On Postmodernism and the Two Camps of Truths

Postmodernism isn't quite as prevalent today as it once was. The postmodern trend and culture is generally considered to have immediately preceded, or even coincided with, the secular project. I have heard it said that we are now in a post-secular society, where all of the previous deconstruction of ideologies has ceased, and people are now beginning to reconstruct their world views, shifting their focus from the individual to larger groups. That being said, it is clear to me, from various conversations I have had, that many of the dominant postmodern ideas still echo today. So I now seek to address these. Bear in mind that, while I do have very strong opinions on the ideas presented in this post, my main purpose here is descriptive, not prescriptive. I am attempting only to explain, to the best of my ability, how things are. Of course, I will make it very clear which worldview I subscribe to, but if I did not do this overtly, it would undoubtedly be conveyed nonetheless through subtleties and inherent bias.

In short, there are two camps of truths, and two groups of people corresponding to these two camps. There are those who say that some people are wrong, and there are those who say that all people are wrong.

In the first camp, we have those who have chosen a particular truth. They may call it religion, philosophy, science, logic, politics, common sense, respect, humanity, citizenship, love, or something else. At the end of the day, though, they have ideas, however vague or explicit, about how things are and how things ought to be. All who agree with their ideas are correct, and all who disagree are wrong. This is not to say that these people are confrontational, disrespectful, or arrogant about their belief (in fact, we shall see that those in this camp are often more open to a change in beliefs than those in the other). It simply means that, whatever they say (or think) that they believe, they actually believe it to be true. And if their truth is really true, then necessarily some other, incompatible truth cannot be. Once again, this does not necessitate that a member of this camp will make a point to let you know when you are wrong. But, if pressed enough, they will likely admit that, yes, according to their belief, you are wrong for believing another. This is the camp to which I belong.

Now, some people are overly zealous about informing others of their wrongness, just as many people are overly sensitive to being informed that they are wrong in another's eyes. Since we are dealing with the fundamental beliefs of a person about life and the world, it stands to reason that any rejection of those beliefs can very easily be perceived as a rejection of the person that holds them. The second camp of truth is often born from such an offense.

In the second camp, we have people that, on the surface, appear the same as those in the first. Often (for reasons that will become clear) their chosen truth is slightly less well-defined, and maybe not all-encompassing, but it exists nonetheless. However, beneath that truth there is a deeper, more fundamental belief. It is the belief that all truths that can be held by a person deserve equal treatment and acknowledgement. This is the defining belief of the second camp, and it is easy to see why it is attractive. Like in the first camp, each person is allowed to find a truth, but there no longer need be any offense given or taken for seemingly incompatible truths, because any truth held by a person becomes valid, by the sheer fact that the person believes it.

Unfortunately, this "miracle cure" of a truth turns out, like so many other miracle cures, to be too good to be true. It advertises options without the need to call anybody "wrong". But take a deeper look at this, and you will likely see a contradiction. By this assertion, every belief is equally valid simply because it is believed. This logic is taken from enlightenment logic used to describe people (i.e. every person is equally valid and valuable by the mere fact of being a person). But in taking this logic, we have to also take with it the limitation in which it applies; namely, that this automatically restricts the truth in question to the person that holds it. In other words, if we wish to use this reasoning to call all truths equally valid, we can only really say that a person's truth is valid for that person. Indeed, this is often the language that is used by postmodernists. As a truth, this is perfectly fine, as long as the implications are fully understood. The only way that seemingly incompatible truths can coexist is if they never occupy the same realm. This says, then, that anyone whose truth claims to say anything about anything outside of the person who holds it, is fundamentally wrong.

And so we see that postmodernism, in an attempt to  avoid having to call anyone wrong, has actually succeeded in calling everyone wrong. It says that, at the end of the day, what anyone believes doesn't really matter, because at best their belief can only be true within the confines of their own mind. So either we all resign ourselves to exist forever isolated within ourselves (which no being, save One, has ever done), or we surrender any hope we have of our truth actually being true. This is why many postmodernists don't concern themselves with the specifics of even their own beliefs, because ultimately, it makes no difference.

On Moralism

Pure behavior change never made anyone a better person. At best, it made them a better actor. So if you look to behavioral trends and practices to measure the moral state of yourself, your community, your country, or your world, you will consistently and drastically overestimate it.

On Modesty

I wasn't originally planning on writing this post. Usually ideas need to bounce around my head for a week or two before I actually get around to writing them down. I currently have one I've been mulling over (something about people truly desiring pain, not pleasure). For whatever reason, the issue of "modesty", particularly as it pertains to women's choices in clothing, has come back into the spotlight recently, and I figured I would at least put in my two cents. Take it for what it's worth.

I will start with some definitions and clarifications. When I am talking about "modesty", I am talking primarily about the types of clothes that people choose to wear and the reactions, specifically erotic or sexual ones, that said clothes induces in other people. While this conversation tends to be geared towards women, I believe it applies to men as well, but in a slightly different way. Furthermore, I am mainly addressing men and women who are part of a Christian covenant community. The things I say in this post have no application to those who do not consider themselves part of such a community, as they are not governed by the same laws. Lest anyone tell you differently, let me reassure you that until you acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, no amount of behavioral change can ever save you, nor do any "Christian" rules apply to you.

I wholeheartedly believe that modesty is, first and foremost, a love issue. It deals with the way that men and women within the covenant community interact with each other and treat each other. There is, however, one exception to this claim. While I cannot speak from experience, I do believe, unfortunately, that there are times when women and girls will purposefully dress and act a certain way for the conscious purpose of gaining attention from other people. This is often done either as an exercise of control or power, as it shows they can control others' responses, or as a desire for validation and approval, as each glance acknowledges, however superficially or incompletely, their value or worth. I firmly believe that this is an issue within the girl's own heart, and should be addressed within the female community, as I, as a male, cannot really identify with this, nor begin to address it. However, I also choose to believe that, particularly within Christian circles, this is not always the motivation for wearing clothes that may be deemed "immodest". It is this other case, where the female's motives are not primarily impure, that I am addressing here.

So back to my claim that modesty is a love issue. We are told over and over again in both the Old and New Testament that we are to love one another (Leviticus 19:18, John 13:34-25, Romans 12:10, Ephesians 4:2, Hebrews 10:24). It is pretty clear that our interactions with one another are to be defined by Godly, Biblical love. Note that this type of love is mainly agape and philia, although storge may have a part in there as well. We are not talking about eros, or romantic love.

Now, as a man, let me come out and say this: I struggle with sexual purity, with lustful thoughts, and with viewing women and their bodies as objects of pleasure instead of co-image bearers of God. And I can say for certain that I am not alone in this. In fact, nearly all Christian men struggle in this area. And I freely admit, this is a sin issue within my heart, and within the hearts of all who struggle with it. Jesus clearly states "anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). In other words, it's the thought that counts, and it counts against us. Every second glance, wandering gaze, and drifting thought is, in the eyes of God, who "looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7), the same as acting on those desires. We deserve the same that adulterers, prostitutes, and rapists deserve, for our crime is the same: taking sex and sexual pleasure outside the context of the intimate, soul-joining, covenanted love of marriage for which it was created.

Let me reiterate: this is a sin issue within the hearts of men in the Church. So often in this conversation we can start pointing the finger at women, blaming them for dressing a certain way. To the women who have experienced this, I would like to say I am sorry. We, as men, have a tendency to do this, and it started all the way back in the Garden of Eden when Adam blamed Eve for making him break the one law God had clearly given to him. In neither case does any action on the part of the woman have any bearing on the fact that the man has knowingly disobeyed God and has thus failed as a man.

This is where the love comes in. Rather than contributing to this fractured relationship, I think we, the men of the Church, need to love the women, and the first way we can do this is by admitting our struggles and taking responsibility for them. We are commanded to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5) and whenever we lust after women, we are failing in this. Furthermore, we are commanded to love women "as Christ loved the Church and gave herself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). Lusting is the exact opposite of this type of love to which we are called. Lust makes the object of our lust a tool to please us, rather than giving ourselves up for women as we are meant to. So the solution to the lust problem is not in looser-fitting clothes, it is in a deeper and more Godly love for women on the part of men, which comes only from experience God's love for us more fully.

Hopefully you see that I am not letting men off of the hook by any means. However, I would now like to address the role of women. I believe women, too, need to love the men of the Church more deeply and more Godly. First of all, you can do this by listening to some of the verses above about love and bearing with us men in humility and gentleness (Ephesians 4:2), and trying to understand where we are coming from in terms of our thoughts and struggles. Please recognize and understand that this is a huge area of weakness and temptation for men in the church today. You can choose to blame society, the media, or Satan himself for this, but I am simply telling you how it is. So, with that in mind, I am asking you all for help. Help us, the men, become better men of God. For guidance on how to do this, I turn to Romans 14, a passage about the "weak" and "strong" Christian.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. (Romans 14:13-15)

While that passage centers on types of food that can be eaten, the logic and lessons clearly apply to other scenarios. In regards to lust and modesty, men are the "weak" Christian. We admit it, we are weak. In that passage, it says to "accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters" (v. 1). Yes, ideally, lust would not be an issue, and you all would be free to wear whatever you want. But since I have told you that it is, I am asking you to help us in this area by not putting "any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister". Just like Paul says about food, I don't think that there is anything inherently sinful about yoga pants or deep v-neck shirts. Recall that, before sin entered the world, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed (Genesis 2:25). However, because we are sinful, I am telling you that these clothes do cause us to stumble. So, on behalf of your brothers in Christ, I ask my sisters in Christ to love us and help us in our area of weakness.

Like I said before, the bottom line in all of this is love. Greater love and respect for women on the part of men so as to not view them as anything less than chosen children of God, and greater love for men on the part of women so as to not knowingly cause them distress on their journey to being transformed into better sons of God. There are plenty of struggles that are more prevalent in men or women, and we, as a community and the body of Christ, need to acknowledge these struggles and respond in love.

Lies, Lesser Truths, and Christmas

I will warn you in advance, if you are looking for a stereotypical Christmas post, this is not it. In fact, this post will get pretty personal, pretty intense, and pretty depressing at parts. But it does relate to Christmas. So, if I haven't dissuaded you yet, please read on.

The focus of this post will be on Romans 1:24-32, specifically verses 25 and 28: "They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.... Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done." Generally, this passage is used to talk about homosexuality and the depravity of man. I'm not going to discuss that in this post, although I think this passage has a lot to say about that topic. I'm choosing to focus instead on the aspects of truth versus lies.

"Truth" is a very common word in the Christian world. We are told to "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15), we are told that Jesus is the Truth (John 14:6), and we are told that the Gospel consists of both truth and grace (Romans 3:23-24). This last one in particular is very popular, and its one of my favorites. Good, Biblical discipleship comes from a balance of speaking truth while extending grace. Truth allows us to see where we have fallen short, and grace allows us to see how God has overcome our shortfalls.

My discipler recently gave me an excellent definition of truth: truth is something you can question, hold up to doubt and examination, and it will remain true. That is the definition of "truth". However, I think there is a big problem that can go overlooked. The problem is that we don't examine our "truth" often enough. And when we don't examine our truth,  remind ourselves of it daily, something dangerous can happen. It starts to change. The change can be subtle at first. Maybe just a slight detail gets omitted. But over time, what happens is truth can mutate. It can lose parts, acquire others, and slowly become something unrecognizable. When true truth acquires these additions, these mutations, it becomes a lie, and we can start to believe a lie. Similarly, when truth loses parts of itself, it becomes a lesser truth, and we start to hang our beliefs on lesser truths. And when we are talking about something as vital as the Gospel, lesser truths are, in fact, lies themselves. We either accept the whole truth of the Gospel, or none of it. Anything less is simply a distortion of the truth and is therefore not true at all. And since the Gospel is truth itself, anything less is not simply smaller, but infinitesimally small compared to the full truth. However attractive or complete they may seem at first, these lies and lesser truths never fail to fail. I do not think it is any coincidence that, in the Garden of Eden, there was a vast garden of trees from which Adam and Eve could eat and only one from which they could not.

This can sound a bit theoretical and not very applicable, so I'm going to give a very personal, very recent example from my own life. Like many people, I often think of the Gospel in terms of truth and grace. Two complimentary aspects. The truth is, to put it crudely, that we have all rejected God's perfect plan and therefore find ourselves in a state of sin, deserving of death. The grace, however, is that God has sent his Son, Jesus, to redeem us from this state, and, by paying our debt with his own death, Jesus has made a way for us to return to God's perfect plan. This is obviously a huge oversimplification, but this is, in my opinion, a pretty accurate, two-sentence summary of the grace and truth of the Gospel. Over time, however, I began to let this full reality take a back seat. On a day to day, practical level, I thought of it more like this: "truth tells us how bad we are, and grace tells us that it's okay". Let me say right now, that is NOT, in any way, a good summary or definition of either grace or truth. I know that now, but at the time, that is, more or less, how I thought of it just a few months ago. This is an example of a mutated truth, or a lesser truth. And I will show you how this "lesser truth" functioned just like a lie in my life.

So around this time, I started to experience some hardships and doubts. I was beginning to feel depressed, and my depression caused be to both seek comfort in what I believed while also questioning and doubting if it was really true. Granted, these are hard to do at the same time even in the best of circumstances, but I fully believe the Gospel has power to dispel all doubts and give comfort at the same time. But remember, at this time, I wasn't experience the full reality of the Gospel on a day-to-day basis. I had exchanged the full truth for a lesser truth. So when I sought comfort from what I believed, I was looking for comfort in the lesser truth "truth says you're pretty screwed up, but grace says that's okay". I challenge you to find comfort in that "truth". I couldn't. And so I came to the conclusion that there is no comfort in truth or grace. And from here, I started to wonder. If there is no comfort to be found in truth or grace, then where could it be found? Does comfort even exist? And as soon as I asked that last question, I had started down a dangerous road. Not because that is a bad question to ask. Like I said, I fully believe that the Gospel, being true truth, fears no questions, doubts, or examinations. But, in asking this question, I had already discounted both truth and grace. In short, I began to look for answers outside of the Gospel. And I tell you, friends, if you seek comfort outside of the Gospel, you will be left empty.

"Does comfort even exist?" There can only be one of two answers to this question, and I had yet to see evidence of one of them. So I began to consider the possibility that maybe it doesn't. Maybe there is no comfort, no peace, no help or relief. There is only the search. And then I caught a glimpse of true despair.

If true comfort doesn't exist, then surely God can't exist. "Can that be so?" I asked. I had asked this question before, and in the past I had come to the conclusion that He does. So, to convince myself, I decided to walk through my previous line of thought. For the most part, it centered around the following quote from C.S. Lewis:

The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.

That was my proof: my inner desires for something greater than this world; a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy. That was my reasoning, and that was also my problem at this point. I ached for comfort and acceptance, and had found none. "But it must exist, right? If I desire it, surely there must be a satisfaction for such desire, else the desire would not exist. The theory of evolution supports this, as do most other theories about the origins of the world as we know." These were my thoughts. But then, as I must do to be thorough, I considered the possibility that maybe satisfaction for these desires did not exist. "Could that be so? What would that mean?" I will tell you what it means.

Take the theory of evolution, and the field of evolutionary biology, which says, in short, that nearly all biological processes and facts can be traced to a need or advantage; that, somewhere along the way, natural selection has favored this trait because it conferred on a creature a slight advantage in some way. For example, hunger causes discomfort because that is a surefire way to ensure that an organism eats when it needs nutrients. Take away the discomfort, and the creature will likely starve to death because it doesn't know it needs sustenance. Now, how could nature ensure that a creature will continue to improve, to get better, and never simply level off? What would be the ultimate trait that would cause a creature to never accept failure, but to always try to improve itself? We have already heard the answer. What if in each of us is a deep rooted desire for something more, something bigger, something larger than life? What if this desire is the strongest of all our desires? So strong that all the food, shelter, and sex in the world can't quench it? A desire that demands to be satisfied, yet offers no clues as to what will sate it? If such a desire existed, it would force us to constantly run faster, strive harder, work tirelessly day after day after day, trying to find something that can quench this thirst of the soul. But, I thought, what if such a satisfaction does not exist? It's genius: instill in a creature an insatiable lust for something that doesn't exist, thereby forcing it to search out every nook and cranny of the known and unknown world. I thought, maybe the sick joke of life is that we spend all of it, every waking minute, chasing something, running after something, striving for something that doesn't exist, all the while chasing our tails. And at this time, I saw full well the depths of despair that causes people to look at life and say "Goodbye, cruel world." For what a cruel world that would be, that we desire something beyond this world, but that this world is all there is.

Or is it? I told all of this to my discipler. He didn't dismiss it, and he didn't argue it. He only asked me one question: "How does Jesus fit into that picture?"

I thought about it for a while. Considered it. Mulled it over. We know from history Jesus existed. He lived, he taught, and we have reason to believe the Bible is an accurate account of the life of Jesus. That means that, at some point in time, 2000 years ago, a man walked the earth, displaying wisdom and power nobody could explain, was killed by the rulers of the day, then came back to life.

I remember the moment vividly. The best way I can describe it is this: I had a picture of life as I thought it to be. All at once, that picture was shattered by the truth of Jesus.

What had started out for me as a mutated, lesser truth became an outright lie. And what I realized was that I had willingly ignored the one person I had been taught all my life not to ignore. I exchanged the truth of God for a lie, or a lesser truth, for hopefully you see by now that the two are one and the same. But praise be to God that Jesus shatters all of our pictures of lies and lesser truths. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the single, earth-shattering fact that proves that this earth and this life are not all there is. There is something more, something, or rather, Someone, far greater out there.

While the shattering was definitely a sudden change, it took a while for the full reality to sink in. But as it did, I started to realized, just in time, that I had stumbled upon the meaning of Christmas. As I said, the person of Jesus is the definitive proof that there is so much more going on here than what we see. Thus, the birth of Jesus is a huge deal! The Bible is clear that Jesus is the revelation of mystery long since hidden (Ephesians 3:6, Colossians 1:26), the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:3, 17:3, 28:14), and the consummation of the Davidic line of kings (2 Samuel 7:16). Until the coming of Jesus, Israel had seen a steady decay in God's favor from the golden age of Solomon's rule, through multiple exiles and increasingly depraved kings. It was not clear how, if at all, God would rescue his people, much less all the peoples of the earth. Then, after 500 years of silence, the answer came like the sun rising over the mountains: Immanuel. God With Us.

Immanuel. O blessed thought! Not since the Garden of Eden had mankind enjoyed the company of the Lord of Hosts. Only the High Priest could enter into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies, and even then but once a year after extensive cleansing rituals. Moses saw God's back, and the resulting light that shone from his face blinded all those who did not turn away. These are not signs of God being simply too proud to deal with humans; rather, it is evidence of humanity's depravity and therefore our inability to exist in God's presence. That which is dark cannot coexist with light. The light will dispel the darkness. Indeed, that is exactly what happened anytime someone broke the careful protocols God had put in place to allow man to continue to commune with him (Leviticus 10:2, 2 Samuel 6:6). As C.S. Lewis says in his book Till We Have Faces, "I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer.... How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

And yet we have Immanuel. God With Us. Perhaps the full weight of this word was best expressed by Max Lucado's imagining of the following scene from A Cosmic Christmas playing out in Heaven:

The King walked over and reached for the book. He turned it toward Lucifer and commanded, “Come, Deceiver, read the name of the One who will call your bluff. Read the name of the One who will storm your gates.” Satan rose slowly off his haunches. Like a wary wolf, he walked a wide circle toward the desk until he stood before the volume and read the word:
“Immanuel?” he muttered to himself, then spoke in a tone of disbelief. “God with us?” For the first time the hooded head turned squarely toward the face of the Father. “No. Not even You would do that. Not even You would go so far.”
“You’ve never believed me, Satan.”
“But Immanuel? The plan is bizarre! You don’t know what it’s like on Earth! You don’t know how dark I’ve made it. It’s putrid. It’s evil. It’s…”
“IT IS MINE,” proclaimed the King. “AND I WILL RECLAIM WHAT IS MINE. I WILL BECOME FLESH. I WILL FEEL WHAT MY CREATURES FEEL. I WILL SEE WHAT THEY SEE.”
“But what of their sin?”
“I will bring mercy.”
“What of their death?”
“I will give life.”
Satan stood speechless. 

Satan has the reaction we all should, because he knows what miracle this plan really implies. Light Himself is about to descend into Darkness, not to destroy it, but to save it. The source of Life will commune with the dead. This is what Christmas means. This is why it gives us such hope and joy. Christmas is a time when we celebrate this great, miraculous act. We relive the joy that Israel felt upon realizing that their God had not left them to rot in their own iniquity. Christmas is when we remind ourselves that, when we had fallen too far to get up, God descended from Perfection into wretchedness to save us.

There is a lesser known Christmas song called "Hallelujah (Light has Come)", by Barlow Girl. The chorus reads: "Hallelujah, we've been found / a child is born to save us now." To me, this expresses what Israel must have felt at Jesus's coming. This is the fullness of Truth. Not some trite phrase, or some way to make it all more manageable. It is Jesus Himself. Jesus is the Way God has made for us to commune with him again, to reclaim the fellowship lost at the Fall. Jesus is the fullness of Truth, with no room for lies or lesser truths. And Jesus is the hope of Life when all we can see or imagine is death and decay. All of the Old Testament writings become clear, their full meanings finally revealed, their prophecies fulfilled. No more lies, no more lesser truths. Jesus shatters them all.

Systematic Theology

I like the word "systematic". It describes how my brain works, and how a lot of processes in the natural and human worlds work. Many things that can be described as "systematic" are very interesting to me, and describing something as "systematic" can say a lot about that something in very little space.

There are also many things that should not be described as "systematic". In this post, I will mainly be talking about such things, and why I think "systematic" is not the right term for them. I'll be addressing a few highly controversial discussions that I usually avoid engaging in at all costs, so I will preface this with the disclaimer that these are my opinions, based on my limited experiences and my even more limited knowledge. My main purpose is to spark deeper thought on some of these issues where it seems to me that the prevailing dialogue only skims the surface of the real issues. So here we go.

Suppose I am a student at a high school. I get decent grades, I try hard, but not too hard. Suppose also that I enjoy math. I like learning the concepts, I do my homework at night, and I study for tests at least 4 days in advance. On the first test, I do pretty well, and I end up with a B. I might be content with this, but, given my propensity for math, I might tell myself "That's pretty good. Let's try to do better next time." So the next test rolls around, and I study a full week in advance. I do additional practice problems, I'm on Paul's Online Calculus notes and Khan Academy for supplementary learning, and on the test, I feel pretty confident. But I still end up with a B. "That's a little disappointing," I might think. "I'll have to try even harder next time." The next test rolls around, I put in even more effort, and I still end up with a B. But this time I notice that I only made one small mistake, which, on previous tests, would have meant a maximum of 5 points off (out of 100), but this time was worth a full 15 points. I might talk to my teacher and ask why, and get an answer like "I'm sorry, but that is the grade that I deemed fair this time." If this pattern continues, with my mistakes becoming more and more minute, and yet my grades continuing to stagnate at a B, eventually I will get upset. And--here's the punchline--I might claim that my teacher has systematically given me a B on every test, even when I felt I deserved an A.

This is a silly example compared to the real issues that I want to relate this to, which is the issue of equality, particularly sexism and racism. We like to find patterns in events, such as incarceration rates differing among the races, or police brutality differing among races, or harassment incidences differing among the sexes. And, just as in the above hypothetical, we may be perfectly justified in making these statements. Or, at least, we may think we are perfectly justified. We might say, for example, that police in general systematically discriminate and arrest minority races more than majority races, or that women experience systematically lower wages in the workplace. I'm not disputing the facts that back up these claims. What I am suggesting, though, is best explained by continuing the analogy.

In our analogy, I have, understandably, come to the conclusion that my teacher has systematically given me a B on every test, even when it was not fair to do so. In this case, though, what if I added the information that I have actually gotten a B on every single test, even in other subjects, and with the same appearance of unjust grading patterns? Now, all of a sudden, the problem isn't just with my math teacher, but all of my teachers. I might say that all of my teachers are systematically giving me B's. But we could go one step further and find out that not a single student has received a single A on any test. Now the pattern is not about me, but about my teachers.

To return to the real issues, my suggestion is that the "patterns" we claim to find might be bigger than we realize. And to be fair, a lot of these conversations have developed just so: people started to realize that it wasn't just them, but everyone of their race/gender that was experiencing these issues. Then they realized that this wasn't just their city, but a lot of cities all across the country. The problem, though, is that I believe we've stopped too soon. We claim, understandably so, that there is systematic violence against women, or systematic educational discrimination against poorer citizens, or systematic discrimination in the justice system against minority races. I'm not disputing any of these. Now, I might argue that we need to make a distinction between intentional discrimination (i.e. a teacher purposely failing a specific student for no reason) and de facto discrimination (i.e. a student failing because he was in the hospital and therefore could not complete his work), but that's a different discussion altogether. For now, I will stipulate that, regardless of the cause (intentional or de facto), discrimination exists. But I think we've stopped too soon.

In the analogy, we have stopped at the level of the teachers. The blame now lies with them for never giving out any A's, even when they were objectively earned. But what if the problem doesn't stop there? What if we are blaming the wrong group? What if, for example, the reason no teachers gave out A's is because the school has a policy that any teacher that gives an A is immediately fired. Now the problem isn't the teachers, but the policy. The teachers could try to stand up, but they will simply be fired. The school administrators might be blamed, but they, too, might be powerless to change the policy. Even they have to play by the rules.

So now to the heart of the issue. My position is that we have stopped too soon in all of these discrimination arguments. We have called something "systematic" that is simply a part of a larger system. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I am clearly acknowledging that these problems exist, just as I would clearly acknowledge that not receiving an A on any exam is a problem. But stopping at the label of sexism or racism is simply not far enough for me. We are blaming the teachers for simply following a rule they didn't create. To be sure, they are still choosing to give out B's and not A's, and in that sense we can still hold them responsible. But if we want to change this, we need to go to the root. 

In the case of discrimination, I don't think the root cause is simply men, or white people, or rich people, or even rich white men. Like the teachers, they are easy to blame; and, like the teachers, I think people should be held accountable for their actions. But to see real change, we can't simply fire the teachers, because that is not the root problem. I hope I do not need to remind anyone that much of the slave trade started with African warlords selling rival citizens into slavery.

So the root problem, as I see it, goes deeper than race, sex, or even money. I say this because a close study of history and humans will, I claim, reveal that the problem exists independent of those factors. The root problem is power; that those with power lord it over those without; that having more power allows one to achieve one's own goals at the expense of those with less power; and that those with power will consistently choose to exert this power to further their own interests at the cost of others' interests. This, I posit, is the problem. Power can come in many forms: physical strength, influence, control, geographical location, psychological manipulation, financial stability, intellectual superiority--anything that can be used to gain an advantage or further one's own interests. I will admit, we have run into the problem of a circular definition: power is anything that lets us gain an advantage over another, and power causes us or allows us to gain advantage over another. The reason for this apparent fallacy is that power is simply the word I have chosen to use to describe this concept. This idea, though, is not circular. I firmly believe it has a definitive origin, and that origin is human nature. By this, I mean that this pattern, or desire, or motivation, is not unique to any culture, class, or group, but is common to all humans; that, on some level, all humans have this tendency and, given the opportunity, will desire to take advantage of it. And from that single, base desire, we have the whole story of sexual subjugation, racial enslavement, ethnic cleansing, political tyranny, intellectual superiority, Eurocentrism, and a thousand other atrocities committed throughout human history. A bold claim, I know. But I invite everyone to ponder it, and to see whether it really seems appropriate to analyze each of these issues in a vacuum, separate from the others. We can, of course, simply worry about a single test in a single subject with a single teacher. But I claim that there is a larger picture here, and that, in order to see real change, we need to do a lot more than argue over points. We need to change the policy. And in this case, that means changing our very nature. Seldom have I heard anyone claim to be able to change human nature. In fact, I have only ever heard one proposed solution to this problem. But that is a controversy for another discussion.

Haddaway

Roses are red, violets are blue

I only wish my neighbor knew

The golden rule

They teach in schools

Leaves this part out

‘Cause no one knows what we’re talking about

But we hear it in our songs

And we all just sing along

Thinking that we're falling in

Just like a trap, like you’re inside

It’s in your mind, not in your heart

I can’t tell apart the different kinds!

Like it’s a thing that you can make

But we all know you can’t fabricate it

You can’t arrange it

‘Cause it’s not an arrangement

Like a bunch of roses

All colored red from broken noses

And bleeding hearts, my beating heart

Can’t be still, ‘cause this is real

I don’t know you but I know what I feel

If it’s a trap, it was made for me

That’s why they call it destiny

The ground below, the sky above

I think I’m falling, falling in

Man, I feel you, Haddaway

I just wish I had a way

To put my feelings into thoughts

‘Cause just emotions are like the ocean

Go overboard and then you’re lost

What’s the cost? Just chemicals

That tell my brain we’re animals

But that sounds wrong

‘Cause this is wrong

But it felt so right

Maybe just the thought is nice

Just like a story, Romeo

And Taylor Swift don’t know me though

Maybe Disney knows what’s true

Cause theirs is true

As opposed to fake

First kisses, then we go to make

Excuses, saying “it’s not there”

Like it was something in the air

‘Cause it has power that feels sublime

But power is just work over time

So now it’s work?

Man, life’s a jerk

Cause it speeds up faster every time

My time to work is nine to five

So let’s just say that it’s an art

That comes directly from the heart

When it’s not there, it’s not my fault

So how come it hurts?

Maybe to feel, you have to choose it first

It's not about feelings or lack thereof

It's a verb to choose to

It's patient, kind, it doesn't boast
It condones the least but forgives the most
It demands perfection, yet looks past flaws
It's pleased with little, but demands it all
And what we all can't seem to get
Is that we never fully deserve it
We think it's a fact
Like day and night
Or that it's a right
But it's not! It's an act
It has an object
And that's us!
We didn't choose it; It chose us!
It came down and gave its life
For us to live, He had to die
'Cause here on Earth, it's gonna hurt
Rip out your heart, 'cause to be safe
Outside of heaven, there's just one place
To keep your heart all whole and well:
The hardest, darkest pit of Hell.
They say it's blind, and that it's strong
But if yours is blind, then you chose wrong
So choose to serve, but make it known
This thing of yours is second to One
If you don't agree before too late
This thing will look a lot like hate
'Cause they won't get it; all that they saw
Is that you didn't follow their law
So don't fret about feeling,
Or feeling too much
Just arrange your priorities in such

A way so that, when push comes to shove,

The one you choose is the One you

EDIT: I want to make sure this is clear. This is a spoken word that should be read and understood as a sort of personal narrative or journey. The first stanza presents a flawed yet very common viewpoint, a very worldly and secular one. The second stanza transitions into the disillusionment of that viewpoint and a state of questioning and confusion, a common consequent of the first stage. The final stanza presents truth as I understand it, to the best of my ability in this limited form to convey truth. As with nearly any viewpoint, there are nuggets of truth in all three stanzas/stances, but only the last one should be interpreted as largely in line with my understanding.

Boundaries

I considered titling this post "Setting Boundaries on a Boundless God", but I decided that could be misinterpreted too easily. My purpose in this post is to explain my (recently revisited) views on boundaries in Christian relationships, particularly those between people of the opposite sex. My goal is to walk through the existence, cause, and purpose of boundaries in light of eternity; in other words, I will attempt to look at earthly relationships while "setting my mind on things above".

First of all, I want to emphasize that this blog consists entirely of my understanding and opinions. I do my very best to make sure that what I write is in line with what we read in the Bible and what God has revealed to us, but I reserve the right to change my stance on most things, and I strongly encourage others to comment below or talk to me if they disagree or are confused about something. On that note, I would also like to add that my views on boundaries and relationships recently changed, and the realization and lesson that brought about that change is the main focus of this post.

Secondly, I want to define what I mean by "boundaries". For the entirety of this entry, unless I state otherwise, "boundaries" refer to rules or guidelines in relationships that are set in various areas in order to govern relationships and make them holy and pleasing to God. The main boundaries that I am aware of are summed up in the TEST acronym: time, emotional, spiritual, and touch. As a simple example, we often set "touch" boundaries pretty clearly (e.g. don't have sex with someone to whom you are not married). The other three can be more confusing. How much time is too much time to spend with a "friend" of the opposite sex? What can you tell them about your walk with God, and what should you hold back?

Having said that, I think that boundaries are grossly misunderstood throughout society today, even in the church and Christian groups. The main question that boundaries are meant to address is, what are relationships between Christians supposed to look like? Whenever we ask questions like this -- questions that deal with how something is supposed to be -- it is imperative that we do not like at how things are in the world today. As a Christian, I firmly believe that we live in a broken, fallen world, so the way things are is by no means a good indication of the way things are meant to be. In order to look at the way things are meant to be, I believe there are two places we can look: Heaven, where all will be made new and everything will be restored to the glory for which it was created; and the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall, when God created everything, saw it was good, and sin had not yet entered the world. I firmly believe that both of these are the best examples we have of how all things were originally created to be, and how, in the realm of the Divine where all things are made new, all things always have been and always will be.

So what do relationships look like in these places? It is my contention that boundaries, as we currently define and understand them, do no exist in either of these places. In case that didn't sound controversial enough, according to the assertion in the previous paragraph, this means that, even in earthly relationships, boundaries are not meant to exist. 

Let me unpack this a little bit, starting with the Garden of Eden. Let's go through the TEST acronym.

--TIME: Adam and Eve were the only ones there, and, as near as we can tell, they were always together. Nowhere in scripture do we see them separate until after the fall. Adam didn't have to go to work; the garden gave them food. Eve didn't have to deal with painful childbirth; that came later.

--EMOTIONAL: Eve was created from Adam's side, to walk with him and be his helper in everything (I'm not making a statement about gender roles here, so please don't read too much into that sentence). The very fact that she was made from a rib, which is perfectly even with the middle of the body and so close to the heart, seems to me to imply that Adam and Eve were to walk through life together, side by side, sharing everything with each other.

--SPIRITUAL: this one seems the clearest to me. Adam and Eve walked together, and together they walked with God in the closest relationship with God any human has heretofore experienced. In God's presence, there can be no boundaries in your spiritual life. In fact, I would conclude that their spiritual lives were indistinguishable from each other, and were, in fact, one and the same, as they both walked together with the same God.

--TOUCH: God made it pretty clear that their job was to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." Not only this, but the Bible made it abundantly clear that, before the fall, Adam and Eve didn't even need to wear clothes. I'm not going to bother expounding on that more.

From my point of view, God did not set any boundaries in the relationship between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. While he did set clear boundaries in regards to what they could eat and what they couldn't, these rules applied to both of them together, not one or the other. In other words, for all intents and purposes, Adam and Eve were treated as one entity, with no separation, distinction, or division between them. Indeed, why else would the Bible make a reference to marriage in the second chapter by saying "the two shall become one flesh", except to emphasize that, in the perfect state of creation, man and woman are not separate, but united?

So if this is what everything is supposed to look like, what happened? Why aren't we all walking around naked and sharing every intimate detail of our lives with everyone we meet? The answer, of course, is sin happened. In choosing to disobey God, mankind broke the intimate relationship we had with Him. As a result, we broke our perfect relationships with each other. Notice that, immediately after sinning, Adam and Eve first hid from God, then made clothes to hide from each other. Thus, sin doesn't just separate us from God, but also us from each other. 

Is this not what we see when we look around today? All around, I see people suffering from the pains of loneliness, longing for the care and affection of a friend, needing support and guidance in their search for truth, and desperate for the embrace of a true lover. In one sense, boundaries aren't something we put in place, but something that were created as a consequence of sin. To avoid confusion, though, I will call these separations due to sin "walls", and reserve "boundaries" for the guidelines we set for ourselves. Sin deprives us of the intimacy and unity for which we were created, both with God and with our fellow humans. The image I have heard used is the two beams of the cross. The first pillar, the one that holds up the other, is the vertical beam, signifying our relationship with God. Without this beam and this relationship, nothing can stand. The second beam is the horizontal beam, which signifies our relationship with our fellow humans. Both of these are pivotal relationships in the life of a Christian, as demonstrated by the two greatest commandments "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself".

Having started in paradise and worked through the fall, we now turn to God's plan for the redemption of the world. In its simplest sense, this plan is simply bringing the world, mankind, and all of our relationships back to the state for which they were created--namely, the world without walls, without separation, and without sin. If this is our goal, why do we create more boundaries for ourselves in our relationships with others? The answer is, once again, because of sin. Our broken relationships leave us desperately starving for the satisfactions we were created to have. Yet, because of our sinful nature, we are not only unable to return to the holy, perfect state from which we fell, but we naturally will not seek out God and this holiness. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that, although we all have needs that can only be truly satisfied by God, no man, woman, or child naturally seeks God of their own volition, for it is completely contrary to the nature of sin that is ours from birth. Rather, God seeks us out and pursues us, drawing us closer to himself by an act of divine grace. Nevertheless, we, in our brokenness, look for other ways to satisfy our desires, with one of the primary ways being through relationships with other people. Now, I want to be very careful, because, as I have already asserted, we are meant to be in close, intimate relationships with other people. However, to return to the imagery of the two pillars of the cross, these relationships can only stand in holiness when we are first firmly grounded in a relationship with God. In the absence of this first relationship, all others are taken captive by sin and brokenness. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves,

We may love another person too much in proportion to our love for God. But it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy.

Finally, then, we arrive at boundaries as we have previously defined them. Boundaries are (somewhat) clear rules and guidelines that we put in place in order to prevent us from seeking from our fellow humans what can only be rightfully given by God. Love, for example, in all its forms, must come first and foremost from God, who is the definition and source of perfect love, and flow from Him to us and then to other people. Intimacy, both physical and emotional, is a means of satisfying our deep desires to be loved and not left alone, to be a part of something or someone else. This desire exists because we were made to exist in perfect fellowship and unity with the three-personal God in the realm of the Divine. Yet we are so easily deceived into thinking that it can, and should, be satisfied in a deeply emotionally or physically intimate relationship with another human being. Thus, we put in place boundaries to prevent such idols and false gods from taking hold of our lives. In a very real sense, then, boundaries are not meant to work contrary to our deep desires as it so often seems, but to refine them, to turn them towards the Thing for which they were originally meant, and, in doing so, ultimately satisfy them. As C.S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We have now established why boundaries exist, and why they are good. They are ultimately tools to be used in our sanctification. At this point, we have arrived where many Christians find themselves, with boundaries viewed as a good thing meant to keep us from sin and make us holy. However, the purpose of this post was not to justify boundaries as they are currently viewed. Nearly the opposite. The goal was to review, in light of eternity and God's story, why boundaries exist and where they come from. It is imperative that we do not forget where these boundaries come from and why they exist. If we do, we come dangerously close to the legalism of the Pharisees, who knew the letter of the law by heart yet still managed to miss the entire point.

Having reached this point, I do not want to stop here. Knowing where boundaries comes from gives us a unique insight into how we should live out boundaries in everyday life. First of all, it is absolutely necessary to remember that boundaries exist because of sin. In a world with no sin, there is no need for boundaries. This is what we saw in the Garden of Eden, and I am convinced this is what we shall see in heaven. If you do not agree, I challenge you to think: what boundaries does God place on his love for us? My answer would be none at all. So when we, at last, with unveiled faces, reflect to each other the boundless--and boundary-less--love of God, and are entirely caught up in His presence, having put to death any semblance of our individuality apart from God, why should we then still have boundaries with each other? I will freely admit, it can be difficult to grasp and accept. For example, will clothes be necessary in heaven? (For now, let us look past the fact that, in heaven, we shall not have bodies in the same way we have them on earth, but shall take on new, heavenly forms the likes of which we cannot conceive.) By this line of thinking, the answer should be no, they will not be necessary. For what necessary function could clothes offer in a realm where there is no lust, no self-glorification, no ugliness or malice or self-deprecation, no shame, and no sin? Perhaps I would do best to quote C.S. Lewis once again, this time from his image of heaven given in The Great Divorce:

Some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh.

The reason I bring this up is that so often I think we view boundaries not as consequences of sin and a means to our sanctification, but the opposite of sin and the goal of our sanctification. We view breaking these boundaries as inherently sinful, and keeping them inherently righteous. But understanding where they came from, these distinctions are meaningless! For as God sanctifies us and makes us more pure, more holy, and transforms us into the image of his son, we are freed from the bonds of sin and are no longer bound by them. And since our boundaries exist because of sin, once we are freed of that sin, these boundaries are no longer necessary. In a sense, the more "righteous" ones are the ones who are more free to "break" what we would consider standard boundaries. They are no longer bound by boundaries, because they are no longer bound by sin. As an example, a teenage girl should feel no qualms about discussing her latest breakup with the pastor at her church, while a similar conversation with a guy her age might be cause for caution. Sanctification breaks down both walls and boundaries as it frees us from sin. In the church, therefore, where it is presumably the goal of each person to continue to be sanctified and changed, we should see closer relationships between people, even people of the opposite gender. Because as well as pursue God and are brought into his presence, we are necessarily all brought closer together until at last, one day, we are all unified completely in God.

I may have said some pretty controversial things in this post. My main goal is to inspire thought and reasoning. Our ultimate source of truth is the Bible, and any rules and assumptions made about the Christian life must ultimately be grounded in Scripture. I recognize that I have not directly quoted any scripture, so my ideas are subjective at best, and I reserve the right to change them in the future. However, I did try my best to appeal to the general story of the Bible, rather than simply reasoning grounded in earthly observations. In my experience, many articles on boundaries between men and women in the church rarely quote scripture, and instead appeal to vague notions of purity and sin. My goal was to provide a counter to this by working through relationships from the beginning and arriving at the result, rather than starting with the assumption that boundaries are necessary and showing how they work and what can go wrong if they are crossed.

I want to end with a final warning. If you take what I have said in this post as license to be as emotionally open and intimate with other people as you please, or to constantly flirt with members of the opposite sex, or to be more physical in a relationship with a significant other, you have missed the point entirely. The point is not that we no longer need to establish any sort of rules or guidelines for earthly relationships and are therefore free to act as we please. To do so is akin to reading the Bible and ignoring any part about God or Jesus. Such an attitude neglects to plant in place the first pillar of the cross and instead reaches straight for the second. The point of this post was to say that, first and foremost, we are all meant to be united with God, through Christ, with the Holy Spirit living inside of us. As we continue to seek him and as He pursues us, draws us closer to Him, and sanctifies us into the holy, perfect image of his Son Jesus Christ, we will find that any earthly relationship we had to let die in the process will be rekindled in a glory we cannot imagine. As we are caught up in the Person and Persons of God, we will inevitably reach perfect unity and intimacy with our fellow humans as well.

Let Me Tell You a Story

As with many of my recent posts (I'm using a relative time scale, here; I realize not many of my posts can be considered "recent" anymore), I'm going to start by talking about something I like. Unlike those other posts, I'm pretty much going to end there. Ye be warned. Continue at your own risk.

One of my favorite video games is Assassin's Creed. I own all of the main games, and I have played through the first two installments in the series twice each, despite the fact that the first one isn't really that great of a game in comparison to the others. I own a hoodie styled after the Assassins' uniform, and a ring with the symbol of the Assassins engraved on it. You could say I'm a bit obsessed. You wouldn't be the first.

What most people don't know, however, is why I like Assassin's Creed so much. Sure, there is the amazing gameplay and unnecessarily violent executions, but there's more too it than that. It has to do with the storyline of the game. If you are not familiar with it, allow me to enlighten you. If you are familiar with it, you might not have ever heard it phrased in this way. Either way, continue reading, if you are so inclined, and let me tell you a story.

Let me tell you a story. This story is about a group of people. This group was relatively small, but it seemed as though most of the world was against them. In reality, a single driving force opposed them, but this force extended its reach to nearly every aspect of life. But this small group of people knew the truth: that something big was coming; something terrible would happen, and it was not that far off. But the rest of the world, and the forces that opposed them, could not see it. They refused to see it. And the force that opposed them was content to keep them blind to the truth and use the illusions to further their own ends. But this group worked tirelessly to free people from the illusion and reveal the truth. They sought to liberate people from their slavery, warn them of the coming disaster, and show them the hope that still remained.

Now at one point early on in the life of this group, one part of the group sought to use the group to further their own interest. They had subtly but willingly joined with the force that opposed this group. This hurt the group, but the truth persisted, and the faithful members rescued the group. And this group began to grow and propagate. And it spread to all different cultures and societies and manifested itself in all different ways. Some bold heroes of the group left their culture to bring the cause of the group to other places that had never heard of it, or to places that had only a small faction of the group and needed teaching and training. And all the while the forces of the world tried to oppose this group, but somehow this small group persisted and survived. In fact, it thrived and multiplied. And every so often they would receive messages from beyond that would confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they were doing was true and just and right.

And in the effort to further their cause and the truth, this group has shaped the course of history. Many famous historical events were shaped in a large part by members of this group. But too often they were lost in the background by the history books. But it didn't matter, because the truth and their cause continued throughout the ages. And the more time that passed, the more urgent their mission became, and the more important it was that they dispel the illusion that the opposing forces so eagerly wished to keep in place. And the forces that opposed them tried everything they could. They persecuted this group in all manner of ways, but it didn't matter, because this group knew the truth. In the midst of chaos and attacks from the enemy, they kept their eyes on the truth and on the end, because they knew what was coming, and it compelled them to act.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you catch it? If you are not familiar with the storyline of the games, the group is the Assassins, and the opposing force is the Templars. The games manage to insinuate the conflict between these two sides into nearly every major event in history, from the fall of Rome to World War II to Mahatma Ghandi. 

For those of you who are familiar with this storyline, and especially for those of you that aren't - namely, the ones who think my obsession is childish and trivial - I invite you to contemplate the following: what if I told you that the above story is, in fact, not about Assassin's Creed?

As a matter of fact, this story is true. It is the story of the Church of Jesus Christ and their mission to spread the Gospel to all people of all nations.

I contend that many of my passions and obsessions are similar to this one. True, there is usually something about the surface level that appeals to me, but often it does not stop there. When you have a spare moment for thought, consider applying this logic to me, your friends, or even yourself. Ask the question, is there a larger story at work here? Is there something beneath the surface tickles my deepest desires and entices me in deeper? You might be surprised at what you find.

Debt, Death, and why we do Works

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Princess Bride. I used to watch this movie whenever I was home sick, which I thought was appropriate, considering the premise of the movie is a grandfather reading a story to his sick grandson. It wasn't until I was older that I realized the entire movie is a farce. As a young boy, I merely thought it was a fantastic adventure tale, filled with sword fights, schemes, chases, and of course, "true love". I loved it, because every young boy loves an adventure, the idea of having a mission to do, like winning back your true love or avenging your father's death. That's why boys look for heroes in history, sports, and war. Looking back, though, I can understand now why my parents would always laugh at scenes like the following scene which features a character named "Miracle Max":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9tAKLTktY0

 Clearly, this scene is meant to be funny and ridiculous. After all, the very thought of someone being "mostly dead" is absurd. Dying isn't like cooking a steak, or something that can be measured in varying degrees. You're either alive or dead. There's no real in between. At some point, everyone learns this fact.

And yet, for some reason, we frequently act as if death isn't binary. We act like death is a process that can proceed in varying amounts, and in either direction. Not literally, of course; most of us accept that dead bodies don't come back to life. But when it comes to spiritual death, we act like those rules don't apply anymore.

What I'm talking about is the way we treat salvation. We treat it like a debt, in the sense that it is somehow finite and quantifiable. This is not to say we think we could ever pay back this debt. But the fact is, that viewing our salvation as a debt cheapens it in a way we can't imagine.

Let's unpack this for a little bit. My guess is we get this idea from the Bible. Nothing wrong with that. It's a pretty trustworthy source of spiritual truth. Passages like Matthew 18:21-35, wherein Jesus compares forgiveness to a king forgiving his servant of a great debt, then that servant turning around and throwing someone else who owes him a small debt in jail. Another example is in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus is eating with a Pharisee when a woman who is called a "sinner" falls at Jesus's feet and weeps. Jesus informs the pharisee that she loves much because she has been forgiven much, and that "whoever has been forgiven little loves little", which he says after giving the pharisee an example of two debtors who were forgiven their debts.

I'm not detracting from these examples at all. Jesus said them, after all. What I think has gone wrong is our understanding of these passages as it relates to our salvation. So often, we view our sin as this massive debt, one which God then forgives. Then, prompted by these passages, we decide that, since God forgave us, it is our job to love Him a lot and forgive other people, and serve God by telling others about him. Those are good things, and I'm not saying we should stop doing that. What I am saying is that that line of thinking is fundamentally flawed. When we view our salvation as the forgiveness of a debt, we are adding to that metaphor our modern understanding of what debt is; namely, debt today is quantifiable and, more importantly, avoidable. Comparing our salvation to debt forgiveness as we understand it today is saying that our sin, however great, was still finite, and that, in theory, we could eventually work enough to pay it back. And so often, that is how we view our Christian works: as paying back a debt. But this is such a flawed way of thinking!

See, debt has historically been treated very differently than it is today, when we have bankruptcy and foreclosure and defaulting and loans and debt is simply a reality. In the past, if you owed someone money, they could have you thrown in what is called "debtor's prison" until you or your family paid back the debt. If you think about this for a second, you'll realize that it is a lot harder to pay off your debt when you're in prison and can't work. Another, even older system is indentured servitude, or serfdom, wherein a debtor would essentially become a slave to their creditor until they had worked off their debt, which could be years, decades, or even never. So debt in Jesus's time was very different from debt in our time. In our time, one way or another, debt will eventually go away. In Jesus's time, there was no such guarantee.

This is why it is so important to realize that our sin is so much more than just a debt that we have to pay. Sin is death. And as we have already established, death is irreversible and unquantifiable. There is no "mostly dead". We were just plain dead, until Jesus sought us out and brought us back to life. And just because this is spiritual life and death we are talking about doesn't mean that coming back to life is any more extraordinary. Spiritual resurrection is every bit as miraculous as bodily resurrection, and in many ways even more so.

So then where do works come in? In the debt analogy, it made sense: we owed a debt, Jesus forgave it, and yet we still worked for Jesus to pay it off. No one would ever phrase it like that, at least not out loud, but if you're like me, you think that way sometimes in your head. You think "I'm doing all of this work for God, because he forgave me. Therefore, I have to work for Him." On the outside, this might look fine, but this is a broken way of thinking. We can never put a dent in our "debt" to God. What he has done for us far outweighs anything we could ever do for him. In fact, as we're about to see, we can never do anything for Him.

Hopefully most of us know that we are not saved by works. That's a given. But so often we think and act like our works are something we are doing for God. I think we need to remind ourselves of Ephesians 2:8-10:

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

These verses seem like they might hold the answer to our question, where do works fit in to all of this? It is clear, from these verses, that our salvation has absolutely nothing to do with works. In fact, our works never give us reason to boast. So why do them then? If they don't impact our salvation, and they don't give us any bragging rights on earth or entitle us to any extra jewels on our crowns in heaven, what's the point? That's where verse 10 comes in: God prepared these works for us. We are created to do these works. These works are our mission.

That's what we're all looking for, isn't it? That's what every person on this earth wants: a mission. A sense of purpose. To feel like we are a part of something bigger. To know that we are making an impact on the world. That's why we see so many people and organizations dedicating their lives to everything from cancer research to football to space exploration to playing the cello to defending our nation to running for political office. And to be clear, none of those are inherently bad things. But if you dedicate your life to their mission instead of God's mission, you are ultimately going to be left wanting.

So the picture we get from the bible is not one of a debtor who is forgiven of his debt and slowly works his way out of it. That view trivializes sin and glorifies our own efforts. The image we get is more like a man who is slowly dying of an unknown disease. He has no living relatives, no friends, no one that cares about him or that will miss him if he dies. The doctors can't help him and tell him he doesn't have much time left. He has no money and has to sleep on the dirty floor of a crumbling, third world hospital, in the hopes that maybe one of the doctors there will take pity on him and find something to help him. But slowly but surely, he wastes away, until one day, without anyone noticing, he breathes his last breath.

...

...

...

Suddenly, he wakes up. He's back on the floor of the hospital, but there is a man looking at him. This man picks him up and places him in a bed, a luxury he hasn't had for as long as he can remember. The man's rescuer is Jesus, and Jesus tells the man "It's okay. I brought you back to life." The man is speechless. No one cared about him before. No one even knew he existed. But then Jesus brings him back to life. He has him transferred to the top of the line health facility, where the man gets constant medical attention, gourmet meals, and the most comfortable bed he had ever felt. On top of all of that, Jesus comes and visits him every day and talks to him, treating him as an friend, which no one had ever done before. True, this man still cannot leave his bed, but he has companionship and food and comfort, everything he had every desired but had never had.

After a while, though, he realizes that even this is not truly satisfying. He knows he has everything he has ever wanted, but, put simply, he is bored. He has an empty feeling, an insatiable desire for something more, something he can't quite describe. It's the same desire I mentioned earlier, that every person feels. The desire for adventure, for a sense of purpose, to feel like you belong, to know that you will leave a lasting impact. And no amount of friendship, food, warmth, comfort, or medical attention can give satisfy this desire.

That's when Jesus says it. "I'll trade places with you," he tells the man. "What I did for you, I have also done for countless others. And still there are countless more people like you. But I'll trade places with you. I will lie, crippled, on this bed, and let you go out and do to those other people what I have done to you. It won't be easy. You'll have to find them."

This is it. This is the answer to the man's lingering desire. Finally, he has found his mission. No, it isn't easy, but it is fulfilling.

So you see, works are not our way of paying God back for all he's done for us. No, on the contrary, works are the greatest gift God has given us! God has given us a mission, a purpose, a group to belong to, a chance to love other people in the way he has loved us, a chance to bring the greatest news we have every received to someone else! Sure, Jesus could find these people much more efficiently if he chose to do it himself and not use us. But thank God that he does choose to use us, despite all of our flaws and imperfections. He lets us be the vessels through which he reaches the world with his love. He lets us do the good works that he has already prepared for us.

It isn't always easy. And we aren't always going to get it right. But this is our mission: to find the people who are dead like we once were, and show them the amazing love that this person named Jesus has showed us.

So let's go find them.

A Grief Observed

Stage 1: The Leidenfrost Effect

It's normal. All is well.
I'm alone. But all is well.
She's not here. But all is well.
It's normal. All is well.

A simple text. All is well.
A sudden plunge.

All is well.

When no pain comes, all is well.
She's not here. But all is well.
But she's not there. And all is well.
It didn't happen. All is well.
But it did. And all is well.

I feel no pain. All is well.
But I do. And all is well.

What is this pain I feel?

It is not the pain of nerves, like you feel when you have a tooth pulled. It is not the pain of emptiness, like the pain you feel when your tongue touches the exposed gum. It is the pain of numbness; the pain you feel when they give you local anesthesia but keep you awake during the procedure. Your nerves are numb, so it does not hurt, but you know it should. You can feel the roots being severed, hear the ties being torn. Your conscious knows that this should hurt, but your subconscious cannot, will not, accept it. And so all is well.

The danger of this stage is that, because it doesn't hurt, we are not prepared when it does. And I wasn't.

Stage 2: The Stiff Heart Questions

The feet, mechanical, go round. Until it hit me. It wasn't the plunge that did me in, it was the lingering. The realization that she wasn't just a few hundred miles away anymore. The realization that I don't know how to move forward from this. The realization that she doesn't get to be a light in this world anymore. The realization that I don't even know what it will be like this December in San Diego anymore. The realization that now there is now only one person who can fully understand me when I say "First Maker Last Maker". The realization that there is one less person who will ever call me "Tilaps". The realization that those pictures on Facebook are now just pictures, and there is no longer anything of substance behind them. The realization that on October 23, she texted me, and I never responded.

A few hours too late, I responded to her text:

Janee,
The other day, you and Claire asked for a C.S. Lewis quote. I never did send you one. Here is the best one I could find:
"You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work."

I broke down. I asked "why" more times than I can count. Why, God? Why her? Why now? What is your will in this? Where is your healing hand? What is the greater thing you want to show us? How could that possibly be your plan for her life? Why was that your plan for her life? What are you trying to teach us? Why couldn't you teach us some other way? What good could this possibly accomplish that you couldn't accomplish some other way?

I was mad. I began to wish God had taken me instead, that my depraved mind would end and her loving spirit would continue.

All this time, I would simply scroll through Facebook, my newsfeed as full of her face as my eyes were of tears. Yes, I freely admit, by this point, I was sobbing. Nose running, breath staggering, the whole bit. If you know me, you know that this isn't exactly a common occurrence. I decided to join the crowd and change my profile picture to honor her. I posted a picture of the Pocket in an elevator (missing Paul, somehow). In the description, I gave her another C.S. Lewis quote, this time from A Grief Observed:

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her.

I also posted another quote from the same book as my status, dedicated to her of course. The quote read:

God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.

The problem with both of these was, I was not ready to accept them. Sure, I knew in my head that Janee didn't really lose anything. In fact, she is more alive now than she ever was when I knew her. She is more filled with joy than she ever could have been this side of eternity. But that first quote continues to say that the mother's spirit of motherhood has, in fact, died. She is no longer a mother. That part of her, brought out by the child, is gone. True, that is not the chief aim for which she was created, but it was a part of her nonetheless. So that quote really doesn't give any comfort.

As for the second one, in my head it always made sense. But it is one thing to understand something and another to own it. For example, this past Sunday, the pastor at my church flippantly referenced John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life." Almost everyone has heard this verse, and I dare say that most Christians wholeheartedly believe in it. But have you ever had to truly take hold of that promise - "whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life"? I know I have not. Not that I didn't believe in it. I can assure you that I did. But it is one thing to believe in something and another to take hold of it. And in this case, taking hold of that promise meant letting go of a dear friend, and that is not a painless process.

Stage 3: Help my Unbelief

Gradually, the tears subside, and I begin to try to think clearly. I would quote scripture, songs, books, and people to myself. I said to myself exactly what I would have said to someone who was in my position two weeks earlier. But what I found was that all of the knowledge and quotes in the world couldn't change how I felt. It was simply not a matter of knowing that she is seeing God face to face, or that God is still in control. It was a matter of accepting all of those realizations I had come to in the previous stage. It is something that I could never have understood until it happened. As I said, I knew exactly what I would have said to someone else in my position, but now I know that there is nothing you can say that will help. There is no secret thought, no cathartic moment, no magical phrase that can simply make it all better.

I would hear other people say things, and my conscious mind would scream them at my subconscious until I became physically out of breath. But, as with the first stage, the subconscious will only ever move as it pleases, not as the conscious wills it. Some of these things were:

"God is good, and God is sovereign. He knew he would be glorified more with Janee with Him."

"She ran the race so hard that she beat all of us."

"She is home now. We will see her soon!"

"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants." -Psalm 116:15

All of these things are true, and all of them are comforting. I readily accept them as such. But try telling a man who has just lost his leg that he only has to wait a little while until all will be made new. If he is a man of great faith, he will agree with you with little complaint. But that does not mean he can walk. He will eventually learn to get around with a wheelchair or prosthetic limb. But he will never be exactly the same, and no amount of comfort or faith can change that.

In addition to these comforting phrases, I began to see her in everything, but especially in song lyrics and quotes. In keeping with the staccato moments of feeling in my life at that time, I am simply going to list these with no explanation:

"I remember you like yesterday, yesterday

I still can't believe you're gone
I remember you like yesterday, yesterday
And until I'm with you, I'll carry on

Every lament is a love song

Yesterday, Yesterday

I still can't believe you're gone

Oh so long my friend, so long."

--"Yesterdays", by Switchfoot

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it...white shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise"

--The Return of the King, directed by Peter Jackson

"Where is my song?

I've lost the song of my soul tonight

Sing it out

Sing it out

Take what is left of me

Make it a melody

Sing it out

Sing out loud

I can't find the words to sing

You be my remedy

My song

My song

I'll sing with what's left of me"

--"Sing it Out", by Switchfoot

"The shadow proves the sunshine"

--"The Shadow Proves the Sunshine", by Switchfoot

"Looking for signs in the night sky

Wishing that I wasn't such a nice guy

Wonder what it means to live forever

Wonder what it means to die

I know there's meaning to it all

A little resurrection every time I fall

You got your babies, I got my hearses

Every blessing comes with a set of curses

I got my vices, got my vice verses."

--"Vice Verses", by Switchfoot

"Here's to your bright eyes

Shining like fireflies

These are my souvenirs,

The memory of a lifetime

We were wide-eyed with everything, everything around us

We were enlightened by everything, everything

So I close my eyes and go back in time

I can see you smiling, you're so alive

I close my eyes and go back in time

You were just a child then, and so was I

We were so young, we had no fear

We were so young, we had no idea

That nothing lasts forever

Nothing lasts forever

[...]

Life was just happening

Life was just happening

I wouldn't trade it for anything

My souvenirs"

--"Souvenirs", by Switchfoot

"Lay down

Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You’ve come to journey's end
Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
All souls pass

Hope fades
Into the world of night
Through shadows falling
Out of memory and time
Don't say "We have come now to the end"
White shores are calling
You and I will meet again

And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home

And all will turn
To silver glass
A light on the water
Grey ships pass
Into the West"

--"Into the West", by Howard Shore

"We’re still smilin as the day goes by

and how come nobody
ever knows the reasons why

Burry you deep so far
you can't see
If you're like me
who wears a broken
heart on your sleeve

Pains is troubles that
you know so well
Either time don't
It can't or it just won't tell

I'm not the type to say
I told you so
I think the hardest part
of holding on is lettin it go

I don't know what time it is
or whose the one to blame for this
Do what I believe what I can't see
And how do you know
which way the wind blows

Cause I can feel it all around
I'm lost between the sound
And just when I think I know
there she goes

Goodbye for now
Goodbye for now
So long"

--"Goodbye for Now", by P.O.D.

"Until the sea of glass we meet
At last completed and complete
Where tide and tear and pain subside
And laughter drinks them dry
I'll be waiting"

--"Restless", by Switchfoot

"But I'm not sentimental

This skin and bones is a rental
And no one makes it out alive

Until I die I'll sing these songs
On the shores of Babylon
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong
Where the righteous right the wrongs
Still looking for a home
In a world where I belong
[...]
And on the final day I die
I want to hold my head up high
I want to tell You that I tried
To live it like a song

And when I reach the other side
I want to look You in the eye
And know that I've arrived
In a world where I belong

In a world where I belong
In a world where I belong
Where I belong
Where I belong

I still believe we can live forever
You and I we begin forever now
Forever now
Forever
I still believe in us together
You and I we're here together now
Together now
Forever now"

--"Where I Belong", by Switchfoot

"Till He returns or calls me home

Here in the pow'r of Christ I'll stand."

--"In Christ Alone", by Keith Getty

"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul."

--"It is Well with My Soul", by Horatio Spafford

I'm sure there are more, but I'm also sure that you probably didn't even read all of those. To be honest, I realize that there is no way to adequately express what I went through, and what I am still going through. But I did notice two recurring themes in all of the above excerpts. First, the idea of where we belong. Janee is where she belongs. I am not. This is not my home. Janee is finally home. I should not lament the departure of a stranger for her true home, simply because I am not yet leaving. Second, there is the concept of life being a song. Janee lived her life like a song. To be honest, I lost the words to my song recently. But through all of this, even when I cannot feel it, I can trust God to simply take what broken life I have and make it a song for Him to sing. Indeed, that is all I can ever do.

I don't claim to be fine. I don't claim to be done processing. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that grief is not a process. It is a cycle. At some points, I find myself unable to accept what has happened. At others, I simply break. And still at others, I realize that, while I am not yet made whole, that one day I will be. Janee just had that happen a bit sooner than I did. Will I ever leave this cycle? I do not think so. I think grief is not something inspired by an event, but rather a harsh reality of a fallen world. To live in this world is to grieve. Sure, eventually the rawness of her death will fade as I grow to rely on God more and more. But I will never again walk on two legs until I reach the other side. This I know. What I am currently learning, however, is that I never have. It just wasn't until something pushed me over that I realized it.

I don't claim to be wise. I don't claim to be able to transcend my current situation and speak general truth. All I know is what I see and feel and what I know to be true. That is what I have tried to communicate. Whether or not I succeeded is for you to decide.