The alterability of God and the inflexibility of a Man

Though I have not been a father for too long, my short experience there combined with my experiences as a teacher have trained me well as practical influencer of young people’s behavior. Lesson number one in that training: Always follow through with consequences. If you say to a young man that he will have to leave the room if he speaks out again, then when he speaks out again, you must do what you said. That’s an example of plain, good people skills, and I have heard that tip in various forms perhaps a thousand times.

Unfortunately, I have also heard hundreds of times a derivative of that idea. That derivative is often projected like this: “I’ve made up my mind and that’s final.” Here the speaker – who often ends up being the father – stands firm in a course of action simply because it is the course of action he originally chose. I’m convinced our culture feels this is a character strength. Take as proof the statement – often said jokingly – that a woman has a right to change her mind. The statement is often said in jest as a response to a man who may have criticized a woman for doing exactly that: changing her mind.

While there is nothing inherently wrong about a fun teasing match where these phrases emerge, what they reveal is this: our culture thinks changing one’s mind is a “womanly” thing to do (read: a weakness for a man). A Man makes up his mind and keeps it, and that’s that.

Maybe that is what our culture has formed as right and good, but if we aspire to be like Christ, we go awry to value such archetypes. Imagine if God were so inflexible – would anything have changed after the flood? Would Lot have been saved? Would prayer be possible?

It is in the act of prayer that we most count on God’s flexibility, and as I share a passage from Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy, I would ask us as fathers and believers not only to take comfort in this aspect of God’s personality and allow it to inspire us to fall to our knees in supplication and praise, but I would ask us to consider how we could better imitate such a character trait.

We should admit, I think, that some views of prayer are degrading of God, and perhaps of human beings as well. . . . But that is not so of the view of prayer that Jesus gives. To suppose that God and the individual communicate within the framework of God’s purposes for us . . . and that because of the interchange God does what he had not previously intended, or refrains from something he previously had intended to do, is nothing against God’s dignity if it is an arrangement he himself has chosen.

It is not inherently “greater” to be inflexible. That is an unfortunate human idea of greatness, derived from behavior patterns all too common in a fallen world. It turns God into a cosmic stuffed shirt. This unfortunate idea is reinforced from “the highest intellectual sources” by classical ideas of “perfection,” which stressed the necessity of absolute inalterability in God. But in a domain of persons, such as The Kingdom Among Us, it is far greater to be flexible and yet able to achieve the good goals one has set. And that is an essential part of the Divine Personality shown in the Bible and incarnated in the person of Jesus and presented in his message. So far from fitting the classical pattern of God as “the Unmoved Mover,” the God shown in the historical record is “the Most Moved Mover.” This is the One who lives with us and whom we approach from within the community of prayerful love.

May we rely upon our God – who can be moved while maintaining his purposes – and may we, by the power of his Spirit, grow to imitate him in this way.

Grace & peace to you,

Geoff

 

Riding Together

When looking for the archetypal loner and independent soul, the world presents the Marlboro Man – a tough, hard working, good looking man’s man. Ironically, outside of Western novels and movies, cowboys rarely work alone. At least, I’ve never heard of a lone cowboy rounding up a stampede or successfully branding a calf.

Still, despite the reality, that archetype holds power and we admire the lone wolf. I have even heard Jesus cast into this lone wolf stereotype – the man who went against the religious authority of his day, teaching his alternative message despite the consequences. But while Jesus was certainly alone on the cross and in those hours of darkness before crying “Eloi, Eloi!” we should remember that he was far from a loner. He moved with a consistent group of disciples, relied on the worldly support of a consistent group of women, and revealed an ever present fellowship with the other two persons of the Triune God.

With this precedent before us, why do we pursue our spiritual lives by ourselves? Especially we men? Why would we isolate our spiritual experiences almost exclusively in occasional private study and reading – prayer-closet only relationships with Jesus? And when we isolate the pursuit in this way, why are we surprised that the struggle overcomes us? Or why should we expect anything different when we neither grow significantly nor find opportunity to share our faith?

During a stay at a Latin American language school for missionaries, Henri Nouwen asked these same kinds of questions, and as he considered himself and his fellow missionary-trainees, he realized

how much we need each other. Mission work is not a task for individuals. The Lord sent his disciples into the world in small groups, not as individual heroes or pioneers. We are sent out together, so that together – gathered by One Lord – we can make him present in this world. . . .

He muses that before they begin to bring Christ to the world, they should

first of all look at each other, recognize each other’s suffering and come together as a living body to pray, and to share our joys and hopes, our fears and pains. . . . After all, the first and most important witness is to them who can say of us: “See how they love each other.

Nouwen’s vision for interaction and mutual reliance requires vulnerability that our loner archetype does not allow. Vulnerability means sharing more than the concerns of our extended family – “Please pray for my cousin who . . .” It means exposing and praying for our own veiled struggles, whether they’re discipline issues with our children or communication problems with our spouses.

And while we may not yet know anyone in church with whom we can share like this, our small groups are a place to begin – entering into relationships with other men and their entire families, building bonds and trust that allow for Nouwen’s vision, a vision of dependence, on each other to carry one another’s burdens, and ultimately on Christ, who carries all our burdens.

Certainly, such an arrangement wins over the Marlboro Man method, a method that leaves a man looking good in pictures but with no one to whom to admit that he’s a workaholic who smokes to give himself something to do besides fret.

Today, then, may we humble ourselves before God and each other, recognize each other’s suffering, and come together as a living body to pray, and to share our joys and hopes, our fears and pains.

______________________________________________________________

Nouwen, Henri. Gracias! A Latin American Journal. New York: Orbis, 1983.

Original image: ‘Dad & Harry – Santa Rosa Ranch‘ by: John Christensen

 

Using Time Wisely

This newsletter is from a book by Tim Kimmel called Little House on the Freeway, and while it speaks a challenge specifically to parents of young children, I hope those in our church whose children have grown can read it and realize its importance. I firmly believe that if veteran parents and our church clearly assented to and willingly reiterated this message, families of young children would listen and benefit. Here is Kimmel’s challenge:

Dads, if we think we can be effective fathers while at the same time spending [most of our waking] hours a week climbing the ladder of success, we’re kidding ourselves. If we think we can dump the responsibility of raising our children off on our partner while we hide behind the “bread winner” mask, we’re hallucinating. Being an effective father requires personal involvement. We cannot – we dare not – delegate our parenting responsibilities to someone else and feel that we have fulfilled our calling to our children. It just doesn’t work.

Kimmel then goes on to speak to moms and to challenge them to question why they are working outside the home – is it because they have no choice due to their husband’s unemployment or a divorce or widowhood? Or is it out of another, more material motivation? What Kimmel does not do, and what I wish he would, is ask husbands too why their wives work, because a husband’s desire for a house or nice car can be as much to blame for a wife “having” to work as a wife’s desire for material security or comfort. Kimmel continues with this, which I believe can be directed to both a husband and a wife:

Work, with its ego benefits and extra income, must be weighed against the long-term needs of our children. When it comes to this issue, there are no easy answers. Loving takes time and time requires sacrifice – somewhere. It gets painful when the sacrifices cut into lifestyle. The lifestyle sacrifices don’t have to be forever, but they may have to be for now. . . .

Those couples who are willing to swim against the current tide of cultural pressures are going to have a reward waiting for them. They may not be able to dress as well, drive as nice a car, go out as much, or have as nice a house as those who ride with the contemporary flow. But they will have the blessing of knowing they gave their kids what their kids needed most – THEIR PARENTS’ ATTENTION.

When we stand before God someday, we’re going to have to give an account. We may have chosen, as moms and dads, to let someone else do the bulk of the rearing and value programming of our kids. But it is we who will have to give an account for our children.

May this message be one we as fathers hear, and one we are willing to utter to families in our church.

——————————————————————–

Kimmel, Tim. Little House on the Freeway. Sisters, OR: Multnomah: 1994.

Original image: ‘Father & Son‘
www.flickr.com/photos/14318462@N00/14029377
by: Phil Hilfiker

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

 

The babies, the handicapped, and the elderly

One of the books I assign to high school students is Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir about Wiesel’s experiences during World War II, when he was a prisoner at Auschwitz. To prepare ourselves for the novel, my students and I watched a moving documentary and interview Oprah Winfrey conducted with Wiesel at the Auschwitz prison grounds. The pictures, videos, and stories stilled my students into a horrified silence. At one point, Ms. Winfrey asked Wiesel about a particular spot and to check with him about what occurred there, she listed whom they killed: babies and mothers. Wiesel added to her list, “and old people.” Then he , Winfrey, my students, and I stared at the spot in sad reflection.

Shortly thereafter this question occurred to me: is our culture doing any different? We have altered the timing and the methods, but still we kill the weakest among us.

To stick with the theme that our pastors have chosen for this month, I thought I would use for our newsletter excerpts from the recently published document “That They May Have Life,” written by a group called Evangelicals and Catholics Together. I encourage you to click on the title to read the entire document. It is a reminder about why it is important to care about abortion laws and an articulation of the most salient arguments for preserving life. Reading it will make us wiser as we engage the world in a conversation about the things that matter most.

Regarding the talk about separation of church and state:

Whatever is meant by “the separation of church and state,” it cannot mean the separation of public life and public policy from the deepest convictions, including moral convictions, of the great majority of a nation’s citizens. . . . There is no more inescapably public and political question than who belongs to the polis of which we are part.

Regarding the argument that a fetus is only a potential human:

It is false and pernicious to claim that the unborn child is, at early stages of development, only a potential human being. No life that is not a human being has the potential of becoming a human being, and no life that has the potential of becoming a human being is not a human being.

Regarding the danger of the rational argument for abortion:

In the present state of our tragically disordered law, citizens are given, in the case of abortion, a private “right” to kill those who are too young, too small, too handicapped, too burdensome, or, for whatever reason, not “wanted.” When this “right” and the lethal logic that supports it is established in law, there is no principled reason why it should not be applied to the “unwanted” at any point along life’s way, as advocates of eugenics, euthanasia, and assisted suicide logically contend.

Regarding the importance of being a bold witness of Christ and his Gospel:

Our society’s drift toward a culture of death will not be arrested and reversed without a bolder and more persuasive witness to the gospel of life centered in Jesus Christ who is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Whatever our cultural circumstance, whatever the ebb and flow of political and legal fortunes, our first duty is evangelization: to share “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2) the good news of the unsurpassable gift of eternal life, beginning now, in knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

May we boldly glorify Christ with our actions on this issue.

 

Love, What Is It? : Issue 4

Our thoughts for this newsletter pause on love – if we’re commanded to do it, what is it?

Scripturally, the answer comes in 1 John 3:16 (ESV): “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

In his book The Cross of Christ, John Stott expands on the significance of the apostle John’s words:

John . . . dares say that, apart from Christ and his cross, the world would never have known what true love is. Of course all human beings have experienced some degree and quality of love. But John is saying that only one act of pure love, unsullied by any taint of ulterior motive, has ever been performed in the history of the world, namely the self-giving of God in Christ on the cross for undeserving sinners. That is why, if we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.*

*Stott, John. The Cross of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1986. 212.

Obviously, it is not hard to find more scripture on the subject of love, but as fathers, husbands, and men, this pair of verses seems worth pondering, since they command us to love.

Ephesians 5:25 (ESV): “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”

Matthew 5:44 (ESV): “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”

 

Taking It Like a Man: Issue 3

We’ve all heard a version of the phrase “take it like a man.” Used as a command, it’s likely not flattering, because the recipient apparently does not meet the standard. Used as a description of what has already occurred – “He took it like a man” – it’s probably a compliment.

But what does it mean, to take it like a man? Too often, it likely refers to a stoic or emotionless manner. More constructively, I like to think it refers to straight-forward, no-excuses conduct, like David fessing up to his guilt in the Bathsheba affair (Psalm 51) and the sinner crying out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).

In his essay “On Forgiveness,” C.S. Lewis talks more about the dangerous temptation to present excuses rather than seek forgiveness. Reading his words, I am curious what our church would look like if more of us men were marked by this repentant spirit – if each of us were to face his own sin “like a man.”

The trouble is that what we call ‘asking God’s forgiveness’ very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some ‘extenuating circumstances.’ We are so very anxious to point these out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the really important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which the excuse don’t cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable.

And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves with our own excuse. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves.

from C.S. Lewis’s “On Forgiveness” in The Weight of Glory

Forgiving vs. Excusing:

“Forgiveness says ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology I will never hold it against you and everything between us will be exactly as it was before.’”

“Excusing says ‘I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.’”

- C.S. Lewis

 

Free from Having Things Our Own Way: Issue 2

In his parenting series Growing Kids God’s Way Gary Ezzo observes that children are not ready to make choices until they are willing not to have a choice. That’s an astute observationof a child’s moral development, but it should leave the 21 ^st Century American adult wondering, “Am I willing not to have a choice?” In a country sown on the demand for liberty or death and fertilized by the customer always being right, don’t I now assume choice and control? Whether it be in public or private, at home, work, or church, have I become the unsubmissive child, demanding power when refused it? How I need the discipline of submission, which Richard Foster defines in part as our being “set free from the need to have things our own way.” Foster explains submission’s importance in his book Celebration of Discipline:

Submission is an ethical theme that runs the gamut of the New Testament. It is a posture obligatory upon all Christians: men as well as women, fathers as well as children, masters as well as slaves. We are commanded to live a life of submission because Jesus lived a life of submission, not because we are in a particular place or station in life. Self-denial is a posture fitting for all those who follow the crucified Lord. . . .

It is impossible to overstate the revolutionary character of Jesus’ life and teaching at this point. It did away with all the claims to privileged position and status. It called into being a whole new order of leadership. The cross-life of Jesus undermined all social orders based on power and self-interest. . . . The cross-life is the life of voluntary submission. The cross-life is the life of freely accepted servanthood.

from Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline.

Expressions of submission:

“As thou wilt; what thou wilt; when thou wilt.”

- Thomas a Kempis

“Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.”

- T.S. Eliot

Scripture on the theme:

Mark 8:34; Eph. 5:21; Mark 9:35; 1Peter 2:21-23 ; John 13:15 ; Phil. 2:4-7

 

Example of What? : Issue 1

Listening to an ad on Christian radio the other day, I heard a woman appeal to parents’ desire to protect their children from the media – Internet, music, television, and more. For some reason it occurred to me: how can we prevent our kids from being exposed to something if we continually subject ourselves to it?

Then with some thinking, I could not recall reading a single moral imperative in scripture that expires with age – God commands children and adults alike to be pure, holy, and righteous.

Men are the heads of their families whether they want the job or not. How we act will bear fruit – most obviously in the lives of our children. For proof, I turn to this month’s excerpt, which comes from a thorough and frightening study of the religious lives of American youth. As we consider these words carefully, we should ask ourselves this question: are our standards for ourselves the ones we would like for our children?

Few teen problems in fact are invented or promoted by teenagers. Most are prevalent in and developed, modeled, and handed down to teens by the adult world . . . In the end, teens are simply learning through socialization how to live in the problematic world they are inheriting from adults. . . .

Adults often complain about how stupid television is and how much of it teenagers watch, but American adults actually watch just as much (stupid) television as teenagers do. Adults constantly preach to adolescents about sexual responsibility, yet . . . the world portrayed by adult-produced media is one of relatively free sex without negative consequences; and all manner of pornographic sex (much of which can hardly be called “responsible”) our society labels “adult,” implying that, though kids should not view pornography, it is a perfectly appropriate pastime for grown-ups to enjoy. Should we be surprised that teens, who are itching to enjoy the freedoms of grown-up life, act out their sexuality in ways not always responsible?

from Christian Smith’s Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers