Maturity

Bruised Reeds, Smoldering Wicks

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Lone reedI promise my series on "Unshackling the Church" WILL continue, but I cannot write the next installment, which deals with community and fraternity, unless I go back to what is basic. Milk.

The last couple weeks have seen some real rancor in the Godblogosphere and I'll be frank in saying that I'm progressively sickened by the appalling meanness we ambassadors for Christ heap on each other in a sort of theological one-upmanship. I refrained from saying anything about the now infamous Mark Driscoll roasting that began at Tim Challies' otherwise normal site and spread out like so many firebrands to sites across the Godblogosphere. But as no one wants to let this one drop, I can't be silent when brother turns on sister turns on brother.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.
–2 Peter 1:5-10 ESV

Many smart people inhabit the Godblogosphere, certainly some of the most knowledgeable people you will find this side of a divinity school. We show off our knowledge of infralapsarianism, dispensationalism, trinitarianism, and a whole lot more -isms than some of us can name, wielding it like a weapon to slay enemies. Unfortunately, too often those enemies are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Peter's progression is informative. The starting point in Christian maturity is faith, then goodness. Most of us are there, I hope. Then comes knowledge.

The problem with those of us who have knowledge is we too often stop there and believe it is the be all and end all of the faith, a dire mistake and the source of much of the pummeling that occurs on the Web. Knowledge must be supplemented with self-control, otherwise we become a human bomb, blowing up and damaging others with what we know. Everyone of us has encountered a know-it-all and few of us like being around them. The reason? They lack an off switch. They also tend to lack all the other traits Peter mentions that follow self-control.

We may think we're mature, but what does Peter put at the end of his list? Brotherly kindness and love, two traits increasingly missing from the Godblogosphere. Instead, we see the spiritual blackjack, the whip to stun our opponents.

Paul spoke of this type of correction, but had nothing good to say about it:

What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?
—1 Corinthians 4:21 ESV

Paul seems to be saying the same thing as Peter. Are we Godbloggers listening?

I don't think so. Instead, what we seem to be listening for is our opponents to drop down on both knees and confess that we are right and they are wrong. Strange, I don't see "being right all the time" as one of the qualities in Peter's list. Even if "being right all the time" were in that list, it would be trumped by brotherly affection and love.

We've got to ask ourselves at what point the following verse becomes true:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
—1 Peter 4:8 ESV

Anyone? 

Now some will say that wielding the knowledge of the Scriptures compels us to right bad theology at all cost. Those some would be dancing around the greater meaning of knowing the Scriptures, though. 

A favorite passage of those folks:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
—2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV

What is the chief end of knowing the Scriptures according to this passage? For what reason do we know the Bible inside and out? To pummel others with it? No, to serve. The chief end of knowing the Scriptures is that we be quipped for GOOD WORKS. In other words, serving others. Serving others means only one thing: putting others first.

Stephen was a model Christian. His defense of the Lord and the entire plan of salvation before his stoning is a masterful exposition by a man who understood the Scriptures like few others. What role did Stephen play in the nascent Church? He served food to widows and orphans. His godliness was not measured by what he knew but how he served others humbly, lovingly, and without complaining. By esteeming the forgotten and the least of these, Stephen was mourned and cried over by strong men.

The least of these…

Of the Lord it says,

…a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench….
—Isaiah 42:3 ESV

In the house of the pharisee, we see the bruised reed, the smoldering wick:

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner."
—Luke 7:36-39 ESV

In the minds of judgmental men who have no real love of God in their hearts, the first thought is "Who let the filthy whore in here?"

See, these men possessed enough knowledge to rightly distinguish just what kind of woman this was. Not only that, but their own pride that they did guess correctly—while some backwoods rabbi was evidently clueless—puffed them up. I'm certain a few chuckled inappropriately while others seethed.

What was Jesus' response?

Jesus saw the bruised reed, the smoldering wick. He could have easily broken that reed, or pinched out what little flame danced in the core of that smoking wick. He could have wielded the rod that Paul spoke of. He could have come down on the side of the pharisees and recoiled in horror that this used-up hooker touched him. But no, he responded with tender loving grace.

Is this how we respond to others in the Godblogsphere? Or are we the breakers of reeds and quenchers of wicks?

I've written elsewhere that the anonymous nature of the Internet makes us meaner people. Something changes when we have to confront others face-to-face. I read awful things about other brothers and sisters in Christ on supposedly Christian Web sites. What makes me the most downhearted is our selfish frame of reference when we devastate another Christian with our loose words.

You see, I don't know you and you don't know me. One slice of interaction on some tiny Godblog that perhaps 0.0001% of the country reads in a day does not give any of us the right to lay into anyone. Which of us knows another's path? I may have been a heroin addict last year before I found Christ, but I open my mouth to say one thing in the comments section of some obscure blog and a half-dozen fifty-year-old-walking-with-the-Lord-since-I-was-a-toddler Christians savage me because I defend a pastor—the guy who led me to Christ, BTW—who dropped an F-bomb once.

Unless sanctification is instant, who are we, locked away in some office blogging, to take that one slice of interaction and condemn another person? What profound spiritual arrogance! 

What if the Christians we knew who guided us in life quenched our wicks at that one point when our theology was less than perfect? Which of us reached maturity in the blink of an eye? Haven't we all been wrong a million times or more as we grew in grace and put away childishness? Would I assault my own child verbally because he doesn't know about life the way I do after the benefit of 43 years? Yet too often, this is what we supposedly mature people do to those who are still growing in grace.

Wanna know a secret? We're all growing in grace. We will all sin. We will all be found lacking at some point in our walk with Christ. We should all be extending love and grace first.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in his book, Life Together:

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutory, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

It's easy to imagine some day that one of us Godbloggers will be standing inside the gates of heaven when a commenter we routinely trash, or a well-known pastor we don't like, or some person of the Arminian/Calvinist/Dispensational/Paedobaptist or whatever ilk should walk through those gates and we say, "Who let this filthy whore in here?"

To which the voice of Jesus says, "I did."

God have mercy on us for our critical spirits and our unloving hearts.

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Previous posts on this sad, recurring topic:

The Godblogosphere’s Black Hole

Hidden Messages of American Christianity: Correctness Before Love

That Other Standoff

Tearing Down the Gallows

Has the Christian Blogosphere Lost Its Collective Mind?

On Consigning Enemies of Christ to Hell

Witch Hunt

Let’s Play “Spot the Heretic!”

Who Watches the Watchers?

Unshackling the American Church: The Sacramental

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My son and I took the thirty mile drive out east to the Amish area of Adams County. Our kitchen table is giving up the ghost and our original set of chairs is now down to two, with two replacements that themselves need replacing. I wanted to see a man about a table. Not some cheap piece of Chinese fiberboard held together by staples and glue, but one built by a man who cared about the wood he selected and the way the lathed spindles felt in his hands. A man whose shop sign read “Wood Craftsman.”

The store itself was not fancy—is anything Amish fancy?—nor was the design of the furniture. But in running my own hands along the same lines that craftsman’s took, I heard the wood singing.

We don’t have the money now to buy that careful, beautiful table. Can’t afford at this moment the chairs that will someday hold our friends and neighbors as we sit around eating the meal I prepare for them. But I liked the man who made that furniture and he’ll get my future business because he understands the nature of what he offers another man.

Down the road was the organic farm. Not too many organic farms in our area, even among the Amish. The young man who ran the place was happy to talk with someone who grasped what he attempted. You could hear the worry in his voice, though. How many other people understood? Who else would come and buy? This was food the way God intended it to be. Food whose cost in dirty hands and sweat made it all the more sweet to eat. One plant mattered because there were so few, so the care taken to preserve what little was in the ground showed in every future bite. This was food that demanded as much care in creating a meal of it as the nurture this young man gave to it.

Walking back to our truck, a flash of red from overhead proved to be a summer tanager alighting on a phone line. My son and I talked for several minutes about that little crimson singer highlighted against the cloudless cerulean sky. Scarlet TanagerThe sun at just the proper angle, the tanager’s feathers glowed in the rays as it warbled. I made sure to ask my son if God was pleased by that little bird He’d made. He gave me a “yes” and together we watched the summer tanager until it darted into the gently swaying oaks.

Later that evening back near our pond, I spotted the summer’s cousin, the scarlet tanager, with its black wings and vibrant red hue, a red that puts the summer’s palette to shame. With the tops of the trees yellow in the setting sun, I glanced back to catch the iridescence of an indigo bunting flitting through the walnut trees, and I thanked God for the birds He created that bless us with their beauty and song.

The Enemy’s work is to oppose God. How does he best accomplish that task? By destroying meaning.

You can’t read God’s prescription for the construction of the Tabernacle and the making of the priestly garments in Exodus without noting a few choice descriptions:

You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth.
—Exodus 25:17 ESV

You shall make a lampstand of pure gold. The lampstand shall be made of hammered work: its base, its stem, its cups, its calyxes, and its flowers shall be of one piece with it.
—Exodus 25:31 ESV

You shall make for the breastpiece twisted chains like cords, of pure gold.
—Exodus 28:22 ESV

Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns; you shall make them with cherubim skillfully worked into them.
—Exodus 26:1 ESV

And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. You shall speak to all the skillful, whom I have filled with a spirit of skill, that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him for my priesthood. These are the garments that they shall make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a coat of checker work, a turban, and a sash. They shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother and his sons to serve me as priests. They shall receive gold, blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and fine twined linen. “And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue and purple and scarlet yarns, and of fine twined linen, skillfully worked.”
—Exodus 28:2-6 ESV

The gold used to make the tabernacle wasn’t just gold. It was pure gold.

The lampstand’s construction wasn’t from this bit and that. It was in one piece.

The garments made for Aaron weren’t just clothes. They were glorious, beautiful, and holy.

And the linen that compromised them wasn’t just linen. It was fine linen.

Most of all, the creators of those items weren’t just workers. They were skilled workers.

While it may be true that to the pure all things are pure, I wonder how many of us in the Church today still understand that the sacred has an enduring quality. That which is cheap and meaningless will not endure, but those things that are consecrated and sacred before God are not forgotten in this life or the life to come. The sacred is costly. To make the Tabernacle cost the Hebrews. They surrendered up their gold, jewels and yarns. But more than that, their artisans surrendered up their time and skills to craft something precious. Gold is easy to refine. Pure gold is not.

Yes, the craftsman’s work honors God. If the Reformation taught us nothing more, we should should remember that all the Reformers understood that craft is blessed by God; therefore our work is sacred when it harbors meaning within it.

But this is not a call to buy that Bang & Olafsen audio system instead of the Emerson. If life is nothing more than consuming and buying, then we have fallen for the greatest of the Enemy’s lies; we have cheapened what it means to be alive.

The American Church’s wholesale abandonment of that which is sacred and infused with meaning for that which is cheap has taken a terrible toll. Our attempts to prove culturally relevant have shown that we value what is cheap over what has meaning, rather than going the opposite way of the world.

  • The pastor downloads his sermon off the Internet. Cost to him? Nothing.
  • The worship leader thinks about the morning’s music the night before. Cost to him? Nothing.
  • Communion that Sunday consists of some mass-produced wafers out of a plastic bag and a gallon of grape juice from Dollar General. The cost…?

Does it matter? Yes, it does—it matters more than we can know this side of Eternity.

So much of what we do as a Church in this country is devoid of meaning. We’ve allowed the Enemy to strip out so many simple and sacred aspects of life that we didn’t notice they’d gone missing one by one until it was too late. Our wholesale chasing after the culture rather than being the counterculture that holds onto meaning and sacrament left the unsaved scratching their heads as to what we really offered. If it were possible, some might contend that we who are the representatives of Christ have treated our the Lord as if he’s just some cool guy who lavishes meaning by giving us what we want. We’ve taken our own lazy lust for the cheap and cheapened our birthright as Sons of the Living God. No wonder the world looks elsewhere for meaning! If we as the Church can’t be trusted to lift up the name of Jesus, what then is truly sacred?

No thankfulness exists for the cheap. The sacred though, commands our thanks. When we receive a costly gift and understand its cost, how can we not be grateful? The heart of the Christian should incline toward thanks because only the Christian understands the depth of the cost Christ paid for our sin. Yet our wholesale abandonment of meaning in other aspects of life makes it all too easy for us to do the same with Christ’s atoning work. Our thankfulness shifts to become the pitiful cry of “So Jesus, what have you done for me lately?” And all meaning in life suffers in that wake.

The sparrow falls to the ground and God knows it because He created it. We, on the other hand, pass by without caring. What is another bird to us? Or another tree? Or for that sake, another person? We Christians may stand against abortion, but why is it that all other aspects of life hold so little value to us that we can overlook them so easily? Our picking and choosing looks more like picking and choosing than a consistent worldview that understands meaning in light of the whole Gospel.

As believers in Jesus Christ, we are a priesthood. As a priesthood, we are charged with conserving that which is sacred. But our focus has been so narrow in that regard that we’ve let the bulwarks fall without thinking and let the enemy saunter up to our gates to assault the very heart of the fortress. Tree, bird, horse, man, Christ? Who cares, right? The latest iPod’s come out!

But redemption offers us true change:

  • Opening our homes to our neighbors has meaning.
  • Slowing down to catch the sunrise has meaning.
  • Listening to our elders tell the stories of our families has meaning.
  • Caring for a dying parent when it is so easy to let someone else do it for us has meaning.
  • Taking the time to listen has meaning.
  • Making something with our hands when it can be bought at WalMart for less has meaning.
  • Wondering at the splendor of a scarlet tanager has meaning.
  • Passing onto another generation the God-soaked sacredness of so many aspects of life has meaning.
  • Making a homecooked meal from the plants we harvested and the animals we raised has meaning.
  • Creating objects of beauty has meaning.

But most of all, being thankful as we experience God and worship Him in every fragment of our day has meaning. How did we in America let the Enemy so easily rob us of the sacramental?

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Other posts in the “Unshackling the American Church” series:

“Unshackling the American Church” Series Announcement

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Rarely do I read a book that leaves me saying “Amen” after every sentence. More amazing is the fact that this book, while it does deal with Christian thought and living, resides in the Politics section of your average secular bookstore. So dead-on accurate is the content, though, that I’m considering starting a new category of Essential Reading in my sidebar just to house it.

Long-time readers know that I take great care to avoid bringing politics into this blog. But this book is not so much a tome on politics as it is on living a sacramental lifestyle that goes beyond the glitz and gloss of modern-day Evangelicalism in America to a new vision of life that is truly ancient.Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons

The book? Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher.

Dreher’s released one for the ages. In fact, this book is so good that I’m hacked off at him for writing it because what he’s penned is the next book I had planned to write (although mine was aimed more squarely at the Church).

The gist of this book explores a little-known tribe living in the United States: Political conservatives, usually Evangelical Christians, who are dropping out of the rat race by going back to traditional ways of life that existed in pre-Industrial-Revolution America. Anyone who’s caught my epic The Christian & the Business World series is well-acquainted with my views on the dire need for Christians to rise up and question our lifestyles, the non-stop, community-destroying, materialistic live-for-today zeitgeist we’ve adopted indiscriminantly.

As the subtitle proclaims, the book gathers under its wings the disenfranchised out there who firmly believe that conserving the family unit, better stewarding creation, restoring genuine community, and overseeing local market economies by restoring America’s agrarian heritage, will recapture the essence of what it means to live a full life that honors God, family, neighbor, and country.

Weeping is not my normal reaction to reading anything, but this book has so far uncorked a torrent in me. And while too many Christians in America brush all this off as utopian nonsense—even as they adjust the volume on their latest in a string of iPods and munch on genetically-modified tasteless veggies—I’m imploring readers of this book to check it out, if only for the first few chapters.

Despite the finale of the subtitle, I’m personally not interested in saving the Republican Party, but I am for saving conservative values—even if truly conservative values look more like some of the elements of the Left than the Right. The kind of conservativism championed by Edmund Burke in no way bears any resemblance to the “free-markets-at-any-cost” stupidity we see enshrined by today’s GOP, but that’s okay. If enough of us drop out of the prevailing societal madness, someone will notice and want to court our vote.

Though Dreher’s beaten me to the punch, I know that you know I’ve been talking these points for a while, so in concert with my reading of Crunchy Cons, I’ll be starting a series called “Unshackling the American Church” that will further examine many of the issues I’ve touched on at Cerulean Sanctum, ideas that dovetail with Dreher’s book.

Stay tuned. I promise a mind—and possibly soul—altering ride.

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Other posts in the “Unshackling the American Church” series: