Lessons from a Killer Cat

The cat came downstairs while I was writing the other evening. I was busy typing so I didn’t bother to look up, but heard her whining, like she was sick or something. When I finished my sentence I looked over to see that she had some sort of creature in her mouth. The huntress had conquered and she was displaying her prey! She spit it on the ground and begin to purr, proud of her capture. Somehow though, the ‘beanie baby’ tag around the neck of the miniature Canadian goose took some of the fun out of the kill for me. She was prancing and purring as if she’d actually done something worthwhile, but the reality was that she’d used all her cunning and courage to capture a few patches of clothe stuffed with peas. Indeed, our cat, now nearly 4 years old, has been fully domesticated. I offered her some fish this evening from my dinner plate and she turned her nose up at it like is was just so much junk food. She prefers ‘kitty mix’ or whatever is the name of the sterile cereal nonsense we buy from the store.

This domesticating process is at the same time both comical and sobering. Comical because her finely honed instincts for survival have become so tamed that she gets and adrenalin rush from ‘killing’ a beanie baby; sobering because this ball of fur sleeps as a living reminder of how easily we adapt to creature comforts and in so doing, forfeit the adventures that ought to be ours in Christ, if we’ll be say yes more often.

Jesus spoke of this when he said, “I have come that you might have LIFE”. He’s talking about walking on water, and going into the world to bless and serve friends, neighbors, and enemies. He’s talking about living with arms and eyes wide open to receiving all that God has to give through honest conversations, creation, confession, and celebration. He’s talking about living generously and watching our own provision come in unmistakably powerful ways; going places we’d not go without His prompting, and doing things that are to the edges of our comfort zones, and just a little bit more.

It’s this kind of living that creates in Paul the apostle the clear sense that he’s not adequate to live the life to which he’s called. He needs the strength of another to be in and through him what he knows he’s unable to be on his own.

It’s too bad when, because of our creature comforts and addictions to security, we choose instead to eat cereal and hunt beanie babies. We’ve settled, I’ve settled, for far less than the life Christ intends me to embrace, more times than I care to mention. I’m not sure how we know when we’ve ‘settled’ in this way. For me, reading through the gospels and seeing both Jesus’ invitation to the disciples and their responses to him usually shakes me awake, and rekindles a desire to ‘really live’ rather than fall passively into the conformist, comfortable ways that society, yes even Christian society, imposes. It’s His life and story that pushes me out – into relationships with neighbors, into an investment of time into my city, into the challenge of engagement with those whose world and story are different than mine. This is stuff of which real life is made.

As your own poets have said...

In Acts 17, when Paul wants to share Christ with the Athenians, he doesn't begin with Old Testament prophecy or history because that would be like opening a sermon in Nepal with an illustration taken from the Super Bowl. It's a matter of emotional intelligence more than anything else; the simply capacity to get inside the head of the hearer and share truth in a way that they'll be able to receive. We need this when we teach, and we need it when we marry and raise children.
The next time I want to explain to people how embedded demonic evil is in this world, I could talk about Daniel's prayers and the messenger who was delayed in bringing a response because he had to do battle with "Prince of Persia", but that might seem, for some, a little arcane. I could quote from Walter Wink's fine book: "The Powers that Be", but that too is overly theological for most people's liking. So the next time I want to explain the realm of principalities and powers to someone in an educated, movie going culture like Seattle I'll just say: "Watch Michael Clayton."

Finely written and acted, this is a film that reveals how the synergy of individual choices, each made for the purpose of preserving self-interest, conspire to create a monstrous evil that is larger by far than any individual would ever desire. I'm on the edge of my seat as it dawns on me what's going to happen, and then when it actually does I'm nearly sick to my stomach. Not for the faint of heart, the graphic language and sexual references bring a harsh dose of reality to the whole narrative. A little gambling here, a little shading of truth in a lawsuit there, a little learning how to script lies so as to gain a promotion (all for good of course, because perhaps my children need to go to a good college, or I need to fly to New Zealand for vacation and see where Lord of the Rings was filmed) - the convergence of innocuous looking evil germinates into dark destructive forces.

If you're trying to understand principalities and powers, if you're wondering who might win best picture, if you're trying to give flesh to the concept of the phrase "we live in a fallen world", then watch Michael Clayton. As our own poets have said...

No Different than a bottle of wine...

Contemplatives (like me) are people who find a great deal of joy in being alone with God. Solitude, silence, and the prayers that unfold in those contexts have a sweet way of nurturing our souls. But it's easy to hide behind this pious looking posture. Our love a contemplation may be nothing more than an addiction to the more comforting parts of life with Christ, and an avoidance of the hard work of truth telling, the messiness of relationships, and sacrifice of service. Thomas Merton speaks of this very accurately when he writes:

Sometimes contemplatives think that the whole end and essence of their life is to be found in recollection and interior peace and the sense of the presence of God. They become attached to these things. But recollection is just as much a creature as an automobile. The sense of interior peace is no less created than a bottle of wine. The experimental 'awareness' of the presence of God is just as truly a created thing as a glass of beer. The only difference is that recollection and interior peace and the sense of the presence of God are spiritual pleasures and the others are material. Attachment to spiritual things is therefore just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else. The imperfection may be more hidden and more subtle: but from a certain point of view that only makes it all the more harmful because it is not so easy to recognize.

God help us to realize that the point of meeting with Him is so that we can go out into the world and offer the gifts He's given us, freely giving because we've freely received. These are notions I'll be discussing in a book that I've written, due out in July. We need to allow our relationship with God to take us places where we don't want to go. For some of us the challenge will be in getting our hands dirty. For others, the challenge lies in sitting still, at the feet of Jesus, and receiving His healing, nurturing touch.

The Politics of Faith...

Have you seen the picture of the Obama team praying before going on stage for a rally? This article in Time explains how different this season is than '04, when the Democrat party tried to distance itself from any affiliation with matters of faith.

This year, we're seeing both parties appealing to the Bible for moral mandates; one party is intent on stepping into people's lives on issues of sexual morality, but stepping away on economic and environmental matters. The other party is intent on stepping into the economic machinery while leaving sexual, family morality to ride a more libertarian course.

My observation is this:

Neither party is consistent - both try to legislate at some points (require health insurance from all employers, or forbid abortion), and at other's call for the government to 'keep their hands off' (my body, my womb, the wage I should need to pay my employees, my freedom to get eight miles to the gallon).

Is this inconsistency principled in some way, or just a double standard?

I'm hoping that we can have conversations at our church around these kinds of subjects in a summer study series, but I don't know. It seems that political discussions often become inflamed with nasty rhetoric and accusations, and people end up hurting each other. In a commendably eclectic community like the church I pastor, shouldn't it be possible to work though a book like this one, discussing various issues and seeking to gain a faith perspective on them, listening carefully to those who differ from us with an eye towards understanding?

That Holy Spirit Thing...

When I think about all the different roles in life, and the challenges in each of them, I sometimes get overwhelmed. Husband, Father, Pastor, Teacher, Leader, Friend, Neighbor. How do we find our voice, our calling, in each of the realms to which we're called, and then walk in that voice with some measure of consistently; or if not consistency, at least an upward trajectory so that it can truly be said of us that as the years go by, more of Christ is being seen in and through us?

The answer, I believe, is found in my capacity to be rightly related to the Holy Spirit, and conscious of His presence in my life. In order to make the presence of the Holy Spirit a reality, it's important that I develop some consistent embrace of each of the following:

1. ACCEPT the fact that the Holy Spirit lives in me. The teaching of the scriptures is that those who know Christ and have turned to Him as their source of life are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Too many are wandering around trying to find what they already have, like looking around the room for the glasses that are on your face. The kind of faith that enabled me to believe that Christ lived, died, rose, and now lives with and in me is no different from the faith required to believe that the Holy Spirit is real and alive in me right now. But it is FAITH that's required, and if we're forever looking for confirmation through miracles, emotions, or other forms of evidence, we're no longer walking by faith. Though we might have believed in our standing with Christ by faith, some of us suddenly become "I'll believe it when I see it" (or feel it) kind of people with respect to our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Far better to simply believe it, because the Bible says it.

2. CONFESS that, apart from the Spirit's power in your life, you will be unable to fulfill your calling. This is the humility part, the brokenness part. This is the part that wholeheartedly agrees with II Corinthians 3:5, and with Jesus words. This is the part that comes from knowing, not in some theoretical way, but deep in our hearts because we've come to know ourselves, that we're like Abraham: called to be fruitful, yet impotent.

But the confession must continue on to also agree with God that, because the Holy Spirit is living in us, we now have a power not our own...a power which will enable us to become a whole new person and do things we would never do on our own - filled with capacity to bless others, love our enemies, speak truth, celebrate, open our hearts, serve, forgive, and much more, all because the Holy Spirit is doing a transforming work inside us. This truth can be just as challenging as the prior one, given our bent towards self condemnation.

3. THANK God, that as you make yourself available to Him today, the Holy Spirit will have the freedom to express Christ's life uniquely through you, so that you can know with some measure of confidence, by faith, that God is enabling you to fulfill your calling to be the presence of Christ in your world; in conversations, work decisions, marriage, relationships, recreation... in all of it, we can go into our day with a confidence that Christ will be seen in and through us. We've offered ourselves to God, given thanks that the Holy Spirit will live in us, and then gone forth, confident that God will live in us.

Let me note that this is why it's so important to develop some habits of prayer and Bible reading, some rule of life (see Aidan way in the sidebar). Without it, we flounder, and lose our bearings. It needn't be that way though. We can know and enjoy life in Christ, and move into our days with a quiet confidence that He will express life through us; not perfectly, not blissfully, but simply. This is, I believe, a large part of what it means to 'walk humbly with your God'.

correction to previous post

The Book, "Paul, Women and Wives", can be found here. Sorry about the mistake on the previous post.

Also, there's an interesting historical explanation, the best I've ever seen, regarding women, men, and headcoverings, in this Commentary on I Corinthians.

I've some thoughts in answer to Bobby's question (see comments below), but will wait to see how others chime in, if at all.

About Women...

There's a great article here about the historical role of woman in leadership. Let me say at the outset that I'm pointing you this way, not to make a political endorsement, but to make a point about how deeply our suppositions and cultural assumptions determine our perceptions. I was particularly interested in "The Goldberg Paradigm" whereby a sample paper was given to a test group half of whom are told that the author is male, the other half being told that the author is female. The columnist writes: "Typically, in all countries of the world, the very same words are rated higher coming from a man."

Why is this the case?

Ah, this is where things get even more interesting. Some would say that the prejudices are 'in our nature for a reason' and that 'we'd better let them be, so that men can rule the way they were intended.' I find this circular reasoning to be both absurd and dangerous. Thinking in this would would entrench slavery, feudalism, caste systems, and more throughout history. (Hey wait... these things were entrenched... by the religious establishment) We'd do well, therefore, to drop this, "since so many already think this way it must be right" kind of thinking. PRE means before. JUDICE stems from the root that means 'to judge'. PREJUDICE: to judge beforehand.

In order to overcome this damaging line of thought, we'd better consider the possibility that PREJUDICE is sin, rooted in fear and pride. I'm thinking, to be specific for this moment and article, of the role of women in the church, and would offer this good book to pique your thinking.

It seems that God is working in ever widening circles, beginning his work of recovery with one man, from whom came a family, and then a nation, which would ultimately rise from its own ashes to be a spiritual community, linked through Messiah indwelling each heart. This community will break down walls of division, offering a foretaste of that great day when all that divides melts away in the glorious revelation of Christ. As those offering a foretaste of that day, we must continually seek to understand what walls God is knocking down and faithfully work to embody the power of Christ's reign in this present time.

"New Notions of Salvation"" Clarified

"This rise, I believe, has to do with new notions of salvation." Can you give examples of these new notions? You sort of left that comment hang on it's own and i'm wondering if you can elaborate?

This was posted as a response on the previous entry and deserves an answer. In order to do so I'll refer you this article about the genocide in Rwanda. The reality that this country was, at the time of the genocide, the most Christianized nation in Africa, begs the question: "How can a 'Christianized' people participate wholeheartedly in one of the most intensive periods of genocide in human history? The answer is found, I believe, in an inadequate declaration of the gospel. People may come to Christ for assurance of heaven, or for personal betterment, or for an answer to some problem, having heard that Christ meets us and addresses these matters. While this is all well and good, the problem is that such a privatized declaration of the gospel misses huge swaths of God's redemptive story, leaving much in our lives fundamentally unchanged. Thus, given the right circumstances, the hatred seething under the surface (between tribes, or classes, or genders, or sexual orientation) pushes to the surface among card carrying believers, resulting in horrible ugliness. The Rwandan example is illustrative of the great need we have to articulate the full implications of the gospel - to declare, as it were, the 'new' notions of salvation. By 'new' here, I don't really mean 'new', but rather 'new to a certain generation' by virtue of the fact that some notions of salvation had been buried.

"Yes... the poor Rwandans... blind to their tribal hatreds!" Ah, but you see, that's the very spirit of things that is dangerous, because we surely have blind spots too (could they be related to materialism, individualism, environmental degradation...???) We too need 'new notions of salvation.' To the degree that we fail to embrace the full implications of the gospel, we paint a distorted picture of Christ's character. It happened during the Crusades, during the Inquisition, during duplicity with unjust regimes, during slavery, during genocide... and it's happening today. Thankfully, we're beginning to see where, with John Newton, we once were blind.

The evangelical fissure is good news

There was an interesting article in yesterday's Seattle Times about the political fragmentation of evangelicals. Gone are the days when the word evangelical was synonymous with Republican. In part, this is because the Republican party used evangelicals to gain votes and then consistently failed to deliver on the social issues they heralded.

A second reason has to do with the entrenchment of the old school evangelicals like Dobson, who can't get over the conspiracy theorist notions that environmentalists are intent on the destruction of our democracy, and that the only issues worth caring about are low taxes, abortion, and the definition of marriage. People in this school are incensed that McCain is doing so well, and some of them, including Dobson, have vowed to not vote at all if McCain wins.

But perhaps the biggest reason of all, and certainly the most heartening, is the theological shifts among evangelicals, illustrated by the likes of Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. These two pastors of American mega-churches have embraced critical social issues, especially in the realms of addressing global poverty and the AIDS crisis. They're mobilizing their congregations to make an enormous difference in Africa and other places across the globe and are even beginning to talk about environmental responsibility. It's as if all of the sudden the messages of the Old Testaments prophets, and James in the New Testament have risen to a place of prominence unknown throughout the modern evangelical movement.

This rise, I believe, has to do with new notions of salvation. Appropriately, this month's Leadership magazine, a journal for those in ministry, is themed around the question: "Is the Gospel too Small?" For many years the answer was yes, but it appears that things are changing.

So this year people who love Christ, claim the Bible to be the words of the God and the true source of authority, and believe in heaven and hell, will be voting across the board, because no single party embodies the ethic of Christ. This is a good thing, because these past two decades of sleeping with one party has not only created arrogance and complacency, but worse: it's created a theological blindness that has morphed the gospel into something other than what Jesus claimed it to be.

The evangelical fissure is good news

There was an interesting article in yesterday's Seattle Times about the political fragmentation of evangelicals. Gone are the days when the word evangelical was synonymous with Republican. In part, this is because the Republican party used evangelicals to gain votes and then consistently failed to deliver on the social issues they heralded.

A second reason has to do with the entrenchment of the old school evangelicals like Dobson, who can't get over the conspiracy theorist notions that environmentalists are intent on the destruction of our democracy, and that the only issues worth caring about are low taxes, abortion, and the definition of marriage. People in this school are incensed that McCain is doing so well, and some of them, including Dobson, have vowed to not vote at all if McCain wins.

But perhaps the biggest reason of all, and certainly the most heartening, is the theological shifts among evangelicals, illustrated by the likes of Rick Warren and Bill Hybels. These two pastors of American mega-churches have embraced critical social issues, especially in the realms of addressing global poverty and the AIDS crisis. They're mobilizing their congregations to make an enormous difference in Africa and other places across the globe and are even beginning to talk about environmental responsibility. It's as if all of the sudden the messages of the Old Testaments prophets, and James in the New Testament have risen to a place of prominence unknown throughout the modern evangelical movement.

This rise, I believe, has to do with new notions of salvation. Appropriately, this month's Leadership magazine, a journal for those in ministry, is themed around the question: "Is the Gospel too Small?" For many years the answer was yes, but it appears that things are changing.

So this year people who love Christ, claim the Bible to be the words of the God and the true source of authority, and believe in heaven and hell, will be voting across the board, because no single party embodies the ethic of Christ. This is a good thing, because these past two decades of sleeping with one party has not only created arrogance and complacency, but worse: it's created a theological blindness that has morphed the gospel into something other than what Jesus claimed it to be.

Gigantic Weekend...

If you have a part in Bethany Community Church, you'll know that this past weekend was our last worship service in our wonderful chapel, which has served this church well for 29 years. I was privileged to share from Deuteronomy on the power and importance of remembering. We spent some time remembering saints who had gone before us here at Bethany, including the founders from 1916, the previous Pastor and his administrative assistant, the people who mortgaged their homes to buy the space we'd occupied for 29 years, and more.

What I said was very real and for me, very heartfelt: Those who have gone before me, before us, have carried a torch faithfully and passed it on. Now, at this moment in history, the torch is in my hands, is in our hands. The great reality that others have gone before me have made me more intent to carry the torch faithfully, and so the weekend ended up being about the importance of seeing ourselves placed in the larger story of history as much as anything else. This makes me profoundly grateful to pastor a church that's been around for 92 years. We're not hip - not emergent - not post-modern. There's no adjective on the front end of the word church to define us...we're just trying to be church; the visible presence of Christ for one another, our neighbors, our world. We don't do it perfectly; but we surely have the baton in our hands, as was evidenced yesterday by the profound outpourings of gratitude and emotion evidenced in the memory cards people created. I'm hoping to compile those into a book later in the year, because we all need markers to remember how God has been faithful.

So there were four times of saying good-bye to worship in the chapel - four times carrying a light across the street to the new building - four times reading a benediction from Ephesians which brought me to tears.

And then, already feeling drained, I went home and watched the super-bowl on tape, having warned the evening congregation not to say a single word to me about the game. It was after 10 when I watched the final three minutes, and that one-handed catch after Manning escaped certain sacking had me screaming, scaring the cat, and probably waking the neighbors. Are you kidding me? I was hoping that the Giants would knock of the 'not as good as everyone says they are' Pats, and sure enough... it happened! I was running on adrenalin until after midnight.

A Gigantic Day... to kick off a gigantic week as we move into new facilities this coming Sunday!