A Moment With Kahlil

Children

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Meaning

Recent events, such as the Utah mine, Hurricanes Erin and Dean, and the Lima Earthquake, have left people wondering and confused. How are we supposed to understand the love of God amongst natural phenomena that seem out of control? Some would say that God is doing these things for the purposes of punishing sin and rooting out evil, as if God is intentionally orchestrating disasters to occur. Others would say that God is an uncaring dolt because God doesn't stop these things from happening and innocent lives are lost, as if God doesn't have a hand in any of these things and turns away in apathy. Neither of these views put God in a very good light and the underlying thinking is that God is an ornery ol' fellow who is greatly affected by things we do.

What does God have to do with natural disaster as far as cause and effect is concerned? I honestly don't know how to answer that question, but I do know that God is neither tyrannical nor apathetic. God cares deeply about what happens. So then, why doesn't God stop earthquakes or at least keep people out of harms way? Why doesn't God steer hurricanes so they don't make landfall? Why did God allow those mine rescuers to be killed while they were doing something very noble?

I wish I had answers to those questions. They are good questions, but I'm wondering if those are the only questions to ask. I think there are other questions, and I also think we must look at the big picture. We tend to get myopic when disaster strikes.

It might be tempting to become a bit envious when we see stories in the Bible of storms being stilled, dead people being raised, sick people cured, and many other things that Jesus did. "Why doesn't he do them today?" we might ask. A different question, one that reflects curiosity of the bigger picture, is "Why did Jesus do these things in the first place?" He wasn't obligated by anyone to do them, and people certainly didn't expect Jesus to do these things until word got around that things were beginning to change for the better.

The significance here is not in what Jesus did, but in what Jesus did meant to the people. The meaning is what must be examined. In order to explore that angle a bit, here are some questions. Suppose God does steer Hurricane Dean out to open sea. What would that mean? Let's up the stakes a bit. What if God sheared the cloudtops off of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 so that her impact would have been severely attenuated? Would it mean that God is now obligated to rescue everyone on the planet from natural disaster by any means necessary? And is that meaning ultimately the one God wants us to have?

So, what did it mean when Jesus cleansed a leper? I don't think it's enough to say that his life was spared, he got his skin back, and he was now happy. That was certainly part of it, but why would that make him so happy? His healing had theological significance (remember, most of the lepers Jesus cleansed were Jews), namely, that he was now restored as a member of God's covenant people and a full participant in the age to come. It meant that God accepted him. That is what ultimately brought joy to cleansed lepers. They were reunited with Israel. To know that you were "in" and an heir of eternal life was a Jewish person's highest goal and joy.

Now, honestly, would averted natural disasters have that same meaning today? Probably not. We need to learn how to think in the overall scheme of God's acceptance of us in Christ Jesus. To believe that we have not been accepted by God or that we are unworthy of the New Covenant in Christ until we do something that is acceptable to God is, by far, the greatest disaster of all. This, I believe, is the greatest malady of our day.

To know that God has set us free from the bondage of works-righteousness systems through Christ was the greatest joy of the New Testament people. To believe that we are "in" because of what Jesus did and not because of some prayer we prayed or some incense we burned brought joy and peace to the hearts of the first Christians. It should also be the same for us!

Atheists Are Cool

I'm dovetailing a bit today off of Kevin's blog to say that I absolutely love and respect atheists. I've talked to many atheists in the past few years, and they are quite honest in their opinions of church life. They can do this because many of them used to be evangelical Christians, so they speak from experience.

I believe Christians become atheists, not because of spite or hatred of Christian people, but because of things they were taught that they found difficult to believe. Many of them were raised on the notion that God is someone to be frightened of because, as they were told, God holds their very lives over a firepit by a shoestring. And God is very angry at them, they were taught, and will remain that way until they repented, said they were sorry, and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. But until then, their situation was hopeless. They would remain sinners in the hands of an angry deity. Many of them were on the verge of insanity looking for ways to placate the wrath of a cosmic sadist and failing at every turn.

So they took leave of God. Can you blame them? If the only version of God available was the one they were fed as kids, then the only other choice was to not believe at all. I think they were given a bad story.

Let's take a cue from atheists and learn how to tell God's story in a way that is true to Scripture. Believe it or not, when an atheist tells you his/her story, he/she is doing you a big favor! Don't react negatively to their thoughts. Learn from them and understand that the version of God they ultimately rejected is a very unscriptural one. We should look to do the same!

No Paths

There are no paths to God, but that doesn't mean God is inaccessible. And just what are paths anyway? Aren't they ultimately just futile attempts to slavishly get on God's good side? If you view God as an angry deity to be appeased, you will try anything to avoid the wrath. Attempting to avoid punishment is hard work and is indicative of a guilty conscience.

Whenever I hear that someone is on a "path", I feel a combination of wonder and pity. I wonder why that person finds it necessary to be on a path. I pity them because I know that they are motivated by fear. Their feeling of angst must be excruciatingly life-sapping. And besides all of that, I know that God loves them passionately, but that love seems alien to them.

But people love their path. There are so many out there. There are even people who are willing to sell their path to you for three easy payments of $19.95 plus shipping and handling. These path "products" are usually nothing more than "to do" lists, giving the impression that God wants everyone to be slaves to the grind.

I'm beginning to understand why Jesus said that no one comes to the Father except through him. To us in the west it sounds like an exclusionary statement, but it's the most inclusionary statement ever made by a human being. It means that we can, all together, join hands and walk out of our slavery and into arms of God. If the cross demonstrated anything at all, it is chiefly this: that we have access to God, not by our humanly devised plans and paths, but by the Way that God himself provided. The Way to God is all God's doing. The only thing left to do is rest from laboriously inventing our own ways. We can stop being so religiously busy and tend to things that are more pressing, like justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God along the Way.

School of The Rock

Can I be frank here? When I was a kid, I hated school and I hated Confirmation. I got good grades, but, honestly, I did not work to my fullest potential. I did just enough to "get by". I only did my homework when it was absolutely necessary to keep my grades up. If homework didn't have any effect on the grade I didn't do it. I know that I wasn't the only one. Most of my schoolmates couldn't stand school. In retrospect I think I know why-- what we were doing to get the grade didn't match our abilities and didn't seem to be a useful way to spend our time.

It was the same thing with Confirmation. I went to a Lutheran school, so my confirmation instruction was during school hours. Pastor would come into the classroom and would recite things that we had to write verbatim. He would pause briefly to explain things, but mostly the class consisted of pastor talking and students writing. We got tested on what we wrote, which means we had to study and remember what we wrote. At the end of the year we were publicly examined in front of the Board of Elders, which meant more memorization.

It's safe to assume, again in retrospect, that after all the memorization and testing was done we promptly forgot what we memorized. There's a difference between rote memorization of facts and figuring out how to put facts to good usage.

Now I'm the pastor. In 13 years of ministry I've noticed that kids still hate school and confirmation instruction. Just about every year I've tweaked and primped confirmation to make it as effective as I possibly could. But the results have been the same-- kids (and parents) who couldn't care less. I think that's why we lose teens after they've been confirmed. They see no value in the knowledge they obtained during their time in confirmation. None of the information was useful. That's not education. That's schooling, and there's a big difference. I believe it's time for a new paradigm.

Here's the big problem I see with traditional methods of confirmation instruction: the pastor is the center of attention. I've thought about what would happen if the students were the center of attention instead of the pastor. What if the students were given the opportunity to match their abilities and talents to concrete ways to grow in their faith? What if I abandoned this notion that teens get confirmed because of what they know and replace it with teens getting confirmed because of who they are? What if I let the students themselves decide what and how they will learn the Christian faith? What if I handed ownership of the class over to the students?

The best I can hope for is to somehow get into the quality worlds of these kids. To them, confirmation instruction is just another version of school, which they can't stand. They won't learn anything by me standing up in front of the room lecturing them. As the addage goes: "Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I'll remember. Involve me, and I'll understand!" Understanding is what confirmation instruction should be all about, isn't it? They'll understand if they are invovled in all aspects of their learning.

So, here's what I'm proposing for Confirmation instruction: no more books, no more lectures, no more worksheets, no more tests, no more rote memorization, no more desks. In their place: total personal interaction by letting groups of kids design and implement their learning. I believe it will be amazing to watch what these kids will be capable of doing. My task would be to listen, to give feedback, to encourage, to guide, to play, to interact. Many people (read "adults") will not like this. We are so accustomed to the old coercive system of schooling that we are incapable of considering the possibility that there's another way. But I have a question for you adults reading this. Why do you think it's right to put your kids through the very thing that you hated as a kid? We hated school when we were in it, and yet as adults we are the biggest cheerleaders for it! I'm finding it harder to cheerlead for something I couldn't stand as a child.

If you want to see a great model of what I'm proposing to do, watch the movie School of Rock, staring Jack Black. Watch what Black's character does with a room full of students. He trusted their natural abilities to be the very best that they could be. He taught them how to rock and roll, not by standing around and talking about it, but by actually doing it! And the kids were completely involved in every aspect of their learning. I know it's only a movie, but it touched on something significant-- that people (including children) thrive in an atmosphere in which they are not forced to do things they have no interest in doing.