what was meant for evil, God uses for good.

I've been thinking a lot about a certain sentence from the Bible. I haven't read the Bible in quite some time I must admit, but there is one scripture that keeps replaying over and over and over in my head. It's Genesis 50:20.

"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good..."


It hits me. 
It hits me like a ton of bricks and I am wrecked and I am humbled. 


We all carry grief, dear friends. Brokenness, hate, resentment, anger, fury, spite, whatever it may be... We are human and we have a great capacity to hurt. And even though our pain can seem overwhelming, unfair and even cruel at times, our capacity to love is far greater than that.

I read this scripture of Joseph's story and I feel whole and I feel honest.

And it's hard as hell to get here....to where Joseph was. Humbled and subservient to the Lord. But I can tell you one thing, he didn't get here because he tried hard enough or cared enough about it. He got here because of who God is in Him. He got here because he sat in the presence of the Lord and he gave up. He saw His heart. He felt His heart, and despite all of Joseph's anger, righteous anger at that, he wept (Gen. 50:17).
He forgave.... and he loved.


May we all seek to be humbled and feel God's love like Joseph. May we seek to touch the Lord's glorious redeeming robe.

"I could hear my heart beating, 

I could hear everyone's heart.

I could hear the human noise we sat there making,

not one of us moping, not even when the room went dark."

                                                                   

                                                                            - Raymond Carver, 1938-1988

"All right, then, I'll go to hell."

today i thought i'd share a post by one of my favorite thinkers, Rachel Held Evans. i hope it challenges you and i hope it moves you as much as it did me. hats off rachel.

If I had to pick a favorite American writer, it would be Mark Twain, and if I had to pick a favorite scene from an American novel, it would be the one where his unlikely hero, Huckleberry Finn, accepts his fate in hell.

It’s the moral climax of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The duke and dauphin have betrayed Jim and sold him to the Phelpses “for forty dirty dollars,” and the Phelpses have locked Jim in their shed, where he awaits his return to his rightful owner for a $200 reward. Huck goes back to the raft to figure out what to do next, and there he gets to thinking about the lessons he learned in Sunday school about what happens to people like him who assist runaway slaves.

“People that acts as I’d been acting about [Jim],” he’d been told, “goes to everlasting fire.”

(After all, the Bible is clear: “Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear”
- Ephesians: 6:5.)

Huck feels genuine conviction regarding his sin and, fearful of his certain fate in hell unless he changes course, he decides to write a letter to Jim’s owner, Miss Watson, to tell her where Jim can be found: 

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”

It is a moment of true moral courage, complicated though it is by troubling ingrained cultural assumptions. (Later, Huck can only make sense of Jim’s kindness to him and Tom Sawyer by concluding he must be “white on the inside,” a comment that reveals Twain’s gift for creating characters that both critique yet fully inhabit their cultural contexts.)

I often think about Huck’s resolution when I am told by religious leaders that “the Bible is clear” on this or that, and that I’ve got to stop listening to those gut feelings that tell me maybe we’ve gotten a few things wrong, that maybe there’s more to the story than we’re ready to see.

“Your feelings don’t matter,” they say.

“Your feelings cannot be trusted,” they say.

“Once you start listening to your feelings, over and beyond the plain meaning of Scripture, it’s a slippery slope to hell,” they say.

A part of me agrees. I want to be faithful to the inspired words of the Bible, not bend them to fit my own desires and whims. Being a person of faith means trusting God’s revelation, even when the path it reveals is not clear or comfortable.

But another part of me worries that a religious culture that asks its followers to silence their conscience is just the kind of religious culture that produces $200 rewards for runaway slaves. The Bible has been “clear” before, after all—in support of a flat and stationary earth, in support of wiping out infidels, in support of manifest destiny, in support of Indian removal, in support of anti-Semitism, in support of slavery, in support of “separate but equal,” in support of constitutional amendments banning interracial marriage.

In hindsight, it all seems so foolish, such an obvious abuse of Scripture.

...But at the time?

A few months ago, I was invited to serve communion at a church in San Diego that included quite a few LGBT Christians in its membership. A lot of things happened in that service that would make some of the leaders in my evangelical religious community very angry: a woman serving the bread and the wine, a lesbian couple partaking of the elements with their baby daughter in tow, a gay man embracing me in a big bear hug and telling me that it was the first time in twenty years he felt worthy to come to the Table.

In that moment—the one with the big bear hug—I knew what my Sunday school teachers would say. They would say that this man was most certainly not worthy to come to the Table, that I was most certainly not worthy to serve, and that daring to participate in this endeavor would surely take me one step closer to “everlasting fire.” 

“The body of Christ, broken for you,” I said anyway.

“The blood of Christ, shed for you,” I said anyway.

“The body of Christ, broken for you,” he said anyway.

“The blood of Christ, shed for you, he said anyway.

As we embraced, I knew in a way that I cannot put into words that sharing communion with this man was the right thing to do, that it was an act of bravery and grace for both of us—together unworthy, together worthy, brother and sister, in the mystery of the Eucharist.

So when the thought of my Sunday school teachers’ disapproval crossed my mind, the only words to surface to my lips were, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

living above your circumstances.

i was reading this morning and came across a line that said, (read as if God was speaking directly to you) "Thank Me for troublesome situations; the Peace they can produce far outweighs the trials you endure." i started thinking about how terrible 2011 was, and i imagined reading that sentence and wanting to know what it would mean to me if i didn't know God. how confusing it would be or how meaningless.

it's one thing to build up strength from a situation and say, "Well, if i can make it through that, I can survive anything." but it is another to find Peace in it. strength and peace don't always go together. in fact, my strength fails me quite a lot.

the Peace that God offers us is engulfed in the understanding of how to live above your circumstances. to be frank with you, it's learning how to let go and embrace the truth that your ultimate purpose of being on Earth is not for your own happiness, but for God's. (though i am fully aware that God loves for us to be happy). this gospel liberates. and i know that many Christians in the past have abused the Gospel and have misunderstood it. Westboro Baptist church comes to mind immediately. but the freedom in this whole story is that God loves us enough to give us a choice to love Him back. and that means we can choose not to love Him and we can choose to do things while on earth that are quite horrific and bring sorrow to God's heart.

i know this blog post might ruffle some feathers, but to be flat honest, i'm really tired of Christians treating God like he's a genie in a lamp. if i sit here and profess to be a Christian running round with Jeremiah 29:11 on my lips and yet cannot embrace that same Promise when my father dies in front of my face and i am utterly betrayed by the man i thought i was to marry, then i am a hypocrite and something is radically wrong with my understanding of who God is.

if anything from the trials i have to endure, i want to learn how to love other people well because that's what Jesus commands us to do, friends. not to judge. not to ostracize. not to be double-minded and weary in our beliefs, but to love and to love unconditionally. when i let go of always needing to be the happiest person in the room, i am free to enjoy other people's happiness and value the bigger picture. i begin to live above my circumstances and cherish more and more the grace that God turned His face that fateful hour, so Love could win.

what if.

I've been trying real hard lately to be disciplined and more intentional about spending time alone with God. This is hard for me. I've never been good at it. I get bored, I get distracted, or I drift off deliberating on what it is I have to accomplish during the week, instead of sitting in God's Presence.
This morning, I caught myself wondering again, but in a different way. And I want to address it.

It is my opinion, that too often we Christians spend our time alone with God trying to convince ourselves of something we do not truly believe. And when I say "believe", I am not attacking your foundational conviction that the God of the Bible is real and sent His Son to die for us all. I am addressing the day in, day out, belief that God is who He says He is.

So at 7am this morning, as I watched the rain fall on the tail-end of Autumn, I asked myself, what if? What if God truly is the Pursuer of my soul? What if I actually believed that God is the Wooer of my heart? What if Matthew 10:30 was real to me?...that God cares for me so intimately that He knows how many hairs are on my head? How would that make my life look different?
Would I still have as many worries and concerns or would my burdens be lightened because I would trust what God says about me over what I or my friend say about me? How would my relationships look different? Would I be more patient and loving with people, or would I continue to not live past my nose when my circumstances get hard and life is "unfair"?

Is it that simple? Not easy, but simple? Is that what Jesus meant when He said that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to children (Matt. 19:14)? Because kids just trust? Because kids don't worry about next week or next year. Because kids are only aware of today and they're okay with that.

So....do I really believe God is who He says He is.

I think if I did, I'd be strong. I could be a leader. I could handle sadness and not get depressed. I would utilize self-control. I would think of others more. I wouldn't fear being alone for the rest of my life. I'd see Death as a swinging door. Nature would be more beautiful to me. I would be bold. I would be humbled.
 
Don Miller once stated that Christian Spirituality cannot be explained, it can only be experienced. And I agree. I want my time alone with God to be an experience. I want the God of the Bible to tear up all of my formulas and ravage my heart. I want to preach God to people without using words. I want to show you Love when I am down-trodden and weak of heart.
I want to let God be in my life who He says He is.

Reconciling Revenge

today i thought i'd share a post on revenge by Jordan Green.


I would generally consider myself a pacifist. I say “generally”, because I don’t really know how I’d react in a given situation. If, for instance, a crazed hobo woman attacked my daughter, I’m fairly certain I would resort to physical violence in order to get her to stop. So maybe I’m a pacifist when it comes to larger communities, like nation-states and youth groups. Because of my semi-pacifist philosophy, I’ve always had one major hang-up with narrative morality, an idea this blog’s esteemed owner discusses in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. That hang-up is this: when played out in story, revenge is sort of awesome.
For instance, I’m reading through George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series right now, and there are plenty of characters in this epic, sprawling fantasy series who I want to pay. And I don’t want them merely brought to justice in a court of law and imprisoned for life. They are evil people, and I want them to die the most painful deaths possible. Most of them do end up dying horrific deaths, simply because (SPOILER ALERT) a lot of people die in these books.(END SPOILER ALERT)
Of course, the characters in Martin’s novels aren’t real, but real life has its share of bad guys. The latter half of the 20th century seemed to mark a turn away from Old Testament-style justice. Adolph Hitler: committed suicide to avoid capture by the Red Army. Joseph Stalin: died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 74. Pol Pot: died at home of a heart attack. Slobodan Milosevic: heart attack while under trial for war crimes. Saddam Hussein: hanged after being convicted for crimes against humanity. The point is, the deaths of some of the 20th century’s worst people were decidedly unlike that of your average Bond villain.
Then, in the last six months, Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi died extremely violent deaths. The former, of course, was shot in the head during a raid by US forces. The latter was captured in a hole, beaten viciously, and, according to some reports, took around 30 minutes to die after being shot in the head and chest.
Now, I know I am supposed to love my enemies, to pray for them and even bless them. I know this because it is discussed pointedly in Romans, Luke, 1 Peter and 1 John. But what’s curious to me is how these deaths feel to me from a purely narrative standpoint. And, if I’m honest, the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi feel somewhat…well…right. As much as I tell myself the death of a human being should never be celebrated, I do at least feel some satisfaction knowing these men are gone. Gaddafi was a madman who ruled with an iron hand, who lived in unchecked opulence while his people suffered. Osama Bin Laden was Osama Bin Laden. One of the key components of Protestant Christianity is the belief we do not get what we deserve, that through following Christ all sin is absolved, but there is still a very real part of us that wants to see certain people get what’s coming to them, from cruel despots to schoolyard bullies. If narrative morality is ingrained in us by our creator — and I think for the most part it is — why is vengeance so undeniably gratifying?
The easiest answer is to say we want justice, and that’s partly true. We yearn for God to put the world right. But there’s more to it than that. One of my favorite stories takes place in Corrie Ten Boom’s book Tramp for the Lord. Ms. Ten Boom is lecturing in Germany when she is approached by a man whom she quickly recognizes as a particularly brutal Ravensbruck guard. Before he can speak, she forgives him:

“For a long moment, we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”

What we truly want is for villains to repent. Ideally, we want a villain to understand what he did was wrong, and redeem his horrible actions. When that doesn’t suffice, we want him to realize he was not as powerful as he thought. This is why, when a villain dies in a story, we are shown his reaction one last time as he plummets to his death or realizes a bomb is about to explode. We want to see him recognize he is a broken man.
The question from there is whether we want our villains forgiven, and I suspect that’s a matter of perspective. Did anyone really want Die Hard to end with John McClane forgiving Hans Gruber, grasping hands, and experiencing God’s love? Doubtful, but this is partly because Hans Gruber is not a real human. He’s an avatar for evil. Real people are a lot messier, with compounding factors like traumatic childhood experiences and mental illness.
Like all sin, we each have our limits. The tools God gives us to push those limits — empathy and a willingness to cede control of our lives — are crucial in determining our reactions. If I had known Muammar Gaddafi, or Osama Bin Laden, I wonder if that glimmer of satisfaction I felt would’ve been diminished completely, and a story read as justice served would more closely resemble a tragedy.