Jesus Wants to Save Christians

Sometimes, other people speak in words better than you can what your heart is crying out. Today? One of those times. Her street name--for anyone who does not know--is Addie Jo. However, I think when Jesus talks about her, he calls her "Beautiful." She has an incredible heart, an inspiring connection to God, and an impelling way of expressing these things in words. This same woman wrote the following post in her blog, blackbirdberry.blogspot.com, and like I said, her words speak better than any I have right now.

"Anger

I am so sick.

I hate this world. I hate it. When, when did we decide that it was acceptable, fine, commendable to ignore the needy in the world and focus always on ourselves? When did we decide that we could 'help' people by bombing their country, tearing their world apart and forcing ideas and systems of governance foreign to them on their lives? When did we decide that we could put down other people to the point that they actually think they're as worthless as we make them seem? When did we make the choice to stop seeing humanity and start seeing us and them?

When did we decide that it's fine to have people living on the streets, out in the cold, without a house, when we have so much extra room in our houses, extra guest rooms, huge living rooms, game rooms, multiple dining rooms? When did we decide that we could waste our money on food we don't even want, that we're going to throw away, that we're going to turn our noses up at, when there are people dying, dying, as in never get to eat another meal because they're dead, dying of hunger? When did we decide that we could ignore the rest of the world as long as we are fine?

What are our institutions, our places of learning, our high towers and money systems, banks and corporate offices schools? What are our sporting events? How much money there is laying around, how many resources used for these things, when we could save the world, fix so many problems with what is spent in idle pleasure?

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of spending hours studying things that don't matter, that I won't use, that won't make a difference in the world, or that only make a difference in my tiny sliver of the world. There is injustice and oppression. There is murder and genocide and starvation and disease and hate, hate, hate, hate and anger and waste. The waste of the entire human race, do you realize that? Do we realize what potential we have, what we could do, if we would just save us from ourselves? And I'm angry and I don't want to spend another day being less than this world needs me to be. If I'm going to wear a cross of ashes on my forehead, I want to be Christ to the world, not have to hang my head down and ignore the people who are freezing outside because I don't know their situation or how I can help them.

No, and I know there are noble things to follow in this society of ours. And I know there is good. But fuck it all, because that's what's keeping us complacent, keeping me complacent, that's what's stopping us from waking up and realizing that there are problems that need to be addressed. We're comfortable, we're fine, we don't need to do anything yet.

And I'm afraid to see what it's going to take to make us change."

--Addie Jo Schonewolf

"Jesus wants to save us from making the good news about another world and not this one. Jesus wants to save us from preaching a gospel that is only about individuals and not about the systems that enslave them. Jesus wants to save us from shrinking the gospel down to a transaction about the removal of sin and not about every single particle of creation being reconciled to its maker. Jesus wants to save us from religiously sanctioned despair, the kind that doesn't believe the world can be made better." --Rob Bell (Jesus Wants to Save Christians)

Just Keep Swimming

About a month ago, I had this dream. It was at least a whole month ago, and I still find myself thinking about it from time to time. It hasn't been one of those recurring dreams, but sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, it's all I think about:

I'm swimming. Not quickly, not frantically; slowly, calmly, yet deliberately. I'm in an ocean--infinite dark water behind me, infinite dark water beneath me, infinite dark water on both sides of me, infinite dark water in front of me. It's not cold or hot, but cool, refreshing. I'm naked, but unaware of the fact. The ocean's salty waves subtly pulse against me and lap against my lips as I continue swimming forward. It's nighttime, that time of night when the moon has already peaked but, crowding the sky, begins its slow drift back downwards. It's a crisp night with a few stray, wispy clouds beneath the millions of stars that freckle the sky. The cycle of time stops, and the heavens stay this way. It's always been like this--that time between midnight and daybreak, that still and quiet time. I'm alone and swimming, and that's the way it's always been. I've never stopped swimming. But I'm not tired, and I'm not thirsty. I'm neither excited nor sad. I'm relaxed and comfortable yet focused. Ahead of me, infinite miles beyond the dark water, I can barely make out the blackish green island of land, erratic pin-pricks of light evidencing the life that exists there. I don't know why or what it is, but something internal propels me to continue moving until I reach this land. I have no clue what it is I'm swimming to, but I know it's good, I know it's worth it, and I know how to get there--keep swimming forward. From out of nowhere, my family swims up beside me. I look to my sides and watch my parents and my brothers. They don't speak to me, and they don't look at me. They just swim with me. All of us, at our casual pace, swim forward together in silence toward this distant land. I'm unaware of how long this lasts, but eventually, I realize I'm swimming alone again. I'm relaxed and comfortable yet focused. The light from the moon and stars dance across the rippling ocean, making the waters glisten. And I keep swimming forward toward the lights of the faraway land that I almost can't see. At some point, I look to my sides and see all my best friends from the youth group swimming with me. I look at each of them in turn before facing the front again; no one looks at me and no one talks. We're all swimming together, always forward, always toward the land up ahead. Eventually, I look around and realize I'm swimming alone again. I'm relaxed and comfortable yet focused. And I just keep swimming. This process continues over and over in waves. Mentors and role models, friends from high school and church and college, all the girlfriends I've had, the few I've called my best friends, and finally, a few people I've never seen before: they all appear, swim silently with me for a period, then leave me by myself again. Eventually, the waves of people stop. Aware of the cool wind stroking my face, the soothing waters enveloping my body, the heavens faintly lighting my world--I calmly keep swimming. Always swimming. Never worried or tired or sad or lonely. Just swimming. Always forward. Always toward the unknown land barely visible ahead. I have no clue what it is I'm swimming to, but I know it's good, I know it's worth it, and I know how to get there--keep swimming forward.

The Great Iconoclast pt II

I wrote this in a journal yesterday. Today, I have decided to post it. Consider this the sequel to the post "The Great Iconoclast."

So this life's about card castles. Well, of course that's not what this life's about--are you kidding? Feeling, recognizing beauty and its perversion, creating and imagining, healing and hating, changing and inspiring change, accepting and rejecting, sacrificing and loving. No. We're capable of too much. This life is not about card castles. But that's what we make it about.

Like I've said before, I think I love card castles, because I just can't leave them alone. They are so much fun to build, but it sucks when they fall. and they always fall. They're just paper--of course they fall. Geeze, no matter how many times I watch my castles fall, I always turn back to rebuilding them. I don't know if there's another option. Gosh, it hurts so much when they fall. It's only by the grace of that same great Iconoclast that I don't die when my castles do, because I should die. For some reason, some greater purpose than just building castles (I hope), I am spared from death--but never from pain.

I love what C.S. Lewis says: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains" (The Problem With Pain). That's good stuff. Listen: if anything, I can be a testimony to that. God is a God of the broken, of the hopeless, of the hurting. I've heard God's voice louder than I ever have in the midst of all this pain, in the midst of the wreakage of this castle I've built and watched fall. There is so much pain here, in these ruins.

That's not what hurts the most though--watching the castle fall, that is. What hurts the most is letting go of all the broken pieces. I've been holding on so tight, and those pieces that functioned so incredibly before as a part of my castle now cut deep into my clenched hands. The sharp, jagged edges draw blood real fast. Biting, stinging, intense pain. And yet it's so hard to let go of those stupid pieces. It's so scary to trust that it's okay, that it will all be okay. It's so hard to see that there's anything else to hold on to. And so I just keep clenching and squeezing and holding on to my broken pieces, and I just keep hurting...

But. No. More.

I'm dropping these pieces.

"They keep on replying, 'But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.' Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise [praise God]. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart--every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out." --C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

The Heart of the Matter (<--click it!)

What They Say

I've been doing a lot of reading lately, so I've decided to post a few golden lines, a few quotes that have made an impression.

Psalm 55 (the whole thing--it's great)

"Idolatry is taking an incomplete joy and building your life around it." --... (don't remember where this comes from. it is oh so true, though.)

"Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to craw back--to be sucked back--into it?" --C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

"Writer Anne Lamott says that the most powerful sermon in the world is two words. 'Me too.' Me too. When you're struggling, when you're hurting, wounded, limping, doubting, questioning, barely hanging on, moments away from another relapse, and somebody can identify with you--someone knows the temptations that are at your door, somebody has felt the pain that you are feeling, when someone can look you in the eyes and say, 'Me too,' and they actually mean--it can save you." --Rob Bell (Jesus Wants to Save Christians)

"Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt...and pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore...pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." --CSL (The Problem With Pain)

"Pain plants the flag of truth within a rebel fortress." --CSL (The Problem With Pain)

"Sometimes it takes a little pain to get us to do the right thing." --RB (Jesus Wants to Save Christians)

"Sometimes it is hard not to say, 'God forgive God.' Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, he didn't. He crucified Him." --CSL (A Grief Observed)

"Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. that, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it." --CSL (The Weight of Glory)

"It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life...how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." --CSL (The Weight of Glory)

"Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either." --Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister (got this one from a good friend's blog--thanks Addie Jo)