Not The Religious Type

The Joys of God's Absence

Half a dozen churches around the country are inviting their small group members to read Not the Religious Type and to pass on a copy to a non-churchgoing friend.

I’m eager to learn alongside these folks. Will this spark a helpful conversation among the church gang? What will all those non-churchgoing friends experience as they read the book?

We may well be one of those churches ourselves in just a few months. Anticipating that, I gave a copy of the book to a very gracious friend of mine who’s a committed atheist. Here was his emailed response (we’re having his family over for dinner soon—they’re good company—and may well hear more).

I just finished your book. I enjoyed it very much. I read it carefully.

So carefully, in fact, that I think I even understand what it is you were trying to say, and why you believe what you believe. Furthermore, I'm glad people like you are nearby, and I hope there are many more like you. I enjoyed your voice and your prose. I liked the way you punctuated the book and named your chapters. At no point is the book strained.

There is no anger or disdain. You are excellent company as an author.

"I'd just as soon go through that reality (of a period of suffering) with God than without him."

I like that quote. It gets to the heart of the matter. You see, for me, I'd rather go it alone. For me, the absence of God is as great a relief and a source of joy and wonder as his presence is for you. Having said that, I agree with many things you say.

Knowing my friend as I do, his response didn’t surprise me. But the starkness of his statement that he’d “rather go it alone” and that “the absence of God is as great a relief and a source of joy and wonder as his presence is for you” nonetheless took me aback.

Does my friend’s response surprise you? Would you anticipate a similar response from your non-churchgoing friends?

Is There a Place in Stage 4 for Crusading/Taking Stands?

To start, several of you have mentioned my subtly-varying pictures with this blog—the changing color of my sweater and the occasional glint to my smile.  This is not to say that my smile doesn't customarily glint in real life, but all of this is an example of Dan Littauer, who helps keep an eye on this blog, adding value to your reading experience.  This is the same man who, introducing me to a Boston College crowd this Wednesday (Dan is a recent BC grad) saying that I lived in x place, had x number of children, pastored x church, wrote x book, and, in a little-known fact, was the 1988 silver medalist in rhythmic gymnastics at the Seoul Olympics.  (It struck me that the frosh there accepted that unquestioningly.  Even when I began my remarks by saying that I had encouraged Dan to include one egregious lie about me in his introduction, the students seemed to look back to me with squints of confusion.  What?  Which was the lie?  Maybe I had x PLUS ONE children?)

You all had your usual thoughtful notes to the post about abortion, and I'm confident I'll come up with an equally-generative topic right around March 2011.  What was noteworthy to me—not surprising, but noteworthy—is that there wasn't a single post saying, "ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY?  WE'RE TALKING ABOUT MURDERING BABIES HERE!"  Nor was there one from the opposite side of the argument, saying, "GET OUT OF WOMEN'S BODIES, YOU FASCISTS!"  And I don't think that would have been possible even fifteen years ago.  We—at least the readers of this blog—really have moved to a different place in this conversation. 

The most notable push-back to my original post was not that I wasn't "bold" or polemical enough, it was that I wasn't thoughtful enough—not usually something I'm rebuked for.  And Brian O. was right, as he customarily is.  Using the standard phrases "pro-life" or "pro-choice" needs some explanation.  "Pro-life" in the legal sense?  Or in the sense that one would encourage the vast majority of pregnant women to carry their babies to term?  (And that's just limiting the term to describing a stance on abortion, not extending it to making any comment on the death penalty or war, as some of you did.) 

So if the "stage 4" approach to this question (for those of you who don't get that reference, the day will come someday soon when we have a page on this site devoted to what that is—for now you'll just have to figure it out by context) is…to talk with specific women about their specific situations…or to care for pregnant women who don't want to keep their babies…or perhaps to talk about a commitment to life in its broadest sense,  what do you make of the implications of that?  Is this to say that there's no such thing as a Stage 4 crusader?  (Because it was thoughtfully argued in your comments that preaching on abortion will be hard to pull off with the kind of nuance that could actually help a given woman choose to keep her baby—far more likely is that it will damage and alienate women in the congregation who've had abortions or know women who have.) 

Is Stage 4, then, doomed/blessed to perpetually lift up the virtues of nuance?

(And, just to finish our opening thought: I was the 1988 silver medalist in the biathlon.) 

How Important is Abortion to You?

While waiting for your responses to roll in about yesterday's post on what you're looking for from spiritual teachings, I thought I'd get your thoughts on another hot-button topic.

For upwards of twenty years, the biggie conservative religious litmus test for politicians was whether they'd work to roll back Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion.  We're not that removed from a time when many dedicated people of faith regularly picketed Planned Parenthood offices.  But church people do seem to have modestly moved on from those times, and I wonder how you feel about that.

To fly my flag, if I need to pick a political label, I'm pro-life.  My journey there might interest some of you, in that it was a surprising and spiritual one.  As an atheist, I was unreflectively pro-choice.  I just couldn't imagine another point of view.  It seemed like an obvious civil rights issue to me.  After my sudden turnaround to believing in a generic god, and then to realizing I wanted to follow Jesus, that point of view didn't change.  Until one day, about a year in, as I was praying about something else, it suddenly seemed persuasive to me that God was the author of life and that this was a big deal and that I'd been on the wrong side of this one, and that persuasion hasn't left me since then.

We haven't done much on this front as a church for four reasons.  Let me preface them by saying I'm in tension about this.  Maybe we should make this a bigger deal, and I'd welcome any comments you have on this.  But, that said, here are our four reasons.

(1) It's seemed to me that church-based stances on this have leaned towards the counter-productive. 

We church folks haven't driven down abortions and we've lifted up an anti-abortion stance as being a primary message (once people accept that point of view, then we can move on, say, to talking about Jesus). 

(2) It's a trickier thing to bring up than you'd think. 

We did a really poor job on this in an earlier evening service on the subject.  We had some impassioned pro-life rhetoric, all the while wondering how the many women in attendance who'd had abortions (both those we knew about and those we didn't) would respond to what they were hearing.  Maybe, for instance, we should have had a woman who'd had an abortion do some of the talking?  We'd thought of that...but couldn't find one willing to do it; it was too painful and personal a subject.  So we were faced with going forward anyway and hoping the folks directly affected by what we were saying wouldn't feel too condemned.  But we lost that one.  We got angry walkouts and letters, and it wasn't clear what good we'd done with what we'd presented.  Was anyone actually helped, or was this mostly an exercise in us "discharging our duty?"

(3) Related to the two previous points, we haven't found abortion to be a helpful gauntlet to be laid down.

Friends of mine who are impassioned about this issue can feel it's a question of courage: Do you have the guts to lay down this gauntlet again and again and again as a primary message?

And yet somehow that strikes me more as the calling of a specialist than of a church hoping to helped a broad swath of people experience Jesus.  If abortion is a gauntlet to be thrown down again and again, it's not clear to me how a church can funtion in its broader mission.

(4) We have a spectrum of healing ministries in our church that draw a fair number of women who've had abortions and who find a great deal of help in that context.

So that's seemed like a gentler way to address the consequences of abortion.  Which, granted, addresses things reactively rather than proactively, and doesn't address the question of the aborted one.

But, all that said, I am, in fact, pro-life.  For a long time, that's been an issue controlled by the Republican party, and I've found it heartening that the Democratic candidate this go-round has seemed to talk in substantive terms about reducing abortions (to the point that one of my friends who has, in his past, picketed places where abortions are performed has said anyone serious about reducing abortions should vote Democratic this go-round, that their plan is far more practical and comprehensive than that of their opposition--whatever you might think of this view, what's interesting to me is that it could even be made; that seems new). 

How important is abortion to you?  How do you encourage your fellow readers to address it?

What Are You Wanting from Spiritual Teaching?

I'd love to give us a little more space to think about what we're hoping for when we listen to someone try to teach us about God.  I'm getting more and more e-mails and letters (not to mention whole books) from people who are leaving churches (on occasion my own), saying that they're not getting what they're hoping for from what's being taught there.

So...let's chat!  What are we looking for from people trying to teach us about God or the spiritual life?

Here's one take, from Brian O.

1. Heavy on practical advice. If I'm meant to learn something about God in a sermon, it needs to be connected to something I can do.

2. I have to resonate with the motivation. Presenting practical tips without making me eager to hear them is often worse than not having tried in the first place.

3. Related to both of those, and perhaps most important, I have to like the speaker. Also, I have to want my life to look more like his or hers on the subject being presented. Wanting something I see and liking the speaker are slightly different from one another, but I've found both to be important.

So, I guess that sets a high bar! Want to give a good sermon? Just be one of the more likeable people I know, understand what makes me tick, and be there ahead of me. :) When those things aren't present, I can usually glean bits from the sermons or feel motivated about my attendance by considering how it's helping other people--but it sure is less fun and doesn't feel so sustainable.

A few minutes after posting this,  he added a second post.

Oh...I forgot to say one of the most important things. There must be stories about people who have applied the particular advice being given. It's best if they're coming from the speaker's life, or his friends, but they can also be historical. But, please, please don't use illustrations about ships & lighthouses or monkeys getting their hands stuck in jars!

Does he speak for you?  What are you looking for?

Mini-Thoughts on Preaching

As I read your thought both on why people are (if they are) quitting church and what we're hoping for from faith in a non-revival time, it makes me wonder what we're looking for in a "good, meaty sermon," something brought up by many of you and many in these books (who, just in case you're not clear, don't feel they're hearing many of these). 

Clearly this has relevance for me as someone at least trying to preach such sermons.

Here's a theory I'm playing with as I read these comments.  If we preachers are trying to persuade you to believe pretty much anything, I wonder if that can feel less than helpful.  Do we automatically slip into drooling and snoring when someone has some truism they're hoping we'll adopt?  This would be putting the blame on modernism for bewitching us that what's important is what we think rather than what we experience or commit to.  Maybe modernism is, by definition, boring.  Once we've figured something out to our satisfaction, most of us are done with it and onto something that actually challenges and interests us.  If we preachers see as our job presenting to our congregations material that we ourselves worked out many years back...aren't we both bored by what comes out?  We're bored, because this hasn't been fresh to us in years, and the congregants are bored because this, by definition, is "reductionist" material--reducing the wildness and befuddlement and power of actual reality to a non-controversial aphorism.

Is the preaching we (or maybe just "I") want to hear some sort of collage of several things?  It would, of course, deeply engage biblical material that is challenging and not at all settled to the speaker.  It would have an intuitive element--the speaker would notice what this material was making him or her think about and those intuitive threads would find their way into the sermon (but they would have to actually be used and useful--they couldn't trail off into randomness...hmm, a tricky part to my theory).  It would have some mind-blower to deliver (a local newscaster used to call this the "IBD" of a good story--"I'll be damned"). 

So it seems like a high bar...but maybe it's just a good reminded to those of us who on occasion get the microphone to, at the very least, genuinely interest ourselves each time we speak, not always the easiest thing to pull off.

More Talk about Sex!

Thanks for your comments on the premarital sex post from last week.

My wife, small daughter and I are on our way back from our Alaska sojourn of this last week. (We're in Vancouver at the moment, flying back to Boston tomorrow.) If nothing else, I can attest that, last week at least, Alaska is very drizzly.

What I take away from your many comments on how folks trying to follow Jesus might talk about premarital sex would be something like this:

First off, do talk about sex! Several of you emphasized that this might not be the same thing as talking about not having sex. What's demanded might be more proactive than that. Assuming that people do in fact want good sex, talking about the nature of that might be a better thing than endlessly talking about why they can't have it.

But beyond a greater freedom in talking about sex, it seems that we're also looking for good talk about sex, talk that's reflective and thoughtful, that's actually grappled sympathetically with the relevant biblical material and that has something surprising and useful to contribute. (Each of these elements would seem to be key.)

So it puts the screws to us: we need to talk about it, and we need to have something to say, not always an easy two-fer to pull off.

It was suggested that smaller groups, perhaps single sex groups, might be a good setting for this. I'm all for that, but it would require some real give and take without easily feeling threatened whatever one's perspective going into the conversation.

If you engage in such conversations in the near future, could you tell us how they go? I, for one, will be one interested reader.

Why are People Quitting Church?

A quick note: If it’s annoying you that I keep throwing out provocative topics for you to address, and then I pay no mind to the comments you’ve already made, please accept my apologies up front. I will address them! I mentioned last week that I’m away in meetings with the leadership of my group of churches. We’re in, of all places, Alaska. If you’re filled with jealousy (I’m posting this before I leave), it might comfort you to know that rain is predicted EVERY SINGLE DAY that we’re there. Am I bitter? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve just begun a book called Quitting Church by Washington Times religion editor, Julia Duin.

She started following Jesus during the Jesus People revival of the early 70s and she laments the difference in her church experience now as compared to what she saw then. Church today, she writes, is all far more predictable; the teaching is almost entirely divorced from life as we actually live it (she has little good to say about seeker churches); if one were to miss a given service, one wouldn’t miss much; there’s little actual pastoring of actual individuals’ needs…and I’m only 40 pages in. I’m sure there’s more.

I like Duin's writing style and approach. I actually find her—and Christine Wicker with The Fall of the Evangelical Nation—more helpful than I often find evangelical pollsters and researchers. Somehow the outside perspective (though—to some degree at least--Duin regards herself as an evangelical) seems more clarifying to me.

And yet I wonder whether she’s hit the heart of the problem. Yes, churches—I’m sure my own very much included—are lousy in too many ways to list adequately. But I’m not sold that churches that experienced the Jesus People revival were, as a rule, led by wiser and better leaders. If so, where are they and their protégés now? Why aren’t they having the same success now that they had then? Was the preaching—not just by a few superstars, but across the board—so much better then, the pastoral care so much better then, the small group structure so much better then?

Or, perhaps, were they in the middle of a social and spiritual revival that was bigger than any of them?

For our purposes here, let’s assume people are in fact quitting evangelical churches in droves (both small churches and megachurches). Why do you think that is? Are they lousier now than they used to be? Or…what’s your take?

How Do You Talk About Premarital Sex?

The headline is an actual, not a rhetorical question.

I’ve been bombarded with information about how vexing this question is for churches in the last few days.

So, for one, Saturday’s New York Times had an editorial which talked about teen birth rates and abortion rates in two dozen countries. The U.S. was highest in both, which seems almost impossible. Our abortion rate was dramatically higher than freewheeling Western Europe, for instance: ours being at about 30 abortions per a thousand women between 15 and 19 and Germany's rate standing at about 5.  (More interesting than the editorial itself is the chart that accompanies it.) 

The Times’ take on the numbers? It’s perhaps a predictable one: By encouraging abstinence, kids still have sex, but now don’t use birth control. Since few others in the world do this, therein lie your numbers.

I also picked up a book this week called Quitting Church, by the Washington Times religion editor, Julia Duin. I’m only about 40 pages in. It’s an easy if discouraging read (I might have a little more on it shortly). It covers similar ground as The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, previously mentioned here, but it draws different conclusions. Rather than attributing falling American church attendance to a change in our cultural mindset, as Fall does, Quitting pretty much blames churches for being lousy.

Among the ways churches are lousy is that they are not helpful in talking about premarital sex. However, the book damns both sides. On the one hand, it argues that Catholics are leaving in droves because, in the interest of attracting new people, priests don’t teach classic hard-line Catholic dogma about, say, the evils of contraception. Longtime Catholics then leave, because the preaching is no longer meaty and integrous. So Catholics need to teach classic conservative dogma more.

And yet, as per the Times, teaching classic biblical morality of “Don’t have sex before marriage” is also damned as both not realistic (teens and young adults who hear this message still have sex at rates almost exactly equal to everyone else) and lacking in the kind of depth that will actually help people.

And then many of the leaders in our congregation just this week had a vibrant conversation about pastoring premarital sex in our midst—proving that, whatever our approach might be, there’s much more to be said.

So you all—whether paid church leaders or not—what do you think needs to be said on the subject and how do you recommend it be said?

Extravagance, Waste and What that Means for Us

I've been thinking recently about how much of faith, as I experience it, seems to have no direct "yield."

So I do my best to pray daily for at least half a dozen friends who don't seem to be experiencing much from God.  Some very good things have happened for those friends I've prayed for over the years (the folks have rotated a bit as people have moved out and others have moved into my life), but it all can seem a little indirect.

Generosity seems that way as well.  Jesus encourages a sort of open-handed generosity which, in my better self, I try to keep in mind.  But what's the yield from this?

Some folks in our church are doing their best to regularly love folks in need in our community at large.  Clearly it's a kindhearted thing to do...but what's the yield?  Are these folks now no longer in need as a result?  Or are they experiencing Jesus in some new way?  It's often hard to say.

I've been reflecting recently that extravagance (which means not only bounty, but also waste) seems very close to the heart of who God is.  We get a famous story involving Jesus in which a woman breaks open a vial of very expensive oil over Jesus' head.  Jesus' followers are aghast--what a waste!  (Evidently the oil cost something like the average worker's yearly salary.)  And yet Jesus is on her side...and we discover why shortly.

It turns out that Jesus himself is God's own jar of oil--a tremendously valuable gift that will be broken open and spilled out far before its usefulness is finished.  God, it turns out, is fundamentally extravagant.  What a waste!

More and more it's seeming to me that there's a big idea here.  As we're encouraged towards extravagance--praying for folks who may never respond as we wish, loving those around us who may never be able to return or reward that love, showing indiscriminate generosity--I'm beginning to wonder if we tap into God's own heart and character in the kind of way that makes God think he can trust us.

And so, while perhaps we don't see the direct yield of any of our acts of extravagance, maybe our lives themselves thrive in a way that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.  God becomes happy to resource us overflowingly, because he sees us as trustworthy to respond with extravagance rather than hoarding.

But this is just a new musing for me.  What do you think?

What Do You Hope for from Faith in a Non-Revival Time?

Back to Quitting Church, by Julia Duin. (I’ve mentioned this book in my last two posts.) If Duin and her friends are feeling nostalgia for how awesome church used to be when they were first experiencing it, along with hundreds of thousands of people like them who experienced what’s now called “The Jesus People Revival,” I’m totally sympathetic.

I started following Jesus not all that long after it was over. It was 1981 and the Jesus People Revival might have petered out, say, in 1975. So there was still a memory of what it had been like and an expectation that it, surely, would be back any week now. 

But it hasn’t come back.

Not that good things haven’t happened on the American church scene since then. There have been moments where God’s healing and presence have gotten lots of press (we just had the briefest of large-scale experiences of that with the all-too-fleeting Lakeland Revival) and we’ve seen the rise of smart leaders who’ve been generous with what they’ve learned (certainly Bill Hybels and Rick Warren and I’m sure you could make a case for others). 

But we’re getting a spate of books like Duin’s which emphasize the general lameness of church. Clearly there are exceptions—there is no shortage of smart, gifted church leaders in America—but the pitch is that the general church experience is at a bit of an ebb right now.

I don’t think we can create a social and spiritual movement; it seems to me that all we can do is ride one that God takes the initiative to send. So it seems to me that berating churches for not being as vital as they were in the Jesus People Movement is a no-win enterprise.

But what DO we want from a church experience in the meantime? I can wonder if a lot of what we want is context for faith. While I certainly hope to be never-failingly interesting and fresh and unexpected even to folks who’ve heard me speak most Sundays for ten years, I’m not sold that that’s a realistic or even needed expectation. 

I wonder if a context for pursuing life in God with a vibrant, smaller group of folks, in a setting that empowers experiencing God by way of his Spirit and getting out to love disadvantaged folks in one’s community (and perhaps around the world) and that aggressively looks to invite others into this experience and that empowers interested people to lead people in and out of the church and that at least upon occasion brings up hard-to-talk-about-things like money and sex and, I suppose, work—will that do the job? 

Or…do we just flat-out need the kind of unmistakable move of Jesus we saw in 1972? Is there really no substitute for this, so we may as well just give ourselves to prayer for its return?

Or is the bottom-line a never-ending trove of arresting and surprising teaching each Sunday?

Or…?

What do you hope for from faith in a non-revival time?

Book plug!

In a strange series of events, my wife, Grace, my toddler daughter, Elizabeth, and I leave today for a long gathering with the board of my group of churches, called the Vineyard.  The board meets in pretty places, which is a nice plus, and are very fun people to hang with, which is another plus.

All to say, I'll prep some posts to roll out whilst I'm away and will read each comment when I return and we'll keep the conversation rolling from there.  And keep the comments coming!  You're a fascinating, thoughtful bunch of folks.

And, if you're the praying type, do pray--however briefly or lengthily--for Grace, Elizabeth and me, along with our kids we're leaving in Massachusetts.  We're a bit daunted by heavy travel with a toddler and this will be the longest stretch Grace and I have ever had away from our other kids. 

For today, maybe I'll just mention a book I'm encouraging folks in our gang to read this fall.  We're trying to increase our faith for praying for folks who don't regard themselves as experiencing much from God.  Some years back I read a really provocative book on just that subject, called Intercessory Prayer, by Dutch Sheets.  It gave me a lot of food for thought and, not long after reading it, I found myself in some serious prayer for a close relative who'd been pretty closed to the faith I seemed to be experiencing. 

Feeling some encouragement from God, I put Mr. Sheets' advice into practice on behalf of my relative.  Within three weeks (I'd been praying for this relative for pushing two decades), he'd had a turnaround in his experience of faith and Jesus, one that's lasted to this day perhaps six years later.

And, this fall, we'll see if Mr. Sheets is just as helpful to our whole group as he was to me and my relative.  I'll keep you posted!

We’ve Hit a Gusher with “Is There Any Bad News with God”

Well, the rip-roaring dialogue continues on "Is there any bad news with God?" as per our many commenters (check it out two posts back). 

I remain sold that we're talking past each other as I read through our conversation there.  The point that's seemed important to me—and several of our commenters—to make is "Jesus is nothing but good.  There's zero bad news for anybody under any circumstances in following Jesus."  (Maybe speaking exclusively of Jesus here will be helpful—though to me the thought holds whether we say "God" or "Jesus.")  The point being made here is not that all circumstances in our life or in the world are always pleasing if we follow Jesus—that clearly would be nonsensical; I seem to recall Jesus himself having a hard day or two, not to mention the life circumstances of his apostles.  The point I'm shooting to make also isn't that the Bible always presents a pleasing picture of God—the conquest of Canaan does indeed present many challenging things to think about.

If, as some point out, we follow Jesus only, say, to be martyred for our faith, does that mean that, for us, it wasn't good news to follow Jesus, that we clearly would have been better off steering clear of him at all costs if we'd only known what was in our future?  I don't know of any martyrs who'd agree with that.  Is the point then, well, okay, the martyrs themselves wouldn't sign off on that, but if we're trying to present Jesus to our atheist friend and he brings that example up, it's going to be a pretty hard sell to him that Jesus is only good. And, if that's the concern, sure, I'd expect a rocky go with our atheist friend if that's the conversation we find ourselves in.

But if the suggestion is that it's "fuzzy thinking" or "not rigorous" to contend that there's only upside to following Jesus, I'm not on board with that.  This actually strikes me as right at the heart of the faith we're discussing on this blog, which is why I'm so glad this point has drawn such conversation.  The gusher is well-focused.  This really is a big, big deal.  (As it's been for folks like Luther, Edwards, Augustine and more.)

To me, this is at the heart of a faith that's experienced rather than believed-in, and that distinction seems to me to be perhaps the central one in our conversation.  Stage 4 faith is a journey with Jesus and whether we're poor Canaanites unaware that we're about to be wiped-out by marauding Israelites or on the verge of martyrdom or just dealing with average American problems, it seems to me we'd be well-advised that we'll have no regrets at all about going through those circumstances with Jesus.  Jesus is, in actual life, only good.

That Controversial “Relationship with God” Idea

Wow, we hit a gusher with the continued "is there any downside with God?" conversation.  I'll definitely get back to that shortly, but if you haven't read the comments from yesterday's post, take a gander.

Today I just had a small thought to throw out to you all—that, who knows, might be big in its own small way.

One of the things I heard the most feedback from at the Center City Summit was an aside I made on the first day.  I mentioned a conversation Charles Park, one of the other speakers, and I had had earlier that weekend. 

Both Charles and I entered faith from atheism.  That weekend before the summit, it struck us both that the pitch we'd been hearing from Christians boiled down to, "You should start to follow Jesus, because you need a relationship with God."  In the end, that appeal actually worked with both of us, to the point that this relationship has become central to our lives—something that then became controversial with the very types of people who'd pitched this relationship to us in the first place.  "You can't base your faith on something so subjective as relating to Jesus!  You need to base it on objective things like adherence to the teachings of the Bible!"

Both Charles and I are very big on the Bible—another pitch that worked with us—but we couldn't help but notice the irony, an irony a number of you evidently could relate to. 

More on “Is there any bad news with God?”

Lots of response to the "Is faith fun?" post.  Thanks!

Most of you had sympathy with the question—largely taking it to mean "Is 'fun' a category you experience (a) in a church setting or (b) with people of faith?  And you either felt "touché!" or you talked about settings you've found where "fun" is very much on the table.  (At the Center City Summit, for example—bless you for that comment—or hanging out with folks for a cold beverage after an intriguing evening session.)

Brian took us a different direction, back towards our exchange of posts a few weeks back in which we talked about whether God ever brought bad news to anyone.  I thought it might be worth a revisiting, because this really does seem like a biggie to me, and a point in the conversation where it can be easy to talk past each other.

So my take is that, according to the Bible and to my own experience, there's no downside with God.  There's no person on earth who would not be advised to experience God (or, if you prefer, Jesus) as fully as they possibly could.  If you're suffering, far better to suffer as one who knows and experiences Jesus.  If you're far from God, there's no downside to getting close to God.  As Psalm 119 tells us about God, "You are good and you do only good."  If God did evil, he'd cease being the god under discussion and, of course, we should all run away from that god as fast as our little legs could carry us.  Happily, the Bible is at pains to say—and my own experience confirms—God, in fact, is good and does only good.  I don't believe this is a controversial point.

The sticking point for some folks is that we can read the Bible as presenting bad news to bad people.  If we're…greedy, exploitive…oh, disrespectful to parents (which gets quite a bad rap in the Bible—my kids should take note)…and (and this is the one usually brought up to me) sexually immoral, there's only bad news waiting for us.  Not addressing this is willful blindness to many texts in the Bible. 

This is where it seems to me we're talking past each other (though perhaps many of you can help me out).  Maybe it's that I'm putting the emphasis on the "with."  There's no downside "with" God.  There's abundant downside apart from God.  Apart from God there's pretty much nothing good to report.  But the reason this seems worth chatting about, to me, is to make the point that the person who's most distant from God of anyone on planet Earth would only find good news with God.  For some folks, as I said, the first place they go with that thought is to imagine someone they know—or can conceive of—who's sexually involved with someone else in a way the Bible wouldn't encourage.  Clearly, it might seem, for them it would be bad news!

But my thought is: how is God ever bad news?  A concept of God might be bad news, for sure.  But the actual God, whom this alleged person would actually encounter?  Would that God treat our hypothetical friend poorly?  Would that God offer anything but hope?  In yesterday's post, I talked about the challenges my own mess brings me in life, and how God—or so it seemed to me—treated me so gently, with such encouragement that my problems wouldn't sink me, that there was a lot of encouragement right at the place where I have wounds and need growth.  I hear that a lot from people.

Now I suppose I could imagine a scenario where I said back, "Phooey on you, God!"  I suppose God could tick me off and I could leave in a huff.  But then we're back to the "apart from God" scenario.  Sticking close to God, I don't see the downside.

How do you all interact with these questions?

In a bummer, I discover I’m a big part of the mess

Thanks to each of you who commented on the "Welcome to Messy Faith" post. This is why I like hanging with folks like yourselves—you can roll with things like mess and not think that mess somehow disqualifies us from being able to say we experience God, even with all the uncertainty.

Has it struck you, as it has me, that a big part of this kind of vibrant, experienced faith is our own continuing ability to find healing from the junk in our lives? I talk to so many people who tell me about the same buttons being pushed again and again in their lives, which leads them to spend so much of their lives reacting rather than acting. Just yesterday I was getting some good time to pray a bit, and the first things that came to mind were endless shortcomings of mine—how basic qualities of my temperament warred against my hopes of being a good friend and parent and husband and pastor. God, staying with me in my complaining, seemed to dial me down, to say that who I was was actually just awesome in each of those areas…so long as I stayed present to my life and my reactions and my choices. When I had my buttons pushed and reacted from that space—or felt a sadness I didn't face with God but tried to distract myself out of—that's when I'd make things worse.

I have a dream for myself—that I'd actually come to have no buttons that can be pushed, that I'd find the face of God at the first hint of gloominess, that distraction would play an ever-diminishing role in my life. It seems to me that the kind of faith that here we've been calling "Stage 4" is dependent on this continuing and deepening self-awareness (as Chris Lowney talks about in Heroic Leadership), that so long as we're unconsciously reacting, we can never get there. This is one of the many reasons that cockiness can never coexist with Stage 4; cockiness, by definition in this view, is not facing ourselves, is revealing that we're not yet a trustworthy spiritual guide. Thoughts?