The Lake Avenue Essays, # 1: The Missing Picture … Who I Am

There is never a good time for a father to die.  I was thirteen when my dad died.  That was in 1961; he was forty-eight.  It was my dad, and it was the absolute worst time.

My brother had joined the Navy two months earlier, right out of high school.  He had always been my dad’s favorite.  Now, I thought, I would have my dad to myself.  But I didn’t, and wouldn’t … of course.

The previous fall, I had started junior high—you know, that time when boys wonder about being a man and are confused about girls.  I’d always had a crush on some girl, but now….  The guys would snicker, “Have you noticed Sue P.?”  My dad and I would never have those conversations.

The school tried to encourage the special closeness of fathers and sons by sponsoring a breakfast that was coming up soon.  All the guys would be there with their dads.  I couldn’t go, even when my mom suggested I ask my Uncle Bud.  I just wanted to hide, and there would be no escaping the shame.

Life moves on.  But deep hurts don’t often move on.  They’re just there, like some background dirge accompanying the good moments and happy times, like a void that refuses to be filled.

I became conscious of the void when I was six or seven, when I discovered the family pictures in a big drawer in the old secretary by the front door.  The drawer was so heavy that I had to ask my mom to take it out for me.  The pictures were mostly loose, mostly black and white, though some were sepia-toned.  There was a painted high school graduation photograph of my Aunt Dee.  She was beautiful.  There were pictures of family and friends.  What most caught my attention were those of my brother.

One picture had him standing by a coffee table with a huge birthday cake and one big candle.  In another, he was perhaps a year-and-a-half, sitting on my dad’s lap, pecking away for all the world as though intent on writing a composition.  My dad’s face was beaming, obviously proud.

But one picture was missing.  I remember more than once going back to look for it in that big drawer, but I never found it.  I never asked about it.  I was afraid of the answer.  The missing picture was the one I was sure had to be there, somewhere—the picture of just me and my dad.

The years moved on.  My life became a question whose answer was self-interpreted.  I began to conclude what a boy without guidance must:  I didn’t matter to my dad.  So, who am I?

1968 came.  Hope was assassinated and I got a letter from the president:  “Greeting….”  I knew where I was going (Vietnam), and I did.  Would I be a man?  When you don’t know who you are, such tests of manhood prove nothing.  I stood my ground, fought back, got wounded, came home.  The question was still there.

Life went tumbling on.  In the deep inner workings that seek to justify existence, I told myself I was better than my brother.  Everything proved it:  Michelle and I got married in 1970, we became Christians, went to Bible school and became missionaries, had three kids.  I was a teacher.  I was a church leader and counselor.  I was looked up to.  Yet, something was unsettling me.  As I counseled guys, I found them confused, struggling with a private picture of God as judge, never smiling, always demanding, never satisfied.  Their struggle was familiar, for I saw that same God.  I recalled what A.W. Tozer wrote, that what comes to mind when you think of God is the most important thing about you….  So how could I help people trust God when I saw him like they did?  I was playing church with these peoples’ lives.  Like them, I was spending my life on a performance treadmill, chasing the smile of God.

I reasoned that God loves me, right?  He always did what’s best.  I’m going to heaven—he promised.  But did God even like me, or just put up with me?  Did I really matter to him?  Did he value me at all?

In a moment of desperation, I got honest with God.  It was 2006 or 2007—I’m certain of the moment if not the date.  I sat at my desk and I cried out, “What do you really think of me, Lord?  I have to know!”

God’s timing is not often early—and never late.  With the words barely out of my mouth, a verse came to mind I had thought of only when doing church discipline:  “My son, despise not the Lord’s discipline.…  The Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:11,12).

Something was different.  What was that last part?  Delights?  “Lord, you delight in me?”  If ever in my life I received a “word from God,” this was it.  My Father delights in me!  Delight made love concrete.

How…?  God for me had seemed distant, not much involved in my life, just up there, always watching, probably tired of my failures.  I googled, “What does God think of his children?”  I kept seeing the word “adoption,” a term Paul used to describe God taking people into his family.  Adoption had meant little to me in Bible school.  But now I knew:  It’s not just a process, but a father’s perspective.  No wonder Jesus taught his followers to call God “Abba.”  Like a perfect earthly father, he had passionately anticipated the day he would adopt me.  (The “pleasure” he felt in Ephesians 1:5).  God wants to be with me!

We intuitively see God like our own parents, particularly our fathers.  My picture of God was my dad!  But God is not my dad.  God’s discipline, all the troubles and disappointments are simply the proof of his delight in me, a message the Spirit brought to my mind as surely as the sun rises to a new day.

In a moment, God lifted the veil that had kept his true face hidden, and I heard him:  “You saw only that missing picture.  But you are my son.  You are the man I delight in.  And you will always be in the picture with me.”

journey post 27–Reality and the Resurrection … The starting point and why it matters

Evangelical Christianity has taken quite a beating in the past half-century, some of it self-inflicted.  Hypocritical, legalistic, self-righteous, judgmental, irrelevant.…  Such are the adjectives representative of common criticisms.

I’m not here to deny the criticisms: unfortunately, they are more valid than we Christians would like to think.  Yet, while Christians are drawing an abundance of flak, Jesus seems to be doing alright with the people.  Surveys indicate that Jesus remains one of the most popular people ever.  One recent querie among Americans placed him and Abraham Lincoln at the top.  (I don’t think it was the beard.)  One of the most telling censures on Christians is one I’ve quoted before, offered up by Mohandas Gandhi.  Gandhi was deeply interested in Jesus and studied him and his teachings closely, and that fact has much to do with the non-violent strategy he applied to the fight for the liberation of India.  He spent much time with Christians in England while studying to be a lawyer in the 1880s and 90s.  He observed them closely.  What he said captures the essence of any critique of those who claim to follow Jesus:  “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  Things haven’t changed much….

Whether you like or dislike Christians, the issue in Christianity is actually not the people. The issue is and always will be one thing, one person:  Jesus himself.  But, how do we know that he is who he said he is?

Looking at his followers doesn’t seem to give us much help on this.  True, Jesus told his followers to be salt and light.  True, he told them that others would know that they were his disciples (i.e., apprentices who actually learned from him and lived it out) if they loved one another as he loved.  And, true, they haven’t done this.  So then: do we walk away, saying, “A pox on both your houses”?  Many have walked away, bitter and frustrated at the legalistic and impossible demands of those they once looked up to.

There is a way to discover the truth.  When I returned from Vietnam in 1969 with more questions than answers, it didn’t take long to realize that there was only one question that really begged … SCREAMED … for an answer.  It was not the question of myth: whether Jesus actually lived or not.  I was surprised to learn that even most atheists or skeptics don’t deny that he was an actual person.  Nor do most deny his claim to be the Messiah (Christ), nor that he was a great teacher—nor that he was crucified.

The central question was and always is the resurrection.  Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

The resurrection was the message that the apostles preached, the validation of who Jesus is and what he died for.  The empty tomb is the sine qua non of Christianity.  Without it, Christianity is a deluded religion, foisted upon deluded people by a well-meaning but deluded leader—or a charlatan—people who are left with no forgiveness, left with no hope.  C. S. Lewis forced me to ponder whether he was a liar, or a lunatic, or just who he said he was—those are, pretty much, the available options.

I began this blog, lo these many months ago, seeking to recount my zigzag journey.  I wanted to work up from those first questions, proceed through my search, and come up with the evidence for the resurrection, and go on from there.  Presto!  But as I reflected on my own journey, I remembered that one of my primary reasons for doing this gig was to help others avoid some of the same pitfalls and zigzags that this Donkey failed to see.  Much of what I did not see was because my own assumptions (read that: pride) left me thinking I could do this on my own—not a very healthy way of approaching God, after all.  It took some 35 years for me go from the empty tomb to recognizing a big problem in my life: that I lived on a performance treadmill.  I lived on that contraption because my functional theology was operating from a fundamentally wrong view of God, a God who seemed more interested in making me know my place than in enjoying my company.  This is the reason I zigzagged from my initial idea and spent time writing and thinking about the conscience God gave us, what it means that God is a father who delights in his children—and allows evil in this world.

If I could lead you to the door of the empty tomb itself, you might still question why it matters at all.  If you’re one of those (most people) who see God primarily as judge (or worse), waiting to highlight your every flaw for all the universe to see, why in the world would you want to get to know such a being and spend your life trying to live up to his impossible expectations—much less spend eternity in his presence?  But, just perhaps, the reality and your thinking don’t quite match up?  If you’d like to find out, the door of the tomb is a good place to start.  Ready?

journey post 25–Honest to God, part 3: the quandary of a good God and the image of a good father

NOTE:  In these two posts (25 and 26), I try to explain that understanding the father heart of God is critical in understanding why there is evil in the world.  This post paints a fuller picture of what I mean when I talk about the “father heart” of God.

*****

April 20^th was Easter.  Christians around the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus.  I became a Christian in 1971 on the strength of knowing it really happened.  The resurrection is the sine qua non of Christianity.  (We will look at that soon.)  If it didn’t happen, Christianity is a crock and we are its fools.

For some 35 years after I began following Jesus, there was a piece missing from my Christian life.  Last post dramatized that fact by pointing to the day I cried out—honest at last with myself and God—and discovered that God delights in me.  That day began a process that would bring me to find the missing part, a very big chunk:  knowing God’s father heart.  Knowing that heart would free me from a number of puzzles, including our question about how he can be good when he allows evil to fill his world.

Christians routinely call God “Father.”  I did.  But God’s father heart is not the same thing.  Each of us lives out the well-spring in our hearts, and God does the same.  That’s one reason Jesus put emphasis on the heart.  Knowing God’s father heart shows us who he is, how he sees people, what are his desires and intentions.  His father heart can be illustrated by thinking what we mean when we urge a man to be a “real father” to his children:  be responsible for them, be there for them, be strong for them, protect them, provide, teach, nurture, discipline, guide, inspire, care for them—and love them unconditionally—all that.  The God who invented parenthood and motherhood is himself all he intended fathers to be.

I was blinded from seeing this by be a couple things:  first, my own deeply entrenched performance mindset, which lay behind my functional theology; and secondly, teaching about God I’d received over the years, some of which portrayed him demanding holiness in a way that he could never be satisfied with.  Had you asked me, “Do you know God?” I would have responded, “Of course,” an assumption that Christians have: we equate knowing God with having eternal life, as Jesus said in John 17: “This is eternal life, that they may know you…”  Questions about his goodness and love remained.  “Delight” didn’t compute with “Judge.”  Jesus saved me from the wrath of God—or was it from God himself?

The day I heard the word “delight” (from Proverbs 3), you could’ve knocked me over with a feather, I was so thrilled and full of joy.  I also had questions, like:  How did I miss this so long?  I soon began a search like I did so many years before about the resurrection—only in those days we didn’t have Google.

Everything pointed to something I’d hardly thought about since Bible school: adoption by God.  That meant looking at God as a father—but how could that be important?  I didn’t realize then just how much my idea of God as a father was equated with my dad as a father.   The truth would change my thinking.

 

Above:  The slave of the General:   Judah Ben-Hur with Quintus Arrius

Below:  The adoption ceremony in Rome.  (Charlton Heston and Jack Hawkins)

Adoption was familiar to early Christians as a status of high privilege, honor, and responsibility as the heir.  If you’ve seen “Ben Hur,” that’s what happened to Judah when made a son by the general whose slave he was.  Paul used adoption to illustrate the relationship God intended to have with us.  Adoption showed an almost hidden side of God, unfamiliar to many, especially to me:  Paul spotlighted a passionately proud father who eagerly anticipated adopting male and female “sons.”  And to these sons, God would give his Spirit—in part, to lead them to recognize the majestic, holy God as “Abba, Father.”  Think of a young Caroline Kennedy running around the White House saying, “My daddy’s the President!”

This fuller picture of God as Father (as a father) didn’t change any of God’s “normal” attributes, e.g., sovereign ruler, majestic judge, etc.  But it changed the perspective through which I viewed him:  I am my Father’s son.  It changed the idea of “knowing God” from a synonym for salvation to a relationship, a journey of discovery in which I am now getting to know an adoptive father who has been there for me all the time—even when I doubted him.  The closer I got to him, the more I realized that this is not about me.   There is no ground for presumption here.  It is rather a reminder and teacher of grace.

About the same time I discovered adoption, I began immersing myself in the four Gospel accounts of Jesus.  As I did, I began to see his heart, a bigger picture of his agenda, and what was important to him.  What was important was his Father.  Jesus reintroduced his disciples to God—as his Father, their Father.

The disciples had bad functional theology that assumed God—and his Messiah–was going to kick Roman butt and set up his kingdom on their time table and they would sit on his right and left.  But Jesus taught them—as no one had—about who God is and what his real priorities are.  He taught them the importance of the heart, of loving others, of humility, and being a servant.  The disciples were denser donkeys than I, it seemed.  He was teaching them:  to know God, the purpose of eternal life.  Jesus was patient while they struggled with faith, debated who was greatest, even denied and deserted him.

Jesus didn’t use the word “adoption,” but he taught and modeled what it meant to be a son to his Father.  It was he who taught his disciples to address God as “Father.”  He used the word “Abba,” an intimate familial term.  This was new thought.  He taught them what the Father is like—a strong, loving, and trustworthy father, a king who would restore justice and love.  He called God “my Father and your Father.”  His followers were family, loyal and submissive to the Father and one another, loving one another and those without.  They learned (what a disciple does), and responded by loving and serving him as trust grew, abandoning their own agendas and self-focused will—even if it meant a cross.

God wants to be known and has made himself known.  He gave us all a clue in our own conscience, in creation, by how he led Israel, by the Scriptures he entrusted to them, and finally, in Jesus.  “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

I’m seeking here to cast a different light on the very old question about how God can be good and allow evil.  It cannot be answered by adding up all the evil and concluding thereby that a God who permits it must either be evil himself or powerless to stop it.  No, we must first see what is actually in his heart and mind; and the closest I can bring you to seeing this—whether you’re a Christian or not—is by analogy to a good father heart.  Jesus used that to teach about his Father, who is like a good father.

Parenthood has much to teach us about how God operates.  It is part of how we are made in his image.  The parent-child relationship has much to tell us about how God relates with people.

More on this in part 4,  The terrible corollary to freedom: evil, real love, trust, and good.

New post up tomorrow evening, D.V.: Honest to God

I have a new post ready to go tomorrow, and another nearly so that I plan to put up in a week.  Both address something called my “functional theology”:  ie, what I really thought of God and how I confronted that dysfunctional thinking 35 years after becoming a Christian. Two questions were closely related for me:  Does God actually love me, and is he truly good?

journey post 18–C.S. Lewis meets Charles Dickens: Mankind was my business!

We all kick ourselves from time to time for missing things we later realize were important.  That kick has been an oft repeated thematic note in my life.  I hear that note now as I write….

I learned a lot from reading C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity in 1970. This little volume played an important part in my becoming a Christian in 1971. Regrettably, there was much that I paid scant attention to, chiefly a statement I’ve quoted twice before on this blog.  The statement is his summary of the “Law of Human Nature”:  “First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.  Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way.  They know the Law of Nature; they break it.  These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in,” (p. 8).  The “curious idea” is delivered via conscience, and generally concerns our relationships with others.

As I read in 1970, I was so focused on investigating Christianity that I assumed Lewis was using this law of human nature as a back way in to telling us about God’s law, e.g., the Ten Commandments; so I read into his words all the list of sins that young men think about.  While I accepted his statements about right and wrong as a given (this is no longer the case in our post-modern world), I was unable to distinguish basic right and wrong from my legalistic list of sins.  I see now that he was doing just what he said he was: using the familiar—conscience and guilt and our questions about who or what is behind it all—to help us get a clue to the unknown:  the meaning of the universe.  My long-established performance mindset blinded me so that I was mostly concerned with how not to get myself clobbered by God while not appearing to be a fanatic.  I missed his point about this law of human nature being the foundation of all clear thinking.  Had I done so, I might have saved myself much grief and many zigzags.

Let me pick up here where I left Scrooge and Marley in Journey Post 13.

When Scrooge inquires about the enormous chain that specter carries, Marley explains it is the chain he had made in life though selfish greed.  We get the point right away, of course, though Scrooge is left puzzling over how such a great man of business could be faulted for his acumen. 

“Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.  The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

These words are wonder-filled, carefully crafted by Dickens, whose Christian values were prominent subtexts in his works as he tried to awaken his fellow Englishmen to the plight of those around them.  Scrooge is left wondering at the words and terrified by his vision.  He climbs into his curtained bed that Christmas Eve with nary a vision of sugar plums dancing, only great dread and unease.

Dickens and C.S. Lewis share a sense of the dramatic, albeit Lewis works it out a bit more cerebrally.  They both recognize that a healthy sense of fear, of dread and unease, is good for us from time to time—as long as it concerns the right thing.

My fellow Evangelicals might wish that Dickens had made his Christianity a bit more explicit, with Scrooge coming to understand that Jesus had paid for his sin of self-centered greed, but Dickens was here more focused on how Christian values work out in life than on giving a formula for how to secure a ticket to heaven.  Lewis, by his exposition of the “law of human nature” with right and wrong being a clue to the meaning of the universe, was seeking to bring us to clearly think about just what is our business, and about who or what might also be concerned and what that means….

Scrooge’s life was in some ways a parable of my own.  I may not have been chasing every penny and farthing, but my life has been assuredly as self-centered as his.  His sense of dread was marvelously resolved in that single eve.  Mine took a more lengthy and zigzaggy route to resolution.

Here is why it was right for Lewis to begin his book with right and wrong:  I, like many, confused Lewis’ “law of human nature” with my own thinking then about religious do’s and don’ts.  Lewis’ concern (and God’s, in my understanding from Scripture) is much deeper.  The law of human nature is written on the conscience by God to help us understand how to live in a world of others.  It also intuitively teaches us something about our creator:  how he cares about people (his business) and how we are to do so as well.

We misinterpret God when our primary picture of him is the great, fierce King and Judge sitting on a throne, surrounded by a sea of adoring worshippers.  The Bible does paint such a picture—he is King and he is Judge—but that is only one aspect.  Were that the whole picture, then I would have to say that Mark Twain had it right when he said we should take a good book along to heaven so we don’t get bored….

Marley’s cry that mankind was his business, charity (i.e., sacrificial love that gives and serves others), mercy, forbearance, benevolence, and, I might add, justice, reflect the values that Jesus himself taught.  Such was not incidental but central in his teaching.  For example, when he spoke of the “golden rule” (a part of the law of human nature), he said that that “is the law and the prophets” (Matthew 7:12).   The religious teachers of his day taught conformity to tradition, to outward duty and action; Jesus was concerned with action emanating from a holy heart—a heart in line with his Father’s perspective.

The law of human nature reflects what conscience tells us as members of the human community.  To abide by this law does more to show our love for God than much else: it reflects his chief concern and will as expressed by Jesus when he was asked what was the greatest commandment:  “’You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  A second is equally important:  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40, NLT).

This is God’s business.  Scrooge would learn that on that dreaded Christmas Eve.

a meta journey post: Outside the Box, Inside Common Sense

I like to think outside the box.  For example, I love stories about time travel, especially those involving actual historical events.  One of my favorite things to do as a kid was to imagine myself at the Battle of the Alamo and how I would have changed the outcome.  (I didn’t think about how winning that battle might have cost Texans their war for independence.)   I was 15 when John F. Kennedy was gunned down, and I’ve often mused on the what ifs of that tragedy and our subsequent history.

Thinking outside the box of historical events is generally a safe fantasy that can teach valuable lessons about choice and consequences and the complicated elements that make up every life event.

Thinking outside the box when it comes to Christianity and the Bible feels unsafe and dangerous—and it can be.  If you think that Republicans and Democrats have trouble agreeing on anything, think about the number of different protestant denominations and independent churches there are.  I spent the summer of 1977 studying French in Quebec at a small Bible institute, and there I began to understand why there are so many different kinds of churches:  When I arrived, the atmosphere was obviously strained.  The faculty had recently split because of a disagreement over whether Jesus had taken his literal blood to heaven to show the Father.  (Don’t ask.)  I’ll never forget the palpable hurt, the human detritus strewn about by those who valued their own opinions over love.   My take-away from this then was great puzzlement as to how on earth people who love Jesus can’t tolerate those who also love Jesus but disagree with them.  I found no real answer for this until I rediscovered adoption.

I was introduced to such distorted and unChristian thinking when we began our Bible school training in 1972.  We were among Christian fundamentalists for the first time.  Fundamentalists get a bad rap for their biblical literalism, legalism, and reputation for shooting their wounded.  Yet these people loved Jesus and were excited about Scripture—but I soon figured out that any variation of thought or teaching was looked on with suspicion.  I felt I had gone back to the McCarthy era, focused now on doctrinal loyalty, not political loyalty.  I was overwhelmed and too fearful of the consequences to question it then. 

In the midst of this, a wise teacher told us that if we ever think we’ve discovered new truth, we need to carefully check out what the Church has taught over the centuries.  This was common sense.   He did leave us some wiggle room:  Luther, after all, rediscovered justification by faith, though few others thought that his thinking outside the box would get him any further than the executioner.

Luther posting his “95 Theses”

Some six years ago, I made my rediscovery of spiritual adoption, and along with it, the father heart of God.  I was seeing red warning lights flashing, but Scripture does teach adoption—we’d been taught it in Bible school from Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians.  But the picture I was now forming from the Gospels of a father who wanted me to know how special I was to him, seemed like wishful thinking.  I couldn’t reconcile this with the sovereign, holy, righteous God angry with sin that I heard about week by week.  Yet Jesus likened God’s care to an earthly father’s and called him “Abba” (akin to “Papa”).  Paul (Eph 1:5) seemed to say that God anticipated adopting children with great pleasure and passion.

Among conservative churches, one hears warnings against teaching that emerged in the 19^th century about the “fatherhood of God,” presenting God as a kindly, grandfatherly type, complete with long white beard, who loves everyone the same and overlooks sin.  As I studied adoption and God’s role as father, I realized that there was no serious theological writing about God in this role.  There was plenty on his role as creator and judge, but no one ever mentioned the “fatherhood of God,” perhaps out of fear.  It occurred to me that spiritual McCarthyism was still alive and well.

In my study I found theologians consciously focused on the aspects of God that promoted his “glory”—his majesty, sovereignty, holiness, and righteousness—in order to counter the other teaching and protect God’s reputation.  (Protect God?  As if!)  Their books are still used in seminaries to train pastors.

The unfortunate result of this was that the Church (that’s people, by the way) was left in the dark about what it means to call God “Father.”  Left to their own, people imagine a God like a bad parent—and God comes out as judge, as demonstrated in one survey that shows ¾ of Americans, including Christians, view God in a negative light.  The truth about God’s father heart got swallowed up in erudite discussions and tomes that give adoption little space.  In many churches, what is communicated about God is a picture that leaves congregants running on the performance treadmill.  I call this the “ministry of condemnation.”  It leads to the very legalism and lack of tolerance that left me so puzzled in Quebec.

As you might suspect, when I started looking into adoption, I went with fear and trembling—quietly at first—searching out anything that would indicate I was not chasing after something to bolster my self-esteem or find a friendly God.  But I was spurred on by a promise in the prophet Jeremiah (29:13):  “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”  Long story short, one day in the library (where else?) I came upon a tape which linked me to some books which linked to some respected theologians and teachers who were also rediscovering adoption.  These people were seeing and teaching his father heart without neglecting his great holiness and majesty and all that gives him glory.

I’ve been around long enough, and I’ve been in leadership enough, to know how easy it is to play church and give out “authoritative” pronouncements about God that scare rather than attract.  I’ve seen enough destructive thinking about God and the wrong teaching that promotes it.  I want to promote good—and accurate—thinking about God through these blog posts.  That is what drives them (I hope). What we think of when we think of God is the most important thing about us.  If we think of him only as a judge or worse, we run from him or run to keep him “happy.” If we know him as Father, we run to him and with him.

If you’d like to explore for yourself, here are some resources I treasure that aided my search and helped  turn me from fear (by knowing his love) to freedom in a relationship with God my Father in the way I believe he intended:

Children of the Living God: Delighting in the Father’s Love, by Sinclair Ferguson, especially his chapter “The Spirit of Adoption.”  Ferguson is a pastor and teacher whose perspective on God changed radically as he explored and realized what it meant to be a son of God.

Sinclair Ferguson

Knowing God by J.I. Packer, a popular theologian and teacher now old as dirt, was first published in 1973.  Two chapters, “The Heart of the Gospel,” and “Sons of God,” are worth the price of the book.

J. I. Packer

A sermon series on adoption was given by Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.  Keller’s sermons are engaging and thought provoking.  Sermons are available for download ($2.50 for mp3) at: http://www.redeemer.com.  Go to the “Sermon Store.”  Messages I have found particularly helpful are: “The Experience of Adoption.” February 8, 1998; “Witness of the Spirit,” April 6, 1997.

Tim Keller

Now, (hopefully), back to C.S. Lewis in the next post.

journey post 16: A Son’s Heart Set Free

(Part III-a , on The grammar school of freedom)

“If the Son sets you free, then you will be really free”  (John 8:36).

The first time I remember reading those words was 1970 or ‘71.  I had this little paperback New Testament, a new, contemporary English version that I was reading so much it was falling apart.

But the verse puzzled me.  Free?  Close by was another verse that people quote a lot:  “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  Jesus didn’t seem to be talking about being free from hell.

Freedom was on everyone’s lips in the 60s.  It was the time when our nation, free from the Nazi menace, was getting schooled in what we thought freedom meant, nationally, racially, personally.  Having “survived” Vietnam, I felt very alive and free.  But I would soon be stepping into a religious world beset by legalism, and would not recognize it because I did know how legalistic and performance-minded I already was.  The speed of the performance treadmill in my new world would be considerably faster.  It took 35 years for me to finally get off the treadmill and understand Jesus’ words, “really free.”

I had been confused by all the personal freedom that people were claiming for themselves in the 60s.  I thought there was something wrong with it, but I was unsure why.  Back then, it was likely due to my legalistic sense of self-righteousness:  I was okay, they were not.  They were just selfish and sinful.  I was to be reinforced in that condemnatory view by the new religious milieu into which I was about to enter.

But there was more to  that view than selfishness, which most would agree is wrong.  The 60s thinking went something like this:  “I am free when I am free from all hindrances and obstacles to do what I want.”  The idea wasn’t new by any means; what was new was its wide acceptance.  Within a few years, it would become the unconscious working assumption of the shapers and movers of our nation:  parents, teachers, lawyers, business people, politicians, et al.

So what could have been wrong with that?  Did we not experience a “new birth of freedom,” becoming more tolerant, more accepting and encouraging to people pursuing their individual dreams?  Yes, we did.  But the idea of individualistic freedom is not wrong just because it is selfish.  It is wrong, I now realize, because it does not take account of the complex nature and contradictory desires of the human heart.  (More on this in the next post.)

If there is one thing I have learned in forty-odd years as a Christian, it is that the important things of life come from the heart.  From the heart comes the “ask not what your country can do for you,” the sacrifices on Normandy Beach, the countless acts of charity and love, the routine kindness of friends; and from it also comes cheating on tests, fathers walking away from families, Auschwitz and My Lai.  We puzzle over evil in our world, but in our hearts, we know the answer because we sense what our own conscience says is our inability to consistently do the right.  History is a mirror that we ignore at our peril, a mirror which tells us not to trust in the “basic goodness” of mankind.  Individualistic freedom has become so important that we are unable to evaluate the larger society around us and understand just what is being sucked away from us.  It is being sucked away from our hearts, and we are blind to it.

I was as blind as anyone as long as I was on that treadmill.  Scripture says we cannot evaluate and help someone else as long as we have a log in our own eye (Matthew 7).  In my case, the log was a treadmill….

Here now is a foretaste of the freedom that was to come into my life at the end of the zigzag….

By 2006, I had not solved the underlying problem of what made me a people-pleaser or performance minded.  I was just becoming aware of my thinking, how wrong it was, how self-destructive.  Our church put a premium on pursuing personal holiness such that those who failed were suspect—which set some to running even faster on the treadmill without prospect of being acceptable.

I finally got honest with myself the same as I did on a hospital bed in Vietnam long ago.  I admitted that I did not know if God cared about me at all.  So I asked him:  “Lord, what do you really think of me?  I must know.  I can’t go on like this!”  Sitting in my despair, a verse from Proverbs came to mind, (3:12), that I’d only ever heard when our church disciplined errant members:  “…the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”  Delights?  “Lord,” I said, “you delight in me??”  It was one of those moments when the dawning light changes everything.  Delight?  How could it be?

I Googled my question, and was shocked but intrigued to see links referencing the teaching we had once received in Bible school about our spiritual adoption, that God the Father has adopted those who trust in Jesus as his children.  Back then, it had bounced off my emotional baggage.  I remembered something my friend Andy told me when they adopted a son.  I asked him (this was 1973), “Are you going to tell him he’s adopted?”  “Of course,” came the reply.  “I want him to know just how special he is.”

I began in earnest, exploring “adoption” in Scripture, reading everything I could get my hands on in theology books (not much there) and the personal experiences of various other Christians.  (My reflection and research eventually led to a thesis that I called, “God is out to get you.”)  What did it mean that God is my “Father.”  Wasn’t it merely a title used in prayer?

Long story short, my thinking was getting revised by what I was learning.  I began to focus my Bible reading on the Gospel accounts to find out if Jesus said anything about it.  I read the Gospels so much I began to feel as though I were one of those disciples walking around with Jesus, spending time with him, watching and listening, learning from him to think like him, to know his agenda and what was important to God.  What I was learning was all about what it meant to be an adopted son of the Father.  Jesus didn’t use the word “adoption,” but his teaching was all about a relationship with God and what the Father is like.  Jesus’ confrontations with the leaders were about their legalism  and their distorted view of God:  Christian writer A.W. Tozer once commented, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”*  I began to see how distorted my own picture of God truly was so I set out to get to know him as I had never before.  Jesus taught his disciples to call God their “Abba,” a familiar, intimate name like “Papa.”  He taught them that the Father (Abba) is like the perfect earthly father who always loves, always gives, always protects and provides, who loves unconditionally and never pulls away.  He showed them God by his life: “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.”  Much fell into place for me as I read Jesus, learned all over again to be his disciple, an “apprentice.”

On the day at that writer’s conference that I realized I would never be in the picture with my earthly dad, I also found something greater:  the identity and the key to the freedom I had searched for all my life.  I am my Father’s son.  I am adopted.  This is my identity.  I am loved and delighted in simply because I now belong to him.  Being a son was the key to my freedom.  And I still almost hear the quiet voice of my Father in heaven saying to me, “My son, you will always be in the picture with me.”

Free at last.

_____

* The Knowledge of the Holy, The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1961), 1.

journey post 15: My Old Man in the Sky (The grammar school of freedom, Part II)

Self-righteous, judgmental, legalistic, hypocritical, irrelevant jerk.

These are strong words, heard loudly and often, especially in speaking about evangelical Christians.  Some Christians simply dismiss such talk as “persecution for Jesus’ sake.”  But thoughtful Christians—and many non-Christians—recognize that those words are not without validity, that those broadly termed “evangelicals” do not quite fit the picture of salt and light that Jesus had in mind, that they are not known for reflecting him by love for one another in sacrificial servanthood.

A popular pastor in Manhattan, Tim Keller, has gone so far as to say that the “greatest hindrance to people becoming Christian is other Christians.”  He’s not alone: he cited G.K. Chesterton to the same effect.  I ran across a similar quote from Gandhi.  Gandhi spent years in Great Britain when younger in the company of Christians.  Gandhi got much of his inspiration for his nonviolent strategy from Jesus.  But he was not treated very well in “Christian” Britain.  Among his words are these stingers:  “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”*

Gandhi…the way you might picture him, and as he was as a young man

I’m not here to bash Christians or defend them.  I am one.  I am here to explore why, not long ago, the words at the top could have referenced me….  Well, maybe not “jerk.”  I was “courteous and kind,” and other Boy Scout words, but inside the heart (the thing God sees), those words really did apply.

Previously, I mentioned that I set myself up to buy into a legalistic version of evangelical Christianity while reading C.S. Lewis on the “law of human nature,” the moral law in our conscience.  But I also made a point of saying that it was not the Church that made me a legalist.  I arrived at the Church door with my legalism already in place.  That’s why I’m writing about it now, before continuing with Lewis.

What made me a legalist?   I’d better define the word.  The term is thrown around a lot among Christians and by others to refer to them.  The word refers to a person who strictly adheres to some law or moral code, to the letter of the law rather than its spirit.  In a religious context, it generally is used in two ways:  First, it refers to a person whose reliance (faith) in attaining salvation is based on how well they keep the law.  Secondly, it refers to a person who judges conduct—their own or others—by the law.  The Pharisees, who clashed with Jesus so much, have given their very name to the idea behind legalism.  Their conflicts with Jesus were about man-made tradition and performance-oriented minutia used to make themselves (and their followers) acceptable.  They missed God’s intention entirely.

A Pharisee (portrayed by actor Anthony Quinn)

Talk with a legalist for long, and you’ll see that they strive to look good in their own eyes by comparing themselves with others.  (I was a “kind” legalist, but still l tried to justify myself.)  Legalists may feel smug about their ability to do what their law demands.  Yet, since even the legalist is human, there will be times when, as in Lewis’ explanation of the great “unease,” they know the imperfection within.

Another way to describe a legalist is as a person with a performance mindset—a person who is seeking acceptance with God, others, or even themselves by their behavior.  You may know an adult child who lives their life seeking to earn the approval of a parent.  No matter what, no matter how well, it’s never quite good enough.  That verdict may be only in the mind, may not be conscious—but it’s there.

That was me.  Only, I didn’t know it.  I could have debated you up and down how I was a Christian, saved by “grace” (a free gift from God), received by faith.  Yet, in the quiet moments, I too had this “great unease.”  In those moments I wondered whether, if I looked over my shoulder, would I see his smile or that critical eye?  Like anyone else, I wanted to hear a “well done!” but expected a “not good enough.”

So how did I get that way?  For some 35 years, I never once thought myself a legalist.  I did begin to see my performance mindset clearly about eight years ago.  I’d long known that I tended to be a “people pleaser,” i.e., I tried to please people by my behavior, but I figured that’s just the way I am.  Then I saw how much a cloud of uncertainty hung over my relationship with God:  it would never have occurred to me that God was pleased with me.  Oh, I knew that I would go to heaven because Jesus paid for my sin, but I assumed I would become a permanent  occupant of some back seat, some lower shelf, some divine dog house (no humor intended), while God enjoyed spending time with the others.  Why I thought this way remained a mystery to me until, a couple years ago, I had to write a story for a writer’s conference.

I wrote about my relationship with my dad, and how I had grown up believing he favored my older brother over me.  My dad died when I was 13, just a few weeks after my brother left to join the navy.

At the conference, the story was returned with this comment: “You’re flying over at 10,000 feet, looking down on someone else”—a detailed snapshot without feeling.  That night, I fell asleep praying and awoke remembering a discovery:  a drawer filled with family photos.  I was six or seven.  One photo stood out:  my brother, Fred, perhaps a year and a half old, sitting on my dad’s lap, pecking away on a typewriter, my dad’s obvious delight captured in time, inscribed in my mind.

I kept going back to the drawer looking for a picture I was sure must be there: the one with just me and my dad.  I never found it.

The hurt from that “missing picture” hit me like an unexpected wave.  I didn’t exist to my dad, it was obvious, evidenced by him dying shortly after my brother left.  That hurt was buried in the baggage I carried when I became a Christian.  I see clearly now how that perception (true or not) tied in with my performance mindset, my compulsion to please, to prove myself better than my brother, and I’ve spent much of my life trying to figure out who I am.  Little wonder that, when we learned how God the Father has adopted us as his children, it made no impression:  research confirms intuition that children gain their initial understanding of God from their parents’ model, especially the fathers.  My model was distant, seemingly uninvolved, not much caring, probably disapproving.

Lo and behold, this is the very picture that most Americans—even most evangelical Christians—have of God:  the old man in the sky, the judge who sits on his throne in heaven.  Jesus may be my friend, but God is my judge.  That is, indeed, great unease.

Jerry Bridges, respected Christian author and discipler now in his 80s, has pointed out that, in his experience, most evangelical Christians live on what he calls a “performance treadmill.”   They are sure of heaven but unsure of God’s acceptance.  The more committed Christians, he notes, run faster on the treadmill, feeling they are falling behind.  They are looking over their shoulders, looking for a smile but expecting that critical eye….

That was me.  And that was my old man in the sky.

*http://thinkexist.com/quotes/mahatma_gandhi/  (accessed 2/19/11)

journey post 14: Grammar School of Freedom

“FREEDOM!”

If you’ve seen the movie “Braveheart,” you likely sat transfixed as I did, contemplating both the horror of the death faced by Scottish warrior William Wallace and the indomitable spirit of the man whose lips emitted that final cry.  What men and women are willing to do to secure freedom for their own people has historically called forth the best impulses of the human heart and mind in self-giving sacrifice—and still does.  That same spirit of sacrifice shown by those who fought World War II is why we call them “The Greatest Generation.”

I am a child of the 1960s.  I remember sitting transfixed, contemplating that spirit as I read stories and watched movies or heard people speak of that generation.  They were not so far removed from us then as now, for they were our parents, our teachers, neighbors, uncles and aunts, still in the prime of life.

The Sixties was the grammar school of my generation.  Grammar school (or, elementary school) is the time when young children soak in the basic structural pieces of learning (the 3 R’s) that enable them to explore and think and verbalize the world around them.  The beauty of the system as it was originally designed was that these building blocks would become internalized in such a way that those basics could be utilized without much conscious thought while continuing to learn.

And so it was that the stories of routine courage and doing the right thing to support the war effort (in jobs and “victory gardens” and innumerable other small acts of selflessness) was also a “grammar school”—those stories penetrated our minds and became such a part of our thinking that words such as “sacrifice” and “service” became closely associated with the word “freedom.”

It was a unique time in which to come of age.  I graduated from Eagle Rock High (Los Angeles) in the summer of 1966.  When I think of the Sixties, my head is usually crowded with pictures of turmoil, trouble, and tension:  the civil rights movement and people being beaten by police and attacked by dogs, more casual sex, routine drugs, burning cities, anti-war protests, and, of course, our nation’s time (and my time) in Vietnam.  Those pictures reflect the cultural memory of an era.

But it did not begin that way….  Contrary to that turmoil-filled snapshot, the decade began with calls to serve and to sacrifice, calls to selfless ideals worthy of the children of our parents.

The “Greatest Generation” had beaten back the Nazis and made the world safe to dream again.  It was a time of high idealism, fresh starts.  The words of our young President, himself a war hero, rang in our ears: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  This was not simply great rhetoric, but precisely captured the spirit of the time.  Our teachers in high school echoed the idealism sparked by his calls to excellence and the vigor with which he pursued life.   We were ready to answer the call to explore and conquer a “new frontier.”  The Peace Corps and civil rights legislation were its natural accompaniment.

We were inspired, too, by freedom.  “Let freedom ring,” as Dr. King proclaimed the dream from the steps of the Lincoln shrine.  Folk songs also proclaimed the themes:  freedom and justice for all, life and peace, help for the poor and oppressed and uneducated:  “How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man?…”  Freedom was on the move throughout Africa and elsewhere: colonialism was dead, it seemed.  Castro was a hero as he led his rebel bands against the powerful dictator Bautista.

Yet freedom took on new, darker, meanings as the decade progressed.  The “free speech movement,” begun at Berkeley in 1964, was a harbinger of a new sense of personal freedom, an individualized independence whose time had come.  It fit right in with our grammar school of freedom that seemed to put its imprimatur upon this more personal freedom.  There was an increasing openness to free love (sex without commitment), and drugs (not so free)…. Even the sex life of our dead President, whispered at first then emblazoned in the tabloids, lent tacit approval (while dampening our idealism).

In mid-decade, Dusty Springfield had a huge hit that reflected the emerging acceptance of a more individualistic form of freedom (and love):

“You don’t have to say you love me

Just be close at hand

You don’t have to stay forever

I will understand

Believe me, believe me

I can’t help but love you

But believe me

I’ll never tie you down.”*

“You don’t have to say you love me” was probably Dusty’s signature song.  It was also a signature song of the 60’s promise of freedom:  “I’ll never tie you down.”  It was the new definition: “I am free when I am free from impediments or obstacles to do whatever I want” (Tim Keller).   The definition would be reflected in our increasing consumerism and insistence on personal rights, and our growing litigiousness.  Hippies became Yuppies and generations since are labeled with variations of “Me.”

While “freedom” was shifting from other-centered idealism to a more me-centered practicality, our idealism was dying.  Being in Southeast Asia at first seemed to be about freedom, but the value of sacrificing for freedom and our early idealism got bogged down in a quagmire that promised only more body bags and mistrusted body counts.  1968 was the nadir of the decade.  The Tet Offensive left us stunned, and our trusted news anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a visit to South Vietnam with the verdict that we could not win.  LBJ announced he would not run again, and the real prospect of a second President Kennedy was exciting.  But it was not to be.  Our idealism and hope finally crashed to the floor on a Memphis motel balcony and a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, and politics-as-usual retook the floor….  “Where have all the flowers gone?” asked Peter, Paul, and Mary.  “Bye Bye, Miss American Pie….”

You may not agree with my analysis of the decade.  Granted, I’m too close to it.  I don’t claim it as objective history, and I’m more concerned anyway with painting a picture here of my own perspective, my context, for the statements I made at the end of last post.  You’re likely wondering what the connection is between all the foregoing and C.S. Lewis, the “law of human nature,” the “great unease,” and the stuff about missing the implications of that law and my setting myself up to buy into a legalistic version of American evangelical Christianity.  I have a lot to share about that in the next two posts.  The connection is our desire for freedom:  We were designed for freedom.  But as the 60s drew to a close, I felt very unfree, though I was inceasingly intrigued by a promise that Jesus made: “If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).  I was intrigued, but would remain puzzled about it for some 30+ years.  That’s why I must write about it here before pronouncing a wrap on Lewis.

In the 1960s, we were chasing freedom, but we ended in bondage.  Chasing freedom, I bought into more legalism.  The Church did not make me a legalist: I already was that, long before.  Legalism and its concomitant, the performance mindset, was a problem for me and for Christianity.  But it was not peculiar to me or to the Church.  It is a problem endemic to us all.

*English lyrics by Vicki Wickham, http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/dusty+springfield/you+dont+have+to+say+you+love+me_20044060.html, (accessed 8/28/13)