We Must Decrease; You Must Increase

I'm taking some time (mostly) away from social media until the election, and one of the best things I've found in the break is the joy of doing yoga while listening to Audrey Assad's music. I'll write more about that combo another day, but for now I want to introduce you to a lyric that has meant a lot to me from her record Fortunate Fall. (My favorite album of hers is "Inheritance," BTW. Check it out.) The song is called "Humble," and it describes the beauty of staying small.

In a crazy world where artificial Christians strive for platform while living lives of indulgence, what does it look like to seek to decrease?

I have always loved John the Baptist for understanding this about his calling, and in Tolkien, Galadriel's willingness to choose humility is stunning. Then, for our sake, our dear Lord chose the pain of dying to self out of obedience to His Father and for the benefit of others.

How beautiful to allow ourselves to be absorbed into a greater good -- to live and die for it. How restful to stop shoving and straining and simply allow ourselves to diminish.

What a good long stretch into a wholesome truth.



Humble and Human, willing to bend You are
Fashioned of flesh and the fire of life, You are
Not too proud to wear our skin
To know this weary world we're in
Humble, humble Jesus

Humble in sorrow, You gladly carried Your cross
Never refusing Your life to the weakest of us
Not too proud to bear our sin
To feel this brokenness we're in
Humble, humble Jesus

We bow our knees
We must decrease
You must increase
We lift You high

Humble in greatness, born in the likeness of man
Name above all names, holding our world in Your hands
Not too proud to dwell with us, to live in us, to die for us
Humble, humble Jesus

We bow our knees
We must decrease
You must increase
We lift You high

We bow our knees
We must decrease
You must increase
We lift You high

We lift you high [7x]

Humble
You are humble
Make me humble like You
We lift You high

Trouble Go Down: An Upcoming Record Release

A few years ago, I wrote a hymns record with Ron Block of Alison Krauss, Union Station and dear, gifted Jeff Taylor. They wrote the music, and I wrote the lyrics.

That record is called Trouble Go Down, and it will be released on September 30. A feature song from the album will be up on the Rabbit Room soon.

Everything Ron and Jeff created is breathtakingly beautiful, so I am excited for you to experience their gifts when the record comes out. However, I am a little nervous about my part in the release, for reasons I describe in the Rabbit Room post.

If you wouldn't mind praying for this record, that God might use it to encourage hurting and weary souls, I sure would appreciate it. Creating is easy, but sending what has been made into a world full of strangers is awfully hard.

Thank you,
Becca

"A Room With a View"

Like most book nerds, I used to daydream about teaching college literature. However, over the past five years, I've found something even better -- teaching high school juniors and seniors in a classical school.

The kids I get to teach are more prepared and responsible than most college freshmen, and since many of my students have grown up alongside my own children, they tend to feel kind of like family.

An added bonus is that teenagers are some of my favorite humans. I love the sorts of questions kids ask at this age, and I love being in their lives daily during that last stage of their launch into the adult world.

Even better, of all the teenagers on the planet, I somehow landed those with the biggest hearts and brightest minds. You need to keep an ear out for my students, see? These people are going to change the world.

For so many reasons, I love my job. I believe in what we do here big picture, I believe in our leaders, and I believe in where we are headed as we grow.

However, until this year, there was one barrier to my work that kept me from performing at the top of my game. For four years, I was a mobile teacher who had to cart books and supplies from floor to floor, rushing between classes so that I could give the next lecture at the next hour's bell.

If you have never been a teacher, you might not realize how difficult this sort of getup is, so let me fill you in on the details. There wasn't a quiet place I could work before school to get things ready for my classes, nor was there a place I could catch up after hours and prepare for the next day.  Collecting papers was always complicated. (Where do you organize the stacks of research papers and quizzes when you don't have a landing place?)  Distributing and collecting books was a challenge.

I also had to limit my lesson plans to what could be ported, set up, and unpacked in a matter of seconds. For some classes - maybe a class that centers around a single book - that sort of adaptability might be doable. Teaching the humanities, however,  involves many different books, movies, illustrations of all sorts.

Finding a computer that worked was also a regular chore. It wasn't uncommon for planning that had taken me 30 minutes or an hour of hard mental labor to just disappear. When the computer system would freeze, I would have to rush to rewrite the whole of what I had already created, and of course rushed work is full of errors and gaps.

Taking attendance in different rooms takes a chunk out of the few minutes you have to set up for your class. As I slid in the door after weeding through dozens of teenagers in the hallways, I would have to remember to log onto a computer, open a program with a password, and click through several screens before spreading out notes or any diagrams that I had created for the day.

Those things made teaching hard.

It's a testimony to how much I love this place that almost every single day I was here, I was happy. Yes, I was tired. Yes, I felt behind. Yes, I felt irresponsible when I didn't get all the boxes checked. But I kept thinking that most of what I couldn't finish was my own fault.

For four years, I beat myself up when I missed details, and by the end of each day, I was just so weary. Because I'd never had any other situation in which to teach, I assumed everybody felt this way.

Then, out of the blue, I got a room.

No. I didn't just get "a room," I got the perfect room... a room with a window that looks out onto a little pond and a cow pasture. I got this particular room because one of my beautiful coworkers sneaked off to administration without my knowledge and convinced them to give me HER room. She did this because she knows how much I love natural light, and she wanted me to be able to work in it. (Guys, teachers don't do this stuff for each other. That's the kind of school this is. I'm telling you, it's a special place.)

When I realized what she had done, I fought her on it, but she insisted -- and now I have been teaching in a perfect, perfect classroom for an entire week.

Suddenly I have a place for everything. I have a computer that works. I have a printer that works. I have the quiet I need to focus on the difficult subject matter I have been given. I have space to prepare space for my students. I have every single resource I could want to organize and to plan.

And let me tell you, teaching now is a whole different world. I suddenly feel like I'm in my groove, made to do exactly this right now with these students.

Teaching is still difficult, of course. I still don't sleep enough at night, and trying to write a book while maintaining a house and a full time job doesn't leave much time for extras.

Even inside this perfect classroom, there's no easy way to help eleventh graders plug through Aristotle. This is difficult reading, no matter what. It's hard to teach a kid how to improve an essay -- hard to to help a student who has never liked reading plug through Jane Austen.

However, the big difference now is that I can spend time and effort doing what should be challenging as a teacher.  I can focus on grading paragraphs with intentionality, preparing lectures, and making sure my lesson plans are in order. I suddenly realize how some of the teachers I work with were doing what they were doing all along.

But there's more. Now I want to tell you how this experience of abundance is changing the way I interpret some of my students.

I've always loved these kids, and I've always wanted to see them win in my class; however, it's sometimes difficult for me to see how their back stories impact their work. I don't know which students are managing a parent with depression, or who feels shaken because their home is driven by constant financial strain. I don't know who couldn't sleep last night because they found out a parent is having an affair.

I don't know which of my students have good lighting for doing their homework, or computers that work, or access to resources that they need. I don't know which students are working minimum wage from 3:30 - 11:30, then trying to finish complex assignments before grabbing three hours of sleep. I don't know which of the girls who try to wear too-short skirts have a family dynamic that would make attention seeking make sense if I could look through their eyes. When I stand in front of the class and collect papers, I can't tell that some of these students are having to labor twice as hard for half the results.

I can't see the values of their families. I can't tell which parents make a sit down dinner for a peaceful evening together, or who is warming up a pot pie in the microwave. I don't know which students have parents with degrees that allow them to help with Calculus, and which parents had to stop helping with homework in eighth grade. I don't know which of them are watching passive fathers disengage, or which have bitter mothers who poison the air of their homes. I don't know which kids are trying to complete difficult, thoughtful work in a crowded apartment with a television blaring 24/7.

There's so much talk these days about owning our own responsibilities, and there needs to be talk like that. It is not only deeply dangerous, but also insulting to insinuate that disadvantaged people cannot rise above their limitations.

Politicians with greedy motives tend to throw around dialogue about "advantage" for political ends, suggesting policies that will benefit nobody but themselves. In fact, some of those politicians tend to want to feed dependency and disadvantage so that they can continue to trade government candy for votes.

However, it's also important to realize that disadvantage is real. While it can be overcome, and while it should be overcome, people facing challenges should be encouraged instead of dismissed with disgust or blame. Walking uphill is hard.

I have known this for a long time, but I'm finally living it. I am finally realizing that if this one simple thing --  having an adequate work space -- can renovate my life so much, what about those thousands of people who don't have the basic essentials?

A good night's rest. Feeling safe enough to take a walk around the neighborhood. Having enough money to buy healthy food. A reliable car.

Parents who don't hit you. A healthy brain. Rest without fear. There are at least some people around me don't have those things.

Secondly, this shift in my workspace has also helped me look back at my own past a little differently, particularly those years when I was a young mother, sleep deprived. Particularly those years when I was trying to homeschool. Particularly those years when I was trying to be a pastor's wife, and when I tried to do impossible things and failed in a thousand ways, because there simply wasn't enough of something I needed to succeed.

For years as a Christian, I've been kind of haunted by the "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" verse, as if every failure of performance were also some sort of failure of faith. However, in doing this, I have blurred some lines between holiness and humanness.

Yes, Jesus said that with faith the disciples could tell a mountain to move. But just a few verses later, he also tells them that the Son of Man would be delivered into the hands of men and be killed. Success in God's eyes doesn't always look like hitting a home run.

In fact, that promise for provision falls into the context of ministry advice. The main point of this passage isn't that the disciples would be perfect or even fabulous, but that efforts to do the work of God without dependence upon God was futile.

And if you know the rest of the story, you know how these disciples would learn their limitations, too. They didn't pop around the holy land zapping out miracles like Hogwarts wizards; they would be hungry, and abused, and discouraged, and they would make terrible mistakes.

In their own ways, they would find the end of their own abilities. They would learn what they couldn't do as well as what they could -- and they would find that grace was sufficient. In fact, in Paul's case, his limitations were used to teach him that very lesson.

Maybe a new classroom is a strange way for me to learn this lesson, but I can't help but think about this stuff as I move through my day. In my season abundance, I am looking back into my many seasons of lack, and I am starting to interpret my life a little differently. A little less condemnation for myself. A little more tenderness. Permission to reboot some conclusions I'd drawn about and start to find new names to exchange for the old ones.

More importantly, this realization is forcing me to apply some of that same tenderness to others in the world who might not have resources they need this year to thrive.

Late for Pentecost Sunday

.

Reading Eugene Peterson's The Message

Yesterday I received a gift copy of Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. I cracked it open to the book of Micah last night, then I read back through that section this morning. It was good medicine for my heart during these crazy times.

 

As I was reading, I realized that I wanted to write a post explaining how I use this variation of God’s Word. While growing up inside conservative Christianity, I heard some pretty strong, negative opinions about The Message. Teachers told me that this was the version "serious Biblical scholars didn't use," and it was often regarded with either suspicion or outright disdain.

But in retrospect, those opinions weren't limited to Peterson’s work. During my lifetime, in my particular circles of evangelicalism, the debate about “which Bible to use” has spanned translations ranging from the NIV through the HCSV. Every few years while I was growing up, it seemed like an expert came along to scold us for reading whatever we were reading, and then tell us which translation of the Bible to use instead.

So I'd like to take a few minutes to explain why Biblical translation is even an issue, first. Then, I'd like to get into why I love The Message, and how I tend to use it in my walk with Jesus.

As I understand it, the primary translation dilemma (for all versions) tends to boil down to a choice between a word-for-word translation or a thought-for-thought translation. For example, let's imagine translating an English idiom into another language. If I told you that my neighbor, Bob, had a “chip on his shoulder,” you would understand that I meant he was resentful and looking for ways to be offended. But how would I translate that idea so that someone from another country understood it? Would I choose a word-for-word replacement? Would I say, “My neighbor, Bob, has a massive piece of flesh missing from his right shoulder”? Or would I take that same idea and find words or phrases to help someone who doesn’t know English idioms understand what I actually meant?

In my decades of conservative Bible study, I often heard people arguing that one translation or another was "closer to the text." However, I rarely heard people explain the technical difficulty of decisions translators had to face. Some of these choices aren't easy.

During my Precept Study Bible years, I used the NASB because it was supposed to be a solid attempt at literality while helping students with phrases that didn’t translate well into modern English. Also, notes provided literal translations for tricky passages, so that I could see what interpretative decisions had been made.

After the NASB, a lot of my crowd switched to the ESV.  This is still the version I use, for the most part. It was first revised in 2007 and then again in 2011, mostly with attempts to replace archaic language with more modern phrasing. I’m not a huge fan of the revisions, but I don’t think they took any serious meaning away. In fact, here’s a link, if you want to check some of those changes out. ( http://static.esv.org/misc/esv_2011_changes.html ) My guess is that you will take a look and say, "What's the big deal?" Because really, the shifts are minimal. Word nerds like me would rather use “teem” than “increase greatly,” so my disappointment here is more aesthetic than theological.

Bible readers who embrace Dr. Mark Strauss’s frustrations with the ESV’s handling of various idioms and interpretational “errors” (http://zondervan.typepad.com/files/improvingesv2.pdf ) now seem to be smitten with the Holman Christian Standard Version.  I like what I’ve read of the HCSV, but I still use the ESV for the bulk of my serious study. Why? Because I own ESV Bibles that I've already marked up, Bibles I'm familiar with that I like. When the time comes to buy a new study Bible, I'll do some research about which version to purchase. For now, I'm pretty happy with what I have.

I will say that I'm glad that (for the most part) the ESV doesn't seem to be quite as drunk as the (new) NIV on attempts at gender-neutrality. Yeah, there are a few places in the ESV where “brothers” and “men” are replaced with “people,” but God is still “He,” and for the most part, the original gender language is left in tact.

(BTW, can I just offer up a random opinion from a fierce, independent female? I don’t like it when Biblical translators or hymn revisionists assume that I’m not bright or strong enough to understand that I’m included in masculine pronouns or nouns. Gender words are not confusing cultural idioms, and I’m quite capable of navigating the Biblical gender waters without needing blow-up arm floaties. Likewise, changing God to a “she,” is ridiculous. God took care to include feminine references to himself in the Bible, too. We just need to let Him do what He intended to do in every description of Himself and stop messing with His art.)

Dedicating this picture of the botched up repair work of Martinez's 19th century fresco in Santuario de Misericordia to all those people who keep messing with Biblical gender language. Stop it, please. Thanks.

Students of literature tend to love the KJV for its Shakespearean language, despite a few technical issues here and there with translation. Whereas a good chunk of baby boomers (particularly the electric guitars and smoke machines contingency) poo-poo 16th-17th century diction, many young readers tend to revel in the reverence and balance of this old masterpiece. Our world has lost some of the majesty and reverence connoted in the King James Bible, so we delight to find it still exists somewhere. Artistically speaking, I imagine that this version will always be my favorite.

As much as I love the Bible, my biggest beef with modern access to God's Word is actually not found in the nuances of translation, but in the fact that the largest publisher of Bibles is owned by one of the most prolific pornographers in America. It disgusts me that Rupert Murdoch is making major money off God’s Word. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. What in the heck are we doing pouring money into such channels?

This business union is a definite moral crisis in American Christianity, and I think believers need to find some way to stand up and remedy this problem. (FYI, my strong stance on this automatically limits my professional career as a published Christian writer. However, if it comes down to it, I would rather never publish books and face Jesus someday knowing that I worked to divorce His church from a connection to gross corruption. God's Word should not be yoked to supporting pornography in any shape, form, or fashion.)

But back to The Message...

If anyone other than Eugene Peterson had attempted The Message, I might feel differently about it, but Peterson is special. I love his writing, and I love his heart. I trust him deeply.

And when I read The Message, I’m not looking for a literal translation of the Bible.  In fact, in my opinion, The Message is not a translation at all. That doesn't lessen it in my book. In fact, it increases its value to me. 

To me, The Message is a paraphrase written by a dear, wise pastor. It is like a sermon delivered after years and years of study, one man’s understanding of a holy text, offered to his parishioners. This is how I use The Message. I don’t bring the same expectations to it that I bring to the ESV, NIV, KJV, or HCSV. I receive it as a homily from the mouth of a local chaplain, processing what I read as if I were sitting in a pew, listening to a human teacher talking about his week of study.

And just like I do when listening to an oral sermon, when I use  The Message, I keep another translation open for reference. I do this because I want to look at a more literal rendition of Scripture while also listening to what Peterson gleaned from the text. Many times while doing this, I have seen a new angle on familiar parts of the Bible.

Good teaching pastors help a congregation catch the heart of a passage, and often The Message has done this for me. Sure, sometimes I find sections of The Message that I would have written differently, just like I often hear teaching pastors say things in a way that I wouldn't have said them. But because I am not expecting divine revelation here - because I let the tool be what it is (no more, no less) - I often come away from my time of engagement with The Message stronger in my faith.

I've talked with quite a few older believers who have hit a low point in faith at some point. (C.S. Lewis refers to these times as "troughs." Read about this here, if you are familiar with how The Screwtape Letters work. (The Screwtape Letters are letters from a fictional demon to his protege.)

Troughs are are seasons when the Bible grows familiar and faith feels heavy and dull, and I think The Message can be particularly helpful for this stage of life. While I might not recommend Peterson's paraphrase to every single non-Christian or new believer who is just beginning to learn essential Biblical truth (though I might recommend it to the more artistic searching sort) , I think The Message can be medicinal for weary, disillusioned Christians walking through a dark night of the soul.

I love Eugene Peterson, and I'm deeply grateful for his pastoral work with the Bible. Sometimes it's just helpful to have an older believer take your hand and walk you through the valley. We tend to get tired on this long walk, and Peterson feels like a dad to me, getting down on my level and helping explain his way of looking at truth. I'm so grateful for him and his efforts.

This morning I held my beautiful new copy of The Message and hugged it to my chest. It felt so good to have a friend for the journey. I needed that this week.

Anyway, as I was rereading Micah in Peterson’s language, I caught some nuances of the minor prophet that I had never understood before. I wish I had room left to unpack those here. Maybe tomorrow. For now, this post is too long already.

Ugly for Jesus : Thoughts on Evangelicalism and Beauty Bias

A couple of years ago, a funny YouTube video made the social media rounds, addressing a condition known as B.R.F. It's an acronym that I probably shouldn't unpack in this blog, but it basically means that some of us have faces that look angry when we are happily resting.

That video hit at just the right time for me, because I'm 44 this year, and getting older is doing something funky to my expressions. So many times I look in the mirror lately and think, “Wow. I don’t feel like that face looks.”

So I stand there staring at my reflection, trying to figure out what muscles I used to use to just look normal. I know that's a goofy thing to do, but I also know how people treat faces in this ol' world. Christians will tell you all day long that appearance doesn't matter, and that might be true at the heart level. But in terms of what actually moves human beings -- beauty is a mighty force.

I've been in and around Christian ministry for over 20 years now. When I first noticed evangelical leaders making choices for leadership and influence based on physical attractiveness, I was shocked.

No, "shocked" is too light of a word. I was horrified.

I will never forget some of those first conversations about spiritual multiplication in which leaders of leaders were coached to consider appearance while choosing who should be "up front."

The first summer I attended a beach mission project and was encouraged to stop wearing a big t-shirt over my bathing suit (so that I wouldn't look so conservative and stuffy),  I wanted to cry. "It's bad enough that all of you are wearing one-piece bathing suits," one of my leaders said. "You guys need to at least try to look relevant."

As time has passed, I have watched Christian industries of all sorts chase down men and women who possess some sort of beauty gimmick. Former pageant queens. Former athletes with gorgeous bodies. Publishers and record labels snag those folks like prizes, giddy that someone who loves Jesus is also physically attractive.

I used to think that Christian industry was trying to help pagans find the gospel -- wrapping Jesus in a thick layer of sexy to help the medicine go down. Lately, I'm more inclined to think that it's not really about pagans in the end. I'm starting to think it's more about selling stuff to existing believers who like to have superstars make them feel less nerdy about faith.

I don't know.

But heck, Amish Christian romance covers. Can we talk about those? Who are these women? And why do they have Kim Kardashian lips? I can't deal.

But before I really get into how beauty is handled in the Christian community, I want to take a look at what we are told by the world. 

While researching this topic, I read through several scientific studies on beauty bias, but I’ve decided not to include any of those findings here. I just don't need formal studies to convince you of my point. You already see beauty bias happening every day of your life, which makes my work as a writer easy.

What I want to do instead is reference some non-scientific mush sites that demonstrate how our culture tends to connect face shapes and personality types. Then I'll get deeper into Jesus world.

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #1:

“The Seven Soul Types: What Do They Look Like?”

Okay, first I'm including a link to an outright claim that your personality type is determined by your face shape.

(Hurry! Hurry! Check it out and see if you are living out your face-destiny! (Sarcasm font.))

SOURCE:
 

It looks so official, doesn't it? I'm the artisan. Somebody give me some canvas and leather, and I'll make you some shoes or something.

Or let's look at the one in the middle row on the right. The "Server." Supposedly, the Server is supposed to work like this: 

“Servers are gentle, genial souls. Facially, they often characterised by a rounded head, sometimes potato-shaped, with soft, sagging features and smallish, tired-looking eyes. Rounded shoulders are also typical.

The Server’s baseline expression varies between one of sorrowful pity (when they focus on the common woes of life, like Mother Teresa) and sweet, innocent cheerfulness (when they focus on serving the common good, like the Dalai Lama). But either way, there is a basic vibe of harmlessness.

Typical traits: accommodating, caring, modest, dedicated, unassuming, homely, downtrodden, melancholic.”

 

Now we get two examples. Queen Elizabeth and Desmond Tutu.

 

I'm sorry to break this discovery to all you Desmond Tutu fans out there, but the guy had no choice. He was born with SERVER FACE?

Uhhh... anyway... moving right along...
 

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #2:

Thoughts from a face shape EXPERT. (Do not doubt the expert of the face, guys. And stop snickering.)

"'Your face is saying something,' expert Jean Haner, author of The Wisdom Of Your Face, told Cosmopolitan. 'You're born with with features you have for a reason. The face is a map of your personality as well as your whole life.'" SOURCE:

The article continues:

“London-born TV personality Kelly Osbourne, 30, has a triangle-shaped face. This means the face is narrower at the forehead but wide at the jawline. 

Men and women with these faces tend to be artistic, creative and sensitive but also fiery.  

'This shape means you usually want to be in charge,' said Ms Haner told Cosmopolitan. 'And the more narrow your forehead is at toward the top of the person's head, the more they have to be in control.'

She said people with triangle face shapes are usually 'very successful'.”
 

There it is. Kelly Osbourne. She's going to be a life coach soon, mentoring the triangle faces of humanity in global domination. (I really hate to discourage all of you with oval and square faces, but there it is. Documented. Might as well give up. Hahah.)

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #3:

Disney

Don't get all huffy. I'm not going to beat up Mickey Mouse. I like a lot of what Disney does, but I hate this one part of their work.

For YEARS Disney has been programming kids to expect goodness to look one way and evil to look another. Take a minute to compare the basic face shapes between heroines and villains here:

In the past few years, some of this has changed a little bit here and there with Disney. But for the most part, these are still the norms. Villains are still ugly. Heroines are still gorgeous.

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #4.

Snidely Whiplash.

Confession. I might just be including this picture because it cracks me up. But still. Snidely Whiplash! Evil blue face. Dudley Do-Right, hyperbolic righteous Canadian manliness.

I better stop writing about this. I'm going to start making jokes I'll feel bad about later tonight. If you know me personally, message me, and we can get all into this one.

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #5 :

SHREK

I’m addressing Shrek specifically because it was such an important movie-- an honest-to-goodness example of a deconstructed fairy tale.

Deconstructionism is a literary school (though deconstructionists would deny that it’s a formal school because they are stubborn like that) that rips apart societal conventions with glee.

If you’ve seen Shrek, you know how the princess turns uglier for love instead of prettier, and then everybody in the audience is all “Whoa!” because that never happens in movies. Then we feel all insightful, and enlightened, and compassionate, because we realize we like ugly better when it's good instead of evil.

Just know that the only reason this movie works is because it's pointing out the stereotype before breaking it.
 

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #6:

Phrenology

Y’all, phrenology cracks me up. It’s a Victorian way of making assumptions about a person's character and intellect based on skull shape. Folks were all about it in the 1800’s, but now we consider it quack science...  weeeeellllll, except for the fact that a lot of us have retained some of the underlying principles of phrenology subconsciously.

Get a load of these whack diagrams:
 

Hahahahha. Ladies on Christian Mingle. Do NOT DATE THE DANGER MAN!

(Christian Mingle Conversation:)

DangerMan7564: "Hey baby, want to talk about Two Corinthians?"

InnocentMaidenWonkaWonka: "Oh my! I just Googled you and saw the back side of your head! You're Danger Man! I can't talk to you!" (Block Profile! Block Profile!)

WHAT THE WORLD SAYS #7:

Jungian Archetypes

Carl Jung was a disciple of Sigmund Freud (yeah, the perv Freud.) I like Jung loads better than Freud, though both were a little weird, in my book.

One of the helpful things Jung created was a list of archetypes that appear and reappear in literature (and life). And because Jung had a huge impact on the work of Joseph Campbell who developed a story cycle that has influenced just about every movie you've ever seen, and a ton of books you've read (including Star Wars), the average American has been influenced to believe that people fall into some basic categories.
 

Because most of us watch this assumption play out in movies, facial stereotypes come with the territory. And thanks to the millennia-long influence of Greek thought organizers (like Aristotle), you and I are automatically comfortable putting people in categories.

These charts (below) aren’t pure Jung, but they will still give you a loose feeling for what I’m talking. about. Especially look through the second chart here and see what visual similarities appear. Could you cast the maidens as sages? Why or why not?
 

https://brandmanagerguide.com/2014/10/02/archetypes-in-branding/
 

http://www.chartgeek.com/jungian-archetypes-2/
 

So <she says, dusting off her hands> that's a smattering of what the secular world gives us -- but what about Christianity? What does faith provide instead?

In terms of content, Christians are repeatedly told stuff like this:

You are worthy just like you are.

You are beautiful just like you are.

God sees you, even though you aren’t conventional.

You are the beloved.

Great message, right? Warm fuzzies, all?

Yet does this language actually line up with how the industry of faith works?

Does it line up with the women we see "solid male believers" deciding to date?

Does it line up with the women we see promoted at faith conferences?

Does it line up with the women that big music labels choose for their videos?

And men, too? What about guys? Square jaws? Height? Broad shoulders?

Confession #2. This one is embarrassing. My WORST Seinfeld crush (by far) was George Costanza. Be that what it may, I seriously doubt I'm going to see a "George" leading a manly Jesus rally in a football stadium any time soon.

For the most part, the promoted Christian women are young, sexy, and beautiful. And though beauty bias might be a little easier on guys, for the most part, Christianity wants its main men to look like superheroes.

Let's get specific. Ready to go there?

Below is a list of top Twitter followers for evangelical females. (It's from a few years back.)

Okay, ignore Joyce Meyer. She’s popular because she promises a bunch of cray-cray stuff that naive people absorb without cross-checking Scripture. If you follow her, STOP DOING THAT. SERIOUSLY, STOP. STOP. STOP. <Can you feel me smacking your hand off the computer mouse with a plastic fly swatter?> HER THEOLOGY IS BAD AND DANGEROUS. Leave it alone.

But skipping Meyer, look at this list of some top influential Christian women on Twitter:

(Source: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/adrianwarnock/2013/02/top-20-influential-christian-women-on-twitter/)

Now look at pictures of some of these women. What do you see?

Beautiful, right? Every single one of them.

And now look at the top-ranking female CCM singers for 2015. What do you notice? (A lot of guys were in the top 15, so the numbers should really run 1, 2, 3 if we are counting only women. I didn't skip any girls.)

#4 Lauren Daigle

#6 Francesca Battistelli

#16 Kari Jobe
 

http://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2015/top-christian-artists

Woah, right?

Now hear me. I don’t mind that these women are talented AND beautiful. Lauren Daigle is one of my favorite singers ever, for example. As far as I can tell, she's as sincere as they get.

But while we allow these beautiful women to be gifted and sincere, are we also allowing others to be only gifted and sincere? Do you see what’s missing in the lineup? What is it that we almost never see promoted in modern Christian industry?

Remember that moment? The world was stunned by Susan Boyle, because her beauty was unconventional, and yet we were forced to see that she was glorious. (And P.S., I think Boyle is as cute as can be, but I'm talking about society's standards here. The magazine cover standard. The centerfold. The Victoria's Secret model. And while you and I might have the ability to see beauty in all faces, most of the world - sadly - does not.)

Why is this, church? Why did the realization that the Susan Boyles of the world ARE beautiful have to come from a secular show? Why weren't the sons and daughters of God already saying this more clearly than anyone?

And for goodness sakes, why are we jumping up and down when a former Miss Hotness U.S.A. signs a new book contract or record label for Jesus while most of us running around are just regular people with regular faces? What are we really saying if that is a big deal to us?

This post is already too long (sorry! sorry!), but I want to close with two quick things. First, I want to give you a quote from a writer friend of mine. She has been a part of evangelical Christianity for a long time, and when she found out I was writing this article, here's what she said:

“I was in the audience for a Bible study series being filmed by Lifeway. The Bible teacher was a celebrity of sorts in the genre of Christian speakers. After we were seated, everyone who had white hair, was dressed shabbily, or who was fat or had an unflattering camera presence was asked to sit toward the back for most of the taping. I guess an audience of beautiful people sells more product.”
 

How sad! How sad that we tell people that their external attributes don’t define them while organizing the Christian industry around the values of our world.

And nearly every female I know feels this reality intensely.

As a female Christian writer, I struggle with pressure to conform to the world's standards, and I'm not just imagining it. Last year an influential figure in the Christian recording industry told a male friend of his, "The only reason people read Rebecca is because she's hot."

When I heard about this, I wanted to puke. First off, the comment was untrue... I'm 100% not hot in real life... he had just seen flattering, carefully-chosen pictures of me online. (Practicing my not-B.R.F.) So, my first emotion upon hearing this was to feel ashamed and deceptive, and I immediately took all my profile pictures down on Facebook.

Then I wanted to puke because I realized that when a man talks to another man... two male members of the successful Christian industry machine... in the privacy of that dialogue, I'm either hot or I'm not hot. They will discuss it.

Some part of my value in Christian industry comes down to that. Especially now, in a world where Christian speakers build "brands" that have to be marketed, my allure is (at least to some people) just as important as anything else I have to contribute.

Women get so much flack about dressing provocatively, but this is why we struggle with all that, guys. It's not just because the world "out there" values our sexuality. It's because the evangelical machine also tends to cater to it. In Christian communities, in Christian industry, in Christian dating relationships, in Christian everything... we are still assessed by our appearance. 

We've seen Christian leaders defer to gorgeous women so long, we now expect it. We used to believe all that stuff about burying our hearts so deeply in Jesus a man of God would find us there, but for the most part, it seems like the men of God are too busy making out in their apartments over the weekend with twenty-something 9's and 10's who post gym butt-pics on Instagram. We've been to the conferences and noticed that Every. Single. Woman. Speaking. looks like a Barbie.

It often feels like there's no safe place for us to live out of our true value... at least not in terms of human safety. And even when the bias is subtle, it is still powerful.

As much as I want beauty not to matter for me and for every other woman contributing to evangelicalism, at present, it does impact how we are received. It impacts the mechanics of the business side of Christianity. It affects which women are called back for the interview. It affects who gets the book deal and who gets invited to speak.

And all of this impacts the greater message Christians in America are hearing -- which is a greater communal tragedy than any sort of disparity that any individual believer faces.

So I want to challenge us all, then, to do the following.

1. Realize that beauty bias exists in evangelicalism. Talk with people on your church staff teams or in your particular industry (music, publishing, evangelistic planning, conference planning) about it. Put the facts on the table and decide whether what you are telling people aligns with what you are showing them. If there’s a disparity, fix it.

2. In the quiet of your own heart, take time to realize that you have been programmed all your life to make immediate judgments based on how someone’s face looks. Let this recognition urge you to lean the opposite way. Take extra time to look behind your first impression. Really listen.

And bonus: if you are a dude, stop dating based primarily on this. Seriously. Grow up. I am so tired of seeingamazing single Christian women waiting for men who will never chase them, because those men are too busy chasing their high school fantasies. Gross.

3. Recognize that everyone you interact with has been living in a world with these biases. The people you meet have been conditioned to believe things about themselves, based on their faces, for decades.  What impact might being told, “You are so sweet,” have on a woman over twenty years? What might being overlooked because your face is fat, or your nose is hooked, or because your eyes are buggy have after a lifetime?

So even when personality and face shape stereotypes do seem to line up, think about why. And give people a chance to emerge that they might not even realize they need.

4. If you are strongly drawn to beauty, intentionally make a few choices about who you read, listen to, study based on content instead of appearance. Not everyone who is Western-beautiful is a bad thinker or teacher, of course. I love a lot of performers and writers who are technically gorgeous. But let’s spend time intentionally seeking out some people who don’t meet modern consumer beauty standards to find out what they have to say.  Imagine the wisdom of having to work all your life against beauty bias. What depth might come out of a life lived like that? What are you missing?

5. Think about how you’ve thought about yourself in light of all this. What have you assumed you were worth? What have you assumed you could or could not do? What advantages do you need to stop depending on? What limitations do you need to resist?

So what if you're ugly for Jesus? So what if I am? I say, that's beautiful, too. I say let's learn to see better, and learn to listen better, and learn to revere the image of God in all seven billion ways it shows up on planet Earth.

Finally, I’m going to close with some pictures of my beautiful friends. When I told them I was writing this piece, they volunteered to help me out with some selfies.

I have the best friends in the world, you know. They have made me the writer I am, and they continue to do that. And so here they are, not behind the scenes this time.

They wanted to show you the faces of strangers, so that you could practice your seeing. When you look at each of these people, what do you assume? Who would you trust? Who wouldn’t you want to speak with at a party? Why?

If there are any you'd overlook, you'd be missing out.

The Prayer I Would Pray at the Republican National Convention

Lord,

Of all the places we could have been born, You chose to bring us to life inside of a nation of invitation.

The first air we sucked into our lungs was the air of commission.

As children, when we were told the story of our homeland, we were asked to be a part of something larger than ourselves.

We were not asked to be beneficiaries -- but givers, investors, defenders.

You chose to bring us to life inside of a nation dependent upon stewardship, a joint stewardship that asks each member of the body to stand up for what is just, merciful, and good.

How rare this.

As we look across the scope of time and space, how few human beings have ever been asked to do what we have been asked to do?

But now that America is in real trouble -- now that the time has come to face the grave responsibilities Your sovereignty has given to us -- there are many among us who are retreating. Some claim to be too holy to invest in a nation that has invested in them their whole lives. Some simply feel like the task is too large or too messy.

Those who remain are asking for Your help.

If You have planted us inside of a country where the rights and responsibilities of altruism are ours, we will not demand from You a more pristine work.

We will operate within the microcosm of earthly citizenship, a citizenship that is resourced in what we are learning from our eternal Citizenship -- the beauties of of selflessness, the strengths of incarnation, the labors of compassion, the considerations of shrewdness, and the infinite resources of innocence.

Still, while we claim that this is our desire, we have not chased it well.

Here we stand in the mess we have made, represented by the two party leaders we have chosen. We have proud buffoonery on one side and deceitful self-idolatry on the other. Our leaders boast of hostility and domination without blushing. This is what we have become, Lord.

How well those two leaders represent us.

Here is our story. We will tell it to You:

Our nation stands knee-deep in the blood of a million of our own children slaughtered each year by our own hands.

We stand knee-deep in the blood of our own cultural injustices and the violence that has arisen as a result of two hundred years of human lives dishonored.

We stand knee-deep in the blood of our own innocence lost, little children and women abused by our own savage men who live lives of bottomless consumer lust.

We stand in the fat of our own gluttony. We have consumed whatever we desired with no concern for others or how our goods have come to us.

We stand in the fat of our own women who have lived preening and flaunting themselves; who have tossed their heads and manipulated and stolen.

We stand in the fat of unrestrained spenders who medicate insecurity and loneliness by shopping irresponsibility, without caring what damage is done by our greed.

We stand in the fat of our sloth. We have wasted so much time.

We have sat on our couches watching garbage for years and years - movies and television shows that have saturated the entire world, infecting foreign and vulnerable lands.

We have not taken good care of our bodies, not taken good care of our environment, not taken good care of our marriages, not taken good care of our poor.

We have grown flabby, weak of mind and muscle.

We stand in the fat of our own rewritten morality — our diet of drive-through justifications. We demand the right to be right.

We stand knee-deep in the dry bones of our dead faith -- the skeletal remains of a country that has hidden behind religion to do terrible deeds.

We have used Your name blasphemously, slanderously, to try to accomplish our own ends.

We have not seen You clearly or spoken of You clearly.

And we stand here now, knee-deep in the bile of our attempts at self-salvation.

Many of us have come to this convention because we have believed that we could rescue America with the strength of our own might.

Have you heard us shouting? Have you heard us declaring ourselves capable?

But, God. These two candidates -- this Republican and this Democrat -- what are these two but wretched, epic symbols of our worst traits? Our Scylla and our Charybdis. They are the spirit of our age.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, help us weep today instead of cheering. Help us be silent, and sorry, and serious.

Let us not feign excitement where there is agony.

Let us stop telling lies out of fear.

Voting this year is a bitter medicine to swallow — but let us drink it down to the dregs instead of running from it.

Like a child receiving his discipline, perhaps as we stand in the privacy of that booth, staring at the two terrible choices before us, we will finally admit the limitations of our autonomy. Perhaps as we push the button, we will finally be forced to weep as we should weep. Perhaps we will finally see how much we need You.

No. We will not disengage. We will not hide. We will own this severity.

For who among us will not vote without also whispering that the lesser of two evils is a terrible evil still. Who will not leave that room crying out, “I have done what I could, and still I have failed. We have all failed. We have all failed ourselves?”

Lord, we do not know if You are willing to help repair our country after all we have done.  It’s hard to imagine that a nation so diseased could ever know life.

But whatever is to come next, will You at least help us to speak the truth? Will you help our national confession begin in the same way our first breaths were taken as Americans... in the intimacy of our own lungs?

Show us ourselves truly. Show us what we have and have not done with the vast opportunity of our citizenship.

Help us kneel today and pick up these broken fragments of our liberty and justice instead of throwing our fists into the air and claiming blind, stupid dominance. Help us be sober about what our pride and our greed have accomplished. Shut our mouths where we would boast.

Instead of roaring, let the pain of this severe, honest reflection settle in our chests, and help us mourn together instead of rejoicing.

We have nothing here. Nothing but straw and grass, and our enemies are approaching, and our enemies are among us.

If our party has attempted to gather to lead America, let us lead then first by penitence. Perhaps that is the cardinal endeavor of our citizenship, the one great accomplishment of our generation.

Perhaps we might be known as those men and women who finally confessed the sins of our time.

And then, perhaps You would raise our chins and show us where to serve our fellow Americans. Perhaps You would direct our hands and transform us into true citizens at last. Perhaps You would help us put aside our greed, our gluttony, our violence, our self-determination.

Perhaps You would finally make us grateful instead of entitled, willing to work hard to give back to a community that has given so much to us?

Perhaps You would give us discernment and compassion.

Perhaps You would teach us citizenship that reflects Your grace and truth?

God, would You give us a vision for what it means to stand firm against those evils both inside and outside of our borders? Would You show us where to fight to defend and where to kneel to wash the feet of those in need?

Thy will be done, not ours, oh God. Our allegiance is to You above all, and it has good for us to be reminded of this.

But as long as You extend to us (within that ultimate allegiance) the invitation to be stewards as citizens of America, help us embrace that opportunity wholeheartedly. Help us be good and faithful servants.

God, and if it falls somehow within Your mercy to do so, please bless America. Please heal our land.

I made a serious mistake this week, and it involves you.

I want to tell you about a serious mistake that I made in my writing this week. It’s embarrassing to admit an error this big, but it's also important to unpack the mistake so that you can recognize it when somebody else tries to do the same thing.
 
First, context. I was writing a chapter on abuse, so I took some time to sit a while inside some hard, old memories. My chest and arms felt tight as I remembered how certain Christians talked to me during those years:

“God has a plan for this.”

“The anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God!”

“Be patient! You're not supposed to be surprised when fiery trials come to you...”

I don't have to explain why those comments weren't helpful, because there are already twenty-five blog posts floating around the Internet, telling people not to say this stuff. But people do say this stuff, and because of those comments, I not only felt like I had to survive the sheer pain of the trauma, but also that I had to perform spiritually while I was hurting. Double whammy.

But performance in severe pain is an impossible task -- how is a suffering person supposed to perform spiritually when God feels far away? Where do you take your disappointment, not just with mean people, but with a God who seems to be looking the other direction while you hurt?

Thankfully, enough years have passed that I’m starting to see (I think) why God allowed some of this hardship. However, I still feel anger. I still feel wronged. I still have the regular human emotions about it.

So when I am writing about that dark time now, I feel a strange surge of power.  I am the one who gets to tell this story this time. I can describe the villain any way I want. I am no longer trapped. I can control every memory at last.

Just like a painter's emotions affect his brushstrokes (Robert Henri), unresolved disappointment and anger have a way of tainting the stories we tell. And that's kind of scary, because I don't know that most people would have recognized this was happening in the words I was weaving. I spoke with authority and confidence, and because I’m a powerful writer, I think I might have been able to persuade most of you to agree with me.

If I had succeeded, what would I have persuaded you to do?

First, to dismiss theology, as if the justice of God weren’t any sort of real solution to our suffering. Secondly, I would have convinced you to dismiss academic arguments explaining the presence of evil in the world. Thirdly, to mistrust anybody who tends to offer help that is more didactic than relational -- to value sensitivity and style over substance and truth.

That's some pretty rotten stuff, but it's not the worst of it. There is one more thing that I did which is probably the core mistake of my whole life.

Through all of this, I essentially said, “You can’t trust God, but you can trust me.”

I invited strangers into my fellowship as a surrogate deity. I pushed the invisible God out of the way and took on the job of comforting and protecting the needy myself -- without Him.

Instead of being a vehicle for God’s love (because He has said that He uses us to be His hands and feet for one another, right?) I was more like Eve, trying to be like God without God.

And this is a really big deal.

The lifelong mistake of the firstborn child is often hyper-responsibility. We tend to be Uzzahs, trying to catch the ark before it hits the ground. We tend to be the oldest son working in the field, angry when grace is shown to a wayward youngest.  

We really believe we can save the world, if you will either just shut up and listen or get out of the way and let us fix it.

We make golden calves out of ourselves, because God is taking too long to send an answer down from the mountain. And when we convince you to focus on us, not Him, we twist your loyalty from reliance upon the (sometimes frustratingly) invisible God to a sweet, feminine, tactile voice that might Facebook message you back if you write her.

I don't mean to imply that those old, didactic comments directed at me were either helpful or holy. What I do mean is that my reactivity led me to be equally harmful. I’m telling you this openly so that you can see how easy it is for a strong writer to be simultaneously persuasive and toxic.

If you had read that chapter as it was, I really think you would have loved it. I think you would have trusted me because my words felt brave and honest. I think you would have thought, "She's funny. She doesn't judge people. I want to hang out with her." I think you might have been wowed by the powerful, artistic language I chose.  I think you would have felt understood and liked.

But these are simply the emotional responses you are likely to face every time you read a powerful writer — and especially bloggers like me who only have to hit “publish" to slip into the depths of your relationship with God.

So pro tip. Watch out for people like us. Remember my story and see how close I came to misleading you.

You know, I love it when you read my blog. But if you aren't reading your Bible along with my blog, that's not healthy. It's not healthy because I might goof up one of these days and you might not catch it.

And besides reading your Bible, you need to be spending time listening to trained, exegetical teachers like Tim Keller. Because while we are living in a postmodern age where expressive, literary lay writers like me are in their heyday, there is no substitute for a trained theologian.

Tonight I am thanking God for an honest and perceptive friend who pointed out my error. If he hadn’t said anything, I might have let this go to print. I might have hurt you. I might have hurt someone you love.

Please remember what I almost did to you, and may God protect you, friends, in this age of artistic teaching. There is so much bad advice out there offered so winsomely. There is so much dressed as good that will not ultimately do you good.

Fruit that looks good to the eyes and tastes sweet on the tongue may poison you before it's all over.

Because of this, you need to be on guard against writers like me. Our enemy knows how to steal, kill, and destroy. He is not above using the over-corrections of well-intentioned, honest bloggers to tear your soul apart.

4 Things to do While You Are Waiting for Your Platform to Grow...

We’ve seen it dozens of times, right?

A Christian writer, teacher, or musician finally gets the platform he or she has been working toward for years. Success! Big book contract. Big speaking or music tour. Face on the cover of some evangelical magazine.

Then everything crashes.

Boom, what a mess! An affair is exposed. Performance anxiety has caused creative paralysis. Depression has led to thoughts of suicide. Irreversible damage has been done by substance abuse. Orthodoxy morphs into a theological disaster.

All the good that was done by this creator is suddenly undone. Brokenhearted fans who had hoped they had finally “found someone they could trust this time” realize they’ve just been shammed again.

But they haven’t been shammed; they’ve only experienced a leader who wasn’t ready for the massive pressures of publicity. And let's face it, who is ever ready for that?

I hear so many people talking about how writing is hard, but it isn’t. Writing is cake. Writing is really nothing more than observation, flirtation, courage, and economy. That’s it. Those four things stirred into two cups of tenacity, and pow.

Sure, we might spend 80 hours working those four traits into six paragraphs, but is the investment of large chunks of time in a world where people are beheaded for their faith really difficulty? Concern over the investment of time is a first world problem.

And what if we lose sleep over a chapter, or spend an entire week working an argument ten different ways, or spend five years finding the best angle from which to narrate a plot? Is this hardship? Of course not. It's a luxury. Reworking art until it's perfect is a first world problem.

What if the honesty of writing is uncomfortable? Even then we live in a land of liberty where freedom of speech is guaranteed. Men and women die overseas because they have proclaimed the same gospel we whine about having to set our alarms at 4:00 AM every morning to describe. We whine because we are not wanting to wake up so very early in our safe, warm houses, even though we will have a hot mug of coffee beside us.

We whine even though the whole reason we are waking up early is because our gorgeous children are sleeping in at that dark hour in their cozy beds, children who will fill our homes with laughter and conversation, children who will have food, health care, and education available to them for as far in the future as we can now imagine.

Or we set the alarm early to write because we are literate, healthy, young, and strong enough to work two jobs. But managing strength, ability, freedom, faith, family, and flexibility is managing abundance. Juggling blessings is a first world problem.

It doesn't take too long looking around the world to realize that writing is not true hardship, and it's rarely deep sacrifice. In America, we are likely to get paid for it. We are likely to get praised for it. This is a regular occupation at its hardest, and it is complex play at its easiest.

We writers can act like the costs of writing are more noble than they are, but what’s difficult ... truly difficult... is living in such a way that our writing counts. That's what we see so few people doing these days."

So if you are a creative person (a writer of books, songs, performance material, etc.) who is still in that sweet spot between admitting your calling and being called by your calling by others, I have a few thoughts for you.

1. Live on the same trajectory you want to chase for eternity.

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. (Says Luke 16:10)

Most of the problems famous creators experience were planted as seeds in their obscurity. Just think about what happens to small sins in the pressure cooker of fame... every flaw is magnified on stage. Every impulse to medicate is exacerbated.

That means these years when we know what we are supposed to do, but we are just beginning to walk toward it, are ideal for opening our hearts to God’s complete renovation.  Just like it’s better for a ten-year-old to learn consequences of stealing than it is for a 21-year-old or a 45-year-old, it’s better for people like you and me to deal with our junk before all the lights are on us.

I don’t know when I’ve ever been more convicted of deep escapist tendencies in my heart than I have been in the past five years (or so) of starting to take my writing more seriously. I’ve been horrified by what God has uncovered ... and by some embarrassing means. I see how I've been indulgent. I've been selfish. I've been duplicitous.

But I thank God, too, that He didn’t let me be in a position of great influence while those weaknesses were being exposed. Yes, there would be grace for me -- but I could have hurt so many people if all those tendencies had been magnified by the pressures of fame, then hit the skids before millions of people. That would have broken my heart and many others besides.

So I say no, let the breaking happen now. Let it happen when my voice is small. Please, God. Now. And if You grow me, grow me after You have either removed what might cause harm or made me aware of my inadequacies like Paul was aware of his thorn. Let grace abound and not excuses or hiding.

2. Choose now whom you will serve.

14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14-15)

As your platform grows, there will be pressure, of course, to present a marketable persona. This is just an inevitable part of companies trying to sell books and records in a cutthroat financial world. Even Christian companies must make a profit or else there will be no money to make new materials, and so those businesses are not being unethical to find ways to stay afloat.

But as creators, we need to be careful about letting the principles of a successful business become our idols.

The day I found out a major Christian industry was owned by a porn mogul, I lost all desire to climb ladders in the creative world. It was strange how that news fell inside me. I felt physically sick at my stomach.

Women – wives and young girls - are being abused right now, marriages are breaking apart, because Christian money is filtering through a business system of sincere creators who are trying to lead people to faith while supporting a man who is using women like meat. We are helping our own enemies defeat our own brothers and sisters.

I would rather write unpaid, little-known posts for 700 Facebook friends the rest of my life than get involved with that.

I would rather bust my butt waiting tables and write exhausted into the wee hours of the morning than get involved with that.

I would rather have three little old ladies and two teenage girls like my posts than get involved with that.

It was a hard, sad discovery to look behind the wizard's curtain, and I'm still a little bit mad about what I saw. (Can you tell?)

But at the same time, how freeing it was to get to this point of liberty as a creator! How freeing it is now to pour water on the altar of worldly success, and leap into the arms of a living God, and say, “You can light this baby if you want it to burn. What I want is whatever brings You glory and delight. What I want is for YOU to dance with me!”  

Because how could the heaps of stone and grass this world has to offer, or the withering names it gives its heroes, begin to touch on the sweetness of a creative union so intimate? Why would I want last month's or next month's dangling literary carrot when I am safe and adored this very moment in the arms of my King?

3. Love your readers.

I don’t care who they are or how simple they might seem to you right now. Five people. Twenty. Three fishermen and a tax collector. Love them specifically. Listen to them. Ache with them. Advocate for them. Preach the gospel to them.

Remember this passage from Luke 10:2?

“And he said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’”

Do your realize that means you have been earnestly prayed for as a creator? The work of your hands. The songs you write. The essays you create. Jesus was thinking about you way back then, asking His people to ask God for you!

For 2000 years, believers have been asking God to provide voices to cry out into a lonely world. They have asked Him for you to show up, and now you are here -- at just the right time while the fields are white!

So what is your field? Look around you and see. There are faces on the stalks of grains, and if you take a moment to stare, you will find that you know their names and their stories.


4. Hone your craft.

Colossians 3:23-24

23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

After God created the world, He hovered over it and said that it was good. He didn’t say popular --  there wasn’t any human audience yet. He reveled in the quality of His own labor.

And the quality of your work is honoring to God, too. He cares about your creative growth.

Now depending on the safety of your past creative experiences, that thought might be a little scary for you, so let me see if an illustration will help.

In the storytelling performance world, we say that the audience helps create a story. What we mean is that there is a living exchange between a creator and his/her listeners. A responsive crowd can bring such energy and joy to a telling. A lame audience can flatten the work.

You and I have the most gracious, giving reader/listener of all the Universe. He is our first hearer. He is our first responder. So whatever you create, create wholeheartedly for Him, with excitement, zeal, and with passion --  because what you make is an offering to a God who is waiting to listen to you!

I don’t know specifically what growth will mean for you, because different writers have different strengths and weaknesses. If you don't know what yours are, I would recommend Dorothy Sayers’s chapter from the Mind of the Maker on "Scalene Trinities." She discusses how various creators can be idea heavy, energy heavy, or power heavy — and therefore out of balance.

For example, I’m "idea driven." I get eight billion thousand million ideas a day --  so many ideas that I could create pretty much all the time -- which means I get frustrated with editing. So (shameful face) I ... uh... skip that part.

About five or six of my detailed friends are kind enough to constantly private message me with type-o’s and dropped words that I’ve missed (which is why, if you follow me, you've already noticed that I have edited most of what I publish 25 times).

Once the flash of catching something beautiful is done, I’m ready to move to the next idea. I know good and well that grammar-oriented people will catch my mistakes, but I have a terrible tendency to not care what they think about my writing. (Haha. Sorry if that's you. Also, please join my editing team! Please!)

My tendency is to care with every ounce of passion that I have about IDEAS.

I tell you what -- I am DEVASTATED if I find that I have been wrong about an idea. That can put me into paralysis. I will sit in the floor and weep if I find out that I have been wrong in theology, judgment, or perceptions.

So two areas where I need to grow as a creator are in (1) patience with revision and in (2) discretion with what I publish. Those are steps I need to take,  if I am really wanting to honor the Lord with the quality of my creations.

He will love me even if I don't grow -- but I want to grow, because I want to be more like Him. And I think He wants me to grow, because the process of change requires me to rely more and more upon Him. This means we will have sweeter fellowship and more intimacy as I develop in my art -- that's how a co-creative team works. And as progress is made, I think He will rejoice with me in our mutual accomplishments.

What about you? How do you need to grow?

Anyway, I hope at least some of this is helpful. There’s so much pressure on creators to be successful in all the wrong ways these days, and sometimes I just worry about you folks who are in the first stages of trying to figure out how to manage that.

It can feel desperate and hungry to get sucked into what is expected of us, but we don’t have to let the floodwaters carry us. We can make choices now that lead to rewarding creativity today. Tonight. Tomorrow. We can dance with our Creator, even as we learn to create.

Now, I’m going to actually put this on my blog and try to proofread it before I post it. Grin. Baby steps.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Becca


 

An Adagio Rising from the Rubble of War

Are you weary and battered today? Are you discouraged by the violence all around?

I know it's painful to see what men do to men, so I want to tell you a story about one of my heroes. I hope it will lift your hearts and give you some direction during these troubled times.

His name is Vedran Smajlović.

Smajlović is a cellist from Bosnia and Herzegovina who played in the Sarajevo String Quartet, the Sarajevo Opera, the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra , The Symphony Orchestra RTV Sarajevo, and the National Theatre of Sarajevo.

But on May 28, 1992, he didn’t play in any of those places.

On May 28, Smalljovic carried a little stool and his cello to a crater in Sarajevo where 22 people had died the day before, and he began to play Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor.

Smajlović played into the heart of the Bosnian war, a brutal conflict between racial factions that took place between 1992-1995. Before this war would end, 100,000 people would die and 2.2 million people would be displaced. Between 12,000-20,000 women were raped. It was the most traumatic conflict Europe would face since WWII.

On the day before May 28, 1992, a long line of civilians was waiting for food in front of one of the few bakeries that was still working in Sarajevo.  In the midst of these innocent people, a mortar shell fell. The scene was gruesome.

Smajlović lived nearby, and he rushed to the scene to do what he could to help those in need. But he was moved to do more --  to speak to the souls filling with violence in his town.

So the next day, he stepped into the street and played the Adagio. It was a dangerous thing to do, but he played anyway, and as beauty began to seep into the rubble, a crowd gathered to listen. Men and women found him when he was finished, wanting to thank him because the beauty he was risking himself to give reminded them to step away from animal hatred and savagery. It gave them sobriety and hope.

For the next 22 days, one day for each person killed in Sarajevo, Smajlović returned to that spot. He played despite sniper fire and mortars falling.

Then he traveled to other sites where the people of Sarajevo had been killed by war.  He played into the blood stains of the streets. He played at graveyards.   He played though he could have been killed playing.

Once a reporter asked him if it wasn’t crazy to try to play cello unprotected in the open air during a violent war. He responded, “You ask me am I crazy for playing the cello, why do you not ask if they are not crazy for shelling Sarajevo?”

I think this is a good story to remember in volatile times.

Certainly, we may have hard truths that we need to speak in wisdom and love to our opponents. There may also be a time and a place to take up arms.

Sometimes wars must be fought.

But there are also times when chaos reigns, when men are killing men without rhyme or reason -- and in that sort of chaos, how mighty is that man who carries a cello out into a street full of snipers for the sake of humanity. For in seasons of discord and hate, a single musician offering an Adagio might heal what armies upon armies of soldiers cannot.

"The Three Conch Shells" A Fairy Tale by Rebecca Reynolds

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The Stones Would Cry Out

Call me a romantic, but I love those places in the Bible that present the created world as an instrument which responds to the touch of God.

The literary term for this sort of language is "personification," assigning an inanimate object human personality traits, but I revel in defying theological convention and interpreting poetry as straight up, logical truth.

Because as stodgy and tight-lipped as some of the literalists can be, I never see them milking passages like these for their riches:

“You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)

Haha! Can you see it? Three great, green, Appalachian hills rising up, opening their bearded mouths. Italian tenors! Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti. "Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Praise Him, all creatures here below!"

The sugar maples, giddy as children at an Independence Day parade, jumping up and down, squealing, smacking their leaves together, and shaking one another by the shoulders. "Look there! Look there!"

Or take this verse:

“He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.’”

A square Marine block of granite rumbling, in full salute from the diaphragm. "Attten-hut!" The Messiah is passing. The cobblestone babies roll over in their tight little beds and yawn. Pillars of slender marble recite the affirmations of a Greek chorus. “He is the Promised One!”

Or this:

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?”

All creation, including my cranky kneecaps (“Come, Lord Jesus”), my quadriceps tendon that whines and shivers (“How much longer?”), that hot, left sciatic nerve, my inner wailing Jeremiah. My sagging, middle-aged face, sighing into the mirror and reciting the story of the Transfiguration.

Thanks be to God.

Tolkien wrote in The Silmarillion:

“Therefore he willed that the hearts of Men should seek beyond the world and should find no rest therein.”

Perhaps we ache because we are part of a world that is, itself, seeking completion. Perhaps it even remembers what we have forgotten.
 

"Three Thoughts on Associate Pastors"

Associate pastors rarely enter an established church with the goal of tearing it to pieces. Usually they are new seminary graduates who are looking for a little real life experience before launching into a leadership position of their own.

However, what begins as a desire to help and learn is often infected by a predictable list of temptations. Over and over again, in churches all across America, the same problems surface. In fact, the problems associate pastors bring to the table are so common, many lead pastors don’t want to hire them at all.

So, I’m going to make a list of three of those temptations below. If you are a church member, some of these will help you be shrewd enough to avoid feeding trouble. If you are an associate pastor, you might need to take a big, deep breath and admit where some of these have lodged inside you. If you don’t, you are likely to leave a disaster in your wake.

1. “Spend the first year at this new church just learning, before moving in to make any big changes.”

This advice is given to many associate pastors, and it’s half true. Absolutely, the AP needs to get to know the new people group deeply -- good advice for any human entering into any new community.

But there is also a dangerous assumption here -- look at the second half of the statement. This implies that the AP has a right or calling to redirect the church after he understands it.

Most associate pastors are hired to fulfill a certain job description. Usually their tasks involve building unity in the body or helping the inner network of a church to run smoothly. However, I have never seen a single job description for an associate pastor that says, “Get to know this church really well, then find ways to redirect it from the inside to fit your personal goals for a congregation.”

Let’s be honest about why a man would be tempted to do this. Most associate pastors are in a high-testosterone groove. They are 25-30, in that bright young stage of wanting to make a mark on the world. And because they have just finished years of technical training, and because they are still reading new books with new ideas that promise to “fix what’s wrong” with evangelicalism, they honestly believe that if someone just gave them the chance, they could make this church thing work.

They aren’t yet experienced enough to realize that the brilliant answer they have now will be tweaked by another brilliant answer that will come in fifteen years. And then that answer will be tweaked by a new one. They don’t realize yet that there are always going to be trends in theology that swing back and forth to correct what came before, and that even though their innovation feels radical and powerful, it sits in a bigger context.

Sometimes they are also tempted to forget that the whole machine they have entered (which now supports their vocation), has worked hard to get where it is. The risks they want to take affect many people who have contributed their struggles and sacrifices, and the difficulties others have overcome now allow them to serve. Gratitude and respect are appropriate here. Any suggested changes need to be offered with a humility that recognizes the foundation provided has not come cheaply.

(BTW: I can't tell you how many AP's I've known who have charged into existing churches with bravado, torn up jack, then launched a new church -- only to find that leading was far harder than they realized, once they got the chance to do it.)

The single most important thing an associate pastor can do for the church that hired him is this (shocker): do the job he was hired to do. Tend the small groups. Tend integration. Tend deep mechanics. Help the lead pastor.

If he cannot respect and embrace the sort of labor he once agreed to do, he needs to resign. Immediately. Even if he has three little kids and really likes having a regular salary.

Those inner jobs are essential, see. They are needed just as much as vision casting. And while he might feel like his big horizon answer can fix everything, the best way he can help in that particular body is to complete what he has been asked to do. If he does not, the machine will begin to tear apart.

2. “This small group of people within the church understands the real truth, so we need to break off and have freedom to chase the vision ‘God has given us.’”

When this temptation hits, it’s wise to go back and consider the context of how those relationships formed to begin with. They formed because a board and a lead pastor invited the associate pastor into a position of trust.

And by the way... a little look behind the curtain. This is how this dynamic almost always begins:

A nerdy or fringe family has never “really felt like it connected.” An associate pastor hears mumbles about this, and he starts asking questions in private.

Family says something like “we just don’t feel comfortable here,” which gives the AP an excuse to suggest the private plan he has nursed in his head for months. After casting that vision, he sighs and says that "the only problem is that the larger church / lead pastor won’t_________, so he can’t ________."

Of course, the family feels honored by this trust. An “inner circle” has been created in which members feel excited and included. The nerdy/fringe family also feels empathy for this bright young pastor who is being kept (by cruel, dense leaders) from doing what would make them truly happy.

Boom. A bond is formed.

These inner groups will begin to gravitate toward one another more and more. Conversation will begin to move from, “Wouldn’t it be nice if this church,” to more independent plans. At some point, after this idea has been nursed from many angles, after strategic sorrows have been expressed, the group will begin to feel like its private preference for community is also equivalent to a divine calling. At that point, the little group will do one of two things:

A. Make a numbered list of demands that function as a sort of ultimatum for the lead pastor. (This list would have read, “I don’t feel like I have enough friends” six months ago, but by now the associate pastor has hinted and nudged until these people share his vision for a “real church.”) By giving this list to the lead pastor, the small group feels it has given the church a chance to do the "right thing" — even though they have been privately undermining him for months, and now are operating at a reactive level.

B. Decide to go ahead and break off the main church to start a new church 20 minutes away. Even in the secular business world, this would be considered unethical, a violation of a non-compete clause. But inevitably, the associate pastor will step out to make a bold claim that “God told him to do this,” and whatever consequences hit the fan, he will ignore.
Often the associate pastor will have targeted individual families in the body with money enough to fuel a launch by this point. (Associate pastors know their next salary will require this.) And here the tearing begins. Small groups are torn apart. Committees are divided. The community turns into “us and them.”

3. “I’ll wear the lead pastor down internally until he quits. Then the church will let me lead.”

Gosh. I’ve seen this so many times, and it usually happens in three ways: by discouraging the other staff, by complaining to the leadership board, and by personal criticism and defiance.

A. The AP has lunch with a worship pastor or a children’s minister. “Have you noticed how...” and then a team within a team is formed. Slowly both staff members begin to resent and mistrust the lead pastor.

B. A weak board member is targeted. More time is spent with that person, and the AP strategically drops “complaints he is hearing from the body” along with remedies that he believes will fix it. What is happening beneath the surface here, however, isn’t about fixing problems. It’s mainly about the AP stepping outside of his role, trying to prove that he is capable of better directional insight than the main pastor.

C. The AP will begin to defy and criticize the lead pastor. He will wait for him after sermons to pick them apart. He will sit in a defiant posture during staff meetings. He will ignore specific tasks that he is given by the lead pastor, investing instead in visionary work that competes with the leadership of the lead pastor.

When the church begins to malfunction because of all this, the AP is in a relatively safe position. He realizes that the lead pastor will ultimately be blamed for any problems. He knows that it would cause turmoil for the pastor to fire him. By this point, even if the whole church breaks apart, the AP believes busting the thing up will do it some good.

Hopefully, you will never experience a situation like this. But I have seen it so often, so many places, that I think there might be a value in putting words on it.

There are ethical, good ways of dealing with leadership problems in churches. The vast majority of lead pastors that I know are open to hearty conversations about strategy and implementation. They are also likely to know of substantial inner barriers that the AP doesn’t know about, so that a solid conversation here can be far more productive than renegade attempts to hijack a body.

The maneuvers described above are never appropriate. If you are a lonely or unhappy church member, and if an AP begins to attempt conversations like these with you, I hope that you will lovingly redirect him. Maybe ask him what his job description is, and ask him how well he is fulfilling it. Then go talk with the lead pastor about what the AP attempted to do. (This isn't tattling. The lead pastor is responsible for his staff, and he need to know things like this. Managing them - listening to them and wrestling with them - is part of his job description.)

If you are a board member who is approached by an AP who is wily and persuasive, take a moment to think about how connecting deeply here might lead to internal complications down the road. Be kind but shrewd. And take all conversations the staff have with you back to the lead pastor. He can’t do his job if he doesn’t know what is happening beneath the surface.

If you are an AP, have the humility and the honor to do your job well. You chose to do these tasks. You applied for this job because you said at some point that this role was important to you.

If your experience in your present church has grown a passion in you for leading your own body, go for it. But do that in a manner that is good for everyone involved.

Yes, starting over somewhere new might be scary and hard. But if God is really calling you to be a leader, He's going to provide for you, just like he provided for the people who started the church that is currently paying you.

If your experience in your present church has grown a passion in you for leading your own body, go for it. But do that in a manner that is good for everyone involved.

Yes, starting over somewhere new might be scary and hard. But if God is really calling you to be a leader, He's going to provide for you, just like he provided for the people who started the church that is currently paying you. And if you are really as insightful and powerful as you feel right now, you're going to be just fine.

Because it’s okay to have a different ministry strategy. Different personalities and different ages have different passions, different ways of working out the gospel. It’s not okay to destroy a large group of people for the sake of your own bravado.

- - -

P.S. I only addressed male lead and AP pastors here, because that is my tradition. Hopefully there will be bits of this that might prove helpful to other situations, I just can't speak into them directly with my lack of exposure to those methods.
 

The Nineveh Liturgies - Day 5 (Stewardship)

Dear Lord,

We have not invested for the benefit of future generations. We have reaped the rich blessings of those who came before us, but we have not provided for our children.

Financially, we have spent until we owe more than we can pay. We have not taken good care of many of our natural resources. We have not studied the good laws of our land, and so we have become prey to the speech of traitorous and unwise leadership. Morally, we have created a deficit of fatherhood and motherhood that is leaving our nation’s children lost and grasping for security. We have lived for our own pleasure, at the expense of those who will come behind us.

Lord, please help us stop the consumption bleed. Make us sensitive to the generations that will come next. Help us lay ourselves aside for their good, as You put aside Yourself for ours.

Make us a nation of savers, of givers, of investors. Help us to live preparing for the needs of others.

The Nineveh Liturgies - Day 4 (Our Heroes)

Our nation has chosen its heroes poorly.

We have admired the rebellious, the haughty, and the immoral. We have been envious of women who toss their heads proudly and who flaunt themselves. We have loved the writing and teaching of thinkers who justify our sin.

With our time, praise, and money, we have worshiped the physically beautiful, the materially wealthy, the corporately powerful. We have trusted the cynical, and the abrasive, and the crude. We have even chosen rude, proud people to lead our nation.

We have forgotten how to love integrity. We have forgotten how to love purity and sobriety. We have forgotten how to love kindness and tenderness. We have forgotten how to love self-control and gentleness.

We mock what is innocent, and we mistrust it. Our hearts have become too hard.

Lord, we ask You to remove the spirit of idolatry from our land. Break down the false, high places. Reveal them for what they are.

Show us again how to love good things. Teach us beauty. Teach us grace. Teach us holiness.

The Nineveh Liturgies - Day 3 (Selfishness)

Dear Lord,

It’s difficult to know how to confess corporate selfishness. National policy is complicated, and it is sometimes difficult to know what is good and what is evil.

Although there are many popular Christians who have tried to reduce our choices -- telling us confidently "What Jesus would do" and "What Jesus would not do" -- deeper study into how governments work and what consequences can result from a decision often make easy answers harder to come by.

Today there are sincere Christian people in our nation who hold opposite stances on sensitive policies. They disagree on how a government should handle humanitarian issues like welfare and immigration, the complexities of military intervention, and trade with foreign countries. 

It has been discouraging (even maddening) to enter into conversation with those who claim to love You, only to find that they disagree with much that we feel should be obvious. This rift has led to anger and judgment in the body. It has led us to take hard sides and speak hard words to one another. We have bit and dismissed our brothers and sisters, calling one another fools and pigs. Bloggers have ranted. Politically-driven pastors have herded their followers like cattle. It's kind of a mess, Lord.

So maybe it’s best to start small and admit that in thousands, maybe millions of ways, we  have made individual choices that were selfish. As individuals, have gone into the world consuming more than giving. We have been impatient and dismissive.

When it comes to corporate selfishness, we are going to need Your help understanding how we have failed. The Bible says that You are able to show us our weak spots, so would You do that for our country? Would you help us stop reacting with oversimplified hostility, and would You help us stop regurgitating talking points that we don't understand very well?

Then would You help us ask You for wisdom? If there are places where we have been hard-hearted, loyal to a political party over Your voice, will You soften those?

Where we have wronged others as a nation, would You help large numbers of us us to see our greed so that our leaders might apologize and work to heal what we have broken?

And please protect us from leaders who use the language of generosity for hidden ends. This is difficult, God, because not all who claim to work for Your values do, and they can be so persuasive.

Expose the wolves in sheep's clothing. Please, God, show us which leaders are taking advantage of their public platforms to manipulate public emotions instead of dealing in the currency of true compassion. Help us to mistrust them and reject their guidance.

As individuals, help us be givers. There are so many of us who have pursued physical intimacy, parenthood, wealth, and power as consumers. It’s going to be particularly difficult to admit our greed if those selfish deeds are still bringing some sort of pleasure. So Lord, burden our souls and make us uncomfortable until we yield to You.  Remove the spirit of gluttony and endless consumption from our land.

Please restore a passion within the individuals of America to care for the weak, the poor, the lonely, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the unborn of our world. Wherever individuals are trapped, mobilize us to rescue. Where they are born into disadvantages, help us serve them eagerly until they are stronger.

Whatever manifestation of that care should be done by a healthy government, please help us to embrace. What work should not be done by a healthy government, please help the church to take seriously, so that each need is met to overflowing.

As we serve, help us remember that we serve You, God, when we serve the poor. To wash their feet is to wash Your feet. So help us to offer our resources and our bodies as tools of healing instead of as instruments of greed.

Reign in our endless appetites. Make us good listeners and good learners. Give us willing hands. Restore self-control and hearts of service to the people of our land.


 

What Grace is Not

The word "grace" is losing its meaning in this decade just like the word "evangelical" lost its meaning during the last.

Grace is not a big spiritual mush pot of okayness.

It does not translate to:
"I'm not okay, you're not okay, so that's okay."

You and I,
we throw grace around like the holy "just."
"Father, just, we just come to You to just ask You to just..."

And so it is now with "grace."

A catch all.
A spacer.
The smiley face emoticon.
We stick it in to smooth things over.

Grace is not two ugly, naked, middle aged people on a nude beach talking about the weather and pretending not to notice the horrors they are seeing.

Grace is not two thieves laughing at that fool, tight-fisted baker from whom they stole a hot loaf of bread.

Grace is not a kid walking into the crowded part of the swimming pool and peeing because he doesn't want to take time to find the bathroom.

Grace is not a grown man sleeping with another man's wife or daughter, then saying, "Grace. This was grace to me. God gave that woman's body to me to heal me."

Grace is not extending a cut crystal glass of raspberry-flavored poison to the naive.

Grace is not fluffing the pillows on a train car that's about to crash.

Grace is not yanking a fit-throwing baby away from her Father because she wants to play with the fire, and He will not let her.

Grace is an exchange,

an exchange given in the context of authority --
an exchange that cost real flesh, and real blood,
and real tears,
and a real son to a real father.

Never in all of time
has there been a cry of grief
like that cry of grief.

Light torn in half.
Love, the living muscle,
ripped through the middle of its flex.

"My God, My God... why?"

Grace is beautiful because it is specific.

Grace is holy because it is singular.

Grace is deeply, profoundly offensive -- because it is a narrow gate that opens up into a wide, warm sea.

Grace is thorny because it calls what is evil evil,
because it asks
us
to call what is evil evil,
because it pricks us through
before it give us a safety.

This generation rolls grace around like cheap wine in a glass,
as if we were born entitled
to drink from the opened vein of a God.
 

The Nineveh Liturgies - Day 2 (On Truth)

DAY 2 - The Nineveh Liturgies (On Truth)

Photo Credit: http://morguefile.com/search/morguefile/3/storm/pop

Holy Lord,

We have refused to accept truths that we don’t like, and we have attempted to create our own reality instead.

When we have run into commands of Yours that are difficult or uncomfortable for us, we have turned away from them.

We have relied upon our own sensitivity and our own judgment above all other standards.

We have chosen our own ideas of “right” and “wrong” without even asking You if You agree.

When Your opinion has differed from ours, we have decided to reinterpret You, creating a new god that is really just a golden idol hammered from the values of our culture.

We have made excuses for our failures, our temptations, and our bad choices until we can barely feel conviction. In fact, we have even tried to put the language of holiness and compassion on evil things.

As we have spent time with smart, funny, and powerful people, we have grown enchanted with their explanations for humanity and for the universe. We have let ourselves be intimidated first, then persuaded a little at a time that obedience to You is superstitious.

We have only kept the easy, comfortable parts of your gospel.

We haven't allowed You to direct us to do anything that would cost us everything.

In doing this, we have slowly hardened our hearts until we can barely feel our conscience. Right feels wrong to us now. Wrong feels right.

You say that Your sheep will recognize Your voice, but for so long we have replaced Your voice with ours, that Your voice feels foreign and threatening to us.

America has come now to the point where we cannot discern light from dark. The eyes of our souls cannot understand.

Many of those who claim to know You don’t understand Your ways. They are false teachers, saying things that feel good to us. They are persuasive and winsome, and we drink them down until we are drunk on fury, resentment, and self-reliance.

Lord, we ask You to remove the spirit of blindness from our land. No matter what it takes, no matter how painful it is, strip away the skins of the dragon we have grown around us.

We cannot see clearly without You. 

We are not wise enough or strong enough to do this without You. We need Your rescue.

Please flood America with Your Spirit. Make us discerning and sensitive.

When You expose our lies, give us courage to confess and repent. 

Teach us the joy of submission.

Ravish our hearts with whatever Your truth may be, and help us to dash our idols on the rocks.

A Parenting Mistake and the Love that Redeemed It

Last week I was all in a knot about dropping my oldest son off in Nashville for the summer, scared about everything I know about big cities and young men, and scared about the world in general.

Poets are oversensitive people by nature, sponges and hair triggers. We are responsive and reactive, which I suppose is what makes us able to do what we do. But it also means that whatever we choose to believe with our minds and our wills can have trouble working down into our feelings.

As I was fighting waves of panic, I decided to go sit in the bathtub and soak my pounding heart until it aligned with the truth I believe, and that’s when my family decided to take my youngest son down to the lake without my knowing about it.

Well, I knew they were taking him down to the water. I didn’t know they were taking him tubing behind a boat in a huge, green, deep lake. And P.S. he can’t quite swim.
He had on a life jacket, of course. My family is careful.

Also, they didn’t know that I didn’t know. They never would have done it if they had.
But their intentions didn’t matter when I realized what was happening. All that mattered was fear.

“My son is somewhere OUT THERE."

I don't know if men would be able to understand this, but some of you moms will get it.

This wasn’t just about one kid behind one boat on one lake. This was about an entire world that feels like it’s sucking everybody down where they can’t breathe all the time. It’s about a world where a mom looks away for a second and an alligator takes her child, or he falls into a gorilla cage, or you miss an opportunity for certain conversations when your child is fourteen, and then you regret that oversight for the rest of your life.

My fear was about dear friends with scary diseases, and dear friends with children I love with scary diseases, and dear friends diseased by lies and by addictions.

It was about greedy, rotten politics, and theological heresies, and financial pressures, and work that has to be done that I can never seem to get to.

All that converged on a single little boy, eight, not nineteen.

You know, there is a beautiful, terrifying illusion that moms have at this stage of the game … the illusion that we can do something for our children. That we can even do everything for them.

But there I was stuck on the deck, staring out into a lake of infinity, looking for my son.
I couldn't even see him.

That adrenaline surge you hear about. It's real. I could have lifted a car.

Instead I lifted this huge kayak off a metal rack and threw it into the water, and even though I don't kayak, I paddled out until I found the boat that was dragging my bouncing boy across the water like a tossed rock, and he was holding on, and he was laughing his head off.

Trembling all the way down to my bones I yelled until they kicked off the motor and then I said something I’ve never said to my family before -- something I hope to never say to them again.
Before God and almost everybody I love and respect most on this planet I slashed at them with my voice shaking low and terrible, “What in the HELL do you think you’re doing out here with my son?”

They froze. I'm not sure they knew I could be that ugly.

But I didn't care if they stared at me as I made those last thousand -- last million miles to my child. With shaking hands, I held his face up to mine, and I kissed him, and I cried.

"My son." I said it.

I said that because I didn’t care at that moment if some stranger overseas gave birth to this kid, or if he has a dad right now too, or if it takes a village to raise a child. I didn't care about jokes about helicopter mothers, or what Robert Lewis says about mother wounds, or what James Dobson says about letting your boys become men.

Winston Churchill, Gary Ezzo, and the Apostle Paul could have all showed up to correct me, and I would have punched them in their mouths.

My son. This year, this moment, this was my son.

In a dangerous world, in the middle of a lake, I was holding my son in my arms. Back off.
So after I ruined it all, after the awkward silence, where the only two sounds were my boy saying, "Mom, I'm okay. I'm okay," and a party boat a quarter mile off, we all went back to the house, and my arms got heavy while I closed the door of my bedroom.

Then I collapsed on the mattress and did that thing where you cry until your guts hurt.
I was ashamed of myself, of course. I'd screwed up all that levity for nothing.

But while I was face down in shame, still angry, still scared, in the middle of the worst of me trying to untangle myself, my mom walked in, and you know of all the things she could have said (things that I would have deserved), what she chose instead was this.

“I bet that was so scary. I’m so sorry you didn’t know where we were.”

“I love him so much,” I choked out. “I just love him so much," trying to make that make sense somehow.

And she let it make sense. She let that be enough.

So often I feel like I have to perform, to be in control enough to do good enough in bad times. I feel like I have to be brave. I feel like I have to be solid.

This time I wasn't. I goofed up bad in front of everybody. No excuses.

But love looked through what I did, through what I said, and said, "It's okay. I get it. You were scared."

And after that, the tears that came were different. Tears of gratitude instead of fear. Tears that unlocked the confessions I needed to start making. The kind of tears people cry in safety. The kind of tears that wash you clean.

tell me everything

I was so sorry to hear about the ways you were abused.

As I read your story, what stuck me first was how very alone you were during those ten years you simply survived. Abusers need isolation to do harm – I suppose that’s just the math of hurting people. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier for me to hear what it was like for you to live through hell on earth without anyone by your side.

You are very brave to reach back through time and grab what happened to you by the neck, and with the other hand to reach forward to find a hand to hold. I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that you aren’t alone any more.

You kept apologizing for the details. You said you couldn’t understand how they connected or why they mattered. But in the paragraph where you described the line of locust trees on that first day that he hurt you, I felt you straining to climb up those branches and hide in high leaves on high winds, so far off the earth that you wouldn’t feel... so far that you might even become weightless.

You said, “I hid behind the living room couch and traced the ugly upholstery pattern with my finger while he hit her in the kitchen. A vintage cowboys and Indians print, brown figures on mustard yellow velour.” You told me how that fabric felt strange, itchy, how it always made your legs sweat, and then you said you were sorry, because it didn’t matter what the couch looked like.

But it does matter, because those details were your hiding place. I want you to keep telling me things like that so that I can sit beside you and trace over the cowboys with you. I want you to tell me enough that when the memory comes back, you won’t have to be alone this time, listening to him do what he did to her.

There’s a scene in the end of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych” where the main character turns his face to the back of a couch and stares at a button. While his life and dreams are falling apart, he can’t even turn to face the room in which he is dying. When life gets too scary, we tend to do that. We go small.

On one of the flights we took to adopt our youngest son in China, we rode in a plane that felt like it was made out of cardboard and staples. I think it was the second most deadly airlines in the world at that point in time.

Hurricane warnings were all over the news that day, train tracks were being washed away by floods, and I doubt that American air traffic control would have let anybody in the air in conditions like these. But we had to take that flight, because our boy was at the end of the journey.

Walking onto that plane was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I got a window seat, but I could barely stand to look.

At however many thousand feet, while the body of the plane shook my teeth loose, I saw stretched over what looked like the whole face of the earth, angry, deep purple and black clouds rotating in violent circles. The light was otherworldly, a pale, irridescent yellow falling on Fibonacci twists, inky indigos bloodied by red plums, a foamy amethyst, all ignited by fire flashing, Propero’s brew from The Tempest.

I felt my whole body go weak.

I'm embarrassed to admit to you that I had trouble praying. I could only count to ten forwards and backwards, pressing my finger and thumb together in a pulse. It was the feeling of helplessness, I think. Foreign country. Crappy plane. Completely at the mercy of forces bigger than I was. Paralytic.

And when you tell me about what you survived, when you tell me that you counted 1...2...3...4... those aren’t just numbers. Leaves aren’t just leaves. Upholstery isn’t just upholstery. These are microfortresses in which a terrified and compressed soul tries to hide.

You also told me that you don't understand where God was. You cried out to him, and nothing changed. You said that it's hard now to trust a God who didn’t intervene when nobody else could help.

I know that some people would rush in and try to defend God to you at this point, but I'm not going to. A high-minded, theological discussion about whatever consequences were left to humans after a Fall might answer our brains, but our hearts would continue to cry out. That answer doesn't fix this problem.

We'd finish that conversation and then go check the Facebook feed, and we'd read updates from people who seem to have always had it easy, and today they are thanking God for providing a new car or another beach vacation. Our theological answer is going to burn sour in our bellies while we wonder what sort of cosmic roulette wheel gets spun, why the white marble of fate bounces from infant to infant, doling out a decade of hiding to some and lifetime of luxury to others.

The bottom line is, I didn't live through what you did. My answers can't reconcile the anger you feel. I'm not going to try to do it.

Have you ever heard mathematicians explaining why we can’t divide by zero? “It’s a meaningless expression,” they say, but it always makes me angry to hear that. It's not because I can't accept futility, but because all of math seems to promise an answer. And so does theology.

Where is the answer to abuse? Why doesn't God stop it? Why didn't He stop it for you?
I have read a hundred explanations for the presence of evil in the world, and while my cognition can comprehend what my compassion cannot... when I see you flutter in pain and when I cry out to God on your behalf, I care only about holding you in my hands and tending your broken wing.

If He has answered my prayer and flooded me with love for you, it is not in the love of explanation but in the love of presence.

How your heart beats! It must be running a thousand strokes a second. I'm so sorry. So sorry about all of what you saw.

Rest here a moment, then.

Just rest while I watch over you now, and be safe beside me. Say whatever you want. Tell me everything while I listen. Perhaps answers enough will come in good time.