Boldness

Justice Is for Losers

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My son’s been playing soccer at the YMCA this last year. He’s now on his third team. He played on two 5-6 year old teams, then graduated to 7-8 this year. Even then, he’s barely seven.

We had our first game of the season today, and it was clear to me that he’s outclassed. His first year he scored a goal in the last game of the season, and I could not have been prouder. His second team showed him improving his skills; he scored three times for that team. From what I saw today, he’ll be lucky if he gets a dozen good kicks in the entire season—and by that I mean making actual contact with a soccer ball. A goal seems almost ludicrous to expect.

In previous seasons, the Y fielded about six 3-4 yr. old teams, four for 5-6 yr. olds, two for 7-8 yr. olds, and two 9-10 yr. old teams. This season, they couldn’t get any 10-yr. olds at all to play and could not even fill up their 7-8 yr. old teams. That means we have only two 7-9 yr. old teams.

The Y must compete against SAY and Select soccer in our area. The Y has one practice and one game per week. SAY and Select have two practices and two games per week. (Now imagine having two or more kids in those programs! Is it any wonder we’re so ridiculously busy!)

I have to be realistic. My son, no matter how hard he works, may simply lack the inherent talents he needs to play in those two highly-competitive leagues. But what makes it sad for me is the reality that parents don’t want their kids to play in the less competitive Y league because (I believe) they think their own kids will never play for USA Soccer and win that elusive World Cup unless they shun the less competitive Y program and go for the REAL kids’ soccer leagues.

Here’s to ratcheting all of life up a notch or two. (For some reason the phrase “metal fatigue” keeps popping into my head.)

I hate Darwinism, especially Social Darwinism. The idea of the Selfish Gene theory driving all that we do, that our mantra for life is reduced to survival of the fittest, just makes me nuts. And what makes me even more despondent is that, too often, Christians are the ones driving that Excellence At All Cost mentality. So much for fun, fairness, and good sportsmanship. It lost out to Kill or Be Killed—in pre-tween soccer.

It seems to me that the Gospel of grace stands in stark opposition to this non-stop treadmill of competition that drives our lives. If nothing else, it demands we seek justice for the oppressed. Anymore, the oppressed may very well be anyone who isn’t deemed “a winner.” While I’m definitely not into the highly PC idea that we forgo having winners and losers in sports to shield our children’s fragile egos, I don’t think we have to naturally fall into the other extreme. We’ve made every aspect of life into a competition, and that’s simply evil. In our free country, we’ve traded political oppression for social and economic oppression. And let’s be honest: that may be the worse trade. At least in the politically oppressed nation, it’s only the government that’s against you. In ours, everyone is.

The Bible says this:

Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.
—Proverbs 21:13

The soul of the wicked desires evil; his neighbor finds no mercy in his eyes.
—Proverbs 21:10

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah. Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
—Psalms 82:1-4

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'”
—Acts 20:35

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
—Micah 6:8

Last week, I discussed issues facing men. One of the fallacies that the modern Christian men’s movement upholds with religious fervor is the power of the strong. Something about a song Beck sang...But in the Bible, on the whole, strength is only good when God wields it. When Man throws it around, people wind up crushed. Sadly, too many of us root for the crushers rather than defend the crushees.

When we speak of justice, we must remember that justice is for losers. As Christians, we’re to minister justice on behalf of the losers of this world, the ones who cannot keep up, the ones who do not have the strength to carry on. As much as we rant about righteousness, I hardly ever hear Christians begging to be more just in their hearts.

But David says this about God:

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.
—Psalms 89:14

Justice is one of the pillars of God’s throne. Heaven itself is established on justice! Why then do we ignore justice in our lives? Why do we American Christians throw in our lot with the popular and not with the ignored? Why do we love winners and hate losers? Why is our theology based on Social Darwinism and not on justice for the weak?

If the Church in this country is doing justice right anywhere, it’s in the anti-abortion movement. We’ve got that down to a science. Good for us. I hate to think what it would be like if we ignored that justice issue.

But what is the Christian’s obligation to workers crushed in the wake of unjust business practices? What is the Christian’s obligation to the children who go unadopted because they are the wrong age, or have a learning disability, or simply aren’t good looking enough to make it in a culture obsessed with appearances? Does God not hear their cries for mercy?

I cannot say that I love my neighbor if I do not seek justice for him. The two go hand in hand. Yet when was the last time you heard this preached from your church’s pulpit?

Consider the following:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?
—Proverbs 24:11-12

God does not care for our excuses. No, our justice will never be as perfect as His, but He still calls us to fight on behalf of others.

One last Scripture from the lips of Jesus:

You will be hated by all for my name’s sake.
—Luke 21:17

You see, we Christians should understand that the world sees us as losers. For this reason, how can we not understand justice? How can we ignore the plight of those who cry out for justice?

I have to wonder if our lack of concern for justice has turned us into friends of the perpetrators of injustice rather than friends of God the Righteous Judge.

How will that look on the Day of Ultimate Justice?

The Intimate, Faraway God

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You had to be living under a rock to miss the brouhaha over Mother Teresa’s confessionary book detailing the profound absence of the presence of God in her life. Not only did the secular media sources jump all over that news, but so did the Godblogosphere.

While I apologize for being late to this news story due to situations here at home, I feel the need to comment nonetheless. Perhaps in the wake of this story’s looming obsolescence (as is common in today’s frenetic media environment) people have had a chance to ponder it a bit more—or forget it completely. No matter the case, I hope to add grist to the mill or refresh your memory.

You can read the original Time article here.

I appreciate Mother Teresa’s work in India to the extent that she cared for the dying. Few of us would be so dedicated in such a hellhole as the one she ministered in. In that regard, she’s a far better person than I am.

On the other hand, no evidence exists that she told dying, hell-bound people how to be born again in Jesus Christ. To have ephemeral earthly comfort without eternal spiritual comfort is no comfort at all.

So in the end, I have strongly mixed feelings about Mother Teresa.

If you cruise the Christian blogosphere, you’ll find all sorts of opinions about the state of her soul. Some would damn all Catholics to hell, saying Teresa’s crisis of faith was due to a complete lack of saving grace; she didn’t feel Christ’s presence because she wasn’t born again. Others sympathetic to the Catholic cause are more lenient, claiming she partook of Christ’s sufferings by enduring an incredibly long, God-ordained “dark night of the soul.”

I’ll let readers decide where they stand on that continuum. Seeing as Teresa ministered in one of the bleakest spots on the planet, the slums of Calcutta, I can see how she might tend toward that dark night. Still, for the purposes of this post, I want to make the issue less about Teresa and more about you and me.

The longer I’m a Christian, the more people I encounter who put on a brave face concerning their own encounters with Christ. If I had to choose a side, I would say that I know far more Christians who would confess in secret that they never experience the feeling of God’s presence in their lives. In that way, they understand what Mother Teresa endured because they feel the same disconnection. That experience nags at them daily.

Can we be honest here? For every one Christian who claims an intimate, uniquely personal encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, I suspect there’s ten who have not.

That’s not a figure we Christians like to trumpet. I think it’s the dirty secret we don’t wish to discuss–ever. Why? Because it calls one’s salvation into question, at least by the standard that some Christians use.

When we talk about having a “personal relationship with Christ,” how many people can claim that this relationship resembles in every way (and better) the kind of relationship one has with a spouse?

To some people, to even ask that question is nuts. “Of course a person doesn’t have a relationship with God, a spiritual being, in the same way as a flesh and blood human being,” some would say. Others would argue, “Anyone who doesn’t have that kind of kind of relationship isn’t really filled with the Spirit and may not be a Christian at all!” Still others would say, “The truth lies somewhere in-between.”

I’ve had some interesting conversations with men of late. More than once I’ve heard them say that God responds to their wives’ prayers in a way that they themselves do not experience. One even went so far as to say that when something he’s been praying for happens in his favor, he has to check to see if his wife was praying the same thing. If she wasn’t, then he can rest knowing that God answered him alone. A dry weary land without waterOtherwise, he fears that his prayers go unheard if they don’t overlap his wife’s. (I may unpack that fear in a later post.)

If I polled men here, I would suspect that some of them are squirming in their seats over hearing this revelation.

Given this, I suspect that a lot of the Godblogosphere’s most vocal proponents of the Gospel harbor a real dryness on the inside for that voice of God they never seem to hear. And given how readily some talk and talk about the little two-sided chats they have with God every day, you won’t hear those dry folks fessing up.

In the case of Mother Teresa (or those of you out there who share her lot), I can say without hesitation that no matter what we might say about her spiritual state, she did one thing right: she pressed on.

One of my favorite passages in Scripture puts it this way:

“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
—Hosea 6:1-3

Most of us know the last sentence, v. 3. I like the other two as well, for they are Messianic prophecies that also apply to us Christians. Sometimes it takes two days out of three before God revives us. In a life of 80 years, that may be a long time to be dry. But His promise is sure if we press on, isn’t it?

I know plenty of atheists who gloated over Mother Teresa’s dryness. “See, see!” they shouted. “If Mother Teresa can’t touch God, there’s no one’s up there in heaven.”

But the thing about atheists is they know nothing about pressing on. They gave up before the second day, before the rains came.

I know a little about the rains. We’re officially at 19″ of rain for the year in my part of Ohio. The normal? Oh, about 30″. Now combine that with the hottest August on record around here, with five days over 100. Folks, it doesn’t get drier than that. My property looks like a moonscape with all the craters of dead, scorched grass. But as someone who fancies himself a farmer, I don’t give up. Because I know some day the rains will come. Maybe not tomorrow or the day after that, but some day.

So we press on.

As the Scriptures say:

I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.
—Proverbs 8:17

I believe that. I hope everyone reading this does.

I don’t know about Mother Teresa. I know about me, and I’m not always a fountain of refreshment. Still, the faraway God comes in intimate times and I find Him. Sometimes I find Him when I’m not pressing on. And sometimes I don’t find Him when I am. But He’s still there, and I take comfort in that knowledge.

I pray that you’re finding Him. If you’re not, know that you’re not alone. So don’t be discouraged; press on. If you simply can’t press on by yourself, enlist someone to press on with you. And don’t be surprised if you see in the one who helps you the very person of God.

Be blessed. And bless others.

Deep Economy, Part 1

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I picked up A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy about six years ago and it made me tremble. I can’t remember a book having so much power in its pages. I think it may be the best book I’ve ever read.

To that short, short list of tremble-inducing tomes, I add Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. Why the quaking? Because McKibben captures in the short 232 pages of this book much of what I’ve spoken of here at Cerulean Sanctum. And he does it quite well.

When I blog about community, agrarianism, stewarding Creation, and living lives of deep meaning for the Kingdom of God, it’s an intricate dance of ideas that sails over some people’s heads. Bill McKibbenSomeone we know well referred to my wife and me as “hippies” for some of the ideals we espouse that touch on these topics, and while we take that lovingly, we also understand that people don’t fathom what we’re talking about.

Bill McKibben understands. His book lays it all out in a way that concentrates the profound message: We need to ask ourselves if the lives we live in 21st century America have real meaning beyond consuming more.

Jesus Christ occupies the center of purpose. No human life finds purpose apart from Him because He made us to be Kingdom people who embody His very image. Our message to the world not only reflects in the words of Truth we speak, but the lives of justice and mercy that we live—His life, His truth, His justice, His mercy. For this reason, the Christian lives a life that is different, a life dedicated to loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Anyone who desires to live that life will rudely encounter the pragmatism, utilitarianism, Social Darwinism, and consumerism that fight with bloody tooth and claw against the Kingdom of God. None of those four worldview are compatible with true Christianity, yet the American Church suffers from their deadly infections to the point of lying in some spiritual hospital in a fevered coma.

Those worldviews own us, no matter how hard we American Christians say otherwise. If you read here long enough, you know that I believe we’ve varnished those worldviews with a thin coat of Christianity and called them redeemed.

But they simply can’t be.

We are wasteful people who pillage the Creation the Creator told us to steward, and then we beg for more. We use spiritual language and manipulate the Gospel to our ends, calling on it to give imprimatur to our uncontrolled growth and need for more material wealth, no matter what the expense. As I noted a few weeks ago, a word exists for that mentality: profligacy.

Deep Economy is a book about profligacy and its deleterious effects. It explains why uncontrolled economic growth will not work on a global scale. It explores the psychological depression arising from desiring more and more stuff at the expense of our souls, our communities, and the world around us. It sounds the clarion call that our lives are out of whack and we’re taking the planet down with us. It proclaims our obsession with the individual must be reversed so genuine community prevails.

Next week, I’ll be exploring each major concept in Deep Economy. I’ll also show why McKibben’s analysis aligns with what we Christians know to be true from the Scriptures. Most of all, I hope I can sway a few doubters to see that another way to live exists, one that better reflects the heart of the Lord.

If you can find the book, pick it up and read it this weekend. And do so with an open mind and spirit. McKibben takes a middle of the road approach even when some of his talking points sound…dare I say it, liberal. If anything, though, those points may be the ultimate in conservatism.

Thanks for reading. Hold on tight…