Still-in-the-Red Friday?

I’m breaking my blog silence this week to bring this prognostication:

My family and I met other family members for an early lunch today. To get to the Indian restaurant, we passed a large mall complex (surrounded by big box stores) and a second shopping area a few miles further down lined along the main drag with strip malls.

And what did we see?

Not much, actually. Parking lots were a third as busy as this same “Black Friday” last year (and we didn’t shop then, either).

Now I can’t speak for the whole country, but at least in the Midwest I expect to hear a collective “Oh, $#*@!” come the close-of-business today as retailers wring their hands and wonder where it all went wrong.

Church, are we ready for what’s coming?

Blogging Angry

Last week probably wasn’t this blog’s bright, shining moment.

Oh yeah?! Well, you can just... I did something last week that I’ve never done before: blog angry. I’m not an angry person, not in the slightest. I grew up with an angry dad, so anger is not something I like dealing with. As far as I’m concerned, we in this country get too cheesed off too easily over things that don’t matter in the long run.

I don’t visit angry blogs anymore. They drain too much emotional energy, especially since they never seem to have practical solutions to the issues that make them angry.

Anger without focus is about as unhealthy as it gets.

Unfortunately, the state of our country today is such that most of our anger is directed against nebulous sources. That not only fuels further anger, but leads to frustration and despair. When what is causing the anger cannot be located or reasonably addressed…well, it’s destructive.

I’ve spent most of the last two weeks angry, not a normal state of being for me.

I don’t have much, but what I do have I’d like to preserve. Not in an idolatrous way, but because they are good things worth conserving so that generations to come will be grateful for me fighting the battle.

I’m now fighting the biggest company in the world. Needless to say, that’s not an easy battle. It’s asking more of me than I have, but I also can’t lay down and give up on what’s important in life, especially at a time when more and more people are coming around to the values I hold dear. To be a champion of those ideals for others, only to lose in my own backyard is galling.

As someone who makes a living with words, to see our local library levy go down to crushing defeat was more disabling to me than I would have guessed. Then again, I had no reason to believe the levy would fail. At any time my family has about 30-50 books checked out of our library. I’ve got a hotline to the staff. New books on the shelves are like candy to my family. The power of story blesses people in the brightest and toughest times. Why would anyone vote against that? To see that threatened brings out the father bear in me, I guess. ROAR!

At the beginning of last week, the Lord gave me a discouraging word I didn’t want to hear right now. And sure enough, I had to drink that bitter cup down to the dregs. On Friday, we got the bad news, leaving us still drowning in the wake of the tsunami I discussed a few months ago. I’ve now run out of all options and I don’t know what to do. So I’m going into the Christmas season about as low as I can go, hoping and praying for an elusive miracle.

People who study human behavior say that a person under extreme duress reacts with his “shadow personality.” In my case, the normally exuberant, extroverted Dan becomes sullen and withdrawn. Not angry becomes angry. Content becomes frustrated. Spiritually-oriented becomes secularly-oriented.

So my apologies if the tone here recently seemed indignant. I don’t want Cerulean Sanctum to become an angry blog. If anything, it’s supposed to be the antithesis of that pattern.

Tomorrow, I’ve got a post on community that I think will rock. It won’t be angry, just hopeful.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for being a reader.

The Terrible Trio

I don’t know why, but I love trios. I look at my favorite rock bands and a large percentage of them are trios. Rush, The Police, Cream, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience occupy a big chunk of my secular music collection (of which there is not much, let me tell you). On the Christian side, I think the best live performance I ever saw was the Charlie Peacock Trio. So trios capture my imagination.

Even bad trios.

The last few weeks have found me thinking about the state of the Church on a more visceral level. Not the high-level stuff about how to better small groups or preach more effectively, but real A hellish trio meat issues that penetrate us to the core of who we are as individual Christians.

In the end, I see three paralyzing factors that stop us dead:

Fear
Shame
Guilt

I have an idea that this terrible trio robs more people of effectiveness, joy, and growth in Christ than nearly anything else. Start searching the roots of the modern American Church’s problems and almost all of them can be traced to this trio.

Take any issue facing the Church today and you can filter each issue through that trio and it will make sense as to why we’re not reaching our potential in Christ.

Let’s consider evangelism. On the surface, what’s hard about evangelism? A Christian tells a non-Christian about Jesus. Simple, right?

Now add the terrible trio and see what happens to our evangelistic zeal!

Fear – we are inadequate for the task.
Shame – we may not know the Scriptures well enough to answer an inquirer’s questions adequately.
Guilt – we don’t share Christ often enough—or at all.

Or how about being a single Christian?

Fear – we will always be single and will never find lasting love in this life.
Shame – we keep making one relational mistake after another while others enjoy happy marriages.
Guilt – we’ve failed to remain sexually pure.

Or how about accepting a call to the pastorate?

Fear – our new congregation will wither and die while we’re on watch.
Shame – others have been established for years in the pastorate, so why did it take us so long?
Guilt – no one knows that we’re just as messed up as the average guy in the pews.

See, the terrible trio of fear, shame, and guilt can be applied to nearly any situation/event/idea that rises up in the Church. You can postulate outcomes, discern motivations, and uncover hidden belief systems all by filtering reality through the lens of the terrible trio.

This may be more personal than some folks can handle, but do you recall your wedding night? The first time you and your spouse stood naked before each other? Was that a shame-filled moment? It wasn’t for me, nor was it for my wife. In fact, what struck me in that moment more than just about anything was the utter lack of shame. Not one fleck of shame intruded into our time together. I understood then what it meant to be back in the Garden, to be as God created us. Even as a sinner, I tasted what it meant to be free from shame.

Now what if we lived out our lives in such a way that we took that lack of shame with us everywhere we went? What would happen to us as Christian if we lived without fear, without guilt?

Don’t you know that’s EXACTLY how we should be living?

So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”
—Hebrews 13:6
For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
—Romans 10:11
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
—Romans 8:1-2

The terrible trio are bondage, pure and simple. As Children of the Heavenly Father, we’ve been released from those chains! Are we then living as a free people? Or do we reshackle ourselves and others?

What would a Church look like that was free of fear, a stranger to shame, and unbound from shackles of guilt?

Lord Jesus, make us a people who are devoid of fear, shame, and guilt. By Your grace, extend to us that freedom so that we might live as You intended from the beginning of time. You have bought us that right. By your Holy Spirit make that freedom real in the lives of your children. In Jesus name, amen!