Tag Archives: theology

Walmart, C.S. Lewis, and John Legend

7 Dec

Last night I almost caused a scene at Walmart. You see, somewhere inside this 6’4 lumbering pastor is still a 6 year old boy that really wants his way. I wanted to get my wife Chelsi a new iPhone and they had a policy that prohibited me from doing so. I talked to the clerk, the assistant manager, and the store manager. I explained to them the nature of policy making and that it is ultimately for the customer’s benefit. I explained that I, the customer, was being wronged due to a policy that did not account for every scenario. I calmly delivered an impassioned plea to “make this right.” The store manager let me finish and blankly repeated the store policy back at me and walked away with calloused nonchalance. I was infuriated. I felt as if it was a personal affront. I devised a plan. This was injustice and I wasn’t going to stand for it. I would find the district manager’s number and have the store manager fired. I would write a scathing email. I would write my congressman. I would gather the 20’s and 30’s of America and march on Capital Hill. “Justice will be served,” I thought.

As I was walking away though, C.S. Lewis whispered something to me. In his work “The Weight of Glory” he writes, “There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal.” That sentence was brought to my mind and it hit me like a ton of bricks. See, I believe theologically that every person ever born is an image-bearer of God. I believe that everyone is a soul that is infinitely loved by the Creator-God. But sometimes I live like people are “mere mortals.” I live like the world around me is built to serve my needs. I act as though I am of higher importance than others. Jeff the clerk, Dominic the assistant manager, and April the store manager, they are all immortal. They all are the beloved of God and He delights in them. They all have a story. But in that moment last night, all I saw was my need to get a phone and they were there to serve my purpose. So in my childish rage, I neglected to see the human beings God sees.

Despite what John Legend tells you, we’re not just ordinary people. C.S. Lewis remarks that, “It is a serious thing…to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…”

What would life look like if we saw people–all people–as God sees them? Every person–you, your family member, your neighbor, that lady with an annoying laugh at work, the mailman, and even a Walmart employee–is an immortal soul with divine thumbprint of God.

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16 Pairs of Underwear

18 Sep

I was 6 years old and I had disobeyed. I had done something that deserved punishing. This is no surprise. I have a knack for disrupting harmony and have been honing my skill from a very young age. At age 3, when told to not throw a frisbee in the house, I flung it full force and hit my dad between the eyes. By age 6 I was a maniac. The crime escapes my memory for this story, but the punishment surely does not…

The disobedient act has been committed and I receive the dreaded words from my dad. “Go to your room and get ready to get spanked.” I’m not sure how most kids take these words but I leap into action. I run full speed to my room, fling open the top drawer nearly knocking myself unconscious (a state that would be welcomed with open arms), and pull out every pair of underwear I own. I take off my jeans as fast as humanly possible. Then I systematically put on each pair of those underwear. Spiderman on. Michael Jordan on. Plain white on. Sixteen pairs later, jeans back on, I am ready for my spanking. I will not feel the sting of the hand, belt, paddle, or whatever the weapon of choice is today. No sir. I am ready.

My father walks into the room–his 6 foot 3 inch frame is not going to be for wrestling or tickling or throwing baseball in this moment. No, today he is the cruel judge. His looped black belt is drooping at his side forming a crooked smile. Judgement time. I am ready. Our eyes meet. I am distraught but hopeful that my preparation will pay off. His voice pierces the silence. “Son, pull your pants down and lean over the bed.” I freeze. My 6 year old brain has not accounted for this. My evil scheme will surely be seen now. There is no way to hide 16 pairs of underwear. So down they go around my ankles. I close my eyes as tight as possible. I don’t want to see his reaction. I wait an eternity. Nothing. Then the sound of labored breathing behind me. My dad has seen my trick. Is he getting ready to deliver the blow of his life? More heavy breaths coming from his nostrils. My bare butt exposed, I brace myself. He finally breathes through his mouth and breaks the labored cadence. He is laughing. Hard. But he doesn’t want me to hear. He tries with maximum effort to hold it in but it is completely futile. He belly laughs–the kind of laugh that comes from your soul–at the sight of his son with 16 pairs of underwear around his little ankles. One half-hearted swing of the belt later and it’s over. He hugs me in the way only a dad can. A full, life-enveloping hug. And he laughs. And I laugh.

The writer of Hebrews gives us this encouragement: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves and punishes everyone he accepts as a son” (Hebrews 12:5-6).

We all have a propensity for harmony disruption. We do dumb stuff. A lot. And God wants to gently correct us and show us what it means to be His sons and daughters. He wants us to be fully human in the way He intends it. But we have an imperfect view of God. We believe him to be a malevolent dictator or a careful rule-keeper. We forget that God is a loving father that seeks relationship with us. That relationship must include discipline. But just like the 6-year-old version of me, we run. We try to evade God’s hand of discipline. So we wrap our butts in every possible article of little luxuries or distractions we can find. But the father sees and (it’s a leap but just go with me) he laughs. He strips us until we are naked and away from any measure of protection we can devise in our own childish minds and He lovingly corrects us and wraps us up in his arms in a way that we can not put into words. He comforts us at the deepest and most intimate level. That is relationship.

Stop running. Stop trying to protect yourself from what you desperately need. In an attempt to protect yourself from the hand of discipline, you shield yourself from to the hand that loves, heals, and mends that which is broken. Let the Father love you.

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Effective Prayer

28 Aug

This is a rough sketch of a talk I gave to Center City on Sunday. I believe it’s a great way to end our series on prayer.

This past month we have been discussing the topic of prayer. Our pastor has been challenging us to pray bold prayers and circle them. We have talked about persistence in prayer and the idea of pushing through until we get an answer. I think it needs to be said, though, that we may have a very limited definition of prayer. We have been told or made to believe that prayer is something that starts with “Dear God” and ends with “Amen.” With this definition in mind, how do take Paul’s charge to the Thessalonians to pray continuously? Does that mean you need to quit your job? Is the effectiveness of your prayer based on the amount of time you are engaged in “Dear God, Amen” prayers? Not at all. Prayer is a posture of the heart. Prayer is your life. We try to drag law into this. We try to measure our prayer life on an achievement scale–as if God gives a quarterly performance review. “Your prayer hours are really down this quarter. You better bring those up in Q4” This is not the case. We do not engage in prayer because God demands it. Rather, we pray because God desires communion and relationship with his children. Our hearts long to be intimate and close with the Father. But when we make it about achievement it becomes a drudgery and we colossally miss the point. God wants to be with you. Prayer absolutely includes “Dear God, Amen” type moments in the day and it will certainly include extended times of that kind of prayer. But we can’t be legalistic with ourselves or others–however appealing it may be. It would help up to remember that we are in a relationship. When Chelsi and I sit in silence, is our relationship less? Does she end the night with a pie chart of our time together? ” We really need to bring up our talking hours and increase the amount of handholding.” Of course there would be an issue if we never spoke but that’s not an issue. We are in relationship. I am deeply aware of her love for me, so I love to converse with her. So what does a life of prayer look like?

In Matthew chapter 6 Jesus helps us out.

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.
8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 “This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.”

I want to point out a few things from the passage that stick out.
1) Don’t pray to be heard or seen. God isn’t impressed by how spiritual you sound and if you’re doing it for that reason, you’ve already received your reward. God isn’t impressed by the quality of your prayers.
2) When Jesus says go into your room and close the door and pray in secret, this is a puzzling remark. Almost all of Jesus’ hearers lived in a 1 room house. There was very little privacy. Many commentators believe Jesus was talking about a heart posture. “Close the door to the noise of the world and pray to God who is unseen.”
3) The quantity of your words has nothing to do with the effectiveness of your prayers. Don’t babble on like the pagans. The Father knows what we need before we articulate a single word. The prayer Jesus gives us is a 15 second prayer. Feel the freedom to interact with God from a place of love not duty. The thing God blesses in prayer is purity.

So prayer is not simply our “Dear God’s” and “Amen’s.” It is so much more. Our worship is prayer. Our silent listening is prayer. Richard Foster says our desire to spend more time with the Father is in and of itself prayer. Our work is our prayer that we offer to God. The entirety of our life is prayer. Kierkegaard says purity of heart is to will one thing. With that in mind, purity in prayer is to will one thing–namely, communion with the Father.

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Prayer (week 5)

21 Aug

Last week we talked about moving away from the idea that prayer is a transaction. From that perspective God is a cosmic clerk that is forced do to what the customer demands. We concluded that God is not playing a part in our world. We are playing our part in His world. He does answer prayer but not because we twist His arm. This will frame our discussion today.

Have you ever been on a long drive and suddenly realized you don’t remember one thing about the past 2 hours? Maybe it’s just a phenomenon I experience. I have a neutral part of my brain. This baffles my wife. She will ask sometimes, “What are you thinking about?” When I say, “Nothing,” I literally mean nothing. I believe there can be weeks, months, or years of peoples lives that are caught in this “neutral phenomenon.” They have been totally desensitized to the world around them. They serve utilitarian purposes. Their whole personhood is function first. Their bosses speak to them only as functionaries. They live drab routines and are only jolted into consciousness when a tragic event occurs. This is one of my greatest fears–to near the end of my life and not remember most of it. Irenaeus said, “the glory of God is man fully alive.” I want to be fully conscious and fully alive every day of my life. Prayer is the vehicle to awareness. Prayer jars us out of the fog and places us in the center of God’s story.

Self-Aware
The importance of being self-aware cannot be overstated. Over and over David asks God to examine his heart. (See Psalm 139) In order to approach God in prayer we must first be sure it is the “real I” that prays. It should be your aim to come to Him purely, without pretense. This cannot happen without self-awareness. This should not produce fear. It is not as if when you “reveal” your true self to God he is going to be surprised. He knows the deepest, darkest places of your heart. Introspection, in the Biblical sense, doesn’t turn you into a navel-gazer that is unable to muster an ounce of confidence. God meets you in your brokenness and reveals His love. In prayer we get an true picture of who we are.

God-Aware
In prayer we are nudged back into the awareness of the God-saturated universe we find ourselves in. There is nothing random. Nothing chance. The presence of God fills the earth. We are drenched in his presence even now. Prayer reminds us of this. Conversations at gas-stations, interruptions in your day, children laughing, a call from a friend are all God-moments. Every shrub is a burning bush beckoning you to take off your shoes and experience God.

Open your heart to the God who knows you better than you know yourself. Open your eyes to the God-soaked world around you.

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Prayer (week 4)

16 Aug

Mark Batterson starts the third part of his book “Circle Maker” off with a story that challenges us to ‘think long’. He alludes to the biblical metaphor of planting/sowing. We live in a time where we want instant results and we get them. If I want to know who won the Braves game or how many people live in India, the answer is at my fingertips. If I want a car at this moment, I can go and take out a loan and ‘buy’ it (although ‘borrow’ would be a more correct term). Our society demands instant gratification. We bring this demand into our spiritual life. We say a prayer and expect that if God is truly God he will answer it immediately. God is not google. There are times when He instantly answers a prayer. But this is not the norm. Prayer is not a formula for getting results. Batterson alludes to Daniel who prayed fervently when he knew the answer was 70 years away. We don’t like to think that prayer can be long and boring. We like mountaintop experiences–when heaven invades earth and we feel the rush of God’s presence. We are addicted to “fits and starts” as Eugene Peterson says. In light of this, he titled his book on discipleship, “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” If that is true of our apprenticeship to Jesus then it is certainly true of prayer. All we can do is be faithful to pray in the direction of the result we seek.

I was talking with someone from Center City last week about the tension of not being where you want to be. He is in a spot where he can clearly define what success is and pray for it specifically. But right now he is fighting to get to the mountaintop that seems so close, yet so far. I told him to imagine there are 2 guys that want to get the summit of Mt. Everest. One guy trains for 2 years to prepare his body. He spends thousands of hours training and preparing for the climb. He then starts the impossibly difficult journey to the top. He fights weather conditions that are unspeakable. He has to postpone portions of the climb due to storms. Then one day he makes it to the top–the highest point on earth. The other guy is incredibly wealthy and pays for someone to helicopter him to the top (this is impossible but go with me–it’s a story). He too stands on the summit with guy #1. Who get’s more satisfaction out of the experience? Who does it mean more to? The answer is obvious. The “destination” or answer to prayer is often our focal point. Batterson says in several of his other books, “God cares less about where you’re going than who you’re becoming.” The destination means nothing without the journey. Is there something that you’ve been praying for for a long time and haven’t gotten the answer yet? Join the club. Keep praying. God is taking you on a journey and the vehicle is prayer. The moment you stop praying you halt the process. God uses prayer to stitch our hearts to his. It is a moment by moment tuning of our consciousness to God. As we pray we realize we are a part of God’s universe–He is not a nice part of ours. We are caught up in His story (I purposefully refrained from using HIS-tory). Our story is a subplot in his narrative. Keep praying toward the result you seek but know that by the time you get there you’ll be a different person–and that’s the point.

“Prayer isn’t something we do with our eyes closed; we pray with our eyes wide-open. Prayer isn’t a sentence that begins with ‘Dear Jesus’ and ends with ‘Amen’…All of life is meant to be a prayer, just as all of life is meant to be an act of worship.” (Batterson)

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