A short post about something I've been considering lately.
It is almost second nature to assume, when we hear "Be sure your sin will find you out" or similar mentalities, that the thing God notices the most when He sees us is our sin.
Do you tend to think that way? Do you feel most aware of what God is thinking about you in moments of sin or immediately after?
I wonder this, because as I've been around parents of young children lately, I've realized something that I never noticed before, and will probably be much more keenly aware of once or if I have children some day. Parents are constantly clapping and whooping and praising children with "Good girl!" and the like. Parents seem to take deep joy in the little accomplishments, the little victories, the new skills as they form. What if God views us this way? What if the parental love that exists towards children is only a shadow of the Original Parent? What if God is cheering for us when we grit our teeth and resist the urge to tailgate the person who just cut us off? Or when Facebook is offering one of those "Meet Hot Sexy Christian Singles" ads with a very immodestly clad Christian woman, but you refuse the temptation to click on it? Or when we sit down to pray, late at night when the day has sucked most of our energy away, or in the morning before our brains are even working, does His heart thrill that we are choosing to spend time with Him? What if God's over-arching sentiment towards us is excitement and joy and pleasure, rather than scorn, disappointment, frustration?
I think we, particularly as Christians, do a lousy job of encouraging and affirming the good qualities in each other and of drawing attention to the heart of God towards His children when it comes to good things. We're pretty quick to worry about quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit, but how much thought do we put towards making the Holy Spirit proud of us, like a father who beams at his son's home run or the way his daughter shares with a sibling when she doesn't realize she's being watched? We're extremely worried about not being prideful, we live under a false humility that refuses to acknowledge the good that God has created in us as His children or the positive reactions that God could be having the times when we aren't sinning.
I'm not talking about boasting in our own strength or thinking that we get brownie points with God for doing good things. Not at all. That's not the point and I think we know it. The point is to learn to trust God's heart towards us, and respond like children. To stop living as if God is only ever watching us with a raised whip, ready to crack us when we step out of line.
Hopefully, you don't see God this way. I'm learning not to, but I definitely picked up this mindset over the years and no one ever explicitly taught that God was like that. So, I imagine there are others of you out there that have had similar experiences and, when given the space to be honest, sometimes have a hard time really believing God likes you and doesn't think you're a big disappointment to Him.
And maybe He's smiling as we start to see the light of how He really sees us.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
The Foundations of Our Faith—Part 1
I'm reading God In The Dark by Os Guinness. It's about the assurance of faith beyond a shadow of a doubt, or so the subtitle reads. It's pretty good so far. At times, it feels a little too "black and white" for my taste, but I'm working on being patient with things like that.
I'm in chapter 5, entitled "No Reason Why Not" and I had one of those moments where I couldn't keep reading. Not because of disgust or confusion, but one of those moments when you're like, "I can't keep reading without dealing with what I've just read, not if I want to claim to be a person of integrity and honesty."
Guinness made the fairly innocuous comment, that we, as Christians, should "all examine the foundations of our faith." I'm not sure why it grabbed my attention so, but it did. He went on to list questions to ask and I want to write them out here, because I think it's going to be helpful for me to embark on another little quest, another experiment. Here were the questions he rattled off:
On some level, my faith in God is definitely my own. I do so much over-thinking, questioning and doubting that I wouldn't be hanging onto this faith if it didn't hold water, if it was just something I was raised to believe. However, on the flip-side, I am, like everyone else, an initial prisoner of my own presuppositions. What I mean by that is that I will never be able to step outside of myself and check to make sure I'm on the right track in my thinking. I will never be able to explore the what-ifs of whether I had been born into a Hindu or Muslim family, would I be simply struggling to defend those faiths and understand what I truly believe, just like I am with this Christian faith? Since there is no measuring stick, no objective litmus test or questionnaire that I can take to ensure my beliefs are correct, I can only try to have integrity between myself and this idea of God that I can't escape (and don't want to).
I think I have taken many things for granted in my life. Several of them, such as God's existence and the trustworthiness of the Bible, are ridiculously foundational to all I claim to believe. Yet, when prompted by Guinness' questions on the matter, I found that I didn't have concrete answers for myself. Why DO I believe God exists? I say I do. And I'm not just saying it to convince you or myself. I really do. But, I haven't ever really considered why. Let me clarify, I haven't ever really considered why I personally believe that. "Strong answers to such questions are no substitute for faith," Guinness said. Lots of reading and college courses have given me a lot of strong answers to that and other questions, but I don't think I've always internalized them or examined them for myself, though I feel like I'd have plenty to offer a debate on the subject when it arose. Lately, I don't feel like that counts for much in any way that matters.
Maybe this is a do-over with God. I've already wrote about re-thinking prayer. That's been incredibly helpful to me. God doesn't need my fancy words. He wants honesty, vulnerability that implies trust in Him. That really resonates with me and I want to be faithful to that. However, I can't help but consider, "why?" Why do I believe God views us this way? Am I forming God in my homemade image? Or am I anthropomorphizing Him into characteristics that are just easier for me to understand? Am I committing heresy by loosely interpreting scripture in a way that makes more sense, or am I actually internalizing truths within it and personalizing them in a way that implies real faith and understanding?
I'm not throwing out the baby with the bath water. I've just reached a point where no one else's reasons or answers count for me. I can't hide behind a system or a religion, a church or a biblical worldview. Either I am interacting with the Almighty Creator of the universe or I've deceived myself into living in a safe little bubble that I've always known, content to build walls of toothpicks to protect me from a crushing tidal wave of reality.
So, forgive me if the posts taper off for awhile. I don't want to simply hash this out on the internet. I've realized this needs to be utterly personal and real to me, or I should stop dragging God's name through the mud. I'm going to work through these questions that Guinness posed, not so that I can pat myself on the back or feel superior to others in a religious conversation, but so that I begin to gain the settled confidence and humility of someone who doesn't have to pretend, or posture, or project anything other than the integrity of someone who knows, loves and interacts with the risen Jesus Christ.
This post feels extremely melodramatic, and for that, I apologize. This whole thing could be summarized with:
I read some good thought-provoking questions about God and the Bible that I don't think I've really ever taken the time to internalize, so rather than keep going through the motions in some sense, I really want to honor God and have integrity with myself and the world by taking the time to go through these questions slowly and come to some solid, personal convictions on these things, rather than always being somewhat tossed on the waves of my emotions and sensitivities to the doubts and questions of the world around me.
Hopefully, this is what the Bible means when it talks about searching for God with my whole heart...
I'm in chapter 5, entitled "No Reason Why Not" and I had one of those moments where I couldn't keep reading. Not because of disgust or confusion, but one of those moments when you're like, "I can't keep reading without dealing with what I've just read, not if I want to claim to be a person of integrity and honesty."
Guinness made the fairly innocuous comment, that we, as Christians, should "all examine the foundations of our faith." I'm not sure why it grabbed my attention so, but it did. He went on to list questions to ask and I want to write them out here, because I think it's going to be helpful for me to embark on another little quest, another experiment. Here were the questions he rattled off:
- Why do we believe God is there?
- Why do we believe God is good?
- How do we know Jesus ever lived?
- How do we know Jesus rose from the dead?
- Why do we trust the authority of the Bible?
- How do we understand that the Christian faith is true?
- How would we answer a modern philosopher, a Freudian psychologist, the follower of an Indian guru, each of whom denies the truth of the Christian faith in a different way?
On some level, my faith in God is definitely my own. I do so much over-thinking, questioning and doubting that I wouldn't be hanging onto this faith if it didn't hold water, if it was just something I was raised to believe. However, on the flip-side, I am, like everyone else, an initial prisoner of my own presuppositions. What I mean by that is that I will never be able to step outside of myself and check to make sure I'm on the right track in my thinking. I will never be able to explore the what-ifs of whether I had been born into a Hindu or Muslim family, would I be simply struggling to defend those faiths and understand what I truly believe, just like I am with this Christian faith? Since there is no measuring stick, no objective litmus test or questionnaire that I can take to ensure my beliefs are correct, I can only try to have integrity between myself and this idea of God that I can't escape (and don't want to).
I think I have taken many things for granted in my life. Several of them, such as God's existence and the trustworthiness of the Bible, are ridiculously foundational to all I claim to believe. Yet, when prompted by Guinness' questions on the matter, I found that I didn't have concrete answers for myself. Why DO I believe God exists? I say I do. And I'm not just saying it to convince you or myself. I really do. But, I haven't ever really considered why. Let me clarify, I haven't ever really considered why I personally believe that. "Strong answers to such questions are no substitute for faith," Guinness said. Lots of reading and college courses have given me a lot of strong answers to that and other questions, but I don't think I've always internalized them or examined them for myself, though I feel like I'd have plenty to offer a debate on the subject when it arose. Lately, I don't feel like that counts for much in any way that matters.
Maybe this is a do-over with God. I've already wrote about re-thinking prayer. That's been incredibly helpful to me. God doesn't need my fancy words. He wants honesty, vulnerability that implies trust in Him. That really resonates with me and I want to be faithful to that. However, I can't help but consider, "why?" Why do I believe God views us this way? Am I forming God in my homemade image? Or am I anthropomorphizing Him into characteristics that are just easier for me to understand? Am I committing heresy by loosely interpreting scripture in a way that makes more sense, or am I actually internalizing truths within it and personalizing them in a way that implies real faith and understanding?
I'm not throwing out the baby with the bath water. I've just reached a point where no one else's reasons or answers count for me. I can't hide behind a system or a religion, a church or a biblical worldview. Either I am interacting with the Almighty Creator of the universe or I've deceived myself into living in a safe little bubble that I've always known, content to build walls of toothpicks to protect me from a crushing tidal wave of reality.
So, forgive me if the posts taper off for awhile. I don't want to simply hash this out on the internet. I've realized this needs to be utterly personal and real to me, or I should stop dragging God's name through the mud. I'm going to work through these questions that Guinness posed, not so that I can pat myself on the back or feel superior to others in a religious conversation, but so that I begin to gain the settled confidence and humility of someone who doesn't have to pretend, or posture, or project anything other than the integrity of someone who knows, loves and interacts with the risen Jesus Christ.
This post feels extremely melodramatic, and for that, I apologize. This whole thing could be summarized with:
I read some good thought-provoking questions about God and the Bible that I don't think I've really ever taken the time to internalize, so rather than keep going through the motions in some sense, I really want to honor God and have integrity with myself and the world by taking the time to go through these questions slowly and come to some solid, personal convictions on these things, rather than always being somewhat tossed on the waves of my emotions and sensitivities to the doubts and questions of the world around me.
Hopefully, this is what the Bible means when it talks about searching for God with my whole heart...
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Prayer... Simplified
I'm doing an experiment, though not merely for curiosity's sake.
As I walk this journey of faith, I keep hitting seasons where I get stuck. "Spending time with God" feels artificial and forced, something I feel like I'm supposed to be doing, but find difficult to be consistent with. Part of that is allowing life to crowd out my awareness of God, including the sins of pride, impatience, worry, etc. But a large part of that is that I'm not coming to God honestly, as I am. There's a certain religiosity that I've been taught to approach God with. An unspoken formula that communicating with the Almighty God requires. I think I generally believe the "right" things—right doctrines have been articulated to me and reinforced for years, but the practice of communing with the Creator God has been sometimes less than experiential and even artificial.
First, there's the greeting, "Dear God," or "Dear Heavenly Father". Anything more elaborate than that feels a little showy, but anything less than that feels a little too flippant, you know? There are those who begin with "Daddy" or "Abba", exercising the liberty hinted at in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6, but that can sound a bit cutesy or uncomfortable for those of us still under the thumb of spiritual propriety. Of course, the ending is crucial. Skip some variation of "in Jesus' name I pray, Amen" and it goes into God's spam folder or something. And during the pray itself can exist any number of silly phrases or anomalies that don't ever really occur when we're talking to another human. For instance, I do this all the time. "Lord, I pray for so-and-so... and ask that You would..." It just feels weird to me lately, the phrase, "I pray for" as I'm talking to God, as if God isn't aware that you are speaking to Him through prayer. And since, in reality, it's a synonym for "ask" or "want", it then seems redundant and wordy. Jesus had something to say about not making our prayers lengthy, but I do this so habitually. Another funny thing about the way I pray, and some of you might do this worse than I do, is how I keep repeating God's name while I pray, as if He's got ADD and I need to keep reminding Him that I'm still talking to Him. "God, we just ask, Lord, that You would be here with us, Father. Show us Your love, God." One concession here is that maybe I need to remind myself that I'm praying, drawing my attention back to the One I'm talking to, rather than letting my thoughts turn into a self-absorbed, spoken journal entry. It can still be a little overkill, though.
Now, I'm not judging anyone else in how they pray. If you do these things, like I have, there's nothing wrong with them at all. Everyone needs to communicate with God in way that resonates with how they're wired. I think this falls under the grace of God towards us, to come to Him as we are, without formula.
That said, I've realized I've fallen into mindless patterns of prayer that have weakened my experience of God. I say words and check off the box that I prayed for someone. So, I realized I need a change, desperately. Last night, as I went to bed, I tried to be honest with God. I thanked Him for the things I'm genuinely thankful for, the things that bring me joy without thinking about it first. I told Him that I was scared of some things and didn't exactly know what to ask for, but that He would help me experience Him more deeply and know Him better, so that I could trust Him a little more confidently, and asked Him to help me to be aware of those little things that I might normally have missed in that process. I talked to Him about some other stuff and as I got pretty tired, I said that.
"Yeah, God, I'm getting pretty tired. Thanks for listening tonight. Hopefully, it wasn't too weird for You. That's all I can think of for now. I'll talk to You in the morning. Thanks for loving me. Goodnight."
*EDIT: The main issue, I am realizing, is the sincerity and authenticity with which we approach God, more than the particular phrases we use or don't use.
As I walk this journey of faith, I keep hitting seasons where I get stuck. "Spending time with God" feels artificial and forced, something I feel like I'm supposed to be doing, but find difficult to be consistent with. Part of that is allowing life to crowd out my awareness of God, including the sins of pride, impatience, worry, etc. But a large part of that is that I'm not coming to God honestly, as I am. There's a certain religiosity that I've been taught to approach God with. An unspoken formula that communicating with the Almighty God requires. I think I generally believe the "right" things—right doctrines have been articulated to me and reinforced for years, but the practice of communing with the Creator God has been sometimes less than experiential and even artificial.
First, there's the greeting, "Dear God," or "Dear Heavenly Father". Anything more elaborate than that feels a little showy, but anything less than that feels a little too flippant, you know? There are those who begin with "Daddy" or "Abba", exercising the liberty hinted at in Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6, but that can sound a bit cutesy or uncomfortable for those of us still under the thumb of spiritual propriety. Of course, the ending is crucial. Skip some variation of "in Jesus' name I pray, Amen" and it goes into God's spam folder or something. And during the pray itself can exist any number of silly phrases or anomalies that don't ever really occur when we're talking to another human. For instance, I do this all the time. "Lord, I pray for so-and-so... and ask that You would..." It just feels weird to me lately, the phrase, "I pray for" as I'm talking to God, as if God isn't aware that you are speaking to Him through prayer. And since, in reality, it's a synonym for "ask" or "want", it then seems redundant and wordy. Jesus had something to say about not making our prayers lengthy, but I do this so habitually. Another funny thing about the way I pray, and some of you might do this worse than I do, is how I keep repeating God's name while I pray, as if He's got ADD and I need to keep reminding Him that I'm still talking to Him. "God, we just ask, Lord, that You would be here with us, Father. Show us Your love, God." One concession here is that maybe I need to remind myself that I'm praying, drawing my attention back to the One I'm talking to, rather than letting my thoughts turn into a self-absorbed, spoken journal entry. It can still be a little overkill, though.
Now, I'm not judging anyone else in how they pray. If you do these things, like I have, there's nothing wrong with them at all. Everyone needs to communicate with God in way that resonates with how they're wired. I think this falls under the grace of God towards us, to come to Him as we are, without formula.
That said, I've realized I've fallen into mindless patterns of prayer that have weakened my experience of God. I say words and check off the box that I prayed for someone. So, I realized I need a change, desperately. Last night, as I went to bed, I tried to be honest with God. I thanked Him for the things I'm genuinely thankful for, the things that bring me joy without thinking about it first. I told Him that I was scared of some things and didn't exactly know what to ask for, but that He would help me experience Him more deeply and know Him better, so that I could trust Him a little more confidently, and asked Him to help me to be aware of those little things that I might normally have missed in that process. I talked to Him about some other stuff and as I got pretty tired, I said that.
"Yeah, God, I'm getting pretty tired. Thanks for listening tonight. Hopefully, it wasn't too weird for You. That's all I can think of for now. I'll talk to You in the morning. Thanks for loving me. Goodnight."
*EDIT: The main issue, I am realizing, is the sincerity and authenticity with which we approach God, more than the particular phrases we use or don't use.
Friday, June 11, 2010
What We Want
Peter La Fleur (played by Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball) stated about having goals,
I've been realizing lately, slowly, that I have inadvertently subscribed to La Fleur's life philosophy. The pain of disappointment or rejection has slowly taught me that it's safer not to try, not to risk, not to love. It creates a numbness, something akin to anesthesia, that clouds the way I see the world. Like going to the oral surgeon and getting happy gas. In the moment, it's a relief from pain. But it would be completely impossible to live the rest of your life well under that influence, because you wouldn't be there, present, engaging in the moment by moment details. I wonder if that's why I have such a poor memory generally? Maybe I'm under my own anesthetic fear-induced fog...
I'm not going to hash through all the reasons or experiences that may have fueled this fear-induced apathy, at least not on this blog (it might be helpful to sort through on my own). But I want to re-engage. I'm starting to see that the things worth having and doing are the things, inevitably, that will require something costly from me. They will take work. They will take tears. They will take risk and there will be failure in my attempts to succeed and experience those good things. For some of you, that's basic stuff. Common sense.
All this ultimately leads to the question, "What do I want?"*
For too long, I haven't allowed myself to dream, desire, hope for good things and be willing to strive and pursue them. When you don't know what you want, all the effort and energy that you put into something only feels wasted and draining, which slowly builds up as subtle ammunition, fueling the fires of resignation. Even if the effort succeeds, if it wasn't what I wanted, there was a sense of disappointment, confusion and betrayal. I had misunderstood that merely working hard at something would not make the attaining satisfying. And I never could figure out why, until over the past year or so, I began slowly seeing a correlation. I need to figure out what I want. And if I don't know, I need to put my energy into tearing down the things that keep me from dreaming and not do anything else until I'm free to. Most of you are pretty clear on things you want, I'd imagine. Maybe not, though, and that would be comforting to know I'm not alone. However, even if I'm just really slow to this thing that should be common sense, I feel like it's good to be realizing it and I want to give it my attention, because it definitely seems to have dominated the way I've lived for... a long time.
* Some of you might argue and say, "Your question should be, 'What does God want?'" and I can appreciate that idea. I'm operating out of the mindset that God, as our Father, has created us uniquely and intentionally, and desires us to be fully alive and fully ourselves. Some of you maybe struggle with knowing your desires too intimately and fighting for those against what you know God wants for you instead. Then, yes, your question should filled with that submission and humility, "What do you want, God?" Since I spend most of my time and energy trying to please people, not fail, avoid disappointing anyone, asking God what He wants does nothing to bring back to life the person He has created me to be. I think partially, God wants us to want things and feel safe in His love to pursue them and live well and love ridiculously. Like a Father with kids in the backyard kind of thing. No good parent tries to micro-manage the way their kids are playing—they simply enjoy watching their kids play well. So, while I do think it's a crucial question to ask—what God wants—for me, right now, that would be an irrelevant, Sunday-school answer to my issue of refusing to dream or set goals or pursue things out of fear of failure or disappointment. I need to know what I want, so that I FEEL the weight of hoping for something, submitting myself and trusting God, working hard to receive the prize of what I'm desiring, wrestling with the failures and successes that will no doubt follow. I feel like as I'm realizing this, God wants me to take the time and energy to figure out what I want and stop believing that what I want doesn't matter or will only bring disappointment, etc.
"I found that if you have a goal, that you might not reach it. But if you don't have one, then you are never disappointed. And I gotta tell ya... it feels phenomenal."On one level, the first part of his statement is true. The second part, about how it feels, is not. It wouldn't feel phenomenal, it would just not feel anything, which, to Vaughn's character, is better than feeling anything bad.
I've been realizing lately, slowly, that I have inadvertently subscribed to La Fleur's life philosophy. The pain of disappointment or rejection has slowly taught me that it's safer not to try, not to risk, not to love. It creates a numbness, something akin to anesthesia, that clouds the way I see the world. Like going to the oral surgeon and getting happy gas. In the moment, it's a relief from pain. But it would be completely impossible to live the rest of your life well under that influence, because you wouldn't be there, present, engaging in the moment by moment details. I wonder if that's why I have such a poor memory generally? Maybe I'm under my own anesthetic fear-induced fog...
I'm not going to hash through all the reasons or experiences that may have fueled this fear-induced apathy, at least not on this blog (it might be helpful to sort through on my own). But I want to re-engage. I'm starting to see that the things worth having and doing are the things, inevitably, that will require something costly from me. They will take work. They will take tears. They will take risk and there will be failure in my attempts to succeed and experience those good things. For some of you, that's basic stuff. Common sense.
All this ultimately leads to the question, "What do I want?"*
For too long, I haven't allowed myself to dream, desire, hope for good things and be willing to strive and pursue them. When you don't know what you want, all the effort and energy that you put into something only feels wasted and draining, which slowly builds up as subtle ammunition, fueling the fires of resignation. Even if the effort succeeds, if it wasn't what I wanted, there was a sense of disappointment, confusion and betrayal. I had misunderstood that merely working hard at something would not make the attaining satisfying. And I never could figure out why, until over the past year or so, I began slowly seeing a correlation. I need to figure out what I want. And if I don't know, I need to put my energy into tearing down the things that keep me from dreaming and not do anything else until I'm free to. Most of you are pretty clear on things you want, I'd imagine. Maybe not, though, and that would be comforting to know I'm not alone. However, even if I'm just really slow to this thing that should be common sense, I feel like it's good to be realizing it and I want to give it my attention, because it definitely seems to have dominated the way I've lived for... a long time.
* Some of you might argue and say, "Your question should be, 'What does God want?'" and I can appreciate that idea. I'm operating out of the mindset that God, as our Father, has created us uniquely and intentionally, and desires us to be fully alive and fully ourselves. Some of you maybe struggle with knowing your desires too intimately and fighting for those against what you know God wants for you instead. Then, yes, your question should filled with that submission and humility, "What do you want, God?" Since I spend most of my time and energy trying to please people, not fail, avoid disappointing anyone, asking God what He wants does nothing to bring back to life the person He has created me to be. I think partially, God wants us to want things and feel safe in His love to pursue them and live well and love ridiculously. Like a Father with kids in the backyard kind of thing. No good parent tries to micro-manage the way their kids are playing—they simply enjoy watching their kids play well. So, while I do think it's a crucial question to ask—what God wants—for me, right now, that would be an irrelevant, Sunday-school answer to my issue of refusing to dream or set goals or pursue things out of fear of failure or disappointment. I need to know what I want, so that I FEEL the weight of hoping for something, submitting myself and trusting God, working hard to receive the prize of what I'm desiring, wrestling with the failures and successes that will no doubt follow. I feel like as I'm realizing this, God wants me to take the time and energy to figure out what I want and stop believing that what I want doesn't matter or will only bring disappointment, etc.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)