Forgiveness! Now I know Jesus is Crazy!

You know, obviously, this isn't true, but to hear Jesus talk, you'd think that He had never been hurt and never really had no one in His life to forgive. Otherwise, how could He of said some of the crazy (and I use that with all the reverence I can muster this morning!) things He said about it? Its almost creepy to me. Personally, I get into the whole eye for an eye thing, when it suits me. City of refuge? Sure! But your gonna have to leave sometime and when you do buddy.....

Okay, I got that out of my system. Forgiveness is a funny thing; its a completely different animal in the New Testament scriptures. I can imagine the people sitting around as Jesus was giving the Sermon on the Mount and can see their reaction when He starts talking about forgiving men their trespasses so that God can and will forgive you.

Now, digress with me for just a moment. Imagine with me, momentarily, that we do not have a Jesus, no New Testament scriptures, and we all simply have people that we respect and listen too. Now, imagine a co-worker or better yet, a family member who is constantly pushing those buttons just as hard as they can. Your exasperated and you go to your sage, so to speak, and you ask him/her, "how long am I going to have to put up with this, oh Wise one.?"

Here is exactly where I would get into trouble. Because, I am sure I'd have that answer already down pat long before I asked it. "You've waited long enough. You may pop them in the nose next time they offend you." Oh yeah! Now, that is my kind of scripture! And to be honest, I went to bed last night thinking of some people I'd just simply like to smack a good one! Oh, don't get all sanctimonious on me. You know you've felt that way too. Heck, I have a few I'd dig up just for the pleasure.... okay, so that borders a bit on the insane side. But, you know what I am talking about.

Unfortunately, or, fortunately, depending on your spirit and how you look at it, we must come back to Jesus and the New Testament scriptures. As much as my flesh would like to set Him and His teachings aside at times, their nagging quality persist! You know God did that on purpose, right? But, seriously, it's in times like this that I have to learn to listen to what I do not want to hear. "Jesus, how often do I forgive my brother when he offends me? Seven times?" (Matt 18, my paraphrase) Oh, that's gracious. Come to my house and offend me once, I might not let you know about it. About the third or fourth time, I'm liable to grab you by the seat of your pants and throw you out. Well, more so these days because.... that's another post. But, yeah, seven? That's gracious in my opinion!

But, oh no, Jesus had a completely different definition, didn't He? I call it it the wipe your feet on me please mentality! LOL Okay, enough sarcasm, I am cracking my own self up this morning. Jesus tells Peter, seventy times seven, all for the same offense, and all on the same day: next day, new slate. OMG!!! No He didn't! Yes, He did! Man, sometimes Jesus really can get me talking to myself!

Do I really think that Jesus expected Peter to forgive 490 times a day for the same thing? No, I don't. What I do believe, however, is that Jesus was telling Peter to forgive--completely. Remember the love chapter? "Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged." 1 Cor 13:5 (NLT) What Jesus was telling him was that the number thing was the wrong mindset altogether. Imagine, if God kept records like that? Forgiveness, genuine forgiveness, operates on a higher plane, and that is why many of us never really get it.

Do I think God holds it against us too harshly? Perhaps not. He looked down from the cross with compassion for a people ridiculing and hurting Him and He cried, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do?" I recently heard someone say that on the cross Jesus was separate from His Father and the Spirit; the trinity if you will, whatever that means. But, no, that isn't what Paul said. "For God was [in] Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. This is the wonderful message he has given us to tell others..." 2 Cor 5:19 (NLT, emphasis added) I am not going to argue theology or semantics today, but if you rewrite the "in Christ" part of that verse to make it mean something that it's not, then we got a lot of rewriting to do altogether. No, the entire Godhead participated in that act of redemption for the sole purpose to free us from our wrong doings. And what are we to do with it? Pass it on....

Oh my, that cuts across the grain, doesn't it? How can I tell others a message that I am not willing to live out in my daily life? Oh, hey, by the way, I hate you for what you did to me, but Jesus loves you?!? In the distance, though, I hear some words uttered centuries ago by a Jewish revolutionary: "freely you have received, freely give." (Mat 10:8, NKJV) That is so hard. No one ever said following Jesus was going to be easy! Love the unlovable; embrace the social outcast, touch the untouchables. That part is easy. Its the family waiting outside the house where everyone there perceives you as a somebody, but they, their embarrassed and think your mad (Matt 12). Oh, my.... Its that neighbor who persist in leaving that one strip of grass that he knows is his but... love your neighbor as yourself...

So, your hurt; I am too. What about boundaries? I don't know. Perhaps, another day. Sometimes I wonder if we don't use those psychological constructs as crutches to keep us from doing as Jesus said. Please don't misunderstand me this morning. Every single time I utter the Lord's prayer, I pause and almost stop when it comes to the "[...] forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors." Matt 6:12 (NKJV) At the same moment as I forgive others, God is forgiving me. If I don't forgive others, He's not obligated to forgive me....

That's really some tough stuff, because some of us have huge burdens of pain and hurt. Abuse, and malicious intentions where people have harmed us with malice and forethought and they've just not cared. Some of us have cried more tears than we can count, stained pillows, being woke in the middle of the night with that gut wrenching feeling and question, why? Why God? In fact, some of us feel as if He did it to us, don't we? We were too young to even defend ourselves....

Years ago, in my youth, the Lord spoke a scripture into my spirit, that no matter how far I've ran or how bitter I have been, I have never forgotten it:

5 Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God: 6 Which made heaven, and earth, the sea, and all that therein is: which keepeth truth for ever: 7 Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners: 8 The LORD openeth the eyes of the blind: the LORD raiseth them that are bowed down: the LORD loveth the righteous: 9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

Psalms 146:5-9 (KJV)

Look at the language there. Jacob is just Jacob; the heel grabber and thief; no Israel/Prince, titles of honor for him that day. But, He's happy. Why? Because the Lord is his help, hope, and God. And, this isn't just any God. No! This is the very God that made the heavens, earth, sea, and everything within. In reality, David is speaking to the orphan, which, for various reasons, was tailored made for me when I was a child and He spoke these words to me. He keeps truth forever, meaning, you don't have to worry about His intent or whether he will keep his word! He will do what he says and while it might not happen today or tomorrow or even in your time frame, you can rest assured that it will!

He executes justice and judgment for all that are oppressed! Ah! Those are the words I heard! Vengeance belongs to Him, forgiveness is mine. Hmmm....... But, the promises don't stop there: He will feed us with bread we didn't earn, loose us from prisons of our own making, open our blind eyes to let us truly see our need for Him, and then, He will lift them that are bowed down! That "bow" is not reverence. No, its being weighted down with the cares and hurt and pain of years of oppression and abuse.

I have to leave this now, but I know that there are many people that I need to forgive. People I can't go too; it's simply too late to do so. I know that in myself, I will never be able to do so. Part of me don't want to let them off the hook. But, the scripture I just shared tells me that its not my responsibility to be concerned about whether or not they get what is coming to them. Who am I to judge another man's servant? I do what I can.... God, forgive me please, as I forgive those who have harmed me......

Baggage and Important Questions!

For various reasons, I hesitate to write this post today. But, I learned a valuable lesson last night. I know, epiphany, epiphany... when is this guy going to stop! Ha! Not so soon; hopefully, never! Having been in a bad place where God felt a million miles away, I welcome His intervention, no matter how it might come.

The family and I went to church last night; I know, I can't hardly believe it either. Before even going, I knew the pastor there was going to be teaching out of 1 Chronicles 2; a text that for the life of me, I could not understand why he would choose to do so. So, I have to admit a certain skepticism going in.

From the moment he opened his mouth I could feel the blood rising within. His opening statement was that the various listings of the 12 Tribes of Israel and their frequent omissions or inconsistencies was troubling to him and that he had never fully reconciled these differences. Immediately, every fiber of my intellectual being began to scream: source criticism, document hypothesis, redaction criticism, textual criticism, historical criticism! THINK!!!!! (okay, I am an arrogant human being, but please, give me a little latitude here and try and read further) There are answers, even if you don't like them! Of course, on the way home, discussing this with my lovely wife (who unfortunately has to listen to my rambling regardless, because she loves me... although I'm sure she'd disagree with the HAS too part... let's just say that she makes a wonderful effort! hehe ), I told her that I knew that if I had been the one up there struggling through some of those genealogies, I would have made a horrible mess of it. Talk about making people mad; I probably would of upset my own self! LOL

Oh, the conviction! Do I think critical analysis of scripture is a bad thing? Absolutely not! Will I ever reconcile the bible from a literary critical and/or historical standpoint? Probably never. But, as I sat there and listened, the more I listened, I began to see that the important thing, what mattered and in essence, those portions of his sermon that spoke to my spirit, not my intellect, were the narratives, the stories.

We are a narrative people, are we not? We have our stories to tell, some more interesting than others, but nonetheless, all our lives' are narratives. When we tell our stories, we don't always follow a linear progression; we get side tracked, run here or there and emphasize the things that are most important to us. How does this relate to the scriptures?

Scripture, for whatever else it may be, is a narrative. The Old Testament is a narrative of a people who felt different, called, constructed by a benevolent, yet jealous God, who selects them for grandiose purposes. In places it is brutally honest, in others, not so much. But for all the criticism, and I surely believe that a responsible approach to scripture demands that we ask the hard questions; but, those hard question do not and and never will overwhelm the reoccurring themes we see throughout its pages.

Woven throughout its very core is a message written in a bottle, if you will, to man. A dismal world brought back to life by a creative Spirit who hovered over it's expanse. A perfect man and woman, put in a perfect world only to mess it up. But then we see a perfect Savior taking animal skins to cover their nakedness and sending them out into a cruel world with an adamant promise of redemption. The intricacies of textual criticism may distract, but if you'll take a few steps back and try and see it as a whole, I think you'll see that scarlet thread, irreducible from the very fibers of the narrative itself.

To be honest, I don't care if the bible (OT in question here) was constructed from multiple sources over centuries, polished by this author or that one. JEDP (and a host of variations) certainly has its place in the classroom, and I would doubt the professionalism of any scholar dealing with biblical criticism who fails to take modern scholarship into account. But, and listen to me well cause this is a HUGE BUT, for me in the pew, it makes little difference. In study, I can as Gordon Atkinson says, "stand outside the myth," if you will, and take an objective look. But, when it comes to matters of faith, their just that, faith. And whose to say your faith in six literal days is less valid than mine?

I know I got side tracked there, but I thank God for the stories. Marcus Borg once said about the creation: "I don't believe for a moment that it happened that way, but I don't doubt for a moment that its true." Dichotomy? Sure. But, really, I've had my children tell me stories that I knew were not true, but the story, what it was that they were really trying say to me, was as true and genuine as the person standing before me. What he was saying was that his post critical, post modern, post-enlightenment mind would not allow him to accept creation in six literal days, but for him, he had no doubt that how ever God did it, He did.

How do we reconcile these differences? We don't. Not really. We set priorities and we decide what's more important. It really is that lucid, at least in my mind. Is it more important that I believe that six literal days were six LITERAL days, or is the point simpler than that? Perhaps, we may never agree on the intricacies of biblical criticism, but we can agree that God is real and that his intent and purpose in humanity is obvious and whether we never understand exactly how or when He will bring his plans for us and the world to light, we know with certainty that He will.

Jesus, one day, having withdrawn from the crowds, kn0wing His time was coming near and needing his friends, asked them a poignant question: "who do you say that I am?" You may not readily see the bridge that I'm trying to build this morning, but what I really learned last night is that there is only a few questions that are most important and that really matter. Who is Jesus? What does he mean to me? And, do I know Him in a personal way?

For all my learning and all my ignorance, those are becoming the most important questions to me. Who is Jesus? He is Yeshua, the Son of God; He is the Man and Mediator between me and God. He's my Friend, Brother, Companion, Lover, Apostle, Provision, Sufficiency... He truly is my all in all.

What does He mean to me? I was lost, but now I am found; I was blind, but now I see! He reached His hand into the expanse of my pain and somehow someway, as only He can, soothed the rawness of my soul. He healed me when I cried out; he called me from a tomb of addictions and pain and hurt and loss... He untied the grave clothes that I had allowed this world to place upon me, and He set me free!

Do I know Him in a personal way? I am learning to know Him more and more everyday. His voice is resonating within my soul. When I do something wrong, I feel His conviction. He wakes me up in the middle of the night for a walk, just to talk..... do I know Him? Oh, as much as one can know the wind... but, I am content to say as Peter: you are the Son of the Living God." Not the dead God of theology or my beloved biblical criticism. No! He is, You, are the Son of the Living God! What will you do with Him today?

What does Addition, Blind Bartimaeus, and Jesus have in Common?

This morning is a somber morning. Addiction in one's life can be a terrible reminder of the daily grind. Stay away from this; don't let this trigger create this situation or that, avoid these places. Those of you who know what I am talking about know the drill. And, to be quite honest, it can be very disheartening.

Over the years, I have found myself confused as to the true nature of addiction: disease, bad choices, lack of self-control? Some, I assume, would find the former more liberating. In many ways, it removes responsibility from me and puts onto this thing inside me that once awakened, turns into a monster that knows no boundaries. And, as a person who knows what addiction feels like, I can tell you that there certainly is some truth in to the, "I don't know how to stop" mentality, at least until a crisis comes along: jail, failing marriage, children.... any host of reasons can wake one up and hopefully give him/her a second chance.

Lying in bed last evening, my wife and I began to talk about this issue. I had attended a local NA meeting and met a man there who had 22 years clean. He stated his name followed by the typical, "I am an addict." I looked down the road and I asked myself, did I want to be in the same place saying the same old line 22 years from now? First answer was a resounding yes, if that is what it takes to keep me where I need to be.

Then, I asked my wife a question about blind Bartimaeus. You know who I am talking about. The man who sat by the wayside, hearing that Jesus was coming his way? He's crying: Son of David, Son of David!!!! Have mercy on me!!! Have mercy on me!!! (Jn 10) We all know the story, right? I mean, the crowd tried to quiet this poor man but the more they tried to shut him up the more he cried. Jesus comes alongside him and ask for him to be lifted up. Standing before Jesus, Jesus ask him an unbelievable question: what do you want me to do for you?

Relaying that story, I then asked my wife: did Bartimaeus attend a former blind persons support group afterward? Was there a leper group or an ex-cripple group? I know this sounds cynical and perhaps it is in a way. But, if addiction is a disease, then can not God heal it as quickly and as easily as he healed the blind man or the leper? I wonder if Lazarus got a blue chip for every year he lived past his initial resurrection?

How many people spend their lives preoccupied with the addictions and pains and injustices of the past? Both secular and religious counseling can not keep up these days with the number of people who need help. Sexual abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, the laundry list of man's plight is staggering. But, unfortunately, in many of these situations, the one thing that is missing is a Jesus walking alongside the road. The climax never comes because He is never given His rightful place.

I don't how or when or where, but I sense a change, a stirring if you will. Jesus is coming along the road. Oh, let's not argue over anything this morning: so its Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, a rock, I really don't care. But, for me, I can hear the crowd stirring in my spirit and I know that long lean Galilean is walking my way and all I really have to do is cry out, Son of David, Messiah, King, have mercy on me.

When he stoops to lift my hand, asking me what it is that I need, I wonder what I will ask for? Healing for addiction, sexual abuse, child abuse; what will my answer be? This morning, the words of the psalmist resonates in my heart: "...be merciful unto me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against thee." (Psalms 41:4 KJV) Isn't that really the true answer? Not the extraneous issues of our lives, the periphery, if you will: sick hearts, souls torn apart and scarred, rotting from the very inside out. All the horror of days gone by can be healed in an instant when Jesus speaks to you and ask, what do you want?

What do you want today? Thought of it yet? Don't let a moment, another day, week, month, year, pass you by. Before long, you'll be so concentrated on your blindness and your begging that you'll even miss the one who's passing you by. God, give us grace today to ask for the healing of our hearts so that we no longer have to live in the bondage of yesterday!

Me and Jesus: Back to Square One!

I rarely write more than one post a month...err, well, okay, lately its been one a day. But, today, I've had some questions and thoughts on my mind that I thought I would just air out here. My wife needs a break!

Recently, I have found myself coming full circle; not becoming an evangelical fundamentalist again, God forbid! Ha! But, I am beginning to realize that much of what I've learned, read, and done over the years has made me a cynic and as such, it has essentially reduced what God that was left within to a mere intellectual pursuit. Now, I'm not happy with that, never have been, and never will be. The God I met as a child was a vibrant, living God who parted seas and made mountains quake. A God who could cause axe heads to float, valleys of dry bones to become armies of living breathing men. A God who healed, loved, and died for me (personally) and then rose from the dead. That was the God that I was introduced too.

Of course, then life happened. You leave the haven of study and you enter the ministry with all these grandiose ideas and before you know it, life is sucked out of you and you have to do something with all those things that you truly believed but didn't see when you needed it the most. Is it all myth? I mean, is the Jesus of the gospels the construction of 2000 years of church doctrine? Really, is the church that good? With its controversies, arguments, theological schools of thought. Could it really of created a Jesus as vibrant and living as the one we see today walking across the pages of the New Testament scriptures?

Are Jewish beliefs so intertwined with myth and such that their very reliability is tainted so badly that we can not know from one page to another if we're reading history or myth? I can't answer these questions today. All I can say is that for reasons outside my control, at forty-one years of age, I am not any more happy with a cynical faith than I was with a fundamentalist one. So, for me, I am starting over.

What does that mean? Does that mean that I lay aside all the critical thinking skills that I've developed over the years? No, not necessarily. What it does mean is that I have to find God/Jesus for me. Not Borg's, as much as I love him. Not, N. T. Wright's Jesus; no, time has come for me to go back to square one and find out who He is. And, personally, I am not afraid of what I might find. I know that He can speak for Himself. So, I've laid aside, for now, the books and the literature and all the things that I comforted myself with when I truly lost my faith. And I go back to where it all began, to an altar, where the only two things I knew were this: His name, and that He was. From there, who knows where we'll end up!

Judas Iscariot- My Kinsman...

Okay, before I even begin this morning, let me say first that I can NOT even believe what I am about to talk about: Judas Iscariot! For a host of reasons, I do NOT like this character, most of which is rooted in my disdain for certain theologies that create lenses through which we can look at this man and what happened to him. I don't like it that he was pretty much doomed from the beginning... that brings up election and predestination and a host of other stuff that me and my reformed brethren will heartily disagree about.

But, that is not my purpose this morning. In fact, I hardly doubt it will EVER be my purpose. I am rather passionate about some things. Anyways, I bring him up this morning because of something that happened to me personally, yesterday. I realized something about me that is a fundamental part of my disposition; a destructive facet indeed. And as I pondered this weakness and its fallout, my mind went to Judas of all people. So, here we go....

Of all the things we can say about the man, the one thing that I see in him is that he was self absorbed. That is not necessarily a biblical indictment. Biblically, he's almost immediately known as the one that betrayed Jesus. What a legacy to leave behind! But, I am not so much interested in what he did, but why he did it. And, personally, in my understanding, he was simply self absorbed.

You know the type. They're the ones who always think their ideas are better. They will follow you, sure, but deep inside they always think they could do it better. Judas kept the money and he tried to keep a tight reign on it too. He believed that Jesus was the Messiah but he was frustrated that He was not revealing Himself to more people. Speculation says that he went to the High Priest that night in his betrayal to force the hand of Jesus. He had seen Jesus preform miracles and speak with authority and surely if he pushed his hand Jesus would respond and take his rightful spot as their King---who had just ridden symbolically into Jerusalem upon a donkey, being hailed as the Son of David by the masses gathered for passover. If Jesus' moment was to ever come, surely today was it! But, Judas didn't quite get it, and I don't berate him either cause I probably wouldn't of gotten it myself. I still don't sometimes.

But, unfortunately for him, that's not what happened, is it? Jesus didn't do what Judas expected and Judas ultimately paid the price for his insolence. His end is a horrific picture; one of the most horrific pictures of self destruction ever afforded in scripture.

The end of such behavior is always the same, isn't it? We hurt those around us, we run rough shod over the people we love because we can't see past what we want to do. Our agenda somehow takes precedent, and usually at the most unconducive time ever. How many of us have betrayed people we really loved? Pushed them to do things that we knew they either shouldn't do or were not ready for?

I don't like talking about this; personally I despise Judas and everything he stands for. Or, at least, everything the church manipulates him to stand for. But, in the end, I have to admit a kinship, one that I pray for God's grace to change. I love my wife, my children, and I no longer want to plunge headlong into my life, my day, without thought of how my actions will affect them.

May God give us all the grace to do the same!