Faith

For the Good of the Overall Redemptive Story Only?

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A friend told me this story:

A teenager in his small hometown had announced from an early age that she was called to missions work. So apparent was Cori’s calling, no one in that small town questioned it. Most everyone saw it operating in her life. So when Cori was old enough to go on a mission trip that would encompass nearly her entire summer, the whole town chipped in to assist her. And when the day came for Cori to leave for sub-Saharan Africa, many in that town came out to see her off. Bright and beautiful, she represented not only the ideal young woman, but the hope and dreams of that small Midwestern town.

But something went wrong.

Within a day or two of landing in Africa, Cori took ill at the mission station. A few days later, she died.

Another story:

Karl and Jen had spent years trying to conceive a child. Now into their early 40s, hope dwindling, they heard about a new fertility treatment. Folks in that church loved Karl and Jen. Jen worked in the nursery and had a real gift with babies. Karl managed the church’s financial assets. So their plight had the entire church praying for a miracle.

Thanks to that new treatment, Karl and Jen got their miracle. Baby Amanda was born.

Everyone thought Jen would be thrilled with the birth. And she was. For awhile. But postpartum depression is a tricky illness, and few people understand its effects, especially on a miracle mom. Everyone thought Jen would get over it. Then one day, she told Karl she was going to the grocers. They found her car wrapped around a tree.

Karl mourned. Taking care of Amanda became his primary duty. He stepped down from managing the church funds, and Mavis, who had ably assisted him, took over. Life, though sadder, seemed to settle down.

At Amanda’s two-year checkup, the doctor found a worrying lump on her arm. The diagnosis came back as bone cancer. Karl had never had great insurance through his workplace, and the costs to treat Amanda drained all his savings. The church put together a great fundraiser in response. Everyone was stunned when Amanda, the miracle child, failed to see her fourth birthday.

They were even more stunned to find later that Mavis, the new church financial manager, had run off with $300,000 in church funds.

One of the most well-known verses in the Bible:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
—Romans 8:28 ESV

I’ve heard a lot of sad stories in my life. Some don’t seem to have good endings.

I know that I struggle with Romans 8:28. A lot. So do many other people. We know the verse. We know that God is true. But we can’t always make life fit into that verse in a way that makes sense.

We Christians in America tend to read the Bible with one eye on the Scriptures and the other on the Bill of Rights. Nothing gets our goat more than thinking about our individual rights being infringed. Our sense of entitlement to personal happiness is enormous because it’s reinforced day in and day out by our collective American unconscious.

I’m not saying the following is the perfect exposition of Romans 8:28, but it’s something I’ve been pondering.

What if the Creator’s intention for “those who love God” isn’t primarily for the individual crushed by circumstance? What if the “those” consists of the greater mass of Christendom?

Perhaps we search in vain for Karl’s redemptive answer to his wife’s and child’s deaths. Maybe the happy ending isn’t Karl’s but another Christian’s, a doctor who hears about Karl’s story and leverages her talents from God to found a clinic for helping others diagnose and manage postpartum depression.

Perhaps answering the elusive Why? in the case of missionary Cori resolves not in her survivors’ joy, but in a next generation, when a young, local man completes that teenage missionary’s calling by establishing a missions center in that town that ends up blessing the world.Cry tears

Perhaps Mavis’s granddaughter gets a tap on the shoulder from God and starts an organization that helps churches better handle their money.

Perhaps it’s not about the happiness of the primary people hurt by life’s seeming injustices but about those who come afterward. Or even those sitting on the other side of the planet in a sub-Saharan missions HQ who decide to work toward improved health care for missionaries in their country.

Something about the Hollywood ending drives us Americans. And we always want to see it unfold in the lives of those immediately affected by life’s vicissitudes.

But what if this redemptive story that God placed us in is far greater than your happiness or mine? Do we ever look at it that way?

I’ve written many times about Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China. His work back in the 19th century is instrumental in the faith of millions of Chinese today. The work he started continues to flare brightly, lighting the world.

Yet those who knew Taylor best claimed that the man who left for China with his family was not the same man after their burial under the earth of his adopted country. A sadness permeated his life.

Did Romans 8:28 not “work” for this renowned missionary?

Perhaps we think too much of ourselves and not enough of the collective work of God in the lives of those other “those who are called according to his purpose.” We like to believe that the verse reads solely for our own private circumstances.

But what if it doesn’t? Are we solid enough in our faith to go to our own graves happy that God’s story is greater than our own lives? And that our tears may not be dried in this life?

A Major Denomination Gets It Right–Will Yours?

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A hat tip to Rick Ianniello for the following lead on a video released by The Foursquare Church (a good, old-fashioned Azusa Street revival descendant):

This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

You don’t change churches to adapt to the spirit of the age. You don’t turn them into sources of entertainment to draw people. And you certainly don’t dumb them down and alter their function to make them more appealing to unbelievers.

No, you do the opposite: You make them intense sources for the most meaty teaching possible, the toughest training conceivable, the most spiritually deep wells imaginable, then you send out your fully equipped people to go do the work of the Church outside the four walls of the meeting place.

Period. End of story.

It is worth seeing if The Foursquare Church as a whole is able to make this concept work. Honestly, it’s the biblical model, so it’s the way it and every church on the planet SHOULD be doing evangelism and discipleship.

God help us if we don’t get this right.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and Why No One Can Get (or Give) Any

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I’ve got about six months until I hit 50. That milestone isn’t sitting well with me, though.

Part of my unrest is that the major tropes of my youth with regard to the accumulation of years have failed. Or perhaps I should say that I failed to fulfill them.

By the time you are 50, you are supposed to be in the prime of your career. You are a leader in your community. Your savings account is overflowing. You have power. Your words matter to people and they listen to you because you are a success.

At least that is what I grew up believing because that’s what we were all taught to believe.

Problem is, I haven’t achieved any of those. My careers (yes, multiple) have all been derailed at one point or another by uncontrollable economic factors, so this elusive “prime” I keep hearing about seems to be some mysterious other’s to enjoy. I’m not rich, so I have no power, since the money = power equation only grows stronger the larger the number of years on the calendar. Politics seems to be the only avenue to leadership anymore, and no party will have me. And since achievements in those preceding traits are the sole signal for success in our society today (with the possible exception of scandal, so there’s at least that still open), I’ll never be a worldly success.

They say that youth is wasted on the young, and I understand this more and more. Supposedly, the counterbalance is wisdom, but no one cares about wisdom. In an age of knowledge, where Google can give you answers to nearly any question you have, and it’s all within reach of a ubiquitous cell phone, what is wisdom? The Internet is filled with dime store philosophers, and most days anymore, I feel like just another of their horde. Name a topic and there’s a pundit for it.

So if none of this works, what is left for the guy who has managed to get to 50 years without making a total wreck of life?

I was taught to always refer to adults with “Mr.,”Mrs.,” or “Miss” preceding their surname. Even when I was in my 20s and 30s, my parents’ peers were still “Mr. Kreider” or “Mrs. Frey,” not “Joe” or “Phyllis.”

This gave those neighborhood stalwarts some ethereal cachet that made them different from me. Better. Smarter. More worthy of respect.

Just the other day, I was out with my son, and we ran into the daughter of a friend. She’s 19-21, if my faulty memory serves, and she called out to me by saying, “Hello, Mr. Edelen.”

I found it almost startling to hear “Mr. Edelen.” Perhaps I am now an adult, part of that elusive set of peerage that reserved such titular prefixes for the friends of my deceased parents.

If anything, that callout got me thinking more deeply about respect.

If none of the other standards for adulthood drilled into me in my youth can be assumed, surely respect can. Yet despite being called Mr. Edelen by one well-raised young lady, I think that more of us can identify with Rodney Dangerfield.Rodney Dangerfield - No respect

Getting to 50 without screwing up one’s life no longer merits the special favor of respect. Perhaps it never should have in the first place. We keep hearing that respect must be earned, and if anything, that’s still the prevailing thought.

Yet if our societal beliefs on respect are to be grasped, no one is earning respect.

The presidency used to be a position of respect. I don’t know if that was forever shot down by the presence of presidential protein on an intern’s dress, but since that event, neither of our last two presidents have garnered any respect. Even from Christians, respect may be talked about with regard to the POTUS, and we can blabber with the best of ’em about Founding Fathers and the greatness of America, but the words we say about our president don’t encompass respect.

In fact, even in the Church today, I can’t think of anyone who gets any respect. The world at large has a built-in reflex for questioning authority, and that seems to have slid down the gutter into the American Church.

Don’t believe me? Consider the following.

An elder from your church pulls you aside some Sunday and says, “I notice your giving has been down this year. What can we do about that?”

For many of us, the first thought is, Take a long walk off a short pier, buddy.

Even if we substitute pastor for elder in that scene, nothing improves. Doesn’t matter who the person is, we don’t want anyone telling us we’re doing it wrong.

But, Dan, the giving thing is a naturally divisive issue, you may say. And I know you don’t ascribe to a New Testament tithe, anyway. OK, then have the elder or pastor suggest that you’re not spending enough of your time in service to either the church or the community. Or that a church leader noticed a sin in your life you may need to address. Or that you might think you’re a gifted teacher, but that class you really want to teach is not what the church needs from you now. Or that you’re not as gifted in teaching as you think you are, and that perhaps your gift is driving the church bus.

How quickly the thought becomes, So which other churches can I visit next Sunday?

We can talk all we want about respect, but no one seems to get any anymore. We are so selfish and believe ourselves so wise, that no one can speak into our lives with any authority and have us instantly consider his or her words worthwhile simply because who he or she is demands respect.

We don’t honor offices or the people who inhabit them. Titles now mean nothing. We have become like cliffs of granite, immovable, unswayable, and suitable only for jumping off for those who would suggest we move or sway.

Sure, plenty of Christian leaders have abused their authority. Sure, some people may not be worthy of respect.

But is anyone?

I maybe a poor example of human being and perhaps an even lousier Christian. Maybe respect should not be afforded me simply because I’ve hung around nearly 50 years.

Yet what else is there? If we can’t respect those people who are still standing after 50 years or more, especially within the Church, what hope do we have to ever move anything—including the Church—forward? Instead, we may be dooming ourselves to a downward spiral of selfishness that keeps crying out for others to respect us, even as we fail to respect anyone else.