Coming back...

It's becoming cool for people to act as though words (or rhetoric, or books, etc.) don't matter - as though they are merely distractions from the all-important task of living in the now (or, in Christian circles, living out God's calling in the present moment). I have to admit that sometimes people can get lost in the sound of the words themselves, and stop striving to live them out, becoming merely a sponge to soak up information or a megaphone to blast it out at other people. But without time spent dwelling in words of truth and beauty, where is the challenge to godliness, the inspiration for greatness, or even one's sense of purpose and calling going to come from? From the changing winds of one's own emotions? From the shifting sand of circumstances, relationships, or politics? All too frequently, yes. So we live like weather-vanes and wonder why we accomplish nothing lasting and our communities and nations are going nowhere. We ignore the words passed down through the generations - words of wisdom gathered from the experience of the ages - so that we can be relevant in the moment, and wonder why our philosophies fail to satisfy us and why our future feels so hopeless or shallow. We think we can understand God without the words of knowledge and godly interpretation that the church has given us, and wonder why He feels so distant or why so many cults and extreme doctrines are rising up.

People, God chose to describe Himself as the Word. The Word of truth and beauty, the Word that was from before the beginning of time and will endure forever, and yet which is never irrelevant to the present moment. Maybe instead of abandoning words as so much noise and static, in favor of pure action, we should strive to make our words emulate the Word, and to fill our minds and hearts with other words that reflect Him and His purposes. And maybe then, when words of value and meaning have had the opportunity to strengthen, equip, and challenge us, our actions will also have more meaning and more lasting value, instead of floating wherever the waves suggest.

So yes, I'm back blogging, because I do believe that words have power and value, and because I want to use my words to express beauty and truth, just in case someone is listening and the one ultimate Word chooses to display Himself in my small, stained mirrors.

Building love upon knowledge and joy upon truth

From The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence:

"That we ought to make a great difference between the acts of the understanding and those of the will: that the first were comparatively of little value, and the others, all. That our only business was to love and delight ourselves in God."

Note first that he does not say acts of the understanding are of no value. In attempting to correct one error, we have a tendency to swing to the other extreme - to say that, because we have previously strayed (or seen others stray) by valuing and seeking intellectual knowledge without the corresponding practice of virtue and devotion, we must completely abandon the pursuit of knowledge and simply attempt to live ethically and with love. But what we see taught here is that the acts of the understanding do still have value for the Christian. And when we think about it, we see that it must be so, for the acts of the understanding create for us a compass of truth, giving direction and guidance to the acts of the will. Without that compass, our will would be adrift in the chaos of ever-changing opinion, confused, "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wave of doctrine" (Eph. 4:14), without direction or purpose, never attaining to the great and glorious end for which God has created us.

However, it is equally clear that to stop here, having obtained a working compass, would be insufficient. Simply knowing the direction we ought to travel will not lead to the completion of the voyage! This is why the acts of the will are of such great value: it is by them, by choosing to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Mt. 22:37) and to find in Him our soul's true pleasure and delight, that the ship actually sails. By the acts of our will we show whether we are following the direction our understanding has established, or ignoring it in favor of some other course; by them also - and only by them - we advance towards the destination of our voyage: full holiness and true unity with God.

Meditation on 2 John

If I had to summarize the main theme of 2 John into one sentence, I think I would say that it is about the importance of truth and the eternal and relational aspects and consequences of holding to the truth or failing to do so. Specifically, he makes these claims about truth:

• it is the foundation of our love and unity as members of the body of Christ (v1)
• it is eternal in essence and will be with us forever (v2); it will not change or fade
• it abides in us (v2); it has personal significance and presence in our lives as followers of Christ
• it is one of the defining characteristics of the blessings God gives us, along with love. The grace, mercy, and peace that He promises and gives are not an illusion or a deceit; He gives them in truth (v3)
• it is how we should live - colored all through with the light of truth, in obedience to God's commandments which are true (v4-6)
• it is centered on the doctrine that Jesus is God and came into the world as a man, that He might die for our sins and give us new life in His resurrection - for our lives, as Christians, this is one truth we absolutely cannot forsake, and it is the kernel of doctrine at the center of every use of the word truth in 2 John, I believe (v7)
• it is essential to the value of the good works we do and crucial to to pleasing and honoring God, and thus receiving a reward from Him in heaven (v8)
• it is proof of the legitimacy of the relationship we claim to have with the Father and the Son - if we do not abide in that central truth of Jesus Christ, we are not His (v9)
• it takes precedence over social norms, tolerance, personal comfort, etc. - it is so important that we must take all precautions not to share in the works of deceit, even if that means conflict and "intolerance" (v10-11)
• it is the source of joy, because it is the foundation of genuine love (v12)

One of the beauties of 2 John, however, is that he doesn't make a list like this about the nature of the truth of our faith, and proceed to lecture us philosophically. Rather, the whole book is glowing with deep, warm, godly love; all the points that I extracted were clothed in the rich garments of the love and personal concern that John had for the lady to whom he was writing and for her children, and I think this too is crucially important for us as we try to live in truth. It shows up a bit in my first and last points, but I would phrase it differently now: if a claimed belief in the truth of Jesus Christ does not outwardly manifest itself in the growth of genuine love for others, it is not true belief or it is at best belief that is neglected and dying. If we take root in the soil of His truth, we will bear the fruit of love. In our faith, the two are inextricably linked; any effort to hold to one while compromising the other is a failure and in some cases even a heresy. The issue is not one of finding a middle ground between the two where both truth and love can be uneasily and half-heartedly expressed, because this assumes that they are in conflict, and the whole wonderful point of 2 John is that they not in conflict at all, but are rather joined together in their work and in their very essence. Truth and love, exulting in the beauty they restore to our broken, sin-ridden world - this is the picture John paints for us in this little book, and it is glorious indeed.

He is the True Light coming into the world

"Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God." - Psalm 43:3-4

 He has sent forth His Light and His Truth into our world, in human likeness, as a baby born in poverty, and He does lead us by that True Light into the place where He dwells. From this all our joy comes: that God became man and dwelt among us, bringing light into our darkness and truth into the sea of lies surrounding us, that we might know Him and draw near to Him.

The Kingdom comes

I am filled with sadness over the way the world goes, and where it goes, and how it hastens toward evil in the name of good. It's hard to write when there seems to be so little hope.

The problem doesn't lie in a single law, or even in the multiplicity of laws and policies that have accumulated through the years. At one moment the government is regulating adoption in a way that has caused several faith-based agencies to close down rather than go against their consciences; at another they are mandating "free" contraception (including morning-after pills) in a way that will similarly affect those Christian hospitals that desire to serve and provide health-care in accordance with their moral standards. The root of the problem is not in those policies, but rather in the worldview that birthed them, in the ideas and beliefs held by so many people in our nation. Those ideas - that children are an inconvenience rather than a gift; that marriage is a convenient manmade institution rather than a sacrament designed by God; that personal pleasure and convenience are higher goals than self-sacrifice, submission, humility, and love - those ideas have consequences, and we are beginning to see and understand what those consequences will be.

So what ought we to do? Well, first of all, we pray. We pray without ceasing for the hearts and minds and souls of the people of our nation, our city, and our community. More mundanely, we continue to pay the taxes that are required of us, because we are to render to Caesar what is Caesar's, even if those taxes are used for something we disagree with. No one supports the use of their taxes 100% (one could argue that this was particularly true for the people to whom Jesus was speaking). And finally, because we are in a country where we can lift our voices to try to change things, we should not be silent, and because we have a free will and a conscience we ought to make the choice to do what we believe is right, no matter the cost. Just as someone could be a conscientious objector to a war, so we can object on conscience to abortion and contraception. If we are mocked and misunderstood, so be it. Many through history have suffered ridicule and mistreatment for causes far less worthy.

On those issues and on others which have come up before and will arise again, it so often seems that there is nothing that can be done but quietly resist, and suffer in the resistance for the sake of Christ, if God so deems us worthy. It may not seem like things will ever change, or that the world will ever get better. But still we can endure because we know that the victory is already won, hidden though it may be by the fogs and black mists of this world of sin. We cannot often see clearly here, but we can trust with a faith that goes beyond sight. In that faith lies the hope that we will need to cling to when all seems dark and desperate.

In the words of an old children's book, Tales of the Kingdom (as best as I can remember them):

"How goes the world?"

"The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes!"

Risking the leap

Sometimes life seems like a wager. We don't know anything with certainty, and yet we constantly have to make choices about out thoughts, actions, and beliefs. We can amass piles of arguments and evidence to support what we say we believe, but our verbalized creed doesn't always match what we really believe in our hearts about things like who we are and how the world works and whether or not there is a god. It is tempting sometimes to give up and just live life however we feel fit at the moment, because we can never really know for sure what's right anyways - but on the other hand, we tell ourselves, we only get one life, so we don't really want to waste it. It can be stressful to deeply want to know what reality truly is and how we ought to live in it and to be faced with the realization that there is no way for us to know these things beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But you know what my answer is, to the doubts and the shadows and the uncertainties? Bring it on!

I'll take the dare.

I'll risk the leap.

I'll chance the odds.

Part of the thrill of living lies in the seeking for truth, and part of the excitement of loving lies in the striving for knowledge. This life is about yearning and questioning, seeking and asking and searching. Even in our relationships with other people there is no way to fully know the other person and no certainty that what we think we know is true - but part of the joy in loving them comes from getting to know them more deeply and truly. So with the philosophical and theological questions of life: there is no way to fully understand the world and God and humanity and all the countless aspects of how all things work individually and relationally, and there is no certainty that what we think we know is true - but part of the joy of living and asking questions comes from ever discovering more and more about the truth.

The lies that creep in unawares

Lately I've been thinking about how what I take in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually affects what I believe, how I think, and how I act. It makes sense when compared to my physical state of being - if I eat too much meat or fat, my stomach feels sick; if I eat fruits and vegetables and beans, I feel healthy all around; if I eat too much sugar, my blood sugar spikes and crashes; if I don't eat enough, I get tired and shaky; and so on. What I put into my body affects how my body feels and how well it works, so it is logical that what I put into my mind and heart affects how they feel and how well they operate. I just never really thought about it that much.

But if I listen to songs like "I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel, it makes me more emotionally closed off than I already am, and it makes me want to be independent and self-sufficient in a negative relationship-less sort of way, while if I listen to songs like "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns, I gain confidence and faith in God and have more joy and optimism to face the life before me.

This is why I think a lot of the books I read in the formative years of junior high were so unhealthy for me. These books were rightfully classics, in many cases, but they were bad food for my mind at that point in its development, like alcohol would be for a child. But I didn't know that then. So in the years when I was starting to figure out what the world was like, and wonder what the purpose of life was, and discover who I was and what I wanted for my future, I was reading books about the futility of life - books that portrayed pleasure as the only good and showed the emptiness of seeking and obtaining it, books that showed life as a prison of despair that killed any hope or dream or love that dared to be born at all. And all that I took in went into my mind and my heart and filled it with half-truths and lies that unnoticeably became part of the way I viewed the world.

God, please let me fill my heart and my mind with your truth and love and hope so that all these falsehoods that I have believed - both the ones whose source I can identify and the ones that snuck in from some unknown place - can be washed out of me, so that I can build my life on the things that are real, the things that matter, the things that have eternal significance in Your kingdom. Thank You for giving me eyes to see so that I can start meditating on the things that are good and true and lovely and pure and be vigilant against the deceits and snares of this world.