Category Archives: Walking with God

The Danger of the Character-Based Argument

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Below are ten theological statements, each with a hypothesis…and a conclusion.

1. “God does not share his glory…so Jesus must not be divine.”

2. “God is love…so nobody will be sent to hell for eternity.”

3. “God will not be mocked…so he’ll remove your salvation if you keep sinning.”

4. “God is sovereign…so he is the one directly causing every event.”

5. “God is generous…so it’s never his will that you be poor.”

6. “God doesn’t make mistakes…so there are people created only for destruction, to whom salvation is never made available.”

7. “God is just…so he would never do #6.”

8. “God is welcoming…so nobody should be excluded from church.”

9. “It’s all about God…so he does not attend to matters like our personal identites.”

10. “God does not show favoritism…so Christians will not be raptured out of the Tribulation.”

5934706650_a50245dd9d_bNo doubt, like me, you agree vigorously with all ten hypotheses but disagree with some of the conclusions (I’ve deliberately set it up that way).

My point today is not to debate each one, despite the passion they’ve already raised in you just in reading them (and in me in writing them). My point is instead to highlight our common use of weak supporting arguments.

All ten of those statements have one thing in common: Each shows a broad principle of God’s character being applied to a specific doctrine. 

And that is a problem.

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Worship as an Act of Defiance

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stormFear was again flooding my heart as I stood to sing in church this weekend.

The kind of fear that confidently insists, more like a certainty – things are going to go wrong and there’s nothing you can do. You might have some experience with that. My hours situation at one of my jobs was hitting a severe snag and the next step was uncertain. The worst case scenario is so easy to jump to.

I’d been praying. But I took it another step that night and chose to worship through intentional song.

It was an act of defiance against the fear.

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Maybe This Year?

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14264163_10154519656294695_4557267216967126051_n (1).jpgThe time has come.

My Seattle Seahawks are again marching forward to war.

Every year, we go through this. We microanalyze the meaningless preseason games, discuss the September cutdowns to death, scrutinize every bit of offseason literature coming out of the city media, all in pursuit of one haunting question…do the Seahawks have a chance this year?

And every year, we Christians think about “that thing”. That breakthrough or victory or miracle or answer to prayer that we’re hoping for.

Maybe this will be the year that chronic illness finally goes into remission. The year you get out of debt. The year you get engaged. The year that gripping sin on your spouse finally gives way. Maybe you don’t know exactly what you want to see; you’re just hoping things will “get better” somehow.

Steven Furtick has a sermon called “Don’t Stop on Six”. It’s one of my favorites. The reference is to how the Israelites were commanded to march around Jericho seven times before releasing a shout, and how they would have missed the miracle had they stopped on the sixth lap. I love an inspirational sermon every once in a while, and “Don’t Stop on Six” is one of my favorites.

And yet…it makes me uneasy.

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Life at High Spiritual Altitudes

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high(Forgive me if this sounds like Amateur Hour Confessions – that’s pretty much exactly what we are.)

My friend and I completed a 35-mile backpacking trip near our home a couple weeks ago, and the one thing I couldn’t get out of my head was how present God was during the whole thing.

It’s not just about seeing his majesty in creation, either (though there was oodles of that – and no, we didn’t get any pictures, evil teases that we are).

When we’re down in the valley, life is a blur. The cushion of first-world existence surrounds us. Our social structures and bank accounts shield us from pain. Though we acknowledge these as gifts from God, his fortuitous presence in these blessings doesn’t exactly jump out at us. It’s harder to see the flashing neon “I DID THIS! – God” sign on those things. Crediting him must be done more intentionally, out of a knowledge of Scripture (James 1:17). Although, to be sure, James seems to think it a sin if we don’t.

But when you’re on the trail, you live hour by hour. And his hand is much more obvious.

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Temptation Isn’t the Only Problem

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drawbridgeBoom. Temptation lands.

Satan is enticing you to splurge through your new budget, or dial up that website you know should stay buried, or sabotage your efforts to show kindness at work by letting your temper fly towards a coworker, or whatever else has been convicting you lately. The temptation presses hard against your heart, like a gust of wind.

It isn’t actually the real problem.

There’s usually a “decision” phase in every temptation in which we’re still deciding whether to commit a sin. Sometimes it’s short or even near-instantaneous, a “cruise missile” moment (like the flare of a temper), but even then we have a split second to decide.

Do you notice an internal dialogue in those phases?

“You want to do this.”

“I don’t. But I kinda do, too.”

“Yes, you do.”

“But I shouldn’t.”

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Roadside Assistance: Speaking the Truth Out Loud

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Jesus' perspective needed!Tooling along a forest highway in the middle of nowhere a couple years ago, headed to a job interview, my breath catches a little. My eyes have just spotted the engine temperature gauge pointing in an unpleasant direction. I pull over and open the hood. The coolant reservoir is hissing, bubbling and trembling like a Yellowstone geyser.

Perfect. Interview aborted. Hope I can limp the 50 miles back to my mechanic. (Welcome to Montana.)

I get back in and start waiting for the engine to cool down. After five minutes spent listening to the double blinkers (“uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh“), the sweltering heat forces me out of the car and into the shade of a nearby tree.

Standing there, one thought inexorably seeps in: my bank account is going to feel this. Again.

And an answering thought on the heels of the first – harder to put words to, because it’s one of those deep-soul thoughts, more feeling than word.

This is pitiful.

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Pizza Lessons #3: Not Crediting God is a Sin???

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pizza2Garn. I hate it when God saunters along and slaps the “sin” label on some innocuous thing I do every day.

I mean, how disruptive can God get? One moment I’m sitting there drinking a mineral water and minding my own business, and the next moment he’s blowing up my whole worldview. What’s a man to do?

Well…repent, to start with.

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Pizza Lessons #2: You Never Know

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pizza1One of the fun parts of my second job (pizza delivery) is that you never know where the good tips will come from.

Our dispatch system works on a rotating basis. The next driver up “clocks out” on the oldest run available once it’s ready, plus a second run (a “double”) if it’s in the same area and if it won’t be too long a wait for the second order’s items to be ready themselves.

Most of the time, we have no way of knowing how much a customer plans to tip when we clock out on that run. Even with the online credit card orders in which the customer has pre-loaded a tip when they first order, the dispatch system doesn’t show it, and digging deeper into our system to view the tip would be impractical given all the other stuff we’re scrambling to do. One could do it, but so far, the honor system has worked for us. Even when we recognize an address and know they tip poorly, we take the run for the sake of avoiding workplace drama.

In this way, pizza delivery is almost a form of morally acceptable gambling! It’s a lot of fun. You don’t know whether each “pull of the lever” will stiff you or bequeath a ten-dollar jackpot of a tip, but since you’re putting in work and earning a wage regardless, it’s hardly sinful. (I know – that’s because it’s technically not gambling at all. But you get the same slight rush.)

Nevertheless, occasionally we get a driver who tries to game the system.

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More Than Just a Whisper

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gushRead these verses and ask if they match your experience of the love of God.

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. (Psalm 86:15 )

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17b-19)

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. (Psalm 36:5)

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him. (Psalm 103:11)

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. (Psalm 23:5b)

Notice the plentitude. Abounding. Overflowing. Fullness. Heavens. These are not words meant to convey scarcity, an occasional drip. Rooted. A tree does not grow unless it has ample soil to draw from. Fullness. How many of us can tell of feeling full of God?

Does this capture how you experience God’s love on a daily basis? A weekly basis?

My experience of God’s love used to be little more than an occasional whisper. Every few months or so, I’d get a glimpse. As if from a distant country, a well-phrased word from God came to me about how he sees my efforts, or how carefully he is handling my life. I rejoice. But it fades soon, replaced by the noise and dust of life. And the next one doesn’t come for a while.

We seem to have accepted this as normal. We expect only the infrequent dose of God’s near, full love. We call them “mountaintop experiences” and feel better because at least it sounds realistic and adult. After all, we see only through a mirror dimly.

But when I examine the Bible and its characters still inhabiting our side of the mirror, I see a much different expectation laid out for us. When the Bible speaks of God’s love, it portrays a much fuller, stronger, and steadier phenomenon than we typically experience.

Are we missing something? Have we settled for much less love than God is willing to give us? Why? And how?

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Respect for the Highest Veteran

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200357Respect.

Oddly enough, that exact word isn’t plentiful in our modern English translations of the Bible, and when it does appear (Rom. 13:7, Eph. 5:33, 1 Pet. 2:17 and 3:15 as examples), it’s usually pointed towards others. “Respect for God”, oddly, is a phrase I’ve rarely heard.

You do hear a lot of the phobeisthe, meaning “fear, dread, and respect”, but not a lot of the timēsate, meaning “honor or value”. My first thought was that perhaps “respect” just isn’t a high enough word for God. We prefer phobeisthe, or perhaps “reverence”, for the attitude with which we should approach God.

But for me – and I chalk this up to quirks of language and personality rather than any insufficiency in the Bible (for such a thing is not possible)…

But for me, I’ve found that “respect” really gives me a foothold on sin.

I recently voted in Montana’s special election. I voted because it’s important and affects the future, but also because it’s colored the past. Many men over the centuries have died to secure my right to vote. We have Memorial Day to honor them. I respect their sacrifice by voting. I do wish that our political candidates themselves would respect those sacrifices by becoming better people with better ideas, but that’s another post.

(Quick aside to the booth official for my precinct: I appreciate your enthusiasm for the democratic process, but please, be careful where you jab me with that “I Voted” sticker.)

Anyway…

It hit me the other day: it seems that I show more respect for American veterans than I do for Jesus.

Jesus chose to shed his glory and become a veteran of the human experience. Most American soldiers led more privileged lives back home than Jesus did; few have died as torturous a death as our Lord; even fewer (read: zero) deserved better; and certainly none died for a greater prize offered to more souls.

I respect the heroism of American veterans by participating in our democracy, paying taxes, and contributing to law and order in every way prescribed. I even had my own stint in the military (though, in all humility, both the time and the danger I experienced fell far short of what our WWII veterans saw).

But…do I respect Christ’s sacrifice by…I dunno, not sinning?

When a sin presents itself before me as a possibility, do I choose to respect all that Jesus went through on the cross to secure eternal life for me? Do I give it the proper due and appreciation?

Or do I give the nails another thwack with my hammer?

It’s not like I do nothing to honor Christ. I blog about him. I’m active in my church. I’ve gone on mission. But Christ commands purity in every area of our lives, and there are too many battlegrounds I’m tempted daily to concede without a fight.

Well, I found out that the earthy, grown-up tang of the phrase “respect for what Jesus has done” makes a nice tool for keeping myself clean of sin. I think of the cross, and it slows my roll towards sin. It’s not like “thinking of the cross” was never available to me until the word respect linked up. But for some reason, the word resonates. In the haze and hot tumult of the battle against sin, I’ll use whatever weapon works, and this works.

We gladly honor the dead. Let us honor the One who didn’t stay dead.