God, The Plan & Spiderman

Why do bad things happen to good people, or to anyone for that matter? Innocent people, people unable to defend themselves, people who trusted God at one time only to feel let down by Him in the end. Villages being burned to the ground, women and children being raped and killed for no reason at all, natural disasters that destroy everything and everyone mercilessly—why does God allow such things? If He is an all-powerful, all-seeing God, why does it seem like He is indifferent to the injustices happening all around us. To face one of the hardest questions of all time, we must turn to dissect God’s character. We must look at God through a magnifying glass and see Him for who He really is.

Before we come to understand God’s character, we must first come to realize one simple truth: yes, it’s a shame that bad things happen to good people, and even that good things happen to bad people. But remember, it is just as true that good things happen to good people, and conversely, bad things happen to bad people. Chew on this for a minute: we question God when terrible things happen, but do we thank Him when good things happen? If we believe in God enough to be angry toward Him in the bad times, it should also be within us to be grateful toward God in the good times. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45b) If we blame God for “not taking action” against all the injustices of the world, and at the same time fail to contribute all the marvelous things that are happening in the world to Him, we have a one-legged faith—not in balance. Why? Because on one hand we are saying God has the power to stop bad things from happening, but on the other hand, somehow we downplay God’s active hand of blessing upon the Earth. How does that make sense? We believe in His existence enough to demand justice in the face of turmoil, yet we brush off the fact that He's "the giver of all good and perfect gifts," and even dare to attribute those gifts to man's doing or science or evolution, or any other avoidance of the divine in the latest grab bag of human ignorance. This creates an incomplete picture of God's character, leaving the canvas half-empty for us to try to understand a half-God. Of course, this theology is unbalanced, screaming with ignorance, if not bordering atheism. He's not a half-God. He really is fully capable of wiping out evil for good (Great, remember?), and He really is actively pouring His favor on humanity (Good, remember?). But like I said earlier, people most often wrestle with the question of why God doesn't make the wrong in the world right. For the answer, let's look at what's behind the question.

Long ago in a galaxy far far away (actually, it was right here on Earth, but it was pretty long ago), Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and toward the land God promised for them. Remember that story in your kiddy coloring books? If you have no clue what I'm talking about, brush up on Exodus. Let me tell ya, the most frustrating part about the story of the Israelites' redemption is how stinkin' foolish they are! No matter how many times they see the direct, unadulterated hand of God working miracles for them, literally fighting for them, they still somehow meander back into the idol-building business. Even with an over-abundance of exposure to God's helping hand, they still seek to cut their spirituality to the quick and replace God with something tangible, something easy to understand...something ultimately man-made. 

Sound familiar? It should, we all do it. We're no better than the Israelites - which, when I realized this, knocked me down a couple pegs. And this is the crucial truth we can learn from the struggle of the Israelites: even if God were to personally escort us to the promised land with a pillar of fire and a huge cloud, feed us with the bread of heaven, and route nearly every enemy along the way against insurmountable odds, humanity - in its deep-rooted state of brokenness - would still eventually shake its angry fist at the Heavenly Father. Humanity's story is the spiritual equivalent of a rebellious teenager and a loving father - no matter how gracious, giving and good the father is to the teenager, the unruly teen will view his dad as the most awful person on the planet...until the teenager grows out of his hormone-clouded rebellion and comes to the truth of his father's character. If this analogy didn't work for ya, surely a superhero analogy will...what superhero analogy doesn't work?!

In movies like Spiderman, Hellboy, and the Dark Knight, the main superhero characters are always misunderstood by the civilians. Here’s how it goes down every time, never fails: the hero performs one or several acts of bravery but stays behind the scenes, out of the lime-light; but eventually, the hero is confronted/discovered by the public and rumors circulate—people start wanting to spot the superhero, start daring him to make himself known by publicly speculating his existence, basically prodding him to reveal himself. Finally the hero is caught in the act of servitude, and for a while, the people cheer. "We love you Superman!" "We love you Batman!" Kiss the baby for the front page, keys to the city, the whole nine yards. But after awhile, the hero shows up at the scene to those same people throwing seditious, false accusations at the superhero, often construing the righteous acts of the hero as questionable and suspicious. I always find myself yelling at the TV…like, full-throttle, fist in the air toward the townspeople because I’m blown away at how clueless they must be to make ludicrous accusations against the savior of the city. “What are you doing to my baby, you sick freak?! “—that’s the first thing one woman says after Hellboy saves her baby from the path of a giant monster’s destruction. “Get away from that baby!” cry the men as they surround Hellboy threateningly. Same thing with Batman. The Gothamites, especially the police, always want to catch the “vigilante,” even to the point where Batman’s enemies start using the Gothamites’ spite to their advantage. That would preach. You see, townspeople always scream for the blood of the savior, and I never understood why. But now I finally know why: the townspeople don’t trust the hero and his power; they are blinded by their mistrust to the point where they don’t realize the hero only wants what’s best for them. 

Humanity's expectancy of divine action, in a way, marginalizes God’s master plan of redemption. It’s true, and I'm about to drop a Truth-bomb on ya: we have had a “superhero” view of God for far too long. We are always waiting for God to step in and save the day, to keep all bad things from happening. First of all, who do we think we are to claim that we know better than God, that we know what’s best for the future of human kind? (especially in light of a God who knows the future anyway). Second of all, believe it or not, God stepped in and saved the day a long time ago. The only hope for humanity’s destructive nature—for the people who cause all these terrible things to happen—is Jesus Christ, the God-given, supreme sacrifice (as understood by Jewish law). He is Hope incarnate, even right now. Sure we can’t physically see God, see Jesus, but if we give Jesus a chance, He will take that opportunity to transform our destructive humanity so we can “bear His fruit” (or in other words, develop His character in ourselves and others through our daily lives). 

So as a Christian, or a person striving for Christ’s likeness, it is our calling to awaken this realization within the hearts of mankind that humanity’s destructive nature will be vanquished by Christ’s hope one heart at a time. In light of all this, I dare say it almost seems selfish to question God’s “lack of action” toward injustice because we are only focusing on a very false and narrow view of God, one that sees Him only as a God of wrath and indifference. This selfish view squeezes God into a box we create with who we think God should be/what He should do with His power. There's a plan in place, and it's the kind of saving we really need.

God planned it all out through the Redemptive Messiah Jesus long ago, and there would be no point to redemption and the final judgment of mankind if God physically interceded in every situation, “saving the day” as I called it. No, Jesus’ redemption and Day of Judgment would have no purpose because God would have been housekeeping every bit of evil the whole time! You see? God’s plan for redemption is much more meaningful, much more “final” than stopping every injustice. If He did that, we would yawn at God’s power, seeing His acts of heroism as ordinary, therefore shattering the significance of faith in the first place...and we would maybe even come to despise God as a push-over to our every whim (then we would be the gods, right?) Even the Gothamites took Batman for granted and came to hate him, despite his good intentions. 

At the same time, I do believe God is very active in every situation of injustice in the world. “Wait, what? Didn’t you just say…?” You see, even if God doesn’t save the day in each situation of calamity in the world, He does intervene…through us! This is what I touched on earlier—we are to be Christ’s love to a broken world. That’s why He came, and that’s why He modeled that love to us: so we could do the same for others who suffer injustice. As cold a statement as it may seem, good can come from evil. The village that was burned to the ground? True Christ followers would come to their aid. The women and children that were abused? True disciples of Christ’s heart would seek to mend their spirits. The earthquake in Haiti? True Christ-like people would race to help the broken-hearted. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying God is some kind of sick-o who makes bad things happen so His minions can look good doing His bidding. That’s pretty much the opposite of reality. God weeps over injustice.

As recorded by Matthew (chapter 23, verse 37), Jesus said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” Jesus wants to gather mankind under his warm wing, but all we do is hate Him through our misguided philosophy that He smugly overlooks these catastrophes that plague the Earth. If we only gave Him a chance to gather us in, we would realize He is on our side—God is on our side! How amazing is that?! I hope we can all grasp this concept and answer that question that has been transmitted through society, “why do bad things happen to good people?” Like Romans 8 says, the world God made is good, but it's fallen from glory and riddled with bad things. In the end God will redeem creation and set everything back into perfect order (heaven); but until then, evil is allowed. Some people turn to God because of it, some people walk away from Him in bitterness and confusion. But I will say this: we wouldn't need cleaning if they weren't a mess. We wouldn't need saving if there were no fallenness, no injustice, no disease. 

There's no pretending humanity isn't broken. There's no getting around the fact that we're in need of restoration from something outside our own means (does that drink or that porn website or that hobby take the pain away or just numb your heart to it?). We may not see the superhero in the sky, but ultimately, God is not uninvolved - He just longs to be involved through us instead of taking the cheap and easy way out by “saving the day” every time. We wouldn't need faith if He did that...we'd be spoiled rotten, just like the Israelites in the wilderness. What a privilege it is to know God decided to use us to bring hope to the hopeless instead of just taking care of every situation Himself, like some kind of cheap magic show. Did you hear what I just said? He decided to use us...we are His superheroes. More on our super powers next time...

Rainfall

I'm sitting here on the porch of my favorite coffee shop, my personal getaway for serenity, and it's raining. Not the pouring kind of rain, not the harsh sloppy kind. Just the light gentle kind. The kind of shower that reminds me of how rain is a pleasant thing, not just a taxing thing that makes our driveway muddy and keeps our puppies stinky. Nope, this rain is slow, cascading...it's beautiful, it's full of life. Not pressing, not forcing itself. Just...present.

As I sit here on the covered porch, I was daydreaming about the rain, all while my gaze was fixed on the shrubbery at the base of the porch. When I woke from my daydream, I realized I was staring at the shrubbery (sometimes this incognizance is embarrassing - ever wake up from a daydream and realize you've been unintentionally staring at something completely inappropriate, like someone's butt or something? Alas, thus is price of daydreaming I guess). But as I wakened to the sight of the shrubbery, I noticed something profound: the rain was affecting the shrubs. Most of the time, humans don't like the effect rain has on us - dodging puddles in our suede shoes, hoisting umbrellas so as not to look and smell like a drowned rat all day. I remember my gram used to rig a plastic bag over her freshly permed hair before venturing into the wet weather. I thought it looked funny.

We've all dodged the dewy droplets from the sky, but as I sit and watch how the shrub is affected by the rain, I'm overcome with inspiration. This is what I learned from the shrubs today:

1. The wetness may be inconvenient for us, but for them, it is essential. It is crucial. They don't mind sitting it in the least bit. In fact, they seem to enjoy it. Which leads me to the second thing I learned...

2. The shrubs' posture is affected by the water. The misty rain is too fine today to stir the plant life, but the droplets from the overhead gutter create quite the stir in the posture of the shrubbery. As each giant water drop falls onto the leaves of the bushes, they bend. They are roused. They come alive. The leaves are no longer arid, but clean. They are being shaken from their sleep to drink and be nourished. They are dancing to the feel of the drops on their skin. They are not hurt by the rain, as it may seem by their bending. For the rain brings a healthy movement, and like all creatures of our God and King, we all need a good stirring to sift out the complacencies we struggle with in this wounded world.

Now, you can imagine what daydreaming this stirred in me! This is such a direct and brazen image of our ever-unfolding life God intended for us: the rain is good, it is crucial, and it stirs us with life. Look over the course of your week, your month perhaps, and tell me: what has been your rain? What has stirred you to life? What has made your soul dance with nourishment? Leave a comment and share!

Ride Hard

A couple months ago, Jodi and I decided to venture through the various trilogies pop culture had embraced over the past few years. We plowed through all the epic trilogies in like a month - Lord of the Rings (extended editions, box sets...don't judge), The Matrix, Spiderman (I still think Tobey Maguire is the best), Batman (of course, Christopher Nolan's adaptation stands alone - Christian Bale is Batman)...pretty much all the superhero series' from the past 20 years. And let me tell ya, there's a lot to daydream about in watching all that. As many times as I've watched those movies, there's always something inspiring to take away from them. I'm tellin' ya, there is real substantive inspiration to be found in these epic tales, though fiction they are. Just recently, I was struck by the recollection of a certain scene in one of these movies, as it related to what my wife and I have been experiencing lately. So here's where I'll begin...

Over the past year or so, I've been applying to a lot of churches, trying to get back into vocational ministry as a worship leader. It's been disheartening. Every application, every interview has come up empty, and not for lack of ability or leadership. Jodi and I were talking about all this the other day, and we noticed something strange: recently, in the past 5 months or so, the opportunities presented to me have turned from shoo-in's to slaps in the face. Churches that seemed to be sure-thing no-brainers ended up not only deciding to walk away from me as a candidate, but also hit me with the door on my way out. The first slap in the face was Florida. There was one church there that sent the worship pastor and associate worship pastor to observe me leading at a friend's church close by. It was a tantalizing prospect - moving to the oasis of Florida, with good friends nearby. The shoreline sweet life. I thought, "This would be nice, God." So I went to lead at my friend's church, and at the same time, I would kill two birds with one stone by giving the chaps from this prospect church a taste of my leadership style. After the gathering was over, I scanned the crowded room, only to find they had left right away without even speaking to me. I had gone all that way, and they didn't give me the decency of even a good-bye - needless to say, I never heard a peep from that church again.

Then a position opened up here in Charlotte at the sister church of the one I had lead part-time in for a year. Big church, nice area, people we knew, good salary. I thought, "This would be nice, God." I was scheduled for an observation leading at their Saturday night service about 3 months in advance. It was a long three months, waiting to interview like that. Each week was filled with anticipation to get off the bench and play. Finally the week came, all the preparation and anticipation was about to climax. Then the night before, that Friday night, I received an email through the church's worship team email list that they had decided on a candidate for their new worship leader. I think the email wasn't meant to include me, but my heart simultaneously exploded with anger and sank with depletion. Battleship sunk. What an unprofessional move. After much heart-aligning and peace-seeking that Saturday morning, I ended up leading that night. They handed me a check afterward, like they never really even considered me a candidate, just a fill-in leader while they were looking.

Then there was the local church plant I got connected to through a good friend from the last church I lead part-time. It was a solid connection, and connections are half the battle in paid ministry. And that part-time experience was a church plant as well, so I would fit comfortably in this new prospect. Comfortably, but honestly, not preferably. But it was something, so I thought, "This would be nice, God." The first ten minutes of my practice with the team, there was conflict. I was like, "Really?" I lead two weeks there, and I haven't heard a word from them since - that was over a month ago.

My face is cut from all the slaps I've been dealt. But as Jodi and I were talking, something became more and more clear: God doesn't want to give us nice. You may think He's a table-scraps God, but He's not. He's a God of feast, not famine. So often, we feel like we don't deserve any more than scraps. But that's not how God rolls. You may have been burned in the past, and this concept of a good God may sting; but like so many of us, your view of God is skewed. He's a God of open arms, not clenched fists...no matter what the culture around us tells you. I would have been miserable with "nice" opportunities, and God knows that. He wants to give me, and you, more than "nice."

So I thought, "What does 'more than nice' mean for me?"  And then something came to mind that I've been pushing off as impossible for a while now. We've been going to a church we absolutely love for a while now - Elevation. A friend of mine told me a long time ago that the best way to get into vocational ministry is to find a church you love first, then seek a deeper involvement from there. For so long, I've been trying to tread water by finding a church that is hiring first, then hopefully grow to love it. But it doesn't work like that, your heart will shrivel up and die first. So I did something to take a step in the Elevation direction last week - I applied to their apprenticeship program, the "Prodigy Program." Now, Elevation isn't one of those churches where it's easy to get involved on a deep level. Elevation is a church of over 12,000 people, with 8 campuses and an extremely guarded inner-core of paid involvement...and rightly so. It's a huge battle to even get positioned to where your gifts are considered for paid employment. And the apprenticeship doesn't mean you'll get hired, but it's the best stepping stone. So I applied, knowing it's an intense screening process. I know God wants to use my gifts of leadership and songwriting, but I don't know how that's all going to play out. I hope it starts at the church my wife and I love, and if I don't get accepted into the program, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do for employment...especially with a baby girl on the way.

So here's where the whole trilogy thing comes back into focus (that wasn't just a random thought to open my blog entry with). I'd been marinating on what all this means for quite some time, dressing the wounds inflicted on my face, when randomly one day recently, a moving scene from Lord of the Rings came to mind. Remember the scene where Arwen is rushing Frodo to the Elf Kingdom before he turns into a Ringwraith? Frodo had been stabbed by a Wraith, and he was fading fast. He needed the healing powers of the Elfs. Hero Aragorn charged his love, Arwen, to race him to her home Kingdom on her fastest horse, but the Ringwraiths were in chase right on her heels. I'll never forget that epic scene, Arwen flying through the pines in a race against time for Frodo's life, with death biting at her back. At one point, a stray branch from one of the pines strikes her face as she speeds past it. It leaves an instant laceration on her cheek, but her focus is so strong she hardly even reacts. That's the kind of faith I want. The extreme focus on the goal, on the promises of God that speak life to the full - in spite of the branches that cut my face on the way by.

Branch after branch has struck me right in the face as I've raced forward, but I will not lose my eye on God's purpose for my life. I will not lose heart. I will not lose aim of the hope I charge towards.

If you've not seen the movie, check out this clip and ask God to make clear what you need to focus on with such intensity as this. And I'll charge you the words Aragorn gave Arwen before she set off: "Ride hard - don't look back..."

The Perplexingly Complicated Complexities of Over-Analyzing, Pt. 3

So here we arrive, our hands full of Part 1 and Part 2 as we approach the precipice of the final mile of our journey...Part 3. And yet, this entry is what I intended to outline from the very beginning. In case you haven't noticed, I get caught up in my daydreams pretty easily and branch off into many and varied worth-while tangents ;)

One thing I realized a few years ago is that I was over-analyzing my spiritual walk with God. "Am I praying the right way? Is there something I missed on my do-gooder checklist, and is it keeping me from God? Have I prayed enough or thought about God enough today to be considered a good Christian?" At the bottom of my good intentions, these questions oftentimes lay in wait, and they jump at the first chance to deceive me.

In the end, the questions at the bottom of my good intentions end up leading me to resent being a Christian in the first place. "It's too hard," I'll conclude. "I end up being more anxious than anything - the 'at-peace' feeling Christianity advertises is overshadowed by its extremely weighty expectations." Deep confessions of a long-time Christian. And you know what? After years of struggling with this, one thing this heart can't shake is the feeling that this can't be the way God intended true life to taste.

The good news is, it's not.

All the straining, all the wrestling to live up to expectations I assumed God had on me, and I realized my strivings were offset by one irony: God never publicized true life as something so illusive, so impossible, yet we as humans, with our finite minds, reduce God's intentions to something we can reason. "God must expect a lot of me because I don't feel like I'm living up to who I should be." Or, "there must be a recipe to full life in Christ, and I haven't gotten it right yet, but it'll hit me someday in a flash of divine revelation." Hmmm, what a quandary...and all the while, God is holding his hand outstretched with the very life we are blind to and stretching for elsewhere.

"What are you trying to get at, Shane? Hurry up, I've got a roast in the oven." Here's the skinny: the way to true life is simple...not complicated, not illusive, not over-bearing. It's extremely and ridiculously simple.

"Well if it's simple, Shane, wouldn't I have figured it out by now?" This kind of simple is one of the only simple's I've encountered that takes going through the complexities of life before reaching the truth. Usually we start with the simple things to get to the richer, deeper things: simple things like eggs, bread and milk can be made into so many yummy recipes, from something as sweet as french toast to something as delightful as bread pudding. A paintbrush and some paint can create the finest work of art, or it can decorate a room into a lavish living space. This is the way life goes in many cases; but the irony of spirituality is that it works in reverse - we boggle our brains and rip our hearts out to understand how to be Godly and why God would love us in the first place, and when the dust settles, we see that something as simple as grace was standing there the whole time.

Jesus addressed the moral strivings of those around him by summing it all up, wrapping the simple truth neatly in an unexpected delivery:

"At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?'" 

Once again, the disciples are missing the point, like so many of us often do. They are focused on figuring out how to do this Christ-following thing right, trying to reason out their salvation. Jesus surprises them with his response...

"He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: 'Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.'"

Jesus totally flips everything on its head; he uses a child as an example of heart-posture. He goes against the grain of culture and uses the simplest, most innocent of things in this world - a child - to serve as a metaphor of what our faith should measure up to. Not complexities, not confusing spiritual jargon, not condemning man-made dogma, not temporary spiritual ecstasy...simple faith, like that of a child. Innocent, doe-eyed awe of God and His gifts. Excitement at the taste of His presence. Active obedience when God's fatherly voice beckons. Unadulterated joy, dancing in the shower of life God rains on us. You may be thinking, "Wow Shane, this all sounds pretty cliche and childish. What kind of maturity is in a spirituality like that?" Yeah, the Pharisees were worried about maturity too, about looking and acting the part...and in doing so, they weighed a lot of people down with false definitions of God's heart. With His next breath, Jesus went on to address those kind of people:

If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!" (Matthew 18:1-7)

I guess what Jesus was saying to the disciples and Pharisees alike, in a not-so-crass kinda way, was that age-old adage we so easily forget to live by: "Keep it simple, stupid." A child doesn't view their relationship with a good father burdensome or demanding. A child doesn't see their role in life as demanding and depressing. In fact, I doubt a child thinks about these things at all. What a child does focus on is having fun, living as close to their father's heart as possible, crawling onto his lap whenever possible to snuggle and be loved, and in-turn, love others with a love like the father's. (of course, I'm also speaking metaphorically about God the Father). Oh that we would keep it simple and not ruin spirituality with our penchant for complicating things.

Even the law-experts of Jesus' day knew what the simple truth was: "On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. 'Teacher,' he asked, 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?' 'What is written in the Law?' he replied. 'How do you read it?' He answered, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, love your neighbor as yourself.' 'You have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Do this and you will live.' (Luke 10:25-28, emphasis added) Notice that the expert knew the answer, the fundamental purpose of humanity, and yet so many experts like himself chose to view God as a puzzle to solve. Maybe thinking, like so many of us do, "God expects a lot more than a child-like faith, how could the answer be so basic? Doesn't He want us to go 'deeper' in our knowledge of Him?" He does, but the depth of intimacy with Him comes from grasping the most basic, yet strong, roots of our faith - love God, love people. Child-like simplicity, empowered by the strength of an all-consuming God. Hand-in-glove.

So I ask you now, how do you read it? That was the question Jesus posed to the expert, and He's posing it to you this very second. Will you read God like He's unattainable, unreachable, exclusive to the ones who seem to have it all together. Or will you choose to read God like a child, one who enjoys God with your whole heart, loving Him with what you can give as you are now instead of thinking you need to be someone you assume He wants you to be before you can give anything. Stop over-complicating a God that's on your doorstep. Stop over-analyzing a Father who only wants to love on you. Come to the well. Drink fully. Enjoy the water like a child would.