Notes From Jon

If we want to make a name for ourselves, if we want people to respect what we have to say, let it not be because we were the first person to cast stones.

As our newly sworn-in President Obama said in his inauguration speech: “Know that… people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

Common questions arise whenever human beings encounter suffering – we heard them over and over after 9-11, and we’re hearing them now. You might think we should ask “why,” and we’ll get there eventually. But for right now, trying to find a way to think and to respond when something like this happens, atheists and believers alike will come to one question:

Where is God? How could he let something like this happen? How could this young man, no matter how disturbed, bring himself to commit such a horrible act? How could God allow these young people – in the budding stage of life, their whole futures before them – how could God let this happen to them? And where is he now? Where are the justice and vindication? Where are the consolation and the joy?

It’s a question as old as the oldest book in the Hebrew Scriptures – Job. How fitting it seems in times like this that the oldest of writings about God are not songs of praise or accounts of his greatness… but questions about good, evil, justice and God’s seeming absence in the midst of suffering.

And if we learn anything from Job, it’s this: Now is not the time for answers, for trying to figure out eternal “why’s.” Even after watching those videos, after hearing of his troubled past, even after hearing psychological analyses… even then we will not be able to give a decent answer to that question. Now is not the time for answers. Now is the time for mourning and for reaching out.

Where was God last Monday? Most of us weren’t there, so we can’t say. But we’re starting to hear stories. Professors and students willing to lay down their lives for others. Unexplainable escapes and near-misses. The outpouring of compassion that touched so many lives at a crucial time.

Where is he now? He’s working, through his Spirit, to bring unity to a world that’s usually divided by class, color, religion, and yes… even team loyalty. He’s speaking through the voices of churches and Christians who, instead of calling for heads, are calling for FORGIVENESS – for Cho Seung-Hui and for the school administration and staff. After all, did we learn anything from the incident in an Amish school a year ago?

We can ask where God is, and where he might have been, and that’s appropriate. But what we cannot do is allow that question (or the answers) to let ourselves off the hook. No matter where we perceive God to have been last Monday, we know the task WE have been given: to comfort those in mourning, to offer prayers for those who have been hurt, to stand up for love instead of revenge, to offer forgiveness instead of lawsuits. These are not the jobs of a select few – they are the jobs of every believer, whether in the wake of a massacre or simply in our day-to-day lives.

Where is God? He’s right here where he’s supposed to be. Question is… where are we?

(Feb. 2007 Church Newsletter)

I read an interesting story in a magazine a few years back about a dog that belonged to a certain family in the Midwest. When this poor little puppy had been born, his mother was very sick and died just after delivering her litter – and this poor puppy was the only one that survived. The family knew that the puppy had little chance to survive without a mother, so they turned to books and local veterinarians for advice on how to care for it. Despite their best efforts, the puppy refused to eat from a bottle, and it seemed he might not make it.

Help came from an unexpected place. The family who cared for the puppy also had a cat, and by a strange coincidence this cat had a litter of kittens just a day or two after the puppy was born. This mother cat, whether by maternal instinct or simply by confusion, took the puppy in as one of her own. While she could not feed the puppy, she acted as a mother to it and treated it just like one of her other kittens. The puppy, now sensing a mother’s love, began to eat and received the nutrients it needed to live and grow.

The writer of the story wanted to show just how powerful this “adoption” had been. While the puppy had learned some instinctually “doggy” habits like scratching himself with his hind leg, in many ways he seemed to believe he was a cat. He cleaned himself carefully like a cat, preferred cat food to dog chow, scratched on furniture, and loved to sit in the sun of a low window sill. In short, the puppy acted just like the other kittens, his “adopted” brothers and sisters.

While today I doubt the accuracy of all the details of this story, I recognize a kernel of truth in how the puppy perceived himself. Having been the owner of a dachshund for a few years, I learned to recognize what some people call the “small dog complex.” Experts say that small dogs, because they have little or no sense of themselves, tend to act as though they are as large as any dog or person they come into contact with. Our little Lizzy, like most dachshunds, was fiercely protective in spite of her size. On seeing a stranger or another dog, she would rush at them full speed, barking and baring her teeth… until she got close enough to realize just how big that thing was. Then, realizing her mistake, she would usually roll over on her back and whimper. If Lizzy had ever really come to terms with her identity, it’s likely she never would have left the house!

So why has my column suddenly turned into Animal Planet? While the magazine story certainly had some interesting parallels to our own adoption as children of God, I was more intrigued by what it says about our identity. That puppy acted like a cat because his only models for behavior were other cats. Lizzy acted like a big dog because she didn’t have a real understanding of her own size. How we act, it seems, is greatly influenced by how we see ourselves.

Sometimes we – as Christians, and as a church – decide to act less on who we really are, and more on how we see others acting around us. As Christians, it’s an easy trap to fall into. We know with our heads that we have been changed by God, but when we look more closely at others around us rather than our true identity, we fall back into old habits of sin and helplessness. We know with our heads that God has called each us to serve and follow Christ, but when we look around and see how others refuse to serve, we fall back and think, “maybe God isn’t calling me to do that after all…” We can only move forward in our walk when we have a proper understanding of our true identity.

As a church we fall prey to this failure of identity as well. We may not say it out loud but it’s the way we think: “We can’t accomplish much, we’re only a small church.” “We don’t need to do that kind of stuff, that’s for big churches.” Sometimes, we talk ourselves into being so small and useless that we feel God has put our church family here for no other reason than to gather and sing songs on Sunday morning. Is that really all we are about?

And are we really a “small church?” Don’t look at other churches for the answer, look at our church: We have a vital and healthy congregation, wide diversity, strong ministry programs, and a rich heritage of music, missions and education. There’s more potential for God’s Kingdom-work here than we realize. Are we really a “small church?” Does size really matter?

Perception is everything. Who do you think you are?

(K-V Dispatch Column, 2/14/07 Edition)

It seems there’s no shortage of folks who want to run for President in 2008. Just in the past two weeks, several have declared they are “in the race,” or that they’re looking into the possibility – which means, of course, that they will be “in the race” soon enough. Why so early? Elections aren’t until next November. We shouldn’t be paying attention until at least this time next year.

Or should we?

I think now is the time to start looking seriously at presidential candidates, because now is the time we’re likely to see who they really are. As the race gets tighter, the candidates will give focus-group speeches rather than talking to the everyday you-and-me. Instead of talking abut their passions and motivations, next year they’ll be telling us what they think we want to hear.

So where does the Christian fit into all of this? We’ve seen more in the past few years that, for better or worse, Christian Americans have influenced elections and policies. But before we jump up and down in victory, we should take a moment to reflect on what it means for us, as the Church, to have so much influence in our government.

Jesus opened up the age-old matter of church-vs.-state when the Pharisees came to him in Jerusalem with a loaded question: “Is it right for us to pay taxes to Rome?” Jesus knew their intentions, and he gave the perfect answer: “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and give to God the things that are God’s.”

Jesus wasn’t just making a clever turn of phrase, and he wasn’t just trying to outfox the Pharisees. He was making a statement to us about our relationship to our government and society.

As members of a democracy, citizens of our great nation, each of us is responsible to have a voice in what goes on in our communities and our nation. We are responsible for the choices we make – or fail to make. If we elect a leader, then you and I are somehow implicit in the successes and failures of that leader. If we vote for a policy change, then you and I share the consequences that come from that change.

How do we, as Christians, make decisions? How do our decisions impact our nation and world? These are questions each of us can only answer for ourselves. But the fact remains, we have been given a mandate – both by our country and by our God – to take responsibility and action. Help the oppressed, feed the hungry, care for the poor… these are the things God consistently tells us we should do, both as individuals and as a nation.

Sure, it’s another 19 months until we choose our next president. But let’s take our God-given blessings and duties seriously, and begin even now to choose and to pray for our future leaders.

Sorry it’s been so long! I’ve started a religious editorial in the local paper called, “Speaking of Faith.” Strangely ironic, since the last post I put up here had the same title…

Anyway, I’ll at least try to get my articles up here from time to time. If I get more, I’ll do more. If not… well, you get the point.

Article one:

Making God

I have a candid confession to make: I have never enjoyed watching American Idol. This is true even though my wife and I lived in Birmingham – home to Reuben Studdard, Bo Bice and Taylor Hicks – during the early height of the Idol era. I know this is shocking, and it places us in the small percentage of Americans who don’t spend those hours in front of the TV each week.

It’s not that we’re against it for any particular reason – we just have better things to do, like play with our young daughters (who are infinitely more entertaining). And it’s not that I have some hangup on the idea of an “American Idol.” Fact is, whether or not we have a television show to tell us who our cultural idol is, we’ll find one anyway – even though those idols rarely turn out to be worthy of our “worship.”

A few years ago, listening to a sermon on idolatry, I experienced one of those rare moments in which I actually remember something I heard in a sermon. I, like most of my fellow audience members, had been used to thinking of idolatry as some ancient sin that only involved wooden carvings or ancient statues in pagan temples. Or maybe we were used to hearing it used in connection with Christian symbols that have taken on a life of their own – the cross, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. However we define it, idolatry is a serious sin… but none of us modern folks really do it.

That’s what I thought, until I was challenged with this simple but frighteningly clear definition of idolatry: “God created us in his image, and we sometimes return the favor.” It reminded me that idolatry is not limited just to the worship of things that are blatantly not-God, but extends to the worship of our own limited views of God as well. Whether it’s a statue or an ideology, idolatry is finding a god to worship that’s not really worth worshiping.

How often do we try to re-make God in our own image? I find myself doing it all the time, and I imagine it’s a pretty common practice for most of us. We imagine Jesus as a white (or black) handsome, middle-class kind of person who hung around mostly folks just like us. He was calm and serene, never angry, never laughing. We envision God to be a Republican or a Democrat, urging us to vote along political lines. We make God an American, a pro-choicer or pro-lifer, a Baptist or a Methodist. These labels conveniently place God on “our side,” and allow us the freedom to withhold love (or “fellowship,” or help) from those who are not exactly like us.

More dangerously, I think, when we do these things we run the risk of forgetting that, while you and I must usually be “either-or,” God can be “both-and.” We hold to our little re-fashioned gods despite the fact that all of scripture points to a God who is complex: showing love and compassion while threatening judgment; showing favor for one people while bestowing blessings to all; bringing peace while bringing division.

And so we commit that ancient sin over and over again – not when we bow down to a little wooden statue, but when we bow down to our own tiny and limited view of God at the exclusion of the many other things God is. When we think we’ve got God figured out and have him placed firmly “on our side,” we don’t need a wooden idol – we’ve built one in our minds and hearts.

As a New Year resolution, let’s commit ourselves to rediscovering the true God in the days ahead. When we do, we’ll be reintroduced to a God who, while warm and familiar, is also mysterious and holy – who is infinitely more terrible and yet compassionate, more peaceful and yet dividing, more dreadful and yet more wonderful than we ever imagined. That’s a God worth worshiping!

In a recent post on Waiting To Live, I mentioned a difference between faith and belief – belief being what we know, and faith being how we act on it.

In the case of the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” there are some times when knowing leads us to crisis. Are we going to react in faith by acting on what we know? Or are we going to pretend we didn’t hear it?

Like Daryl, I tended to vote for change in the elections this week. I don’t honestly know what we accomplished. I’m not sure whether we’ll see change, or just retribution and a swinging of the pendulum. I have gotten so disillusioned with politics in recent years, that for a long time I will have difficulty finding the redemptive aspects that Jim Wallis and his crew are working to find.

We also had another kind of vote here in Virginia: the marriage amendment passed overwhelmingly. I don’t think anyone was surprised. We haven’t seen the end of this issue — It will become a national/federal issue before long. And then Virginia will be knee-deep in it once again.

In other states’ news, I had to laugh at the ad that Corker ran against Ford in the last days of the Tennessee election… and almost had to cry when I saw that it worked.

As I just mentioned on a post on Daryl’s blog, sometimes I don’t have a lot to add to a conversation. In those times, I’m better off to just stay silent – and in the “real world,” I generally do. But for the sake of blogging, it gets boring when someone doesn’t post for, oh, two weeks straight.

While I did have a thought that wrapped up some of my recent thinking on faith, for the most part I’m fresh out of originality right now. I’m pouring most of my creativity these days into my ministry and my sermons (which are no longer published unless I get to write them down). So, instead of giving any original ideas out right now, I’m going to instead point you to a few places that have sparked my interest lately.

Explore some links. See what you think. I’m interested in your responses.

I am continually saddened by the goings-on in the Western Christian world. I am very sad and sorry for Ted Haggard, who reminds me of myself in some ways. The higher up we are in the world, the higher our pedestal, the greater must be our eventual fall. My heart and prayers are with Mr. Haggard right now as he comes to terms with a new kind of life – and applaud him for his eventual honesty and the mode of restoration he seeks.

By the way, I appreciated what Tony Campolo had to say about the matter.

I am also deeply saddened by the concept of brainwashing promoted by the camp leaders in the film “Jesus Camp,” but am even more saddened that some people (presumably Christians?) decided that the best way to deal with it is to vandalize and promote a kind of backwards warfare. What kind of message are we sending to those children?

Look in the next post for more…

My post today is a simple one. It’s a few questions I’m asking myself and everyone else. If you have an answer, tell me.

Why war against an evil dictator in Iraq, but not Darfur?

Why a call in our churches to action spreading Good News to every human being, but not Darfur?

Why powerful sanctions and rhetoric against nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, but not Darfur?

Why spend our money on iPods, clothes, computers, books, satellite TV… but not Darfur?

Why do we argue over heaven and hell, Mohammed and Jesus, evolution and creation, but not Darfur?

A few weeks ago, I posted with comments on stories about Steve Gaines’ leadership at Bellvue Baptist in Memphis. The more I read about it, the more sad I get. The most recent article on the matter pretty well sums up what’s happened in the last month or so.

It makes me sad on so many fronts, but especially two. First, that the whole world has to hear as this church deals with this mess. If it were a smaller church, chances are no one would care. But it’s Bellvue. Whether you’re a congregation of 30 or 30,000, you’ve got to be sad when your church gets this kind of publicity.

Second, that the matter has been handled in such a political way, instead of open and honest dialogue. If there was no wrongdoing, answer the questions. If there was wrongdoing, ‘fess up and answer the questions. No matter what really happened, the worst thing you can do is sit on it and hope it will go away.

I, for one, offer my prayers for the people and leadership of Bellvue – that they will be able to have open and mature dialogue about this problem, and that together they can seek God’s continued will for their church family.