A Shifted Perspective

            I remember the difference between the Varsity/ JV and the C team for basketball at Sammamish.  It was kind of a weird situation, because the Varsity and the JV teams were decently good.  In fact, Varsity was one of the best teams in the state.  But for some reason, the C-Team (the one I was on) was absolutely terrible…in fact, we only won 2 games all year, and both were against the same team.

            Now, if there were such a thing as a C-Team basketball analyst, I think they’d be able to find dozen of reasons for this odd gap in achievement.  They may point to a good senior class, or a different offensive strategy, but that’s not the main thing that I noticed.

            I think the biggest difference between these teams was the view of the coaches.  Here’s what I mean:

            The Varsity coach was so respected among the school.  Able to beat almost any student in a game of one-on-one, his reputation preceded him.  Sometime new student players would be nervous to meet him or play for him, as he had been voted King-Co coach of the year before.  He would quickly dispel these fears, however, as his kind and easygoing nature would calm nerves.  This coach literally improved my vertical by about 4-5 inches in one day.  He got results based on his coaching techniques.

            The JV coach was beloved by everyone who played under him.  A couple of guys on the team even called him “dad”.  His office was always filled with both Varsity and JV basketball player.  He had charisma, he showed interest in all of his players, and got incredible results.  When I quit playing basketball, he was the one who would always ask me to play, without making me feel guilty for not playing.  He was loved by everyone who knew him.

            The C-Team coach, however, was a totally different story.  Without trying to put him down or anything, he was feared by many of the players on his team.  He was angry at us a lot, making us run lines for the slightest infraction.  Most of the practices actually consisted of us running lines for the majority of the time, and we were terrible as a team.  Much of the time, we were afraid of making a mistake and ticking off the coach.  I actually saw him in the mall the other day, and I totally avoided him.  I didn’t want to talk to him, I didn’t want to be around him, I didn’t want to see him.  Players feared him because he was angry and volatile.  Thus, he didn’t get the results he wanted and the team was terrible. 

            I think that’s the problem that a lot of people have with God.  NOT that He is an angry and volatile God, but that people perceive Him to be.  He’s not angry and volatile, He’s slow to anger and never changing.  People walk around life acting like He’s angry, when in reality, God is desperately in love with them, and even died for them. 

            It’s realizations like this that change people.  The more you get to know Jesus, the more revolutionary you realize that He is.  He’s perfect, but He’s not angry about your flaws.  He’s absolutely righteous, but has forgiven sinners.  This is revolutionary and will change people around the world.  Crazy results will come from this.  God is not looking for ways to condemn or destroy you, He’s looking for ways to redeem you.  He’s looking out for your best!  That’s revolutionary!  That will produce crazy results in the lives of those who begin to understand it, just like how the players of the basketball teams were shaped by their perceptions of their coaches!

Words

I was Ranger Mark this past week at my church's version of VBS, which means that I'm kind of a big deal.  My job was to stand on a stage and be the serious one who brings every single story back to the story of Jesus and to high-five kids as enthusiastically as I possibly could.  I was essentially the Beatles all wrapped up in one in cargo shorts and hiking boots.

One thing that stuck out to me was this:  there was a woman there who was in a mechanized wheel chair with one of those typewriter things that she could write what she wanted to say, because she wasn't able to speak.  There was one point though, in which I was walking past and saw what she was saying.  The screen read "I love you so much", and I just about lost it.  I just thought this held so much significance.

This woman probably doesn't say a whole lot in her day, but what struck me was the significance that the words held.  She's not wasting time, she's not droning on, but she's speaking with more significance than I do.  And I know I'm totally making this a bigger deal than it is, and I'm not putting much effort into my writing style or word choice, but please bear with me, because I think this holds some relevance.

Just like this woman wasn't wasting words because she couldn't produce a lot of words, we shouldn't be wasting time, because we don't have a huge supply of it.  We shouldn't be living insignificantly and living without purpose, because we honestly don't have enough time.  Our days are marked and will be over before we know it.  So we need to make each moment as significant as each word for that woman.

The Frame Called Future

I heard a story once of a village at the base of snow-capped mountains.  A stream ran through the village, trees outlined it, and it wasn't unusual for deer to wander into civilization's bright light.  This village was weird, though, because their whole life consisted of them finding paintings or pictures beautiful without noticing the beauty around them.  They were right next to such a beautiful landscape and they had never even looked up to see it.

Finally though, someone pointed out the snow on the mountains, the deer right across the stream, and the towering trees that surrounded them.  The odd thing, though, was that no one found the scenery beautiful. No one considered the landscape directly surrounding them wonderful.  That is, until someone had the bright idea of looking at the scenery by staring the opposite direction into a mirror pointed towards the mountains, streams, or deer.  That way, one could look at the nearby scenery but it was still framed and seen the same way they saw paintings and pictures in the past.

Thus, the people in this village spent their lives only appreciating the amazing qualities of their town when they pointed 180 degrees away from the actual scenery, never seeing the majesty for what it actually was.  I feel like this could be considered an allegory for me, and probably a majority of people at some point in their lives.

I just get super excited about the future.  Not just distant future - like career, wife, and kids - but also near future - like job, college, and girlfriend(s).  I have a great talent at being able to romanticize the future.  My job will be purposeful and fulfilling, my wife will be perfect, and I will be too, at that point.  I'll be well loved, and I will love meaningfully.  I will have great friends, I will have great influence, I will have a deep level of meaning.  And it is like such that much of my life is spent, romanticizing about the future, dreaming about the future, looking at beauty through the mirror called "future".

And to be honest, I think a lot of people live their lives like this.  The "now" is something that we need to get through in order to get to the "later" and the "later" is never achieved.  My wife will be awesome, my job will be awesome, my life will be awesome, but when I actually get married and get a job I'll be dreaming about how to make them better.  I'll think of how to get higher responsibilities in my job, and I'll think about what I can do to make my marriage better.  I'll always be looking into the future, and passing by the beauty right in front of me.  Like the people in that story who couldn't appreciate beauty unless they saw it through a small frame, I can't appreciate the beauty of my life until I look at it until I look at it through the broken frame of the future.

And this is what God has been teaching me lately.  That life is beautiful, right now.  He whispered it to me on the 4th of July, when I drove back at night and saw fireworks on either side of the freeway, and a close-to-full moon on my left.  He whispers it to me when I'm talking with the people I love, when I'm able to spend time with close friends.  Life is beautiful, right now.  Life is something to be seen in full and not only through a broken frame called "future".

Jesus Loves You (Part III)

            The third and final installment of the only series that my blog has ever contained.  This is the third one.  The big one.  This is when people overly romanticize the movie and make it seem greater than it actually is and give it 11 Oscars and use it in sermons just to try and appear like a cool church.  If it’s not brought home in this one, then the whole series is worthless and I sold out after number two and the ending wasn’t thoughtfully considered.  So, no pressure or anything.

            We’re going to be looking at the last word of the phrase, “Jesus Loves You”.  We (meaning I) have already decided that Jesus wasn’t just a historical figure, wasn’t just a good man or teacher, but was an all-powerful God.  We (meaning I and whoever already believed it before reading my blog) have also decided that this all-powerful God kind of is crazy about us.  Kind of madly in love with humanity.  My goal in this one is just to clarify something: that Jesus doesn’t just love humanity, but He loves you. 

            This may not seem to be a huge or significant distinction, but it is a realization that has wildly affected the periods in my life when I actually got it.  It’s easy to lose hold of, but worth holding onto, like Jell-O or a sweaty baby. 

            Here’s the distinction between Jesus loving humanity as a whole, and Jesus loving you.  If you believe that Jesus only loves humanity as a whole, you are going to consider yourself the exception, like you always do with any rule or writing that you’ve ever heard.  Don’t lie to yourself, it’s like how I always feel like I’m the exception to my parents’ rule of not dating in high-school.  It’s different because the world revolves around me.  Thus, I think of myself as the exception and am incredulous when I’m not.  That’s what humans do.  We don’t consider ourselves a part of the system, but outside of it, greater than it or lesser than it. 

            Be honest with me.  If I told you that I loved your family so much and that y’all are so great, would you really care?  Not that you wouldn’t, but would you hold onto that compliment as something that holds great meaning?  Would it weigh more if I narrowed my statement and told you that I loved YOU and that YOU are incredible and that I’m incredibly blessed to know YOU?  That holds more weight.  It’s more vulnerable for me.  Because if I like a family, then I’m not really committing to anything.  It’s vague.  If I like YOU though, I’m committing to acting like it.  I’m committing to showing you why you’re important to me.  It holds more weight.

            This is why we should not be content with theology that says that Jesus loves the world as a whole, that He loves mankind overall.  As long as we believe only that, our views of God’s actions on the cross don’t mean as much.  Maybe I would die on a cross if it meant the eternal future of every single person who has ever lived.  But if I pursue one person, even to the point of death, that means something.  That means that I’m wild about them.  This is why this you is so significant.  I’m never going to marry a woman who just says that she loves my family.  I’m going to marry a woman who loves me.  As arrogant as it sounds, isn’t it truth?  That I’m not going to be blown away that my wife loves my family, because that doesn’t take commitment! Maybe her love for my sisters compensates for her repulsion to me.  I as a human being need to be loved individually and uniquely.  

            And so it is that many people come into church week after week and are never moved by the Gospel, never brought to a saving knowledge of Jesus.  It is because they believe themselves to be the exception to God’s love.  “He can’t love me even with my….” “He doesn’t love me because I……”  “He didn’t die for me because I can’t….”  “I didn’t…..” “I failed.” “I continue to fail.” “I messed up, and the dirt is still on me, defining me like a scarlet letter.” 

            It’s easy to see why God would love other people.  They seem to have everything under control.  The pastor in the pulpit used to deal with things, but became a Christian and now never struggles with failure.  The people in the row next to you grew up in church.  The guy writing the blog refers to his mess-ups in the past tense.  But you must be the exception.  Jesus doesn’t love you because of your condition.  Because of your failure.  Because of your mess. 

            And yet He doesn’t stop chasing you.

            This God of the universe who has made you and knew your failures before you were conceived, who planned out your very being, who mapped out the essence of you, has never stopped chasing you.  This God whose emphasis is on the marginalized continues to chase you, to woo you, to pursue you.  He doesn’t just love mankind as a whole, He’s crazy about you.  He thinks about you.  Not to make this melodramatic or anything, but what’s crazy to me is the possibility of Jesus on the cross saying, “Just a little more, for Ben.”  He’s crazy about you, He can’t stop thinking about you, and you’ll finally understand why people get so hyped about Christianity.  You’ve tried being a Christian in the past and didn’t get anything from it, not because there’s something wrong with Jesus, but there was something wrong in your understanding of Him.  This is why I’m passionate.  This is why I get worked up when I talked about Jesus.   Because Jesus loves me.

Jesus Loves You (Part II)

            This is Part II of trying to break the phrase, “Jesus loves you” down and giving it some weight rather than having it be the cute cliché that many people see it as!  I’m going to be looking at the word “loves” today and breaking that down and why it’s significant and relevant to our lives.  If I was good with technology, maybe I’d say “click here for Part I”, but I kind of just put letters in blue and underlined them and you can try clicking as much as you want, but nothing’s going to happen.  I apologize for the inconvenience.  Maybe if you take the time to click over one blog post, you could read it.  I also apologize for the passive aggressive attack on you to compensate for my technological impairment.

 

            So far we know that Jesus isn’t just a historical figure, and is more than a man.  He’s a divine being with the capacity to love in a personal way. But what does that mean?  Jesus loves you.  We all know about love, and those of us who grew up in church know that pastors always diss the dating-relationship kind of love and then say how God’s love is better than your loser boyfriend or girlfriend kind of love.  You’ve probably heard that, and if you’re like me, it doesn’t do a whole lot for you.  When you’ve been single for 17 straight years, there’s nothing better than the perfect, imaginary relationship that you’re going to have someday (not dissing you, future wife!  Just using literary hyperbole in order to prove a point!).  So what does it mean that Jesus loves us? 

            I think one of the best ways I can put this into something that’s relevant is to dispel what you functionally think of this love.  More often than not, we live life like Jesus tolerates us as long as we’re good.  We live like Jesus resents us for asking Him for stuff, like He rejects us for failing again.  Like it was never really His choice to die on the cross, that if He knew who He was dying for that He’d go back and never make that whole propitiation, justification thing happen.  What a waste of time for a bunch of losers.

  

            It is for this reason that we go crawling through life, never praying, only reading our Bible out of our self-righteous duty, only going to church to appease Jesus, who commands us.  Who demands of us.  Who expects from us.  And just like that, we’ve put Jesus into the background and put our acts and our duties and our righteousness in the foreground.  It’s then that we screw up and feel like Jesus doesn’t love us anymore, because the only reason that He tolerated us was because we were being good.  We wonder why so many Christians get discouraged and depressed and don’t feel like trying to remain holy anymore, it’s because we’ve misspoken the whole Gospel!  We say that salvation is by grace alone, and then act like you better be good, because God’s got a short string and could blow up at you at any moment. 

            Which is why Jesus’ love for us should be REVOLUTIONARY.  It’s why Jesus love for us should be MIND-BOGGLING.  Every single facet of God’s holiness should scream to our insufficiency and worthlessness, but every single facet of God’s love screams to our heart.  One thing that I can promise you is that you will never, ever, ever have a worthwhile relationship with God if you always think of God as a mountain that needs to be climbed in order to reach righteousness.  God is not a mountain to be climbed or a bar to be exceeded, but is a Father in pursuit.  He’s not a standard of goodness, not a line that needs to be crossed, but a being who is chasing your heart out of the overflowing love that He has for you. 

            There’s a verse in the Bible that says that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free”.  And to be honest with you, I’ve never ever gotten that verse.  It kind of seemed pointless to me for a while, because it seemed really obvious.  “It is for eggs that I went to the store to get eggs”.  “It is for pizza that I ordered a pizza”.  Well of course it’s for freedom, what else could it be, right?  Recently though, I feel like maybe I got a breakthrough.  This verse is significant because of the end goal that is implied.  It is for FREEDOM.  God didn’t set us free so that we’d like Him more.  It wasn’t to gain some street cred among the angels.  It was for our freedom.  This is what SCREAMS of God’s love for us.  That His end goal in dying on the cross, His end goal for coming down to the earth, His end goal in His pursuit of us is for our benefit!  Now, does it glorify God to set us free?  Yes.  Is the chief end of creation to glorify God and lift Him higher?  Yes.  But for what reason did Jesus die? For what cause did He sacrifice Himself?  It is for our freedom that Christ set us free.  It’s for our well being.  It’s for our benefit.  He chased us because He loved us, and He loved us because He is good! 

            So may we be covered in His love for us, may we realize that we are sufficient in His grace, that He loved us so much that He couldn’t sit idly by.  May we know Jesus’ love for us and may our futile attempts at being good enough drift into obscurity. 

Jesus Loves You (Part I)

            I apologize for a multiple-part blog.  It gets pretty intense and people wonder why I’m long winded.  Someone once wrote to someone else and apologized “for writing such a long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one”.  So I’m going to write a lot because being concise is hard.  I appreciate your grace.  I think some of these ideas have the potential to change your (and my) life.  So don’t walk in here for a theology lesson, but to apply truth to your life.

Jesus loves you.  Perhaps one of the weightiest ideas of all history has been condensed to a trite cliché that people mainly use as a passive aggressive way to vent their anger at the car that’s cutting them off.  The same phrase that has the ability to change everything about a person, the whole lifestyle, the whole mind-frame, the whole outlook, has been transformed into something different, lesser, worse. 

I know this is so because for the past couple days I have been contemplating this phrase and its relevancy, and not once have I been reduced to tears.  Not once have I dropped to the ground in sheer awe of the magnitude of such a phrase.  Not once have I called a friend and just wept with joy at the power of this statement.  Why is this so?  I’m claiming that this phrase could be the most significant piece of knowledge in all of human history, and yet I’m coming at it as if it were a science project or a math problem.  Why am I seemingly unmoved at what I call the most powerful piece of knowledge there is?  I think it’s because we as a church and a body of believers have taken the single greatest piece of knowledge there is, “Jesus loves you”, and have made it a trite cliché to say when people are depressed.  We’ve stamped it on so many T-shirts, mints, bouncy balls, and cross necklaces, that it has become almost irrelevant. So my goal with this writing is to go through the phrase “Jesus loves you” one word at a time and try to convince you of its significance and worth!

The first word is “Jesus”.  I think this is the part that turns most people off from the concept completely.  Who’s Jesus?  If I held a sign on the street saying that “Joan of Arc loves you”, people would think I was crazy, she’s dead and thus unable to love.  If I posted a Facebook status that said, “Bill Gates loves you!”, people would deny it.  Either Bill Gates is a creeper, or I’m lying about the affection that he has for you.  You’ve never hung out with Bill Gates, so for him to express his undying love for you would be taking things slightly fast.  A DTR or conversation over coffee would have been nice before he starts telling everyone how deep his affection is for you.  If I told you that the Tooth Fairy loves you, you’d think I was ignorant.  Because the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist (sorry to my large 4-year old audience; you had to know at some point), she is incapable of love (sorry to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for designating the Fairy a “she”.  Nothing personal).  It’s nonsensical and absurd to tell someone that Joan of Arc, Bill Gates, or the Tooth Fairy loves you. 

Which may be why this phrase has lost some of its potential impact.  Without clarifying the nature of Jesus, Christians have told thousands of people that a historical figure loves them.  A dead man can’t love.  Neither can a distant and unknown or imaginary one.  And so why is the historical figure of Jesus separate from other historical figures?

The answer is a doozy.  If I sound crazy for writing all this, I apologize.  Sometimes you look at the words you’ve written and feel like a lunatic scribbling conspiracies on his walls.  What’s different and better about Jesus that makes him capable of personal love?  Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he wasn’t really just a historical figure.  Not that he didn’t exist, but that he has existed for quite some time.  Not that he didn’t live on earth with the rest of us, but that he also made the earth, and life, and the rest of us.  I don’t think Jesus was just a historical figure like Joan of Arc or Napoleon, I think he was and is a preeminent figure, an everlasting and all-mighty figure.  Not just a God that makes but that also loves.  If Jesus was God, that’s significant.  If Jesus was a God who loves, that changes everything.  If Jesus was God whose only mission on the earth was to love and die on account of love, then I should be on the ground sobbing right now.  If there is a God who not only loves but also sacrifices Himself to show love, that means that love isn’t a cute cliché, a nice idea, or a happy thought.  It means that love is powerful and real and can actually change things.  If love prompted God to die, then perhaps love has the power to do the same for me.  Perhaps this love that has been shown can also be received and can also be emulated.  Which changes everything for me.

Because of the fact that Jesus is a preeminent, all-powerful, all-loving God and not merely a historical figure, I have HOPE.  The fact that Jesus died on a cross puts some weight to the phrase “Jesus loves you” as the fact that He rose puts credibility onto it.  This phrase suddenly doesn’t become trite, but instead turns into the most powerful phrase of history.  The God of all power sacrificed His power for love.  The God in control gave up everything.  This is hope.  

Israel

People tend to associate really closely with certain characters in books or movies.  Certain figures are so much like them that they tend to be wrapped up in the story line, on the edge of their seat waiting for the story to resolve.  For me, Simba was always the character I associated with.  I'm not sure if I've ever watched Lion King and not felt a total connection to him.  It's weird, but he's a ginger and I'm a ginger so it just might make sense.

If we were going to get all intense, which we are, I'd say that I closely associate with characters in the Bible.  Mine is not David, the warrior poet musician who was truly a man after God's heart.  Mine's not Moses or Abraham or any of the famous ones who are renowned for what they've done.  If I'm going to be honest, the character that most fits me is the nation of Israel, not the guy but the nation.

Is that cheating?  If it is, I apologize, but the association remains.  Time after time after time, God's grace covers Israel despite how forgetful they are, turning away from the one who rescued them.  I am Israel.  To prove this, I'm substituting my name for the Israelites in these verses and substituting sin for Egypt

"God looked on [Ben] and was concerned about him." - Exodus 2:25


"The cry of [Ben] has reached me, and I have seen the way [sin] is oppressing him." - Exodus 3:9


God saved me from my sin!  Yay!

"[Ben] did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron." - Exodus 12:50


Yay, God's good, I'm good!

"[Ben} said to them, "If only I had died by the Lord's hand in [sin]!  There I sat around pots of meat and ate all that I wanted, but you have brought me out into this desert to starve me to death." - Exodus 16:3


Wait, wasn't this when I was doing what the Lord commanded?  What happened?  God saved me from my sin, rescued me from my hopelessness, did great miracles, and I'm sitting in freedom wishing that I could be a slave again?  See, I don't realize that freedom didn't mean painlessness or lack of hardship.  My fetters were taken from me, but a desert has been added.  I'm expecting ease and comfort, but God had different plans.  And I want out.


And thus starts the never ending story of God rescuing me from my hopelessness, me turning from Him, me realizing that life without Him sucks, and crying out for Him again.  When do I get it?  I keep turning from the source of all light, I keep turning from the perfect one, because I don't get it!  I'm on fire at one point, and I'm fleeing at the next moment.  But that's not where I'm focusing.  Because even though I keep turning, God's grace keeps receiving me.


"He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to [Ben].  All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God." - Psalm 98:3


"He will redeem [Ben] from all his iniquities." - Psalm 130:8


Bottom line.  My hope rests in Jesus' steadfast love and patience for me, a wayward sinner much like his wayward nation.  


All praises to the one who continues to restore and redeem the wayward; who continues to pour His unfailing love upon His children