What am I supposed to do for Christmas?

Surely, as a follower of Jesus, my way of life is to be marked by sacrifice and suffering for my fellow men & women.  I wonder, though, if during this time of year it’s appropriate for me to withhold giving gifts to my wife, children, and family in order to give gifts to other families.

So often these thoughts spawn, not from a sense of compassion for the poor or a genuine desire to demonstrate the love of Christ as a family, but from a personal sense of guilt for not having compassion for the poor or not loving like Christ.  In response to that, I confess, so much of what I do is demand that my family pay the consequence for my sin.

And so this is what God has been teaching me.

Our God is a God who lavishes His love upon us (1 John 3:1).  He gives us great and abundant gifts (Matthew 7:11, John 10:10).  So often when we are given pictures of Heaven, we are given an image of an abundant feast – not a lackluster meal of rice and beans (Matthew 22).  We have a God who is promising to give us His Kingdom and His righteousness – and get this – all the things we worry about which are worth anything will be thrown in (Matthew 6).  This is a God who has given us all of creation to steward over.

Yes, we are called to lay down our lives for our friends (John 15).  Yes, we are called to daily take up our cross (Luke 9).  Yes, we are called to participate in the sufferings of Christ (Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 4).

But all of these calls to sacrifice are calls to sacrifice WITH Christ – as if we already have identified with His sacrifice for us and we are now partnering with Him in the world.  It’s a sacrifice as a adopted sons and daughters who willingly choose to move with Him in this world.  This is vital.  God has come to us and laid down His life for us before we have done anything.  He moved first (Romans 5:8).

The process which every Christian is to know intimately and to live out is this:  Christ moved toward us first, then we move toward others as we live in the strength of Christ’s love.  

Here’s the problem:  so often I don’t do a great job communicating to my family that Christ loves them first.  In my own sinful struggles to remember Christ’s love, I end up trying to get my family to love others like Christ has loved them… but haven’t helped them to know how Christ has loved them.  WHAT?!

And so this year, I’m remembering that my first place of ministry are to those closest to me.  How can I love strangers well if I don’t love my wife well?  How can we serve a third world country well we don’t serve each other well?   How can I communicate the love and abundance of Christ if I don’t know the love and abundance of Christ?  So I want to give them abundant gifts to remind them of how much God desires to abundantly give all of us gifts.

I have been thinking about how my first place of ministry and love is my family.  I hope that I never implicitly or accidentally communicate to them that God’s blessings, while for others, are not for them – that the love and provision of a father and husband are for the world, but not for his family.  

Giving up our presents and purchasing a goat for a family in a third-world country is tempting for me every year.  It makes the struggle with envy, gluttony, and over indulgence easy to conquer.  I imagine I will consider this every Christmas season for the rest of my life – and one of these Christmases, I should actually do it.  Yet this sort of struggle should be so much bigger than just a season.  How much better would it be for the world and for God’s Kingdom if daily I lavished love and gifts on my family and, with them, lavished love and gifts on the world – all the while personally sacrificing to help these things happen?

What do you think?  What are you doing this year for Christmas and how it is communicating the love Christ to those around you?

You could hear the buzz of the microphone; that current of electricity just waiting to be used, humming to get attention.  The camera panned the crowd as they murmured to containing themselves as they awaited resolution and justice.  When one of the main characters finally walked forward with the microphone, I couldn’t help but wonder what substance his words would have.  I was confused then, when he deferred a speech and passed the microphone off to a peripheral character.  “I am not the hero here, someone else is.”  

And the crowd went wild.

I thought, “Oh, that’s nice of you, but I was kind of looking forward to what you had to say.  Besides, I don’t care about this other character – who, by the way, isn’t even central to the story.”  Mr. Peripheral grabbed the mic and said, “I’m not the hero here, someone else is.”

And the crowd went wild.

“At least the microphone is going to a substantial character again”, I thought.

When the main character took the mic and said, “I’m not the hero here, someone else is”, I almost threw up. He was referring to the dolphin.

And the crowd went wild.

And then I did throw up.  Right there.  Right next to the couple who didn’t like moving their legs and had too much butter on their popcorn.

When the main character deferred a heroic speech for the third time, there was no one left to take the mic.  The substantive speech I was waiting for… the interpretive meaning and moral… the agenda of hope was passed off in the name of humility until there was no one left to speak.

My disappointment was ushered in by the sounds of applause in a room of thick emotional soup.

What were we celebrating?  What were we so excited about?

No one knows.  But, dammit, everyone got a chance to be celebrated.

It reminded me of our desire to occupy.  What are we occupying?  No one knows.

And the crowd went wild.

Years from now, this movie will serve as a wonderful example of what we dream of and hope for… and it breaks my heart.  I think of good ‘ol Jack saying,

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

We are called out of darkness and into light (1 Peter 2:9), through repentance (Acts 2:38-39) and faith in Jesus Christ, into a loving relationship with God (1 Corinthians 1:9) and others (John 13:34); to live as Saints in unity with each other(1 Corinthians 1:2), in God’s Kingdom and Glory (1 Thessalonians 2:12).

Control, I have noticed, is a myth.  I’ve been told as much from very early on, but in typical ignorance I have felt the need to discover this truth on my own.  I suppose it is because of this I have found Larry Crabb’s notion of “manly men” so intriguing.  Crabb notes, in The Silence of Adam, that men will often enter chaotic and vague situations in the natural course of life.  He suggests that very few times will men know exactly what to do, and even if they do, will rarely be able to do it.  Instead, he says God has empowered men to know who to be in every situation through the person and teachings of Jesus.  In my experience, I have discovered the truth of this.  I may often be able to cry out, “I just don’t know what to do right now!”  But it is rare that I feel powerless as to who I am to be.  I am thankful for this.

Maybe it’s because of this that doubt rarely creeps into my life through my own circumstances.  I have moments, sure.  But rarely do chaotic and negative circumstances cause me to strongly question the deeper, foundational truths of God and man and existence.  I suppose I have questions, I just find a thick, quiet response from God regarding who I am and who He is.

What I’ve noticed is that doubt comes into my life a lot when I consider other people’s circumstances: when I encounter a friend’s story of apathy, brokenness, loneliness, hurt, or failure.  When I step into those stories, and realize that I don’t have a quick answer for them, I find cause to doubt.

When these same themes take root or form in my own life, I don’t expect quick resolution like I do in their lives.  I have some encounter with God, through Scripture or experience or cereal or something, and am reminded that my circumstances do not define my worth and value.  I am reminded of the God who loves me and intended to make me.  I am reminded that circumstances will not always be this way.  I am reminded that, if I am willing, God will offer me resources to demonstrate that I have a God who is greater than these momentary afflictions.  I am filled, I suppose, with faith.

Maybe the trick, then, is that I can’t give someone else faith; and when I rub up against that, I doubt.  Perhaps I am afraid they won’t encounter Christ in their circumstance.  Or maybe that they will allow the circumstance to color their understanding of their worth.  No matter the fear, it is obvious that at the core of my struggle, I uproot God and stand in his place.  Rather than asking God to give faith to a friend and make Himself known, I grow weary  in trying to figure out how I can do this myself.  It is rather obvious then: when I assume the throne of God, doubt creeps in.  And for good reason.

I have spent years (since 2001) exploring this difference between doing and being in the midst of chaos.  I suppose I’m just now realizing that I have only been exploring that as it pertains to my own life and story.  It’s about time I learn to do that in the midst of other’s stories as well.

It’s been widely discussed that the young adults of America are one of the most overtly entitled generations in our history.  While I think that most of our strengths and weaknesses as individuals and societies find their strongest roots in our families of origin, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the impact of advertising for the 18-25 year olds in America.  I want to briefly highlight two things about our culture of advertising and how they effect worldview.

Donald Miller first opened my eyes to the major thrust behind successful advertising in America.  Think about ads you see, commercial spots you watch, flyers you read…  what is the one central theme in all of them?  You are not satisfied.

You are not good enough.  Smart enough.  Content enough.  You don’t have the right thing.  Your stuff is old, antiquated and in need of upgrading.  You don’t look cool enough.  Hang out with the right people.  You aren’t treated like you should be treated.

It’s the single most important message driving all of modern advertising.  After all, how can I really convince you that you need a new phone when your current one is only 3 months old?  Oh, oh, I know!  Convince you that your current phone isn’t hip anymore so that there is small voice inside of you that whispers, “You aren’t relevant.”  Which makes you ask, “How can I relevant?”  And then… BAM!  Check out the NEW thing!

It’s simple.  You just aren’t satisfied.

Hold that thought, because there is something else that is happening with advertising.  We have figured out a way to get products to people without them opening their wallets first.  Get this:  instead of you paying for TV in order to watch TV, how about I give you TV but try to convince you to buy stuff while you watch it.

Let’s slap labels on everything under the sun.  Let’s place products on every horizon.  Let’s sponsor nature and nurture and everything in between.  Instead of honest to goodness funding, let’s find cheap ways to get this done and throw someone’s name on the side.

Smart, right?  I mean, people are getting what they want for cheap or free, so long as they are willing to put up with marketing.

Here’s what it’s teaching our culture:  we shouldn’t have to pay for anything.  Think about it.  Youth get upset when they have to pay for movies and songs and books.  Some people are actually mad at the RIAA for pressing charges on illegally downloaded music.  Are you serious?!

So let’s put this together:  I’m not satisfied & I should get things for free.

How’s that for worldview?

Why are we drawn to such minute details?

As his three friends lowered him through the roof, I wonder if he even dared hope for what could happen.  I imagine he pleaded with them with to leave it be and let him rest in the life he had reconciled himself to.  Yet, as faithful friends do, they fought against reason for the ridiculous and foolish chance to see their friend healed.  And we find this man, this paralytic, being lowered through a roof and laid at the feet of Jesus in a dirty, packed crowd.

This God-Man, as the Bible would have us believe Him to be, heals the paralysis and, apparently, the paralytic’s sins.

But I struggle at this. If this is truly God, and He can do what He proclaims He can do (e.g. – throw mountains into the see, etc), couldn’t He have done more?  I mean, this was such a little problem compared to the magnitude of everything else going on in the world.

Yes.  And I think this is what we expect: that Jesus would not bother with this man, or that if he did, it would only be to serve as an example to something greater. Surely He couldn’t be interested in such a little thing?

There is the rub.

What is greater in all creation than an immortal son of God?  What is more significant in all creation than a human being; this demi-god fused with flesh and spirit?  What is more important to God than His chief creation whom He bestows His image upon?

It is so difficult to believe that this Creator God could care so deeply for me.  Clothed in filth and desperation, I hide from God thinking that if He ever did pay attention to me, nothing good can come of it.  This was true of Adam, it’s true of me, it’s true of you.

I think Jesus spent time with 12 (and to a greater extent 3), spent time with families and walked on foot, sat around fires and ate fish with friends, built tables and chairs for a living, healed men and women he knew by name, asked his friend to take care of His mother…. because God actually cares about us.  He doesn’t just care about us because we are part of the systemic problems or the moral issues or the faceless masses.  He cares about those things because He cares about us – about me, about you.  And even though this is the only air that will fill our lungs, it is so hard for us to swallow….

I think this is why we are drawn to the little things in art.  We must hold fast to the hope that the smallest of things matter.  The lesser our view of self, the more this is imperative.

When I see an artist spend an inordinate amount of time on the fingernails of a statue, I wonder if God cares this much about His creation.  When a musician puts years of their life into a 40 minute album, I wonder if that’s the sort of math that makes sense to God.  When I see a man spend days making something by hand that could be made by a machine in minutes, I wonder if maybe my view of what is important is skewed.  Maybe the little things are that important.

Maybe I am as important as Jesus seems to indicate by His life.  Maybe you are too.  Maybe He really has a name picked out for us.  Maybe we, the littlest of things, are what God is displaying for the world as His greatest artwork.  Maybe the crazy hope for this is why we rally around flowers and words and moments in art.  Maybe.

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”  ~John 17

This has been everywhere lately.  Sitting in church, talking about friendships, walking with engaged couples, houses full of friends, my marriage.  I can’t get away from it.  It’s ubiquitous.

Lately I can’t get away from how fundamental unity is in God’s plan.

Jesus beseeches God, asking that we (followers of Christ) might be one….so that the world may believe that God sent Jesus Christ.  He is implying that if the goal is to convince the world that Christ is from God, our unity is key.  And is it not of paramount importance that we believe Christ is of God?  For if Christ is not from God, and is not of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father, than His sacrifice is nothing more than a sad story of a lunatic.  But if He is, and if His death and resurrection were not only a means for our justification before God but also an example, a first fruit of what is in store for all of us…well that changes everything.

Not only does Jesus imply that our unity is a (the?) key competent in the fight to show the world the nature of the Christ, but He implies that it is again our unity that is necessary if the world is to believe that God loves us.

It is, as I said, no coincidence that in all things God, a nation of divided churches and broken marriage and individuality struggles most with the belief that God could love them.  This rings true in myriad ways.

• “How could a God so big care about something so little?”
• “Doesn’t He have better things to do?”
• “If I can’t even love myself, how could God love me?”

If Jesus is convinced that our unity is paramount in order to convince the world, even each other and our selves (are we not also included in this?), than the fractured nature of our relationships is in a direct, inverse, causal relationship with our belief in the both the nature of Christ and the love of God for us.

This should compel us to cease our judgment of one another and render forgiveness as liberally as Christ renders this to us.  We must love in self-surrendering ways.  We must seek to be united with our spouses, families, neighbors, churches, friends.  Even seek to be united with our enemies in Christ Jesus.  All in Christ Jesus.

To the degree that we do this, I believe, we will help the world to see the truth of Jesus and help the world to believe that God does, indeed, love them.

Audio | http://www.thehouseutc.org/talks/2010-10-20-sexseminar.mp3

Video | http://www.thehouseutc.org/talks/2010-10-20-sexseminar.mp4

I had this experience the other day that left me shaking my head and laughing.  I ran into someone I had never met and helped them out.  At one point in the middle of our conversation the guy stops and asks, “Are you a Christian?  You must be a Christian because no one has ever been this nice to me before.”

Jewels in my crown aside, I found myself thankful that what this guy did know about Jesus and His followers allowed him to associated a gracious act with Jesus Christ.

I agree that Christ represents Himself far better than I do, far better than churches do and far better than Christians do.  But sometimes I wonder if isn’t a couple of bad experiences that get honed in on and begin to represent the whole in our cultural conversations.

I mean, if we really believe God is sending His Spirit to make people more like Jesus, shouldn’t we actually see Christians representing Christ better and better as they walk with Him?  Shouldn’t the norm be Christians actually living like Jesus?  I think this is happening far more than we talk about and I’m thankful for it.

I know Christians aren’t perfect, but we should be getting closer all the time as we follow Jesus.  And this is a good thing for our world when we consider that perfected humans love and live like Christ.

In order to tell you where I am, odds are I need to couch it somewhere between where I’m from and where I’m going.  Think about it.

For example, I’m in Tennessee right now.  You might wonder, “How did you I get here?”  “Is this where I’m from.” You might continue with, “Do you plan on staying?”

This is natural for us.

It happens with far more than physical locations too.  It happens with our emotions (“Why do you feel that way?”). It happens with our finances (“How did you get into this mess and how are you getting out of it?”) It happens with our relationships, with our social status, with our ambitions, etc etc.

In order for us to communicate where we are, it’s necessary to explore where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

In our church culture we have, I think, in recent years grown in our awareness of where we’ve been.  I spent three hours this morning in a coffee shop talking about Hebrew feasts and sabbath and the importance of recognizing what our history is.  Churches are teaching more out of the Old Testament and recognizing the sweeping picture of God’s work throughout history.  We celebrate the communion and remember what Christ did during the Passover (which is remembering what God did during the Exodus).  Remembering these things in the past helps establish our understanding of where are now.

So what about the future?

In modern, American Christianity there is this fear of talking about Heaven & Hell (the only Biblical possibilities for our future).

I remember hearing about Pascal’s wager my freshman year of college.  It sounded brilliant until some junior on my dorm floor convinced me if that’s the only way God could convince us to follow Him, He isn’t very sophisticated.   I remember reading on the front of a church bulletin a quote from Martin Luther proclaiming that people converted by fear will later grow to hate their conversion.  I remember a late night discussion where a girl proclaimed that a god who even made a place like hell is no god she would care to be with.  Many of my friends had been told they were going to Hell if they didn’t fix their crap.  After loads of this type of conversation I stopped talking about Hell…. and my guess is in this ultra-sensitive, politically correct, we all deserve heaven culture you don’t talk about it much either

We don’t talk about it because it sucks and we don’t know what to do with it.  We struggle to trust God and His goodness with Hell in mind.  But we also struggle to talk about it because we know more about Hell than we do Heaven.

We hear people talk and must about Heaven, but we never hear anyone teach on it.

We all know things about Heaven though, right?  We know we sit on clouds and play harps.  We know that we’re white and see through.  We know that somehow, although singing gets old after a while hear on earth, we will find happiness in singing the same songs over and over again for millions and millions of years without rest.  We know that there will be no physical pleasure as good as sex, no fast cars, no bacon and blue cheese hamburgers, no golf, no shopping.  And we know we’re going to be happy about all this.

But we’re not happy about this.

I don’t think we’re supposed to be happy about this.  We’ve been sold some false (at worst) or watered-down (at best) understanding of Heaven from commentary and humor and cynicism in art and culture… but this is not what the Bible teaches. Whatever the Bible does say about Heaven we are not being taught with any regularity.  This needs to change.

For those of us who find life, truth and identity in Jesus Christ, Heaven is our destination.  But we never set our minds on it and know hardly anything of it.  Think about that.

If someone were to ask you what Heaven is like, is your answer really that compelling?

I’ve been learning lately just how much we can know about Heaven.  Jesus asks us to pray for His Kingdom to come here – right now – just like is in Heaven.  The Scriptures talk of the throne of Heaven, the capital city and the physical Jesus being present on a renewed earth – not some airy, ethereal super-cloud.  The Bible speaks of relationships, of art, of culture, of work, of gifts, of animals all being present in the future Heaven to come.

So where are we?

I started off by stating that our ability to know where we are is dependent upon us knowing where we’ve been and where we’re going.  I wonder if some of the reason we feel lost so often… some of the reason we wonder where we are in life… is because we’ve never set our eyes on Heaven.  We’ve never focused on what God is preparing for us and promised us.  We’ve lost sight of the fact that this isn’t the only shot we get at life on earth… and the next shot will be a whole lot better.

Maybe if we focused a little more on Heaven we would be a little more hopeful and impactful here and now.  Maybe if I knew where I was going I would know where I am and live as I’m meant to live.

“If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.  The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied on Heaven.  It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.  Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you get neither”  (CS Lewis – Mere Christianity)

For further reflection, consider reading:

• Isaiah 61-62
• John 14
• Colossians 3
• 1 Peter 1
• 2 Peter 3
• Revelation 21-22