How to Support Planned Parenthood

This post is about supporting abortion. It is about you and me and choices.

You see, support for abortion providers comes in a whole host of ways. Much of that support is easily recognizable. More of it comes in powerful, subtle, and unnoticed ways.

With a blog of relative insignificance that is read primarily by family, friends, and those within my Christian ministry circles, chances are that you are pro-life.  You're not reading this because you want to support Planned Parenthood, but because of your surprise that I of all people would write about supporting them.

And here is where this post makes gets tough. As pro-life, crisis-pregnancy-center-loving, adoption supporting, conception-to-coffin lovers of life, we have been supporting the massacre happening at Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics.

I'm not talking about our tax dollars.

I'm talking about our silence.

Let's forget the media's silence on the issue and look at our own.

The excuses come easily even in light of the horrors revealed by recently released videos showing Planned Parenthood officials bartering over the price of baby parts:

• I don't want to bring negativity to Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• I can't bring myself to watch the videos. I can't stomach that kind of stuff.
• I'm not really a political person
• This is controversial and I don't have the energy to engage the debates
• People's minds are already made up on abortion

Our silence, our unwillingness to speak, up condemns more babies and possible mothers to horrifying choices. It allows this worst possible "choice" to persist in the public's mind as a reasonable and liberating "choice" for women in often desperate situations. Our silence is wholehearted commitment to the status quo.

I wish that silence were broken. With tears. With anger. With prayer. With action.

Silence in the face of evil and injustice is a symptom of deeper issues. In the case of the horrors of abortion the two primary issues seem to be ignorance and apathy. Too many people are intellectually limited and emotionally unaffected.

Our ignorance leaves us paralyzed and unable to speak truthfully or graciously. Sadly, it seems that much of our ignorance is willful. We don't watch the videos. We don't study moral arguments against abortion. We write it off as political banter that never goes anywhere. And we stay unknowing. Ill-equipped. Ignorant. And impotent to bring change.

In addition to, or perhaps because of our ignorance we are apathetic and emotionally unaffected. In our hearts we know how deeply disturbing the truth is and how revolting the videos are so we avoid them. We know that there are things in life that we can't un-see, un-hear, and un-feel without betraying our consciences.

So we avoid the videos and the conversation using the excuses above and try to cauterize ourselves from the pain we know is there. We don't enter into the lives of the broken, hurting, or desperate women who are considering abortion because we know it will be costly. We know that the emotions that will be triggered if we really see what happens and we will be uncomfortable with those feelings. Our idolatry of comfort runs too deep for us to be bothered by reality so we remain silent.

The silence needs to be broken.

We need to know the realities behind what happens over  1,000,000 times a year in abortion clinics.

We need to hear the barbaric language of massacre: crushing, cutting, slicing, severing, extracting.

We need to understand the medical language used to inoculate the public's mind to the violence: tissue procurement, fetal extraction, procedure, research, clumps of cells, line items.

We need to know why abortion statistics are racially and economically skewed.

We need to enter into painful, broken situations in order to love the women facing unplanned pregnancies.

We need to weep and lament. Over lives lost and over our silence.

We need to confess and repent of our apathy and ignorance.

We need to pray. Fervently. Urgently. Constantly.

Please watch the videos. Read the blogs. Let your tears stream and your wails resound and your stomach retch and your heart cry out.

And then speak. Loudly. Resolutely. Repeatedly. With wisdom and knowledge and grace and mercy and love and compassion. To those you know and those in power and those involved and those considering such a dreadful 'choice'. Use every resource available to you: social media, family, friendship, pulpits, your political representatives.

We too, have a 'choice'. For too long and for too many that choice has been silence.

Abortion isn't something that will change with our silence. God willing it will eventually change through politics. But first it will change through tears of lament, prayer, repentance, courageous words and actions, and through a growing moral revulsion over the sacrifice of babies to the idols of convenience, finances, research and comfort.

No words can better capture what we are facing than those from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He spoke these words facing a Nazi regime that killed millions. Their doctors did 'research' too.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."

Ambition Will Kill You

Ambition is a dangerous friend to keep. Not necessarily a bad friend. Just dangerous. The reason is because whether it is for wealth, prestige, and power, or tamer goals of safety, security, and family, ambition will either poison your soul through self-indulgent flattery or cost you your life through sacrificial humility.

If you have any sense of ambition and you are earnest in pursuing those ambitions then these are your only two possible outcomes. Ironically, in the long run the former turns out to be death in street clothes while the latter is a flourishing life dressed up in sacrifice. One is a spiritual death while the other may very well include a physical death.

So, after diving straight into the deep end of the pool on this post I want to help you tread water a little bit so you can get a better read on what I mean.

Let's start where the Bible starts. In the creation account of Genesis we see that God gives humans two distinctive callings that are meant be the hallmarks of their humanness. Our capacity to bear God's image is revealed in these two activities.

The first is to be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth. It is a call to take the God-glorifying gifts that belong exclusively to humans and carry them to the uttermost reaches of the earth. Something about our reproduction, raising families, and moving to new places brings God glory as it reveals him to be a God of abundance. As the pinnacle of creation and image bearers our multiplying and spreading fills the earth with more and more capacity to display God's image upon earth.

The second distinct calling given to humans is to subdue the earth as we spread, exercising dominion as we multiply and expand. This is a call to imprint our beautiful, God-glorifying humanness upon the earth. We are to steward, shepherd, mold, shape, order, and tend to the rest of earth in a way that brings about more life, beauty, and worship of God. Our dominion properly carried out brings forth more possibilities, more productivity, and more beauty from the rest of the created order.

Certainly these two callings ought to inspire ambition. None of them is accomplished quickly, easily, or without boldness, risk, and planning. Humans then, from the beginning, are embedded with gifts and desires and a calling that are ambitious at the core. To explore, create, protect, expand, mold, shape, proliferate, and spread all require ambition. We were meant to be ambitious.

And yet....

Chapter 3 of Genesis is a story of human ambition run amok. Our God-given, ambition-creating call to multiply and to subdue is subverted with the temptation to 'be like God'. One of the lies behind Satan's words is the thought that we might be able to claim some of God's glory as our own. The problem is that we were only ever created to reflect and participate in His glory. The two callings we were given demonstrate how we ought to bear His image, bringing him glory as we multiply and subdue.

The image we bear, the 'likeness' that can be seen in every human face, is one that reflects God. However, our sinful hearts want to look at that reflection and see ourselves, giving ourselves credit and glory. God is not eager to share that glory and we fail to realize that we only have glory to the degree that we are appropriately reflecting God's glory.

Equally as tragic as our failed glory-reflecting is the way we can look at others and deny that the reflection seen there is that of God. To try to claim that reflection as our own or to try to deny that others bear God's reflection is a foolish act of treason. 

And so it is that since the fall much of human ambition is wasted clinging to something that isn't rightfully ours. Our ambition causes us to cling to, fight for, and hold on to glory that was only ever meant for God. In doing so, we abandon our true image-bearing calling in order to pursue our own image and glory. This kind of fallen ambition only leads to brokenness, suffering, injustice, and death.

Granted, our ambitions usually feel smaller than this. They feel safe and 'normal.' We desire security for the future. Or safety for our family. Or for control over various aspects of life. Or maybe we just want a better job or more influence at work. We climb corporate ladders, practice spiritual disciplines, raise 'good' children, and 'earn' everything we have.

None of these things are wrong by themselves but how our heart relates to them is crucial to understand. Our ambitions reveal the inner workings of our hearts in a very clear manner. Because our ambitions give such clear pictures of our hearts we usually try to hide, minimize, or downplay our ambitions. Or we keep our lives and our ambitions small because deep down we know that they aren't what they should be.

At the end of the day our hearts and ambitions will either be self-seeking or selfless. We will either build our own image and kingdom or we will live out our Genesis 1 calling that extends God's rule and reign, giving Him glory.

If our ambition is selfish we will be grasping, clingy, tight-fisted, and anxious. In our efforts at work, with our families, and in our hearts we will protect ourselves and the image and identity we have created for ourselves. And slowly our souls will lose there capacity to truly and properly bear God's image. Our ambitions will lead us to think that life is about hoarding, hiding, and fighting to hold on to what is 'ours' or should be ours. 

When our hearts are oriented towards this kind of ambition we worry about scarcity and ignore God's abundance. We look at our lives and see risk and only feel fear, not glorious expectation. We will identify threats and not see possibilities. Our ambition will be for accruing wealth, status, power, or control and security. Our scale might not be that of politicians or CEO's but our hearts will be the same.

And little by little, with our little worldly ambitions, we will poison our souls.

There is a better way for our ambitions to end if they are aimed towards bringing more glory to God. We can live out our original callings to multiply and subdue. We will be open-handed, generous, and joyful because we know the abundance of Him from whom all blessings flow.

And with fullness of joy we will more fully reflect God's image and declare His glory as we become more of what we were always meant to be.

We will explore risks eagerly. We will view new and unexplored horizons with anticipation and not foreboding. Getting married, bearing children and raising families won't happen with cold calculation of finances, timing, or the brokenness of the world. We will create and develop and contribute and not just consume and exploit.

Most of all we will be selfless and generous knowing that doing so helps others more truly bear the image of God.

In case none of this has made sense I am going to bring in some scripture that might help it come together. Thankfully these passages are pretty clear and well known.

Our first stop is with the lovable, bumbling brothers James and John. They are earnest and ambitious but a bit shortsighted in Mark 10 and Matthew 20. In these passages we find them making a bold and ambitious request: to sit at the right hand and left hand of Jesus when he comes into his kingdom. Their request is dripping with ambition. They are asking for status, privilege, authority, respect and much more! It would be easy to despise leaders as openly ambitious as James and John. I am sure the other disciples weren't excited to overhear the request.

As brash as their question is, Jesus answer is just as surprising. Their ambitions aren't shoved back in their faces and Jesus doesn't try to take them down a peg or two. Instead he recognizes that their ambitions are not yet fully aligned to the vision and values of his kingdom. They are still desiring the benefits of knowing Jesus more than they are desiring simply knowing Jesus.

What they desire isn't a bad thing but actually a very good thing. James and John just don't realize what it takes to get those there. That is why Jesus asks if they are able to drink from the same cup as He. Jesus reveals that the road to great things in His kingdom and the way for the ambitious to get ahead is directly opposite of what the world claims.

Those who seek to be great in the Kingdom will not find power, privilege, authority, status, or wealth to be of advantage. Rather, the path to greatness in the Kingdom is marked by selflessness, sacrifice, and generosity. Godly ambition will be known by its humility.

For those who follow Christ this means that we don't need to be afraid of being ambitious. In fact, it means that our ambitions can explode. The problem isn't that our ambitions are too big but that they are too small and too selfish. Big, godly ambitions are tragically rare things for followers of Christ. When our ambitions are godly we can freely, joyfully, and beautifully live out our calling to multiply and subdue because we will have a sense of abundance, awe, purpose, and identity that rest outside of ourselves and our accomplishments.

Philippians 2 is the second place we should look for re-orienting our ambitions so that we can properly bear God's image. This passage is what James and John needed to hear and it is what we need to hear. It points to Christ as our example and shows that the exaltation that the brothers sought is possible to those who are able to drink from the same cup as Jesus Christ. Humility, sacrifice, and an ability to disregard the trappings of earthly ambitions are shown to be the values and behaviors of those who would be great.

Our ambitions will be costly regardless of how our heart is oriented. For the selfish ambitions, death awaits. For the selfless ambitions, sacrifice awaits. Jim Elliot's famous words here are helpful for distinguishing between the two kinds of ambition: "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

With our hearts being revealed by our ambitions we can ascertain whether we are holding on to things that we cannot keep or to things we cannot lose. Perhaps most beautiful in our ambitious pursuit of that which we cannot lose is this promise from Matthew 6:33: "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

Like James and John and like the saints in Philippians we need these words to keep our ambitions right. We need to make sure that our ambitions are big enough to include multiplying our image-bearing and subduing the earth in God-glorifying ways. James and John are revealed to have too small ambitions, settling for things that come from God rather than being ambitious enough to have God himself.

My ambitions are too small. Too selfish. Too concerned with life on this earth. I imagine that I'm not alone in needing to ask God to give me bigger ambitions that will bring him glory.

What Everyone Was Made To Do

I just finished reading an incredibly powerful and profound book by Andy Crouch called Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power. The book has been deeply affecting for me as I think about life, family, ministry, culture and so many other things. In fact, I was only a few chapters in when it made my list of "best things I've read recently" a few weeks ago!

The book is rich with thought, but one in particular has stuck with me over the past several weeks. Crouch describes learning the cello at the age of 41 so that his children can see him struggling, learning, growing, and stretching himself. He was making a point about the lessons learned while putting oneself in a position where one is dependent upon another's capacity to teach or equip you in a skill. While profound, that thought isn't what has stuck with me most. Buried in that section of the book is this little gem of a thought: 

"I want our family to create together, not just to consume together."

For weeks now that line has kept crashing into my internal monologues about parenting, family, and work. Usually it shows up in provocative and confrontational ways. It has me turning over all areas of my life asking questions like:

• Does this demonstrate a fruitful, expansive use of my time, talent, and treasure?
• Am I bringing about flourishing in my life or more importantly in the life of others?
• Is what I'm consuming necessary for me to consume? Media? Social media? Food? Housing? 
• How am I adding value or beauty to the world and to others?
• Am I helping my children to see the beauty, power, dignity, and gravity of the image of God in themselves and others?
• Am I living out the divine commands for humans to be fruitful and multiply and to subdue and have dominion? If so, and more importantly am I doing it in a way that brings glory to God and allows others to flourish?

In a risk averse culture I have noticed that many of the things in my life (most notably retirement savings) that feel like wise decisions are really about delayed consumption. Somehow we don't feel so guilty about what is blatant consumption if we project it into the future.

With so much of my life built on convenience and efficiency I have realized that in reducing the wait and effort required to obtain some things I am really just increasing my capacity for consumption. 

I think the are powerful and redemptive possibilities found in slowing down and cultivating the kind of life where struggle, patience, and steep learning curves are the norm. Our culture seems to have no place for this creative, deliberate, non-consumptive way of life.

Our accumulation of wealth, status, and in the case of millennials, hobbies like crossfit, home-brewing, fantasy football, and attaining social media prowess are usually facades for lives that only know how to consume. We entertain and 'improve' ourselves and exercise our freedom in Christ for almost entirely self-satisfying purposes (which, by the way is the antithesis of the freedom Christ bought for us!). If we are a bit uneasy about these patterns of consumption we will find ways to do them in community to help ease our consciences, because community is a good Christian thing to do right? But it is still all the same sad story of consumption.

Crouch is dead-on in his assessment of the need for humans to be creating and not just consuming. I have been so challenged these past few weeks to dig through my heart to see if I am really living out God's call for humans to flourish, multiply, and imprint our God-glorifying, image-bearing  humanness all over this earth. At our best our creating gives glory to God. In using music as an example Crouch puts it this way: 

"But from time to time, you hear music- whether Tuvan throat singing, a Beethovan symphony, a Bach chorale, a black gospel chorus- that shakes you to the core and leaves you both utterly satisfied and hungrier for life than you have ever been for life. That is glorious music. The best of culture has this quality of transcendent excellence, the ability to be utterly itself and to speak of something far greater than itself."

God is Something Far Greater that we all ought to be striving to show forth with our creative capacities.

I don't think you need to be a creative genius to enter into this God-given capacity to create. But you do need to be careful to not let busyness, convenient alternatives, and desires to consume and save steal away opportunities to cultivate a life that creates in a way that honors and glorifies God.

For you it might not be art or music. It might be the creative work of coaching a team and building chemistry. Or it might just be chemistry, creating new drugs that lead to better lives. Maybe try planting a garden.  You could learn an instrument at the age of 41 like Crouch because there is beauty in the struggle. Or like me, you could try to write what passes as a blog. The possibilities are endless.

I'm not one to interpret art, music, or poetry but I am pretty sure that this song by Sara Groves is getting at the very same ideas about our capacity to create:

Wanna See Me Angry?

I don't express a whole lot of emotion. Most of the time it feels like a nuisance to bother with them at all. To be honest, most days I have a slightly larger range of emotions than the average banana. However, there is one thing that stirs up emotion and gets me hot under the collar with unfailing regularity: the self-checkout lines at grocery stores.

Nothing gets my blood boiling like watching someone cradle a cabbage like a baby while struggling to find the code to enter. And don't get me started on the folks who use cash to pay their bills. The whole thing is just an exercise in futility for most people.

It doesn't help that I have really bad luck in picking the right people to follow. I tend to choose to follow the guy with the 4 identical cans of soup in his basket over the hipster chick with her wide array vegetables without bar codes and overpriced organic health food. And inevitably it turns out that the veggies/no bar code girl can kick a registers butt, moving with precision and expertise while the 4-cans-of-soup dude gets dumbfounded with each can as he tries to swipe it across the scanner over and over. And over. And over.

Why do I always choose the slow person? And no that isn't a question about my wife. Although some mornings....but I digress.

As an introvert I rarely have the urge to strike up conversations with strangers but when I find myself in these situations I come dangerously close to blurting out phrases that would best be described as colorful and unsavory.

Before you judge me too harshly, let me confess that I wish it weren't so. I wish I could master my emotions. With as few as I have you'd think it would be easier! I wish that 3 minutes of my time lost didn't bring up such ugliness. And I wish I picked better lines!

The good Lord must think that I need extra practice in patience. There is nothing like being at the mercy of someone else's incompetence for surfacing some suprising and unpleasant emotions (hello parenting).

There is two millennium of speculation about what the "thorns in the flesh" were for Paul. Most people go for really serious, deep stuff but my guess is that it was some trivial thing like the self-checkout line that kept bringing out the worst in him. We all seem to have 'triggers' that are guaranteed to make us forget everything our parents told us about being kind and gracious towards others.

More and more, I think that those are the moments that we are most truly ourselves and the rest of the time we are just lucky enough to have some measure of control over our circumstances so that we can keep the ugly stuff in. What we are at our worst is far more telling about who we really are than who we are at our best. For me every trip to the grocery store is a reminder that I'm not quite the guy that others usually think me to be.

So, if you see me at the grocery store pray for me. Even if I pick the line with the cut-my-coupons-while-everyone-else-waits person. I hope that I can get better at avoiding my usual surge of anger.

Our Discomfort With Discomfort

In our house nothing keeps papa bear from his slumber like the general malaise and discomfort that comes from not having life figured out. Unfortunately, at 33 years of age, I still don't have much of life figured out! The resulting discomfort quite readily turns into anxiety if my head and heart are not right. From low-level, nuisance anxiety to take-your-breathe-away panic, I am well versed in the ways it steals joy and sleep.

With a year spent focusing my head and heart on experiencing rest (see here and here) I have had to look my anxiety in the face quite a bit. It turns out that anxiety is not a natural bedfellow for someone who is seeking the Lord. As I have worked on resting in Him, my anxieties have slowly been slipping further into the background.

An honest examination of our anxieties and the experiences that cause us mental or emotional discomfort can reveal a lot about our hearts. Scripture has plenty to say about anxiety and worry precisely because they seem like an ever-present possibilities in our lives. In my life they are most often a result of uncertainty and unanswered big life questions

A lot of times people think they are pretty good at diagnosing their sources of anxiety: conflict with a loved one, concern over work projects, the state of the world as seen on the news, or lack of clear direction in a particular area of life. I know I usually have considered myself a good diagnostician of my own struggles and stresses.

Looking closely at my own anxiety I can see that much of it comes from being uncomfortable with discomfort. I want answers, resolution, and closure and usually want to avoid the messy, complicated, and patience-stretching work of getting those things.

As a Christian, my first tendency is to pray for the resolution of that issue. I pray for relief, clarity, changed circumstances, or whatever else I think will best remove or resolve the issue.

And for years this felt like the right thing to do, bringing those things to the Lord. God certainly is capable of answering those prayers and bringing about those changes. But this year I've started to see it differently.

Think about it for a minute. Something in your life is bringing some discomfort, frustration, or anxiety to your life. So you ask God to resolve the issue. What is really happening when you do that?

Hidden behind our pious prayers is often a heart that is just saying "give me what I want" or "I deserve to be comfortable". We are telling God that IF ONLY He would give us whatever resolution we are praying for we would have peace, joy, comfort, etc.

Too often our trust isn't actually in God's ability to BE those things for us but rather in his ability to give stuff to us that we think will provide those things for us. And we do find peace, joy, and comfort in those things. Sadly, God intends for us to find those thing IN Him and not just FROM Him.

This is precisely the problem with all of our anxiety. We don't correctly identify the source of our anxiety and discomfort and we are left saying "IF ONLY". We think that our struggling marital relationship is the issue. Or our finances. Or the uncertainty regarding our job. The deeper reality is that our anxiety and discomfort come from our broken relationship with God. The context where that brokenness displays itself may be our marriage or our finances or our job but rest assured that the underlying brokenness is rooted in how our hearts are relating to God.

Adam, when confronted by God in the garden identifies Eve as the source of his problems. Adam overlooks his own complicity and failure and thinks that IF ONLY God had given him someone better than Eve things would have been different.

Cain, with his poor relationship with God, looks at his brother and identifies Abel as the source of his troubles. Cain overlooks his own deficient worship and assumes that IF ONLY Abel wasn't showing him up things would be ok.

And right on down through the pages of scripture we can see people feeling anxious and thinking IF ONLY God would....

And so we too, overlook our lack of love and trust in God, and pray to Him thinking IF ONLY we had x, y, or z we could have peace and joy and truly experience God.

As an example consider a recent situation from my life that has brought its share of discomfort and anxiety.

My wife and I are 2 1/2 years into what will probably be a 3 1/2  or 4 year adoption process. We started this process thinking it would take 15-18 months. Unfulfilled desires, longings for our son or daughter, and a sense of being 'stuck' while we wait have been pretty steady companions. The waiting has not been pleasant. It has caused discomfort and frustration and anxiety.

So for quite a while we prayed for answers. Clarity. Quicker resolution to the whole process. For our son or daughter to come home soon. Those are good things right? Things that we know God has called us to. Things that would bring some measure of resolution, peace, joy, or comfort.

And yet...

Nowhere in those prayers did we actually acknowledge that it is God Himself that we need in order to experience peace or comfort. We've felt anxiety and a certain level of emotional (and financial) discomfort because of the adoption process and so we prayed for it to draw to an end.

But since when did adding a kid to a family bring peace or comfort or rest? I've done it twice already and each time my peace, comfort, and ability to rest have been severely challenged.

We have rightly longed for peace and an end to our anxiety and discomfort but we have wrongly assumed that those things are going to come from something God gives rather than simply from being with God. We have loved God for what He can do for us rather than for who he is. In those moments our faith is functionally no different than the prosperity gospel wherein we use or manipulate or beseech God to give us 'good' things. We fail to see that He is the Good Thing.

For us, our anxiety and discomfort have been exposing how much we rely on things and circumstances to keep us cool, calm, and collected. Too much of our supposed godliness has been revealed to be of the "as long as" variety where we set the conditions under which we will feel safe, secure, and comfortable do that we can live godly lives.

As long as the adoption process follows our timelines...

As long as costs work our as expected...

As long as our desires are met....

The thing is that what our hearts crave most is already available to us apart from any particular circumstances. If we are pursuing God and being filled with the Spirit we can be assured of love, joy, peace, patience, and so on. In experiencing discomfort and anxiety we ought to be praying for more of God and not for something else that we have identified as a 'solution'.

As I have worked to rest in the Lord I have had to confess that I often mistakenly come to God with prayer requests for a change in circumstances and not a change in my heart.

If God is my refuge and my strength, a rock and a shelter, and an ever present help for my need there is nothing apart from Him that will relieve my anxiety or discomfort.

He himself is our comfort. And joy. And peace. Our discomfort and our our anxiety reveal that we don't know know him as we ought to. Our discomfort with our discomfort should force to look inside our hearts. Too often when we experience discomfort we look outside ourselves to see what might bring relief.

The American idols of safety, security, prosperity, and health are a direct affront to our capacity to trust and know God as comfort for our souls. Anxiety creeps into our lives not because life is hard but because we aren't experiencing God.

My own heart can attest to the fact that much of my own sense of well-being, contentment, joy, and patience is built on having things go my way. It has been sad over the past few months to realize how much peace, joy, comfort, love, and other things I have missed out on by ignoring the fact that God is all of those things and more for those who love him.

My prayer is that in the future I would use my discomfort to reveal ways I am trusting in something besides God for comfort. I pray that I would quickly be able to identify the ways my anxiety is actually an issue of how closely I am walking with God and not an issue of circumstances.

It has been a thrilling and joy-filled journey to start again in my walk with God paying more attention to who he is and less attention to what he can do for or give to me. When feelings of discomfort or anxiety come up I now recognize them for the warning signs that they are of a floundering relationship with God. By His grace anxiety is slowly being replaced with peace, contentment, and joy.

What Are You Reading?

I love reading. A lot. My reputation as a nerd is so well established that I often get asked "what are you reading?"  Cooler people probably get asked "what movies have you seen" or "where have you traveled?" or maybe "where did you get your clothes?"

As a undeniable nerd I have never had those questions asked of me. Maybe its because if you stepped into my office right now you would see no fewer than nine books out, 3 of them recently finished and the others in some state of completion. I can't wait to see my nerdy genes showing up in my daughters!

One of the things I always get excited about is when I come across 'reading lists' from people more famous and influential than myself. I find them to be a fascinating peek into that person's life, personality, and disposition. I especially love to see them for people that are obviously committed to learning and dialogue and understanding others. These lists really are a fun way to learn about what fascinates and intrigues someone. It also usually helps me add new things to my reading list.

I'm not famous and I don't have people lining up to learn more about my disposition or likes and dislikes but I still felt like sharing a bit of one of my passions and pastimes with whoever might be reading this blog (thanks Mom!). Here is a list of some of my favorite books from the past few months:

• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. This is quite simply the best book I have read in many years which, given the volume of reading I do, is saying something. Following a variety of narratives of real life folks this book documents what is known as the "Great Migration". Under Jim Crow oppression millions of African Americans fled the south seeking refuge in cities in the north and west of the United States and the author picks up on several streams and storylines in this decades long migration. I was heartbroken reading a history of racism and oppression that reached out from what I thought was a more distant time/place and into more familiar time/place, challenging many assumptions that I have held regarding race in this country. The personal accounts given are intimate and inspiring. This book is both a tragic and triumphant testament to some of the stories that belong to our nation. 
• Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power by Andy Crouch. I have waited years to find a book like this that digs into the issue of power in a profoundly Gospel centered manner. Crouch gives a refreshing and needed perspective on issues of power, privilege, and injustice by examining the good, fruitful, and God-honoring ways that humans are to bear His image. Too often the terms used in discussions of power are defined by psychologists, sociologists, economists, politicians, musicians, and others who have no biblical framework or motivation. This book truly is redemptive in the way it re-captures the language of power, privilege and injustice which allows Christians to bring the full weight of Scripture to the discussion. This is a refreshing, challenging, and indeed, powerful read for anyone thinking deeply about what human flourishing looks like and what bearing the image of God truly means.
• The Chosen, The Promise, My Name is Asher Lev, and The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. After ignoring my wife's suggestions for years I finally read The Chosen this spring. In the weeks after I read the 3 other books above because I couldn't get enough of Potok's writing. Written about about the coming of age experiences of young orthodox Jews, Potok reveals a fascinating world of deep faith, strong family bonds, and the struggle to make one's faith personal when entering adulthood. These books are beautiful and profound and, while from a Jewish background, gave me much to think about with my own Christian faith. 
• The Silmarillion by J.R.R Tolkien. If you've read Tolkien's more famous works on middle earth and haven't explored The Silmarillion you are missing out. Rich in imagery and epic in its storytelling, the book leaves you with profound sadness over the way things go wrong in that world while also encouraging you through stories of sacrifice, redemption, and hope. It is a bit like the Old Testament to The Lord of the Rings New Testament. You can read the New without the old and appreciate it deeply but when you understand the hopes, promises, failures, and fears of the Old it becomes much richer and more beautiful
• Angela's Ashes and Tis' by Frank McCourt. Another book recommended by my wife, this one left me laughing and crying. Given my work in a context of urban poverty I appreciated the manic pace of life that McCourt's storytelling gives as it is reflective of much that I have seen in the lives of those in poverty. There is a weightiness to Frank's life but also a levity and humor that is very refreshingly lacking in pretense or even the bitterness that can sometimes come with hard childhoods.

Here are some honorable mentions from the past several months:

• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson. 
• My Antonia by Willa Cather
• Any Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. This will always be on any list I put together regardless of what else I have been reading.
• Last Woman Standing by Winona LaDuke
• The Grace of Silence by Michelle Norris

So if you've made it this far in a post that could be boring for some, please take a minute and let me know what is on your reading list. I tend to binge on books and read them in big groups so I can go through them quickly. I'd love to add some new material to my list so catch me up to speed on what I'm missing out on.

A Bad Habit

I graduated from seminary over 7 years ago now. I am still trying to unlearn some things!

Don't get me wrong. There were all sorts of great things learned during those years of study that continue to have an impact in my life and ministry. However, there are is one thing I picked up during those years that has persistently been detrimental to my walk with God. You see, I developed a bad habit during those years in seminary that I think a lot of believers probably develop at different times in life. The circumstances under which the habit are formed might not be seminary for most, but the habit is a common one nonetheless.

The habit has to do with how we read and engage with God's word. It has to do with with 'knowing' scripture verses 'experiencing' the richness and beauty of scripture when we surrender to it. At the end of it all, experiencing is really a deeper more intimate form of knowing, but unfortunately most of us are quite content to settle for a shallow 'knowing' quite devoid of experience.

In seminary I learned skills and got exposed to tools that were supposed to help me grow in my understanding of scripture. It is true that these things helped tremendously with my knowledge of scripture but that didn't translate into my experience of scripture. I can study original languages to pick up on nuances lost in translation, pour over commentaries to see differing perspectives on a passage, point out structure in passages that give added depth, and cite all sorts of historical information to give extra context to what is happening in scripture.

All of these are good things. Preachers, teachers, and writers (and their audiences) love to use these things. And why not? You can sound pretty intelligent and feel significant when quoting church fathers and ancient philosophers. You get definite Christian street cred if you can walk someone through the various possible translations for tricky verbs in Greek. Throw in a reference to a dead white guy's thoughts on a passage? It's like hitting paydirt in some churches.

There is nothing wrong with doing any of those things. However, the troublesome habit I formed in seminary is that I ended up approaching scripture trying to be clever, well-read, well spoken, and intelligent. As a reader you might not do it in quite the same way as me, but I think all of us can tend towards this habit even if we are only preaching to ourselves.

We have our favorite pastors and theologians to quote. Our "bible studies" are more often actually "what one guy (usually white) thinks about the bible" studies. We also love our "red letter" bibles to help us know what is 'really' important, as if that determination was ours to make. And when all else fails we can fall back on our  church traditions and mistake church policy and preference for biblical truth.

The problem with the bad habits many of us take into our time in scripture is that they only help us with the knowledge of scripture and not with our experience of scripture. I know I struggle with this and so I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I might start developing some better habits and attitudes. What I have been concerned about in my life is that we can know all sorts of good, helpful and true things about God's word and not experience it as we ought to. A quick scan of biblical 'scholars' reveals a frightening number of atheists which tells me I am on to something.

How then ought we experience scripture so that our knowledge isn't fruitless or faithless? How can we approach scripture in a way that leads to transformation in our hearts and lives?

For starters, with humility. Gratitude. With a sense of awe and reverence fully aware of our need for God to speak to us. Scripture is something to be immersed in. Something to be saturated with. It should overwhelm and sweep over our hearts and minds with its truth and with God's love. There ought to be a very strong sense of surrender and submission when we go to scripture.

To help me out I have been trying to come up with an image or metaphor that might convey some of the concern I have felt about my own time spent reading the bible. The image I have came up with as I seek to re-train my heart to 'experience' and not just 'know' scripture is that of the weather. In particular, I am thinking about some of the ways that people 'know' the weather.

There is a seminary equivalent to studying the weather that comes across our nightly news: the weather forecast. There, we see on full display what years of study and use of excellent technology can produce: maps, predictions, patterns, and even the history of a particular storm. We can lay out historical trends, share records, give warnings and provide all that we usually need to 'know' about the weather.

But this 'knowledge' is very different from the experience of weather that ultimately makes any 'knowing' worth while.

It is one thing to 'know' the weather but to 'experience' the weather is quite another thing. The hope and longing and then sudden joy a farmer experiences at coming rain is a unique kind of knowledge that comes from experiencing the weather in the flesh and blood. Likewise, the awe and fear and terror brought about in the violence of a storm does something to our hearts that a forecast can't do. The serenity of Minnesota summers or the beauty of a sunset or the oppressive, will-crushing heat of the Texas sun are experiences that don't compute in the weather models we see on tv but each is a powerful way of 'knowing' the weather that is predicated on actually experiencing the weather.

We can all remember examples of all kinds of weather that we have experienced but we probably can't remember a single weather forecast we have seen through the years. There is something profoundly significant about knowledge that comes from experiencing something that just can't be re-reacted through the shallower intellectual knowledge. It sticks with us in a different way than what comes over the airwaves and onto our tv screens.

We study the weather in order to develop knowledge of the weather so that we can better experience it. However, at some point in time we need to give up the comfort and control of heat and air conditioning, step away from our screens and try to live life. It really is an act of surrender when we expose ourselves to the weather so that we can enjoy it for what it truly is: beautiful, dreadful, harsh, gentle, violent, calming, mundane, and inspiring. At their best, news forecasts help us make wise decisions on when and how to enjoy the weather.

So it should be with our study of scripture. Our commentaries, original language studies, favorite preachers/authors, and tools that help us see patterns, connect storylines, identify motifs, and diagram arguments should only serve the ultimate end of experiencing scripture. We need to use our 'knowledge' of scripture to step into scripture in the same way we step into the weather after a forecast: with no control of scripture (or weather) but surrendering to what God speaks there and using our knowledge to make wise decisions. We build up our 'knowledge' of the bible so that we can better experience the weather.

Just like with the weather, when we step out of the climate control of our commentaries and Greek lexicons and favorite bibles studies, we don't control what is said in God's word but surrender and submit to it. Unlike with the weather where we ought to avoid the bad stuff, we don't avoid the hardest stuff in scripture. A weather forecast helps us avoid stepping into a tornado, but our study and 'knowledge' of scripture ought equip us to do precisely that with God's word. The hard issues and big storms are not things to avoid but things to surrender to while trusting in God's goodness.

Experiencing scripture really is an act of dependence on the Holy Spirit as we ask him to speak, reveal, teach, and discipline. We don't come with pretension or a sense of control or with demands to hear certain things. We come empty handed in order to receive. We allow truth to saturate our hearts and minds. We become steeped in passages and dripping with words spoken by God himself for His people.

Along the way our experiencing becomes our knowing, moving us beyond translation issues, competing commentaries, and historical context to actually hearing from the God whose word is still living and active. Our knowing changes from reading about God to communing with God. We ought not read the bible as a Facebook profile for God but rather as a coffee date with Him. Seminary never taught me how to go on a date with God. Instead, I feel was trained to read and write profiles for God on a dating site!

As I see things today, the seminary experience of building 'knowledge' was never explained as being something to aid in experiencing scripture. Rather, it often was presented as some sort of spiritual 'climate control' which could be used to achieve mastery over scripture. As I continue un-learning this bad habit I am learning to surrender and submit with my head and heart so that God can speak to me.

Perhaps your journey is different. Perhaps none of this resonates. But for those who do connect with this I'd encourage you to step out of the comforts of climate control and into the winds and waves of God's word. Surrender and submit and FEEL and don't just think. Feel awe, reverence, humility, fear, gratitude, wonder and everything else God intended for us to feel in relation to him and scripture.

I know that in my life and in my time with God spent in scripture I want to be less like the weather forecaster and more like the farmer who looks to the skies with complete dependence on it with hopes and fears tied up with what may come or like the sailor who watches his sails snapping in the wind and feels the thrill of cutting through the waves.

I want to experience the richness, depth and power of scripture with the awe, wonder and sometimes terror of the little Minnesotan boy I once was. I would beg my mother to play outside on days when school was cancelled due to cold because there is something fearsome and fascinating about weather that can freeze your spit before it hits the ground. Or I would step onto the front porch when tornado sirens went off in order to feel the sting of hard rain and to watch the power of the wind twisting century old oaks in a way that seemed unfathomable. God's word holds the same possibilities for exciting and inspiring experiences.

For me it has meant a shift from trying to gain mastery of to a willingness to be mastered by scripture.

Let the winds blow as they may.