Church Issues

Question

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Between the silence of the mountains
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she’s waiting there for me
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose

I’m looking for someone to change my life
I’m looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our soul

–Excerpt from “Question” by The Moody Blues

 

In searching for some factoid last week, I stumbled into a piece about The Moody Blues and their top songs, one of which is “Question” (shown in the excellent video above).

I always liked that song. The plaintiveness of the question that erupts from the heart of the singer resonates.

Many people are looking at life right now and asking how it is we are where we are. Beyond the questions that afflict us all comes that one individual query, the one that haunts a lot of us who scout our personal situations and ask what happened to that place of refuge and hope from long ago, that “land that I once knew.”

I turn 50 in a few weeks, and I guess that’s good enough time as any to get introspective. Now more than ever, I run into fellow travelers paralyzed by the search for the land they once knew, for someone to change their lives, for some miracle to happen that will forever alter the inevitability of the road they find themselves on, the road that winds through the grey mists of morning that lead into forgetfulness and loss.

How is it that some people seem to find their mission and fulfill it, while other people look and look and yet the road never makes itself clear?

How is it that some people can clearly see where they have come from and where they are going, yet they never quite get to their destination?

How is it that some people find the opposition to their entire journey so strong that it never truly begins?

Where the trouble for me begins is that I know a lot of Christians who are stuck in these No Man’s Land locations. For whatever reason, they’ve been sidelined. All those things they hoped to do now seem less likely than ever. The vision that lit up their early lives now flickers, a cooling ember inside a broken heart. You can see that cool nostalgia in their eyes and hear the tremor in their voices when they tell their stories, especially when they reflect on what might have been.

Some wonder how it was that they had a yearning for foreign missions, yet every opportunity to do those missions blew up or met with seemingly pointless resistance.

Some wanted nothing more than to work with young people, yet the vicissitudes of life kept pulling them away, and now they no longer understand youth.

Some wanted to change the world for Christ, yet they got drawn into the embrace of the American Dream and saw their youth and enthusiasm sucked dry by it.

And some reflect on it all and wonder if they are the ones who put their hands to the plow but then looked back. And they wonder if there is any redemption for that very human failing, a second chance, a ticket back to that land they once knew, where they could start again and do it all right this time.

I think there are a lot of people who found that Someone who changed their life. And yet the finding somehow didn’t shield them from broken hopes and dreams, especially when those hopes and dreams were to be all they could be for that Someone.

There is no joy being caught in that time of discernment yet unable to tell the difference between the dead and the sleeping.  When the road we take from here seems obscured. I don’t know what to say to people when I see them struggling to find how to move on when there appears to be no place to move to. I hope that whatever words come out of my mouth have some of God’s life in them, but I don’t know myself how to answer the questions of how one finds himself here, because I’m not so sure of my own location.

At this point in my life, I wonder about systems and how people end up mired in them. Government, institutional religion, personal expectations, other people’s expectations– they seem to conspire to cloud rather than clarify. And the “land that I once knew” seems farther off than ever.

What do you do when you tried to do everything right by God and yet it led to this far off place that feels so alien and removed from where you think you should be?

I wish I had an answer to that question. I wonder if it lies back in that land we once lived in, but I don’t know how we get back there.

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From a “What?” Church to a “How?” Church

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QuestionWas reading Jack Towe’s astute comments in his post today, “Mature Christians.” He notes that he has been a part of 16 churches in his long life, but while most of them sought to answer the what? questions of Christianity, none of them talked about the how? questions.

I know Jack from a ministry he used to run in Cincinnati. He saw that a bunch of old buildings  in decent shape sat unused. He worked to buy them, fix them up, and give them to people who had no decent housing. For a couple years, I was one of those who helped Jack prep buildings for use.

Jack always was concerned for actually living out the faith and not simply knowing about it.

The issue of churches that focus on what? instead of how? is a huge one. Questions of what? are baby-step questions. They’re the basics of the Faith: What did Jesus say? What was the purpose of His coming? What are folks supposed to do once they become Christians?

What? questions are easy. Milk.

But how? questions are harder because how? takes the what? and tries to make it applicable and functional in life. Unfortunately for most churches and the Christians in them, going from what? to how? is a little like Evel Knievel’s jump across the Snake River Canyon. It seems possible, but the execution grossly underdelivers and leaves everyone a little embarrassed.

I’ve written before that authenticity issues plague the Church in America, a problem that has led to a mass exodus of 18-35ers craving more practical sense and expression to their interactions with the world.

I know what I am to do as a Christian, but how do I do those things?

How am I supposed to feed the poor when I work an 80 hour a week job?

How do I heal the sick in Jesus’ name?

I’d like to visit prisoners in jail, but how am I supposed to do this when I have young children and I’m caring for two increasingly enfeebled parents?

How do I overcome the reality that I’m bored with the Bible? How do I even confess that without feeling like I’m an awful person?

The sermon on Sunday said that God accepts us as we are and we should not be worried about appearances, yet my company is handing out pink slips to people who look old. How do I keep my job and yet not concern myself with my appearance?

How am I supposed to be used of God when I’ve suffered from depression for years and sometimes find it hard even to get out of bed in the morning?

How do I know that moment when someone is ready to come to Christ?

I’ve had seven jobs in six cities in nine years. How do I find lasting fellowship with other believers?

How?

The dearth of how? answers arises, in part, from a clergy that’s out of touch with real life. The professional minister doesn’t always realize what life is like for “real” people. I read a book several years ago called Making Room for Life by Randy Frazee that was both excellent and terrible. Randy proposed this idea of Hebrew Time and how we should construct our lives around it, carving out space for other people and real life. Randy’s ideas were fantastic, but they were burdened by one simple truth: while they worked excellently for a professional, salaried minister (which Randy was), they completely collapsed when applied to a second-shift laborer. Or someone who lived in the country. Or someone who was caring for an enfeebled parent. Or…

The disconnect between what paid, professional clergy think is possible in life and what “real” people experience could not be greater, yet sermon after sermon on Sundays in churches nationwide will avoid the question of how? by assuming that everyone not only knows how, but can implement the answers to what? questions with ease. Yet my experience is that most churches that easily answer what? can never provide answers to how? that go beyond the preconceptions of professional clergy, who look at themselves as perfectly representative people when they are anything but.

The other problem with how? is that the answers to it are not simple. Nor are they always one-size-fits-all. Sadly, we’ve structured our churches to reach seekers primarily, so most of our solutions to life are baby-step what? answers. In truth, we haven’t much thought about answering the how? questions of life.

But how? is where life IS and remains that place where we must abide. Sticking to pat answers simply isn’t Christian. Jesus never offered pat answers. His always came from left field and rocked people’s worlds. They were the “unanswers.” They took people down pathways they never envisioned and answered questions people didn’t know they had in ways they had never explored.

Why should the Church, which supposedly reflects the assembly of the Body of Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit, be so incapable of generating answers to how? in the way that Jesus did? If anything, that’s what we should be known for! That’s the very authenticity young people are dying to find.

But where are the great thinkers in Christianity today, especially among Evangelicals? Who out there is answering the harsh questions of everyday living with life-infused answers that not only provide real solutions, but which also shake us up while offering us peace?

How do I live out Christian faith?

More than anything, I would like to see fewer Christian leaders telling me what I should be doing and far more helping me achieve what I should be doing, despite my circumstances.

I think that many people now struggle with how they can live as practicing, worldchanging Christians in a down economy that has them scrambling for decent jobs all the time. I have yet to see a Christian leader tackle that subject, yet issues of work possibly create more how? questions than anything else in a person’s life.

Christian leaders, the questions of how? and how best to answer them are the most important questions in people’s lives. Start offering possible solutions. This means wrestling with tough issues. You’re a leader for a reason, so stop running away from the hard questions and start being that leader. Model what it means to take the answers to what? questions and make them answer how? questions in a practical way. This is what leaders do. They blaze a trail. Now blaze it.

And even if you aren’t a leader but have been around life long enough to answer how? questions, for heaven’s sake, DO NOT HIDE YOUR INSIGHTS UNDER A BUSHEL. The Church of Jesus MUST answer how? questions. If you have experience, share it. Who knows how many people might benefit? We are a body, and what one body part knows can serve a different part!

Christian maturity isn’t knowing all the answers to the what? questions of life. It’s more about the how? in the day-to-day. Successfully answering how? is the difference between just being in the race and actually finishing it.

The Devil in Outcomes-Based Living

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Off the road and into a ditchI’ve spoken about politics lately far more than I ever have in my life. It seems to be getting me in trouble too. This means I should probably stir the pot more.  😉

But really, this post is about faith, not politics—though it doesn’t start that way.

One of the most perplexing aspects of this current election cycle is the extent to which it reveals some Christians have no qualms at making strange bedfellows. Solid believers who would ordinarily argue against certain courses of action are willing to forget their arguments because they have a goal in mind. To them, the outcome matters more than anything else. How they achieve that outcome and their justifications for their actions are inconsequential. What is foundational becomes secondary to the result.

What I see happening is many Christians aligning behind a candidate whose worldview basis is completely at odds with God’s Word. In a different context, we would call those beliefs “doctrines of demons,” and God, through the Scriptures, has nothing good to say about such worldviews. But because this is “just politics” and the candidate supposedly supports certain outcomes that align with what many Christians hold to as the core of “values voting,” many excuse the worldview that informs those outcomes. To them, the outcomes matter more.

The problem with an outcome-based line of reasoning is that it produces unintended consequences. God says as much, and the Bible is filled with people who desired a certain outcome, ignored what God said was all that He asked of them, and instead pursued that outcome.

Consider this verse:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
—Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is always depicted as the seat of longings. And longings are about the outcomes we desire in life. We want something, and it can even be something noble and good, but we can go down wrong paths to find it.

The Bible warns about this from its first book and shows the perfect instance of how outcomes-based thinking leads to error:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
—Genesis 3:1-6 ESV

That final sentence shows outcomes-based thinking at work. Eve justified her behavior because the outcome was, in her limited understanding, desirable.

Eve’s error began when she glossed over a critical reality: God said no. Eve did not stop her subsequent actions at God’s injunction. While God said no, Eve concerned herself with the outcome alone.

In my life, I have seen far too many solid Christian people crash and burn because they did not stop at what God says. Whether God speaks through the Bible or through the Holy Spirit, our imprimatur as Christians is to heed God regardless of possible outcomes. If God says no, there is no further argument. If He says yes, then we proceed.

You see, outcomes are always God’s and His alone. He alone is Sovereign. He alone directs the lives of men and women. He is the Master of Time and Fate. We all know the verses. They are indisputable. If anyone questions this, read the Book of Job.

Few thing sidetrack and cripple the Church more than focusing on desirable outcomes. We simply cannot make an outcome foundational and work backwards toward a justification for it. This is a recipe for error and has destroyed churches and their people. Instead, God says to start with Him and proceed to do what He says. Understanding who God is and how He can be known matters. The Bible and the Holy Spirit tell us. We begin there, do what God says, and leave the outcomes to Him. Period.

The embodiment of this is found in this beloved verse:

…for we walk by faith, not by sight.
—2 Corinthians 5:7 ESV

What God calls us to do is to be faithful to Him by trusting His revelation to us. If we are faithful to do what He wills, He is faithful for the outcomes, even if on the surface those outcomes appear negative.

And the truth is, the Christian life lived faithfully will often end negatively—at least negatively by the world’s assessment of outcomes. Don’t believe me? Then ask the great saints of our Faith how well they enjoyed their martydom.

It’s funny, though, how God turns the negatives into positives when we do what He says and leave the outcomes to Him.  The Kingdom of God always seems upside-down. The world won’t understand, but we know better, right?

One of the realities the Bible shares is that in the Last Days almost everyone on earth will accept the mark of the beast. I don’t know for certain what that mark may be or when it will come, but this I know: People will rationalize taking the mark because they desire a specific outcome more than they desire to abide by the words of God. And we all know how that turns out for them.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
—Proverbs 16:25 ESV

Outcomes-based living has no other end. When we live only to achieve a certain outcome, we are bypassing the most essential understanding of how God wants us to live by what He tells us to do. None of us can see the future, but we know in the present what God has said.

Do what God says, then leave the outcomes to Him.

I end with this: Every evil perpetrated on earth since the dawn of time has been justified by what appears on the surface to be a desirable and proper outcome.