What Athol Wrote...

The Opposite of Art - Excerpt From Chapter 14

2011-10-28T17:35:00.001-07:00

As he had beneath the Sistine ceiling, Ridler paced the sidewalk. Back and forth beside the looming ramparts, he paced. All the years swirled through his mind, the cost of jungles, beaches, filthy alleys and bazaars, tortured and exploded, hungry, parched, lonely and alone, and of course Suzanna. Suzanna lost forever. He had surrendered everything to paint the Glory, trying it a thousand times, a thousand ways, miles of paint, gallons of it flowing across canvas by the acre. What were these imposters' feeble efforts compared to sacrifice like his?

"I'll show them," he muttered, dropping to his knees and opening his backpack. "I'll show them."

Removing his kit he spilled his pastels out onto the sidewalk. Still muttering, he selected a piece of chalk and began to sketch. His arm swung broadly over the pavement, a giant motion from the shoulder. Line after sweeping, monumental line arched across the slates around him. He was no mere artist. He was an athlete, a zealot and a warrior. He was no propagandist. He was a partisan, a dogmatist in possession of all truth. He alone could show the Glory to the world, and he alone would do it.

Driven by his rage and his disdain, Ridler lost all consciousness of his surroundings. He did not see the crowd gathering about him as his colors rose from the pavement to the ancient ramparts of the Holy See. He did not hear their whispers, nor their gasps and exclamations as the image swelled and spread. He climbed the wall with only fingertips and the narrow edges of his boots, clinging to the bricks stacked earthy and steadfast for generations. Halfway up he released his hold and drifted. Gripping colored chalk in both of his hands, he drew with unerring beauty and precision on his left and right at once, a whirlwind of pristine intention, filling empty voids as if he was a witch conjuring a portal to a future or a past. He almost had it now. This time he would hold it fast. He would draw back the veil. He would reveal the Glory. He would not let it go. He would master everything.

Ridler drew among a cloud of witnesses. No carabinieri stepped forward from that growing crowd to protest on behalf of public property. On the contrary, the police in their white belts and chest straps stood entranced along with bankers and tourists, priests and beggars. Dozens of them turned to hundreds; hundreds turned to thousands. From the street and sidewalk, from the windows, balconies, and rooftops, all of Rome observed in breathless silence.

It never crossed the artist's mind that he might run out of colors. Again and again he pulled more pastels from his pack, never realizing it had become a cornucopia, endlessly fertile, providing everything required. Nothing was withheld. The sun itself beyond the angry clouds did not betray him. On the contrary, it remained aloft long past the normal hour, granting the suspension of time. Even gravity and space surrendered, all created things in all directions bowing in submission to his genius.

In the end it seemed the only limit was himself, for when he stopped it was his own decision. Hands and arms and clothing choked with color, Ridler sat back on his haunches. At that very moment the sun began to move again above the clouds, but it took a while to regain its usual velocity. And like the fading of the day, Ridler's own return was gradual, a slow recognition of the image spread out all around him. Shadows gathering, he gazed upon the work.

It covered half a block along the sidewalk. It climbed forty feet up the wall. It was of course his grandest effort, superior to anything that Rome had ever seen. Thousands knelt around the fringes, hands clasped at their chins, palms turned up toward heaven. Their whispered prayers combined and interlaced in midair, flowing hot across his face. Their adoration of the image plucked him to his feet as if he were a puppet pulled by strings. He disappeared into them, staggering with painful joints, fleeing yet another failure, for he was well aware that this was merely one more flawed beginning. As he had so many times before, he had reached the end of Ridler without capturing the Glory.

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LOVE WINS - A Review

2011-05-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

I finally got down to Rob Bell’s book in my reading list, and I finished it this week. The first thing you notice about Love Wins is it’s not written for pastors, elders, or Bible teachers; it’s written for that guy sitting next to you in traffic, the one who hardly ever thinks about religion.

Parts of the book are arranged on the page like poetry, one short incomplete sentence stacked over another, and sometimes each line is
just
one
word.

It’s often difficult to draw firm conclusions about specific ideas from poetry, so it’s not easy to do that with Love Wins. Rob often seems to say one thing here, and the opposite thing there. To some extent I think that’s intentional. A major thesis of the book is the fact that we know far less about God and the hereafter than we often pretend to know. In a way then, Rob’s style demonstrates his thesis.

If you’ve read the “Yes and Yes” chapter in The Gospel according to Moses, you know I believe the proper response to the apparent contradictions in the Bible is not to take a stand one way or the other, but rather to say “Yes,” to both halves of the paradox. Rob says exactly the same thing, on page 127.

While some may object to this as an affront to the intellect or a copout on important doctrine, it’s just as reasonable to view it as a proof of faith. After all, who has more faith: the one who insists he must understand everything in the Bible, or the one who believes God is big enough to make sense out of two apparently contradictory propositions?

So far, so good. And I especially endorse Rob’s take on heaven, which he presents not as something to be reached in the afterlife, but rather as a way of being, which starts here in this life for believers. It is, I think, a perfectly orthodox interpretation of the scriptures. Salvation is not a single choice to be made and then relied upon thereafter. On the contrary, Paul presents salvation as something we must "work out . . . with fear and trembling" throughout this part of our immortal lives. And Jesus didn’t teach us to pray “Let us come into thy kingdom when we die.” Rather, it was “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth [right here, right now] . . .”

Rob’s perspective on heaven as a state of existence in the present world has vital ramifications for how one lives today. It’s the difference between a Christian who leaves his religion in the pews when he walks out of church on Sunday, and a Christian who loves his neighbor with actions, all day every day. When you carry heaven in your heart, it’s much easier to be heavenly.

Several other points Rob makes in Love Wins deserve praise. I appreciated Rob's effort to expand his reader's thinking about how faith in Jesus leads to a loving relationship with God, and about who enters heaven. Like Rob, I believe many Christians are going to be very surprised at the company they'll keep in the hereafter. And again, there are strong parallels between much of what he wrote and The Gospel according to Moses. I'd love to go into more detail about this and other helpful points he made, but space is limited here, so I want to pass from praise to the one concern I had when I put down the book.

Like so many others, I'm worried about Rob’s perspective on hell.

In many places, it seems to me Rob says hell is a temporary condition, a teaching tool God uses to convince those who pass out of this life unconvinced.

Note my language, please. When I write, “it seems to me,” that’s because I can’t be sure. Again, this book is written like a poem, and different people may get many different meanings from the same line in a poem. On page 117 for example, Rob seems to say if we choose hell, then God will let us have hell. Rob doesn’t limit that statement in any way. He doesn't say God will only let us stay in hell a little while, for example. But the over-arcing sense I got from this book was of a hell that’s not really “hell” in the traditional sense of the word, because as Rob writes on page 86, “there’s always the assurance that it won’t be this way forever.”

Unless I completely misunderstood Rob, he thinks hell is temporary. That idea is repeated in many places, across several chapters. Eventually, everybody suffering in hell will see the light, and enter God’s presence.

Rob quotes many scriptures to support this idea. Unfortunately his scholarship is often deeply flawed. He sometimes quotes a verse to make a point, when the prior verse in the scriptures makes exactly the opposite point. He even goes so far as to quote the first half of a verse without mentioning the second half, when the second half refutes his interpretation of the first.

Here’s just one example, although I could offer many others:

On page 91 Rob discusses Jesus’ famous teaching about two kinds of people: 1) those who try to take care of the hungry, thirsty, alien, naked, sick and imprisoned, and; 2) those who don’t. At the conclusion of that passage, in Matthew 25:46, Jesus compares the fate of those two kinds of people. He says:

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

Rob writes about two Greek words in the verse, but rather than examining the words Jesus actually used, Rob focuses on the roots of those words. It’s as if a Chinese student learning English applied the meaning of the word “finite” to the sentence “The universe is infinite.”

Based on that approach, Rob concludes that the word usually translated as "punishment" should actually be rendered "trimming" or "pruning," and the word usually translated as "eternal" should instead be understood to mean "a period of time." So he suggests the first half of Matthew 25:46 should be translated this way: “Then they will go away to a period of pruning . . .” He then moves on without mentioning the second half of the verse.

That omission is understandable, when one considers that the word “eternal” in both halves of the verse is the same word in the Greek. Had Rob translated that word in the second half the same way he translated it in the first, he would have had this to explain away:

“Then they will go away to a period of pruning, but the righteous to a period of life.”

"A period of" life is not what a believer hopes to experience in the hereafter, of course, nor is it what the Bible teaches, either about heaven, or about hell. The actual Greek word Jesus used is unmistakable: it means everlasting, eternal, or forever.

Some compare Rob’s apparent theology on hell to the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, but it is a flawed comparison. Purgatory, in the Catholic sense, is a place where believers who die in a state of grace suffer appropriate punishment for their venal sins, a process which completes their sanctification and allows them to enter God’s holy presence.

Whatever one may think of that theology, purgatory is not a place where people who reject God in this life have a second chance at faith along the lines Rob seems to suggest. Roman Catholicism, like traditional Protestant theology, is quite clear: those who die without accepting God’s grace in this life pass directly to eternal suffering in hell.

Now, having written those terrible words, I also want to be clear on one thing: I wish Rob was right.

I wish the Bible taught that there will be an infinite number of chances to confess, repent, and step into our loving God’s embrace. I wish the Lord would give us an eternity to make that choice, if necessary. I wish the Bible didn’t say, “. . . man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” I wish it didn’t say, “. . . whoever does not believe stands condemned already.” I wish Jesus hadn’t warned us the day will come when he will say once and for all, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” and “Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'”

But the Bible is consistent about this: after this life come a eternity in hell or heaven for us all. The choice of where we’ll be is ours, and the time to make that choice is now, because when we leave this part of life, our fate in the next is sealed.

While I wish it wasn’t that way, who am I to protest that this isn’t fair or just? After all, God is God, and I am not. A slug might as well complain to me about pesticide. As God himself explains, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Who am I to explain ideas like love, mercy and justice to God, the one who merely spoke, and galaxies sprang into existence?

Still, I wish it wasn’t that way.

I read an old story somewhere recently (it may have been Adam Clarke's excellent Bible commentary, or perhaps Barnes), about two preachers discussing their sermons the previous Sunday. One says he preached on the topic of hell. The other asks, “And did you cry?”

That is how any true follower of Jesus feels about hell. To live in heaven on earth is to live with a broken heart for the lost on earth. Along with Rob, I would never presume to say Gandhi is in hell. “Judge not, or you will be judged” means such awful words are for God alone to speak. And I certainly don’t revel in the thought of people in eternal torment. On the contrary, I weep.

But because my heart does break at the thought of hell, the last thing in the world I want to do is write a book that lets an unbelieving reader think she can ignore Jesus in this life, because there will be (or even might be) a chance to set things right in the next.

Is that what Rob Bell believes? Or might believe? Even after reading and re-reading Love Wins, I still don’t know for sure. And that is precisely the problem.

There is a difference between speaking judgmentally about specific people, and speaking truth about God’s coming judgment. The judgmental aspect of Jesus' relationship to creation is very clearly written in God's word, because it would not be just, or loving, to be vague about a thing like that.

Sometimes the most difficult and uncomfortable things must be spoken very carefully and clearly, if love is really going to win.

RIVER RISING - Deleted Scene

2011-05-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

While looking for something else this morning, I came across this scene, which got cut from River Rising early in the editing process. In honor of the poor folks in the parishes around Baton Rouge and New Orleans today who are once again suffering from a flood, I thought I'd publish it here, as a reminder that miracles do happen, and "love . . . always hopes, always perseveres."

Visualize relentless rain falling on a slave plantation beside the Mississippi, and a great flood about to crest the levees . . .

***

Lying on the moist soil of her shack, Marah smelled something in the air. Smoke? She took a tiny bite of hard tack and chewed it slowly, drawing it out, making it last. Yes, wood smoke. Someone had built a fire inside their doorway, she supposed; maybe had a little dry kindling stored away, and decided a hot meal would be worth putting up with tearful eyes and ticklish lungs. She too would rather suffer a smoke-filled room than endure the cold comfort of another meal like this. But she had not had the foresight to gather wood from along the overgrown sides of the levees and store it indoors. She envied them. She took another bite. All too soon her little piece of bread was gone. Time to milk the goat. One of the other women had fed the last of yesterday’s milk to the baby a little while ago. The child would be crying for more in the middle of the night. Marah rose to her feet and paused before the door, staring out into the rain. Strange, this rain. It had gone on like this for a day and a half now, never faster, never slower, no lightning or thunder, just strong, steady rain coming down so straight it hung outside the doorway like a curtain. Wrapping her arms across her chest to clutch her elbows for warmth, Marah ducked her head and stepped outside.

The rain hit her neck and rolled down her back. She made no effort to avoid the puddles as she walked, for the puddles were everywhere, and getting deeper. Wading right through, she followed the beaten path along the front of the shacks, heading for the small pen back behind. She did not look up. She knew the way so well there was no need. Besides, what would she see but pitch black? Holding her head down, facing the ground, was the best way to avoid the pounding rain. So when the light appeared at the edge of her vision and she raised up, Marah was already very near the fire that Newboy had somehow built. It roared and danced with life as if celebrating something joyful. Newboy stood on the other side gazing into a pot that hung above the flames. The warm light bathed his features with a yellow glow. His skin glistened. He stood perfectly still. The rain, falling into the flames, crackled and rose again as waves of steam that almost obscured him.

For a moment Marah thought he might be a vision. The fire might be a vision, too. How could anyone build a fire in this rain? How would you get the first tiny flame to catch and hold? And where would you get the dry wood? It was impossible. Yet there it was—there he was—somehow.

How?

Forgetting the goat, Marah walked closer. The warmth of the flames caressed her, made her feel almost comfortable again. Stepping into the circle of firelight cast around about, she got Newboy’s attention. He looked up at her across the fire and smiled. Suddenly she felt comfortable on the inside, too.

“Want some stew?” he asked.

Unconsciously she touched her stomach. “Sure.”

“I think it’s ready. Help yourself.”

“What’s in it?”

His smile widened. “Does it matter?”

She laughed and knelt and dipped one of the wooden bowls lying there into the pot and up it came, rich with vegetables and meat and smelling of heaven. She watched Newboy over the edge of the bowl as she drank from it.

“Good?” he asked.

She nodded and kept on drinking and chewing, following his every move as he turned from the fire and went to the nearest shack. Sticking his head inside he called, “Hey! Got some stew out here for them that wants it.”

The stew was better than good. It had a peculiar, delicate flavor. Tilting the bowl toward the fire she saw small floating green and rust colored flecks. Had Newboy somehow found spices? She sighed with pleasure. They had not even had salt in…how long? Since before the last planting season for sure. Maybe even the one before that. Yet here he was coming up with these delicious spices.

How?

Newboy moved on to the next shack, where he poked his head in and offered another invitation to come out and eat some stew. Moving on again, he was soon too far away for Marah to see him in the darkness and the rain, but she heard his muffled voice and knew he had continued, all the way down the line. What was he thinking? The pot was far too small for everyone. It held enough for maybe six or eight at most. And already the three women living in the first shack had emerged. Marah giggled as their eyes went wide at the sight of her kneeing in the rain beside a roaring fire, eating stew. Had she looked that way at Newboy when she walked up? The women approached slowly, each of them clutching a bowl made from a gourd. Marah rose to give them room as they clustered around the pot. Her own bowl was almost empty. Strangely, that one serving had been enough to fill her belly. But even though the stew was mighty filling, there would never be enough for everyone.

Now others gathered around the fire. To Marah’s surprise, nobody pushed or shoved. Everyone made room for those who came behind. Even Qana waited his turn. Marah supposed it was the shock of seeing the fire that kept them civil. What else could it be? She saw Newboy take his place on the far side of the fire, just where he had stood before when she walked up. Steam rose and fell in waves as he watched the others dip their gourds and hand carved bowls into the pot. Sometimes the steam almost obscured him. Sometimes it parted and she could see him clearly. The others did not seem to notice that he did not eat. Maybe he had eaten earlier, before Marah came along. One or two people thanked him as they passed along beside the pot. Most did not. No matter what, he smiled at one and all in a way that made her certain that he did not care about their thanks so much as he did about their bellies.

Qana had gone through the line twice before it finally occurred to Marah that the pot was not yet empty. How could that be? There were so many of them, and some had already taken two helpings, yet each hand that dipped a bowl into that small pot raised it up again filled to the brim. Could Newboy have refilled it in an instant of concealment by the rising steam? Could anyone move that quickly? And if so, where did he hide the raw materials? And the fire…she had not seen him add a log, yet it still burned. No longer did she marvel that the fire had been started in this rain. Now she marveled that it kept on burning. There was no pile of logs waiting to be burned. And the air was filled with falling water. No fire could burn in such a rain. Looking around, Marah wondered: did no one else see these things? How could they not? How could they simply eat and see nothing but the bowls they cradled in their hands as if to protect them from each other?

Was she the only one with eyes?

Love Wins . . . Unless You Are Rob Bell

2011-03-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

Rob Bell is at it again. He has never shied away from controversy, and apparently his new book, Love Wins, is no exception. With the book not yet even released, already such stalwart evangelicals as Albert Mohler and John Piper are calling it heretical. An executive with a Christian publishing company, Justin Taylor, was apparently an early voice in the outrage against what Rob Bell might have written. (Taylor says on his blog, “I have not read all of Bell’s book, though I have read some chapters that were sent to me. . . . I think that the publisher’s description combined with Bell’s video is sufficient evidence to suggest that he thinks hell is empty and that God’s love (which desires all to be saved) is always successful.”) Speaking as a novelist and non-fiction author, I'm surprised a man with Mr. Taylor's background in publishing would assume Rob Bell had total control over his publisher's advertising copy. It's possible, of course, but I could tell several disaster stories to demonstrate it ain't necessarily so, and I'll bet Mr. Taylor could, too. Take the trailer for Love Wins as an example. Are we expected to believe that Rob deliberately set out to do an Uncle Fester imitation? Surely that sweater was some publicist's decision. (Sorry Rob.)

Rather than basing a response on what the man's publisher wrote, unlike Justin and Al and John I think I’ll wait until I read what Rob wrote before I pronounce judgment from on high.

That said, the trailer does make it seem like Rob’s upcoming book will take on some tough questions about salvation. What is it, exactly? How is it made possible? Bell’s video asks if Gandhi is in hell, and he asks if we have the right to say so. Again, since the book is not yet out, everything is speculation, but it seems like Rob intends to explore the ideas of heaven and hell, and how we get to one or the other, and he intends to look at it a bit more broadly than Drs. Mohler and Piper might prefer. So what’s the problem exactly?

The Bible does clearly state that many of us are bound for hell. I hope Rob agrees with that, because if he doesn’t, then he has indeed stepped far outside of Biblical truth. Where there is much room for debate, however, is exactly what the Bible says about how to get to heaven. Fortunately, there is a core set of beliefs that virtually no evangelical Christian will dispute. They have been famously explained this way:

God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life;

All of us sin, and our sin has separated us from God;

Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through him we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our life;

We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s plan for our lives.

These are Bill Bright’s famous “Four Spiritual Laws,” and as I mentioned, they are universally believed in the evangelical community, as far as they go. But some evangelicals go further. Whereas Bill Bright said, “We must . . . receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord” some insist we must also add, “. . . and receive him by that name precisely, and consciously and deliberately believe in the historical details of his crucifixion and resurrection as a person who was both fully man and fully God.”

I suspect we would find Al Mohler, John Piper and Justin Taylor firmly in this camp. Theologians call it “Exclusivism.” At the opposite end of the theological spectrum is “Universalism,” which holds that God’s love and His desire that none should perish means everyone will go to heaven, and hell is empty (except perhaps for the odd demon). This is what Rob Bell has been accused of, but those doing the accusing seem to think there’s nothing in-between these two positions. If so, they could not be more wrong.

I wrote a chapter on the territory in-between in my memoir, The Gospel according to Moses: What My Jewish Friends Taught Me about Jesus
As part of the companion study guide, I collected a few quotes by other famous fundamentalist evangelical theologians on this subject. You can read those quotes here, and I strongly suggest that you pause a moment now, and go do it. You may not know me, or have any reason to believe what I write here, but I promise you will be familiar with many of the sources of those quotes.

All of the great Christians quoted in the study guide would disagree with the idea that a person cannot enter into a healthy relationship with God without—regardless of circumstances—first expressing faith or belief in the historical details of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God/man. Given that, some might wonder if these men are saying it wasn’t necessary for Jesus to suffer and die on the cross. Do they believe Jesus could have simply examined our hearts’ intentions and decided if we were worthy for salvation based on that, without all the torture and the blood?

It’s a natural question to ask, and based on everything we know about these men, I think we have to answer, no, they all believed exactly the same things every evangelical Christian believes about the reason, purpose, effectiveness and exclusivity of the cross and empty tomb. We get a hint of this when we zero in on a few of those quotes:

"...elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated, and saved by Christ..." (Westminster Confession of Faith)

"...all salvation is through Jesus..." (C.S. Lewis)

”...anyone thus saved would learn in the next world that he was saved through Christ." (J.I. Packer)

They're saying salvation--all salvation--is by grace through faith in Jesus alone. We know these men aren’t Universalists. None of them think Buddha or Vishnu or Allah saves. All of them believe every soul in heaven got there in "one way" only: through the mercy and justice of the cross. They would point to Hebrews 11 as one proof of this (the part that teaches that all the OT believers were saved through faith in a future event--the cross--even though “they did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance”). These men would say the crucifixion was essential, because it was not a mere symbol but was instead an objective fact, an effective and direct Divine intervention in history, by which the potential for justice was actually reestablished in our relationship with God, and a genuine process set in motion which will one day also reestablish all the laws of nature in the universe as they were originally created to be.

So that's not the question they’re dealing with. Instead, they want to know this: if we say we must have faith in the historical details of the crucifixion and resurrection in order to be saved--if we must consciously assent not only to the "Four Spiritual Laws" but also to the full scriptural detail behind them--then what do we believe about the countless people who have lived and died without hearing and/or understanding those specifics of the Good News?

Do we believe every infant who ever died is in hell? Every adult with a baby's mind? Every American Indian before Columbus? Every person who lived before 33 AD?

Of course most Christians have had this conversation many times, and most of us would say, no, the God we love would find a way to save such people. But then we must ask, on what basis does He save them? That is where most of us throw up our hands and answer simply, "God will find a way," but the men I quoted are a bit braver than most, and tried to take it deeper.

Think of stories we've heard about missionaries who encounter people in the deepest jungles and tell them the Gospel, only to learn those people already somehow believe in a God who died for them. In these missionaries' stories, the jungle people are delighted to learn the real name of their God, "Jesus", but what if one of these people who previously believed in a strange “God-who-died-for-us” had passed away the day before the missionaries arrived? She knew some of the facts—the substitutionary sacrifice part—but would she have gone to hell because she died without hearing that God’s name, Jesus, or the fact that he was both fully God and fully man? In other words, must she know all of the historical details, or are only some of them enough? And if only some, which ones, exactly?

We believe those missionaries' stories, and stories about Muslims meeting Jesus in their dreams and so forth, because we believe in miracles. But are those stories really about paranormal miracles, or do we think such revelations are completely normal? Do we think God somehow tells everyone on earth the historical details of the gospel before they die? No child dies in Pakistan until they know it? Every mother in the Amazon? Every man in the mountains of Tibet already knows all the historical details of the Gospel? The Bible does say everyone is "without excuse" because of God's self-revelation through the glory of creation, but does that passage also mean God has revealed the full story of the crucifixion to everyone? If so, if God would never let anyone die without first revealing the historical facts behind the Gospel, miraculously if necessary, why would Jesus command us to go throughout the world and spread the Gospel? And if we don’t believe God reveals the full Gospel to everyone, if there are unreached people on the earth who die in ignorance of it, does that mean those people will suffer in eternal fire forever?

Or could it be that some of those people--probably only a few because the gate is narrow for us all—could some of them in total ignorance of the facts of the Passion nonetheless see the Lord around them in creation's glory and recognize the truth of what they see, and reject the worship of “images” even as they sense the utter impossibility of climbing up to such a holy God as that, and fall on their face in utter desperation, filled with love and desiring nothing for themselves except a relationship with the One they love, offering themselves completely to a Mystery they long to know, and begging Him to have mercy on them, to find a way to climb down to them instead, to let them simply love Him and be loved by Him?

If someone prayed that way, yet died in ignorance of the cross, how would Jesus Christ respond? That is the real question.

Quoting one of many similar verses ("No one comes to the Father except by me") some devoted Christians believe Jesus would still condemn such a person to hell, because after all, if God had wanted such a person to be saved, surely He could have found a way to speak the historical details of the Gospel into that person's mind. Plus of course, He is God, and quoting this perhaps, some say who are we to question His decisions? And I think every true Christian would agree God could indeed reveal every detail to everyone before they die, if that were God's intention, and God does indeed have every right to do with everyone exactly as He wills.

But other Christians—equally devoted—pointing elsewhere in the same scriptures think God has already made His preference known, and He desires us all to live with him if we only will. They believe God might choose to save the person I described above, and do it on the basis of the cross, even though the person does not know the cross exists. Fine Christian men like Justin Martyr, C.S. Lewis, J.I. Packer, John Stott, and Billy Graham might suggest it is not the historical fact of the cross which saves us; it is the One who used the cross to change history. They might point to James's famous statement that even demons believe, and shudder. They might mention that throughout his ministry on earth, Jesus was much more concerned with the content of the human heart than he was with religious belief systems. And they might ask, what does "except by me" mean, primarily? Does it mainly mean "except by knowledge of a Jewish carpenter?" Or from looking at the very next verse, might it much more likely mean, "except by the intercession of the second Person of the Trinity?" (I say “mainly” because of course, Jesus was both, but can it really follow that one must understand that fact in order to be saved? And if so, are we all lost, for which of us really understands it?)

In short, some Christians think we’re saved by what we know; others think we’re saved by who we know, but one thing is for sure: if any Christian wants to accuse another of heresy over this, then they’re going to have to include men like John Wesley, John Stott, Justin Martyr, Billy Graham and C.S. Lewis among the heretics. Given such a cloud of witnesses, personally I think it’s much wiser to leave the accusations to Satan, who loves to do such things, and admit that I don't know the mind of God on such a matter.

Finally, given all of this the usual next question is, "In that case, why bother to evangelize?" and the answer is: 1) because it helps our neighbors to draw closer to the Lord through deeper knowledge about the sacrificial nature of His love for them, and; 2) because Jesus Christ commanded it. Either should be more than enough motivation for any Christian.

I have no idea what Rob Bell has written about all of this. If he did believe in a God who doesn’t care about justice, who allows unrepentant Hitlers to live forever in heaven alongside repentant saints, then I do think he would be horribly wrong, and worse than wrong, I think he would be in grave spiritual danger himself for leading many people astray. I also think he will be in grave spiritual danger if his new book does teach Universalism, because that doctrine is not Biblical, and leads to damning complacency among its adherents. But I don’t know that Rob believes any of that. Neither do Albert Mohler, or John Piper, or Justin Taylor. And oh, how I wish we Christians would learn not to attack a brother (in The New York Times, no less!) before we know it’s absolutely necessary.

So far in this matter, the only things we know for sure are these: 1) there have indeed been famous pastors behaving poorly, and; 2) they have not been Rob Bell.

Shall We Dance?

2011-03-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I have a chance to preach at my church. Last Sunday, I spoke about Proverbs 8, and the Trinity. If you're a Christian, can you explain why the idea that our Lord exists as three Persons is the most important thing we Christians know, except for the cross and empty tomb? It's strange, but many of us can't. I wonder why we spend so little time thinking and talking about it . . .

I’m in awe of Proverbs 8. All of the scriptures are sacred, of course, but today we’re moving onto truly holy ground. Today we’re going to glimpse what it’s like to be the Creator of the universe. And along with awe, I feel an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude, because today’s passage proves my Heavenly Father wants me to know as much about Him as my little mind can understand. I think there’s only one reason why the Creator would bother to reveal Himself this way: He loves me—and all of you—very much, and like all lovers, He wants to be known. So let’s begin in Proverbs 8:

1 Does not wisdom call, does not understanding raise her voice? 2 On the heights beside the way, in the paths she takes her stand; 3 beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: 4 "To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the sons of men.”

Proverbs 7 shows us secrecy is the enemy of relationships. There, the wicked woman goes out into the street to find the wayward young man, but she wants him to come alone back to her house. She says, “It’s okay, my husband isn’t home. This will be our little secret.” But here in 8:4 we see wisdom is different. Wisdom calls to all humanity, all the sons of men. You can also see this in verses 15 & 16.

15 By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; 16 by me princes rule, and nobles govern the earth. 17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.

So wisdom works at the most highly visible human level, among kings and rulers. Wickedness operates in secret, destroying relationships and community, but wisdom stands out in the open, calling to everyone, guiding entire nations. And if you look at the very end of chapter 7, you see wickedness comes at a high cost. In the end, it costs everything.

But now look at verse 17 in chapter 8. Wisdom says “Those who seek me find me.” And why is that? The answer is also right there in 17. God loves those who love him. Folly says come home with me, and I’ll show you a secret. You’ll find peace and joy through what you know. Wisdom also offers peace and joy, but out in the open. Wisdom says it’s not what you know, but who you know. God wants to be known. “I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 7:7. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

So this is one way we can know we’re approaching the true Master of the Universe, and not a cheap little imitation: The one true God keeps no secrets.

On the contrary, again and again Jesus implores us to listen and believe. “Verily, verily I say unto you,” he says, over and over, begging us to hear the plain truth of his teaching. And why does he bother? Again, because God loves us very much, and like all lovers, God wants to be known.

Back in Matthew 7, right after promising that those who seek will find, Jesus also says, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” Notice how Jesus says ask and it will be given. Your Father in heaven will give good gifts. Wicked secrets have a cost, but God’s wisdom is free, at least for you and me.

Of course as Christians we know wisdom is free, but justice is not. Justice requires an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The vast wisdom of God’s love, and the forgiveness which proves God’s love, is openly available to everyone, a standing offer at no cost to us, because Jesus already paid the price for it on the cross.

On the night before his crucifixion, they took Jesus prisoner and asked him questions, hoping he would say something they could use against him. In John 18:21-22 He answered: "I have spoken openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues or at the temple, where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said.”

Jesus said nothing in secret. Wisdom calls out in the streets. True love keeps no secrets. God wants to be known. Over and over again, Jesus freely and openly explains the way to peace and joy in life. Over and over again he says simply, “believe.”

Jesus says, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

He says, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

And one of the most famous things Jesus ever said is in John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.”

To some of us, this just seems too easy. Here we are, wondering how to connect with the Creator of light and time and molecules and black holes, and Jesus says, “Just believe”? Some of us feel there must be more mystery than that. More to know.

Just believe? It can’t be that simple. And I agree. I do agree. On one level, I think that’s far too simple.

If we understood the slightest bit about what we’re really doing here today, talking and thinking about this vast Presence who not only fills the entire universe, but also exists somehow outside of time and space in a way we can’t begin to imagine, if we could fully know the smallest fact about God’s actual state of existence, then I think we’d have to agree that entering a loving relationship with Him is, at the very least, mysterious. And to solve a mystery, you must understand it. So why does Jesus say, “Just believe?”

To begin to understand this, I think we have to press closer to the sacred territory I mentioned at first, the holy ground that begins in Proverbs 8, verse 22.

22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. 23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; 26 before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. 27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.

If you know the Bible, you’ll feel you’ve heard something very much like these words before, and of course you have. Here are the first few words of the Gospel of John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

The apostle Paul also enters this mystery in Colossians 1:15-17, where he says:

15 He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Solomon writes of “creation” and “the beginning” and “kings and rulers” and “wisdom.” John and Paul write of exactly the same things, except instead of “wisdom” John speaks of “the Word,” and Paul comes right out and speaks of “Jesus.” The apostles’ words are so similar to Solomon’s, I really think they must have had this particular Proverb in mind.

But what about that language in verse 8:22, where depending on the translation we read phrases like: “The Lord created me,” or “the Lord brought me forth as the firstborn,” or “as the first of His works.” If Solomon is really talking about the second person of the Trinity, as John and Paul seem to think, then this language is a problem, isn’t it? Because as Christians we know Jesus is not the first thing made by the Lord, not a creature created by the Lord; Jesus is the Lord, as Paul wrote in a couple of places.

Some think this means Proverbs 8 is only poetic symbolism. They think it’s strictly about wisdom. But the problem isn’t only here in Proverbs. Remember the Colossians quote I mentioned? Paul calls Jesus “firstborn over all creation.” So we can’t avoid this simply by calling Proverbs 8 a symbolic poem.

This mystery is too deep for that, and like all mysteries in the Bible, I believe the thing to do is not to turn away from it, or deny it, but rather to press into it, and by doing that, learn more about the Lord. Let’s press in.

In Libya today there are mass demonstrations and a cruel government crackdown which some people think may lead to more terrorism. Early in the fourth century another big problem came out of Libya, when a popular teacher named Arius decided this Proverb and Paul’s “firstborn” language means there must have been a time when Christ didn’t exist. Arius also thought it meant Christ and the Father were fundamentally different. This is called the Arian heresy. Even today, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons still teach these mistakes, but they directly contradict what Jesus said about himself. For example, in Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” And he said, “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” Notice that especially: Jesus didn’t say “I was,” but he very specifically said, “I AM,” exactly as God said to Moses from the burning bush.

The church fathers three hundred years later responded to the Arian heresy with the Nicene Creed, which says:

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father . . .”

You could almost call this section of the Nicene Creed a commentary on Proverbs 8. The connection comes in the words, “begotten, not made.” Notice the church fathers are drawing a distinction there. “Begotten, not made.” It’s vital to remember the difference. Birds make nests. Humans make houses. God made the universe. But birds beget birds. Humans beget humans. And God begot God.

God made the universe, but God begot God. You see?

To be made, or created, is very different from being firstborn, or begotten. Something made is fundamentally different from the maker, but something begotten is the same substance as the begetter.

So if that word “created” in some translations of Proverbs 8:22 causes all this confusion, why use it? Well, the original Hebrew word is found 85 times in the Old Testament, and in all but three of those places it’s translated as “buy,” or “get,” or “possess.” In fact, this same word is used eleven times where Proverbs says, “Get wisdom.” But in those three remaining places, there is indeed a sense of being born. So a perfect translation would have to use an English word that means get, buy, possess, and born. But there isn’t such a word, is there? So the translators had to make the best of it. Sometimes we say things like, “Alexander Graham Bell is the father of the telephone,” as if an inventor could give birth to an invention. So the translators used “created” because at least that English word more or less sits between the ideas of “being possessed” and “being born.”

Personally, I think the New American Bible gives the best translation of verse 22. It reads, “The Lord begot me, the firstborn of His ways.” I think they rendered it that way because it’s closer to the “firstborn” language Paul used, and because it’s closer to Jesus’ own attempt to explain what he is, as God’s “only begotten son.”

Now we’ve seen how God begot God, and we’ve seen how important it is to remember that meanings don’t always translate directly from Hebrew into English, but there’s still a mystery, because the Hebrew word in verse 22 does carry both the idea of being born, or “firstborn” as Paul puts it. And of course if something is born, then that is the beginning of it, right? But the Lord has no beginning, and “Jesus is Lord,” as Paul said. So it seems there’s still more to learn by pressing even more deeply into this mystery.

Let’s begin with Leo Tolstoy. That famous novelist once said, "One may say with one's lips: 'I believe that God is one, and also three' - but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense." And I think we have to admit it’s true: those words have no sense.

Speaking of nonsense, I always think it’s adorable when a child is just learning to speak and he’s still lapsing into gaa-gaa-goo-goo sometimes, and his mom or dad says, “Use your words, dear.” We get more words as we grow up, but when it comes to some things, aren’t we all still at that gaa-gaa-goo-goo stage?

We don’t really have the words to fully explain the taste of water or the smell of air, do we? And when your heart swells with love or soars with a sunset, aren’t you sometimes almost painfully aware of how impossible it is to describe the most important things? Of course you are. We all know this is true. We’ve all lived it. So, getting back to trying to explain how the second person of the Trinity could be firstborn or begotten, let’s not make the foolish mistake of thinking words can be applied to Jesus in the same way they apply to us.

God begot God, and God has no beginning or end, therefore God’s only Son is begotten, and he has no beginning and no end.

This can no more be explained in words than that feeling you get at sunsets, or the way you feel when you watch a loved one sleep, but it’s every bit as true as every sunset, and every bit as true as everyone you love.

Still, something God put inside us wants to try to understand the Trinity. So, being very careful to remember analogies for God are only made of words, let’s think a moment about fire.

When fire appears, it produces flames and light and heat, correct? We have flames, and light, and heat, all three, all in the one thing, fire. But it’s not correct to say the flame was first and the light or heat came second. If there is one fire, there are also always flame and light and heat. Three are produced (or born or created, if you like) out of one, yet all exist at all times. And so it is with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Sort of.

We can learn more from the “the Son of God” analogy Jesus himself chose to describe his life with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Think about the fact that it’s impossible to be a child without having had a parent. It’s also impossible to be a parent without a having had a child. This is so important: unless a parent and a child both exist, it isn’t possible for either to exist. I myself have no children, therefore I am not a father. A Son implies a Father. But a Father also implies a Son. You could say they define each other. In a way, you could even say they create each other. So there’s that word “create” again, except it applies in a totally different way to the Godhead.

This means if there ever were a time before the Son of God, then there would also have to be a time before the Heavenly Father. Yet God by definition is eternal and never changes. So if God was ever a Father, God was always a Father, and if Jesus was ever God’s only begotten Son, Jesus was always God’s Son, from before his creative works began, exactly as it says in Proverbs 8:22.

I think Jesus had a second reason for choosing the Father/Son analogy, and I think from our point of view, it’s much more important. I think he used the Father/Son analogy for the same reason he inspired Solomon to use the lyrical language of Proverbs 8. I think Jesus wants us to think of the Godhead in terms of love.

Look at 30 and 31 again: “I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.”

What a beautiful image! The Father and Son at work together in the fields of the Lord, the Father showing the Son new and wondrous things, and the Son building on His ideas and laughing aloud with delight, and the Son’s delight an absolute delight to the Father, and the two of them, delighting in their mutual delight, and all the universe a profound labor of love because the Son and Father are so joyously in love with each other. It’s, “Look, Father! Look what I just made!” And “Oh, excellent, Son! Do it again!” . . . and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made . . . and the Word became flesh, and dwelled among us. (John 1:1-3 & 14)

And just here is where I’m sorely tempted to fall to the ground with awe, because I read Solomon’s words with an overwhelming sense that the curtain outside the Most Holy Place has been lifted just a little, and what I’m peeking through to see is what the physicists like to call the Big Bang, but what really seems to be much more than only that, more like the very source, the center, the cosmic beginning or entry point of all the love that ever was or ever will exist throughout the universe.

The history of humanity is one long theology lesson, God revealing facts about Himself as fast as we can absorb them. He used Jews to explain his oneness to the world. He used Christians to reveal his three-in-oneness. Even in the Hebrew Scriptures we see it. Not just here in chapter 8, but also in Proverbs 30:4, where a thousand years before the time of Jesus it asks, “Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know!”

So why don’t Christians spend more time thinking and talking about the Trinity? We really should. It’s the most important thing we know, except for the cross and empty tomb.

The Trinity explains why God isn’t an impersonal force that made everything and then withdrew.

The Trinity explains why God is personally involved, all the time, in everything.

The Trinity explains love.

The philosopher Martin Buber wrote a little book called I and Thou. It says we can only exist in one of two ways. Those two ways are “I-It”, or “I-You”. Buber said there is no third way of existing. We are sensory creatures. We are emotional creatures. We are relational creatures. We can’t survive without something or someone to relate to, any more than we could survive without air or water.

Most of us don’t understand this. Most of us think we can be just “I”, independent of “You”, or even of “It”. But when we try to do that, what we really enter is the “I-It” way of being. We become our own “it”.

This is what happens when we think of ourselves as something to be dulled with alcohol or drugs, or as something to be distracted with sex or work, or something to be gratified with possessions. To try to live only as an “I” is to think of ourselves as something about which something must be done. When we do that, we become subhuman. We become “I-It”.

But there is also “I-You”. When we are “I-You”, we are outward focused, on the Other. We are truly engaged in the world, unwilling to dull or distract or gratify ourselves because the Other, the You, is too wonderful to miss. It’s frightening sometimes, but “I-You” lives life as life truly is, far out there beyond just I, independent of just I. “I-You” gives itself away, and wonder of wonders, in giving, we receive.

But we don’t care about receiving. We are in “I-You”. The focus is not “It” and certainly not “I”. The focus is the Other, the You. In other words, (if you haven’t already figured this out), we are in love.

True love requires a “You”. True love must have an Other, in order to exist. You cannot even imagine true love in a vacuum. Remember! True love requires a “You".

So again, these are our only choices: “I-It”, or “I-You”, because relationship is as essential for survival as air or water. A single “I” is impossible. When we try to live that way, we turn ourselves into “I-It”, or else we go mad, which may be the same thing.

God, of course, is different. Unlike any created thing, God requires nothing for his existence. God and God alone exists simply as “I”. This is what God means when Moses asks him, “What should we call you?” and God replies, “I AM.” God is only “I”, or “I AM”. But the Apostle John also said, “God is love,” and remember, true love requires a “You”. It’s impossible to love in a vacuum. But before “the beginning” what Other existed? Before creation, there was only the Creator.

So because love requires a “You”, and because God is love, and because there was a time when only God existed, God must, somehow, be both an “I” and a “You”.

Of course, Christians know this is true. There is one God, but somehow God exists as three persons. We don’t pretend to know how this is possible. How could we, when we have only “goo-goo-gaa-gaa” to describe the eternal, the all-powerful, the ever present, the never changing? But we know this is true, because wisdom calls out in the streets. There are no secrets. God wants to be known. We see it in our Bibles.

We see the Three together in chapter one of Mark, at the Jordon River when the Holy Spirit comes down on Jesus like a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven saying, “You are my Son, whom I love.” We see them in this morning’s passage: Wisdom with the Father, two Persons delighting in each other, delighting in the thing they’re creating together, and the delight created with their love becoming so complete within itself it must also be thought of as a Person, the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Because there are really three parts to Martin Buber’s word of love. There is the “I”. There is the “You”. And there is the dash between, the hyphen that holds I and You together, and is held in place by them.

I was reading C.S. Lewis on the Trinity, and I found this:

“In Christianity God is not a static thing...but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance. The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person.” (“Good Infection”. Mere Christianity, Book IV, “Beyond Personality”)

God is a dance. What an amazing idea. But I think of how I feel when I’m closest to the Lord, and I know exactly what it means. And look at verses 23 and 24 again. See where it says, “I was established,” or “I was brought forth”? That same Hebrew word can mean “I danced.” And in verses 31 and 32, where some translations see wisdom “rejoicing” in God’s presence, the Hebrew can also be understood to mean wisdom was “at play.”

The idea that the Holy Spirit emanates from that dance, that play between the Father and the Son, made me remember a strange thing Jesus says in John 16:7: “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” Why did Jesus have to go away before the Holy Spirit would come down? If Lewis is correct, I think we have part of the answer.

After accepting the humiliation of life on a fallen earth and betrayal and torture on the cross for you and me, the only begotten Son returned to the heavenly Father in triumph, and only then did the infinite delight of their reunion inspire the Holy Spirit to call out to all creatures great and small, “Come and join the dance!”

All of this returns me to that question I asked earlier: Why is it almost every time Jesus talks about the way to enter a relationship with God, he says simply, “Believe?” How could such a simple thing make such a massive difference? The answer, of course, is that it is far from simple.

C.S. Lewis went on to put this better than I could. He said:

“The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made . . . If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separate from God, what can he do but wither and die?” (Lewis, ibid)

Even Christians sometimes forget that the beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom. She calls in the streets. She has no secrets. God wants to be known. But Jesus doesn’t want us to miss the obvious: We must believe her, not just one time long ago, but all day every day. James put this in a different way: “Faith without works is dead.”

Look at how you live your life. Do you really believe wisdom? Then do what she says.

If you’re not a Christian, you might think believing means turning your back on questions and answers. But Jesus has no secrets. Believe wisdom, and you step closer to the truth, not further from it. You step into the fountain from whom all the answers flow. You join the Divine dance Solomon describes. You are united with the Heavenly Father, Begotten Son, and Holy Spirit, and you will have eternity for answers.

We are all made in the image and the likeness of a God who exists in true love, in “I the Father”, in “You the Son”, in the Spirit who holds I and You together and is held in place by them. Whether we never knew it before, or whether we knew it and forgot it, we are made in that rejoicing image of community. We are made in that dancing likeness of relationship.

We can try to deny the obvious, and end up sulking all alone on the little island of “I-It”. Or we can believe the wisdom calling in the streets, and live like we believe it, and be at play in the fields of the Lord forever, in the joyous universe of “I-You”. Those are our only choices. Folly hides the ugly truth about herself, and in the end she will cost everything we have, but wisdom keeps no secrets, and the heavy price of what she offers is already paid. Wisdom calls to all of us, and the most important question is . . . shall we dance?

On Getting Lungs

2011-02-04T09:50:00.000-08:00

To teach is to learn. I led a discussion on the Lord’s Prayer and the Proverbs last night, and gleaned many inspiring insights from the friends I was supposed to be teaching, but for me the most intriguing moment came when we discussed these two strange facts:

1. The Lord’s Prayer is meant to be prayed by a community of believers.
2. There is no such community mentioned in the Proverbs.

Point number one seems clear when we notice the plural pronouns Jesus used: “Our Father”, “give us this day our daily bread”, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. Surely the One who was the “craftsman at God’s side” during creation (Prov 8: 22-31) did not craft these phrases lightly. We are meant to speak this prayer together, as a body which is one as Christ and the Father are one (John 17:11 & 22). Why then don’t we see some hint of this communal aspect of belief in Proverbs? Solomon leads a people who are called to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Surely he well understood the role of community in a believer’s life. So why did Solomon use the words “our”, “us”, and “we” only in the context of a group of sinners who lie in wait to steal and murder, or an adulteress and adulterer together in their bed of sin? (See Prov 1:11-15, 7:18, & 24:12 the only three places in Proverbs where these plural pronouns appear in the Hebrew.)

The answer, as we discussed it, lies in the fact that every child is born completely self-aware. Total immersion in ourselves makes it impossible imagine life in true community. So the Lord must meet us in that solitary place, and He does.

No one enters the city of God (or the people of Israel) among a crowd. The gate is narrow, not only because it is difficult, but also because we must pass through one by one. Solomon, in all his wisdom, can only point the way. He does this not with constant references to heaven (there is just the one, mentioned above) nor with prophecies of messianic kingdoms (that will come five centuries later, with Daniel) but by showing one young man what life can be when lived as God intended all along. In so doing, Solomon helps that solitary young man understand he cannot measure up to such a life alone. No one can.

Throughout the Proverbs Solomon says his words lead to life, but who can live the life of wisdom he describes? “The beginning of wisdom is this: get wisdom,” says Solomon. It is as if he had said to a fish out of water, “Get lungs.”

In the Gospels Jesus says “the Spirit gives life,” and “my words are Spirit.” (John 6:63) Solomon’s words point to life; Jesus’ words are life. Wisdom is something one must try to get. Life is something given.

So Solomon’s son strives for wisdom, rejecting the false community of unbelievers, but he remains alone. Only in Christ can we experience true communal life, true connection with our fellow human beings. All people outside Christ are spiritually dead, and nothing is more solitary than death. But inspired by Solomon’s glorious vision of how true life could be, those who enter one by one through that narrow gate—those who come alive—are joined in a single living Body, somehow “one” with millions and millions of other individuals across the globe and centuries, just as Jesus and the Spirit and the Father are One everywhere for all time.

Through our collective Christian veins flows the blood of the one true life, Christ’s. This is not a matter of being in community one day, if all goes well. It is an accomplished fact. “It is finished,” because Christ has done it. We are one vine, one body, one church. This is true even when we forget, even when we pretend otherwise, because even then we are alive in Christ, we all have lungs at last, and all of us together inhale one Spirit, counselor and protector. But we do forget, and therein lies a challenge we have faced for centuries.

To an early church mired in doctrinal disputes, the church father Tertullian once said the devil has tried to destroy the truth in many ways, often by defending it.

Even last night we forgot it. As we read Peter Kreeft on this subject, it was difficult to think of Peter as us, and to think of us as Peter, because we are Protestants and Peter is a Catholic. Our brother writes of the “mystical” and of “purgatory” and we look for distance from him, as if such a thing were possible, as if our brother were himself the embodiment of doctrine we deem false, as if the eye could say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” or to the feet, “I don’t need you!” simply because the eye sees something disagreeable about the hands and feet. (1 Cor 12:14-21)

We are people of the Book. We spend countless hours reading, talking and thinking about God’s Word, which is good because that is why the Book was given, but sometimes in the midst of it we would do well to pause and reflect on the poem of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Sometimes in the midst of it we would do well to remember that the very first doctrine we all learned--the Gospel itself--is at once the simplest and most wonderful, and it alone was all that mattered when we entered through that narrow gate. When doctrinal disputes arise in this community of ours, if in true humility we will follow every question to the Source, there we’ll find “nothing except Jesus, and him crucified.” Our faith does “not rest on the wisdom of men [not even Solomon’s!], but on the power of God.” (1 Cor 2:1-5) Anything which contradicts that power is outside of us, but anything which does not contradict it should be embraced, if not with intellectual assent, then with loving forbearance.

After all, it is truly finished. We are one vine, one body, one church. No lesser doctrine than the Gospel could unite us, and no lesser doctrine can divide us if only together we will pray, “Our Father...give us...lead us...deliver us.”

The Worst List of All Time

2011-01-19T08:51:00.000-08:00

I found something disturbing recently while looking for ways to promote The Opposite of Art. It’s a list over at GoodReads, called “The Worst Books of All Time.” In the top (bottom?) 50 titles or so, I found books like: To Kill a Mockingbird, Billy Budd, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Red Badge of Courage, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Forest Gump, Fahrenheit 451, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Pearl. As a novelist and as a Christian, that list saddens me.

While discussing it with some fellow novelists, one said many books by Christians are poorly written. She then felt the need to qualify her statement by affirming that she thinks there are lots of well-written novels by Christians. Probably she didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, and that's laudable, but it seems to me she had it right the first time.

It’s true many novels by Christians are poorly written. That's also true of many other kinds of novels. In fact it’s true of most novels of every kind, but its not a particular indictment of mediocre writers or the readers who enable them. Most people don't really care about excellence in architecture, sculpture, painting, or dance . . . or government, commerce, marriage, or anything else in life that ought to matter.

What interests me, is why. In our discussion about the “Worst Books” list, some of my author friends speculated that so many people dislike those novels because they were forced to read them in school and disliked them then. But these books truly are works of genius—most of them are, anyway—so why didn't we love them in the first place?

The answer has to do with what it means to live in a fallen world. As creatures made in the Creator's image, we were designed to use our gifts to their utmost, and to savor excellence in our neighbor's use of their gifts. It's impossible to imagine the words "good enough" being spoken in the Garden before the Fall. But we did fall, and one of the things we lost was our ability to throw ourselves into living with complete abandon. "Good is the enemy of great," as Jim Collins wrote (paraphrasing Voltaire). Thus, in settling for good enough, we have rampant mediocrity in the world.

Another thing we abandoned in the Fall was our ability to perceive the true extent of what we've lost. So when expediency and ego dilute the full potential of even our best writers and artists, the audience, being also lost, doesn't know enough to care. Therefore they applaud what little they can get, and their applause rewards mediocrity. This in turn inspires the production of more mediocrity, and the cycle builds more and more support for itself until mediocrity seems normal, or even (God forbid) good, and because that lie has become pervasive, the truth is difficult for even Christians to remember. Thus we have rampant mediocrity even in the church.

The faithful Christian's life will always include a sense of resisting mediocrity at every turn. It's a command and a duty. "Whatever you do, do it will all your heart, as if for the Lord and not for men." (Col 3:23) It's no coincidence that this command includes the same requirement for wholeheartedness as the Greatest Command of all, to "love the Lord your God with all your heart...."

How can we love the Lord with all our heart? By living every part of life with all our heart. By not settling. By always striving to improve. In other words, as with all of His commands, the Creator simply wants us to live (write, marry, work, etc.) as we were originally created to live...with complete abandonment to what we truly are, which will reveal itself in the constant exercise of excellence in all our gifts.

Don't believe the lie of "good enough." You're so much better than that. Strive for excellence in everything you do, including what you write and what you read.

Live with all your heart.

Weigh the Soul

2011-01-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

2011 marks the one hundredth anniversary of Dr. Duncan MacDougall’s experimental attempt to prove that we have souls. His results? We do, and they weigh precisely 21 grams.

Color me skeptical.

Whether or not one believes the doctor’s results, the idea of weighing one’s soul in the balance is a good thing to ponder at the start of a new year. But while Dr. MacDougall focused on the weighing, I’m more focused on the balance. Consider Psalms 139:4-6:

Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (NIV)

At first I thought this was just a run-of-the-mill Biblical a statement about God’s omniscience. Then, considering it more carefully, I realized there’s something surprising being said here about...me.

I expect an omniscient God to know everything about me, including the instincts—the deepest, inmost urges and forces—which inspire even the words I use to think. What I didn’t expect, is the Psalmist’s insistence that I cannot know myself on that instinctive level because “such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

In short: there are things about my mind that my own mind simply cannot know.

What a paradox. And what a dilemma, because if I cannot know myself on the most fundamental of levels—the pre-thought level that inspires all thought—how can I improve myself fundamentally?

If you’re skeptical that this is really true; if you believe you can learn to understand your own instincts, consider this, from Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos:

Can you explain why it is that there are, at last count, sixteen schools of psychotherapy with sixteen different theories of the personality and its disorders and that patients treated in one school seem to do as well or as badly as patients treated in any other—while there is only one generally accepted theory of the cause and cure of pneumococcal pneumonia and only one generally accepted theory of the orbits of the planets and the gravitational attraction of our galaxy and the galaxy M31 in Andromeda? (Hint: if you answer that the human psyche is more complicated than the pneumococcus and the human white-cell response or the galaxies of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, keep in mind the burden of proof is on you. Or if you answer that the study of the human psyche is in its infancy, remember that this infancy has lasted 2,500 years and, unlike physics, we don’t seem to know much more about the psyche than Plato did.)

In other words: if you really believe you can understand your own instincts, then you’re going to have to explain why science has a better understanding of galaxies a billion miles away, than it has about the nature of the human psyche.

This speaks to the fundamental problem with the human condition, the thing that causes every kind of bad behavior from genocide to snarky comebacks: when a temptation to do the wrong thing comes, I may be able to manage my response, but before willpower or self-discipline has time to kick in, I still have a visceral reaction—a pre-response response if you will—that I cannot control. And I will never be able to control it.

The reason my instinct is beyond control is obvious when I think how it works in real life. Suppose someone treats me rudely. I may be able to grin and bear it. I may even—with many years of practice—be able to turn the other cheek. But my most basic response to a rude person, the thing which inspires the thoughts I’m forced to try to manage with willpower and discipline, is still just as ugly as his rudeness and I have no idea why.

This is why Jesus said, "There is only One who is good." None of us is "good" on this deepest, pre-thought level. Yet I don’t want to have those kinds of instincts. Who in his right mind would?

Imagine instead if that very first reaction before a word was even on my tongue, was to love. How would it be to encounter someone’s rudeness and instinctively think, “What a sad, unhappy person he must be. I have to find a way to help him.” There would be no need to struggle for self-control, no need for constant vigilance, for the exhausting, joyless maintenance of willpower and discipline which are always on the verge of breaking down to expose the underlying instincts I so desperately want to hide. If love was the thing that inspired words before they were upon my tongue, then I could simply do the natural thing in every situation, knowing it’s the right and healthy course of action. What freedom that would be!

So, I read that Psalm and came to this idea, and as so often happens, as soon as it occurred to me I sensed it had has been loitering in the antechamber of my brain for quite a while, waiting to come in. Because of course now that I think of it this way, I realize this disconnect between my desire to love and my base instincts is exactly what Jesus came to earth to change.

Again and again, in dozens of ways, he tried to help us understand the problem:

“...unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) NIV

“...no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” (John 3:3) NIV

“...whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39) NIV

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus deliberately chose humanly impossible metaphors? How could I become like a little child at my age? How could I go even further back and be born a second time? How could I find my own life after losing it? Such things are beyond me. In fact, (surprise, surprise) it turns out the solution to this problem, as Jesus has proposed it, can be described in the same words used by the Psalmist to describe the problem in the first place. Both the problem and solution are “too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

This is where balance comes back in.

On one side, I can know part of the truth about my inner self, but never everything. On the other side, I can know part of the truth about God, but never everything. If pride presumes (pretends) to know it all in either case, the scales tip out of balance. But if humility prevails, and I admit my limitations in both cases, balance is achieved. In that case, by the grace made possible through Jesus, the Holy Spirit can begin to change my deepest instinct into the perfect love that God wants it to be.

I sense this happening in me. It’s far from complete. It never will be finished in this life, but it is happening, and it is wonderful, and how I long to keep what can be known, and what cannot be known, in balance so the change will continue in the coming year.

Peace On A Troubled Earth

2010-12-24T06:50:00.000-08:00

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. (Luke 2:8-14)

Peace is a fitting topic for the Advent season, because the angels’ Christmas announcement was, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace....” But this is often the least peaceful time of year, even for a Christian. As Christmas approaches our thoughts can turn to loved ones who are distant or departed, and that can make it difficult to find “peace on earth.” Surely God knew this would be the case, so what did His angels mean by “peace on earth,” exactly?

Most of us know the Hebrew word for peace is shalom, of course. In Greek, it’s eirene. In both languages of the Bible the meaning of peace is much more than a simple feeling of tranquility, or the absence of war. Theologians say the Biblical ideas of shalom and eirene can be defined as wholeness, or completeness. Also honor. Integrity. Community. Righteousness and justice, maintaining healthy relationships, living out the golden rule, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

But is all of that what the angels meant by “peace on earth”?

On that first Christmas Eve, Israel and most of the western world groaned under brutal Roman oppression. Between twenty and thirty percent of the people in Europe and around the Mediterranean were enslaved. Public entertainment involved fights to the death in coliseums. The government had people beaten, stripped naked and nailed to crosses where they were left to die of exposure, asphyxiation and dehydration. Forty years after Jesus was himself nailed to a cross, all of Jerusalem was leveled by the Romans, and the Jewish people were enslaved and scattered throughout the world. The so-called Pax Romana was nothing but peace by the sword.

So much for wholeness and completeness and integrity and honor and righteousness and community and the golden rule and loving your neighbor as yourself. So much for peace by any earthly definition, really. Jesus himself said, “In this world you will have trouble,” and he said, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.”

But still, on that first Christmas Eve, the angels did say, “Peace on earth.”

It’s understandable that so many unbelievers think the angels got it wrong. But you know, words have meaning, and we really need to stop and think about the words these angels used.

Did they say the world was at peace?

No.

Did they promise the earth would be at peace?

No.

Their exact words were, “Peace on earth,” and they were angels after all, so we can assume they said exactly what they meant. When they appeared to those shepherds saying, “Peace on the earth,” they meant peace had arrived on the earth, right then, right there, and the shepherd could find peace if they wanted to, lying in a manger.

To fully understand this, we must ask, “Who and what is Jesus Christ?” People compare him to Confucius or Buddha or Muhammad, as if he was a wise teacher, a religious leader, or a holy prophet, but none of that is accurate. Consider what Jesus said about himself:

Jesus didn’t say “I know the way.” He said, “I am the way.”

Jesus didn’t say “I’ll tell you the truth.” He said, “I am the truth.”

Jesus didn’t say “I’ll teach you how to live.” He said, “I am the life.”

So when the angels appeared to the shepherds saying, “Peace on earth,” they didn’t mean Jesus had arrived to teach us about peace, or to lead us into peace. When they said, “Peace on earth,” they meant Jesus has arrived. Period. “Peace on earth” was just another way of saying, “Jesus is on earth,” because Jesus Christ is Peace.

You can find this all throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, Micah said the Messiah would be our peace (5:5). Isaiah called him the “Prince of Peace” in a scripture we hear put to glorious music every Christmas in Handel’s Messiah (9:6). And writing about Jesus in Ephesians, Paul said “He himself is our peace.” (2:14)

This means when we talk about the ideas of shalom and eirene, we’re really talking about Jesus, and that adds a whole new dimension to Jesus’ own teaching on the subject of peace. For example, in the Gospel of John, on the night of his arrest, when Jesus tells the apostles how they can have peace he doesn’t give them a philosophy to follow, or a religion to practice, or a ten step process, or any kind of a to-do list at all.

Instead, Jesus simply says “Abide in me,” or “Remain in me,” and then he says, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace” (16:33).

Jesus doesn’t offer a kind of peace, or a way to peace. Jesus Christ is peace, period. So it makes perfect sense that authentic peace is only found in Jesus. The way to be at peace is very simple. Abide in Jesus. Remain in Jesus. In Jesus you’ll have peace.

Maybe for you that doesn’t sound so simple. Maybe talk of being “in” Jesus sounds too vague and mystical for you. Fair enough. If you’re the practical kind, try thinking about it this way: you may not understand how it’s possible to be in Jesus Christ, but you do understand how a person can be in love, right? Well, Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is deeply in love with you, so the way to be at peace is to simply love him back. Be in love with Jesus, and you will be at peace.

Being at peace really is that easy, and that hard. It’s hard, because you can search the whole wide world and you won’t find peace on your own. It’s easy, because peace a free gift. Jesus said so himself, many times. He said, “God loved the world so much he gave his only son, so that anyone who believes in him would have eternal life.” And since Jesus Christ is peace, “God gave his only son” is just another way of saying God gave peace. It’s a gift. All you have to do—all you can do, if you want to be at peace—is accept the gift of peace.

Even Christians can forget this sometimes. Even Christians sometimes need to be reminded that you can’t be at peace by figuring things out. You can’t be at peace by being good. You can’t buy peace with money. The pastors at your church can’t give you peace, and you won’t find peace in your friends or family. And this is very important: you might be alone in life; you might be sick; you might have no money and no job, but whatever kind of problem you’re facing today, the solution to your problems will not give you lasting peace. After these problems will always come more problems, because we don’t live on a peaceful earth, so while a solution to your problems might be wonderful, what you need even more is the kind of peace that makes it possible to face your problems peacefully. You need peace with God, just like the familiar Christmas carol promises:

Hark! The herald angels sing.
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild;
God and sinners reconciled.”

This carol stands the test of time because it get things right. “Peace on earth” is about God and sinners reconciled, not about a peaceful earth. To the world, hanging on a cross is the opposite of peace on earth, but peace between God and us is only possible because Jesus Christ became that peace by hanging on a cross in place of you and me.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” What irony! You can pay a horrible cost in blood, sweat and tears for worldly peace, but it can vanish in an instant. Or you can simply accept the peace Jesus wants to give, and it will last forever.

Jesus went on to say, “I do not give to you as the world gives.” Because Jesus Christ is peace, he gives a different kind of peace, a peace that is all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present and eternal, a peace on earth that’s anything but earthly, as we find in yet another wise old Christmas carol everybody knows,

Silent night, holy night.
All is calm, all is bright
‘round yon virgin mother and child,
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.

No matter what kind of challenge, pain or suffering you face today, you can have heavenly peace on earth right here, right now. It’s a Christmas gift for everyone. Just fall in love with Jesus.

The Opposite of Art, first draft

2010-10-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, remember me? I've been gone a while. On Wednesday I sent a good first draft of THE OPPOSITE OF ART off to the editor. As always, in the final months of work on a new novel it becomes impossible to even think about keeping up with this blog. Wish I could do both, but there's only so much energy in this little brain of mine. Anyway, the hard part's over now, so I'm back.

I'm excited about this new novel. After moving further into "magical realism" territory with LOST MISSION, this one continues the momentum in that direction. Most readers seem to think RIVER RISING is my best work so far, but I suspect they're about to change their minds. Here's a taste from the first draft:

The sirens called him from his dreams. When the racket stopped, he rose and crossed the little bedroom of his hotel suite to lean naked out into the night, trusting his life to the freezing wrought iron railing just beyond the window so he could gaze down into the alley where a couple of New York’s finest had thrown some guy up against the bricks. Even from five floors up, even in the dark, Ridler recognized the lust for violence and the fear down there, but that was nothing compared to the play of the police car’s lights on the brick wall across the alley.

Shivering, he watched the blood and bruises rhythm of the red and blue, red and blue, the flashes regular against the motionless pattern of the dirty terra cotta colored masonry, worlds colliding in the two configurations, lights ethereal and fleeting, bricks stacked earthy and unchanged for generations. In the time and space created at the intersection of those patterns Ridler saw deep shadows slash across the wall, carved out of the light by the few bricks which had resisted the usual linear fate of their kind, standing out a little, casting empty voids across their fellows like witches conjuring a pitch-black portal to a future or a past. Lately he’d been interested in voids, in portals. He sensed a presence waiting beyond time in them, something no one else had painted. Gazing at the blank brick wall Ridler ignored the policeman down below pummeling the screaming fellow’s kidneys with methodical jabs, left, right, left, right. Although that too was a pattern in its way, there was no color in it, and certainly no transcendence.

When the screaming stopped and the guy dropped face down in a puddle of oily rainwater, Ridler tucked his long black hair behind his ear to better consider the rotating lights rippling in the glistening pavement around the body. Steam arose like ectoplasm at a manhole cover, transubstantiated from ghostly grays to primary colors by the police car’s flashing lights. It occurred to Ridler they would switch off the lights at any moment.

Turning from the window with a curse he ran into the sitting room, which he used as a studio, easel standing on a paint-splattered tarp in one corner, finished paintings hanging everywhere, stacks of waiting canvases against the walls. From the dining table he gathering his sketchpad and some pastels. Seconds later he was back in the bedroom, bare haunch against the window jamb, half in, half out, colored chalks and charcoals on the sill beside him, fingers dashing back and forth across the pad, eyes mainly on the wall across the alley, ignoring the cold in his desperation to memorize the image in case he couldn’t get it down before they killed it off forever.

The lights went out. The brick wall was just a wall again. Ridler leaned dangerously far out into the frigid air beyond the wrought iron railing, teetering five stories up to scream, “Turn your lights back on!” The policemen down below ignored him, focused as they were on dragging the inert man over to their car. Ridler’s breath turned into clouds, drifting off into the night. “Give me back my lights!” The policemen drove away without bothering to look up. Pulling back in from the brink, Ridler muttered, “Pigs.”

(Opening paragraphs of the first draft, THE OPPOSITE OF ART, which will be published in the spring)

Commit Literature

2010-07-24T07:28:00.000-07:00

When I began writing my first novel in 1993, I made a decision that still guides my work today. I would not try to write “great literature.” I would instead content myself with a simple little story, but I would write it to the best of my ability, and work hard to improve my skills to assure that what I wrote, while no masterpiece, would at least reflect well upon my Maker. I believe the most important words a Christian can apply to any kind of work are these, which were written to slaves by a man in chains:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” (Colossians 3:23-24) NIV

So I wrote slowly and painstakingly, carefully considering every word from many different standpoints. I sought out the opinions of intelligent acquaintances, and was never too proud to make constructive changes when suggested. Then, through a series of remarkable events (which I hope to write about one day in this column) to my very great surprise that first novel was published. But what surprised me even more was a comment made about that novel by an editor at a major newspaper. He said it “verged on committing literature.”

How strange it was to hear that word, when “literature” was the very thing I told myself I would not do.

Since those days Providence has seen fit to let me finish eight more novels, with six of those in print so far, and one memoir which may outlast them all. At the risk of seeming immodest, there have been several literary awards and many not uncomplimentary reviews, all of which when taken together have tended to imply that others see in me a puzzling habit of producing “literature.” This has caused me some confusion, for not once in all the years of writing—a million words or more—have I gone back on my original decision. Never have I consciously attempted literature.

Literature was for the academy. It was dense, impenetrable, lofty and apart. I simply wanted to tell unusual stories that might entertain readers, might enchant them through the characters and images brought to mind, and might perhaps leave them with a useful thought or two. How did that amount to literature?

For help in thinking through this question I looked to that ever-faithful writer’s servant, Webster’s. It turns out “literature” might not be the stuffy snob I once suspected. It is only “writings in prose or verse; especially: writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.”

Well. That didn’t sound so bad. In fact, this was a fair description of what I expected to read in every novel worth my time. It’s what one should expect from any gifted novelist who does his best to write “with all his heart, as if working for the Lord.” Indeed, now that I think about it, this is what every novel in the Christian Fiction genre ought to be: “excellence of form or expression, and ideas of permanent or universal interest.” For what is the alternative? Mediocrity of form and expression? Unimportant and uninteresting ideas? As an inheritor of the greatest story ever told, what kind of Christian storyteller would I be if I was satisfied with that?

Since I am indeed a Christian truly serious about the faith, I have finally decided to accept this fact: whether I try to write a Transcendent Masterpiece or simply keep on trying to amuse, my underlying goal must be to “commit literature” as it is defined above. If that is not my goal, if I am satisfied with less, then I am not writing for the Lord with all my heart, and in that case I would do best to stop writing altogether and seek some other kind of work.

In exactly the same way, whether you are a home schooling mother, a scientist, an assembly line worker or a lawyer, if you are a Christian you are called to work with all your heart as if working for the Lord. No job is too mundane for that calling; no task is too trivial. Those words were first meant for slaves, remember, written to them by a man in prison. I cannot help being a writer; this gift was given without asking if I might prefer another. Similarly, a slave by definition cannot choose his work, but in following St. Paul’s admonition he can most certainly redeem it. Perhaps life has assigned you only ditches to be dug, but in the way you dig them you decide if you are making literature or pulp. Every task, from the most denigrated to the most celebrated, becomes a form of praise and worship if it’s done with all your heart as if for the Lord. That choice is always yours.

Praise the Lord with excellence in whatever work you do, and prepare to be surprised when others call it something more than you dreamed possible.

The original version of this post was was first published on July 15, 2010 at Novel Journey.

On Beauty III

2010-07-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

Do you know what beauty is? For fifteen years now I've been trying to create it in my novels, and although the finished product never seems to measure up to what I had in mind, I think it's important to keep working toward it consciously and passionately. Not everyone agrees. In this post I wrote about the strange fact that many novelists rarely think of beauty as a goal in their work. In this one I discussed the reason why a Christian of all people ought to do exactly that, which brings me to the point: when you’re in hot pursuit of a thing, it’s important to understand exactly what that thing is.

So what is beauty, anyway?

It’s a difficult question to answer. Everyone has an opinion on how to define beauty, and our opinions vary widely. Like love or the taste of water, it seems beauty is the kind of thing one can’t quite explain. Webster’s defines it as “the quality attributed to whatever pleases or satisfies the senses or mind,” but notice this describes beauty in terms of its effect and not in terms of what it is. One simply knows beauty when one senses it, and as is often the case with intangibles, this means when we ask, “What is beauty?” it may be simpler to explain what beauty isn't. So I've compiled a little list of what beauty is not. Here goes:

"Beautiful” is not a synonym for “pretty.”

This fact is embedded in the language. While “beautiful” comes from the root noun “beauty,” there is no root noun for “pretty.” On the contrary, “pretty,” an adjective, is the root of “prettiness,” a noun. This means we can describe a thing as pretty, but pretty in itself is not a thing to be described. On the other hand, beauty requires no object. Beauty is a thing itself, and it is not necessarily pretty.

Nature offers countless examples of the difference. The perfect contours of a great white shark are easily an aesthetic match for any sculptor's masterpiece, and it moves with an effortless grace that any prima ballerina would envy. Surely “beauty” is not too strong a word to define such complete balance of form and function, but who would call that awesome predator “pretty”? Not all beautiful things are pretty, therefore the two are not the same.

Beauty is not relative to anything.

Certainly we are conditioned by our cultures to prefer one form of beauty over another in some cases. Many Japanese men think geishas are beautiful. With respect, I prefer less makeup. But that kind of disagreement exists only when we compare what we ourselves create. Everyone on earth agrees sunsets are beautiful. That fact means cultural distinctions are irrelevant when it comes to beauty found nature. Natural beauty—primal beauty—is an absolute which transcends nation, race, gender, religion, age, social mores and language. It is not relative to anything.

Beauty is not always comfortable.

Consider forest fires and lightning. Think of the summit of Mount Everest. Are they not beautiful in their own ways? Yet aren’t they also terrifying? Remember the great white shark again, or a black widow or a lion. Some beauty makes us so uncomfortable we feel the need to set ourselves apart from it. And our desire for distance from some kinds of beauty isn’t only due to danger. We were created to care for the garden. To work it. To organize it and arrange it. This explains the impulse many of us feel to make some kind of change in nature. We trim hedges. We separate flowerbeds from lawns. But what of those who take that impulse further? Who set fire to forests simply to destroy them, hunt for animals they do not eat, and fence off land they do not use? Beauty sometimes makes us sense our smallness. It reminds us we are not in control. It whispers “You are only mortal, and none of this is really yours.” Beauty is not always comfortable.

Beauty is not halfhearted.

Sometimes I fail to write beautiful words because of a momentary lack of enthusiasm, a distracted mind, or a prideful hidden agenda, but there is no pretension, no confusion, no uncertainty and no shortage of exuberance in anything of beauty found in nature. Every beautiful insentient thing from the smallest one-celled organism or slightest grain of sand to the greatest sequoia or the highest mountain is completely and sincerely what it is. Indeed, it is only when this is not true—when the purity of nature is polluted—that we call it ugly.

Similarly, no crow ever wished it was an eagle. No leopard ever wished it was a lion. Everything of beauty with a consciousness is absolutely determined to be completely what it is, everything that is, except sometimes for man.

Even man is the exception that proves the rule, for who could rightly call a man “beautiful” while he is pretentiously pretending to be something he is not? Such a man may still be lovable (it's best to love him anyway, for we are him from time to time) but it is not possible to think of him as beautiful. Beauty is not halfhearted.

Beauty is not slipshod or substandard.

As long as it lives, a mighty oak will always grow leaves in the spring. It never forgets. It never grows leaves partway, or poorly. It never makes the mistake of growing toads or daffodils, nor does it grow leaves on its roots or over in the next county. Mighty oaks are beautiful in part because they can be relied upon to do what oaks do perfectly, each and every time they do it. In the same way, doves are beautiful in part because they always sing their mournful song without missing a note. Ocean surf is beautiful in part because waves always come, one after the other, on and on with never one that fails to do its duty and surrender to the beach. All beauty in creation must fulfill the promise of itself completely. Beauty is not slipshod or substandard.

Undoubtedly there are many other things which beauty is not, but I have only time and space enough to mention one thing more:

Beauty does not exist for our entertainment.

Just as the Rocky Mountains were not raised up for snow skiing, and the Bible was not written to help readers avoid boredom, beauty may fascinate or even hold us spellbound, but that is not its purpose.

Entertainment can be pretty. It can be funny. It can be tragic. But if a moment comes when we suddenly realize a pretty painting, a funny movie, or a tragic novel has somehow become beautiful before our very eyes, we mean it has become something more than merely entertaining.

Entertainment is always inward focused. Its sole purpose is wrapped up in us, but beauty exists either with us or without us, and often, sadly, in spite of us. Think of the violent and profligate life of Caravaggio, or the egomaniacal Frank Lloyd Wright. Think of their beautiful paintings and architecture. The fact that base and selfish men can produce beauty proves that beauty is true, transcendent and sublime in and of itself, and not dependent on us whatsoever. Beauty is not about our entertainment.

But what does it mean to say beauty is true, transcendent and sublime? I could write a book to explain and add no further understanding to that statement. In the end, there's only one thing I can say in the affirmative about beauty without fear of contradiction:

Beauty is mysterious.

And it is because of this quality of mystery that beauty is most easily defined by looking elsewhere, at the negative. The loss of mystery becomes the loss of beauty.

Practically speaking, this means the best chance of finding beauty in one's work is to concentrate on avoiding all the things that it is not. To create a work of beauty, I cannot write merely pretty words, or comfortable words, or entertaining words. I cannot slavishly conform to culture. I cannot tolerate mediocre craftsmanship, and I cannot write halfheartedly.

Beauty is a mystery, so a novelist (or any kind of artist) in pursuit of beauty must never look for it directly. If we do that, we will find beauty has escaped us, much as soap bubbles pop when they are touched and flowers wilt when they are plucked. No one can define the mystery of beauty, but everybody knows it when they sense it. Indeed, beauty is a mystery so powerful it’s blinding. It’s like looking at the sun. I must gaze off to the side, to a place where beauty is not, if I hope to glimpse it as it is, for as the Source of all beauty once famously said, “You may see my glory, but no one may see my face and live.”

The original version of this essay was was first published on June 17, 2010 at Novel Journey.

On Beauty II

2010-06-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

It was a bad week. My last living aunt had passed away. Her name was Liz, and she was a hoot. If you’re old enough to remember Phyllis Diller or Carol Channing you’ll have a general idea of how much fun she was. I’ll miss her so. Then the next day I had lunch with a friend whose wife had just filed for divorce. My friend has a drinking problem, and his wife decided she couldn’t take it anymore. After lunch I spent time with another hurting friend whose only child was down to one last hope—an experimental therapy—to beat his cancer.

Meanwhile, I had to write 1,000 good words that day, and do it again the next day, and every other day until September if I was going to meet the deadline on my next novel.

The word count wasn’t the real problem. I’ve been at this writing game a long time. I’ve written amidst the distractions of airports, coffee shops and shopping malls. Even with all of this emotional turmoil I could probably still deliver 5,000 or even 10,000 readable words a day. But good words . . . aye, to quote the Bard, there’s the rub.

It’s tempting to lose focus and begin to wonder why I bother. In a world like this, excellence in the arts can seem like such a trivial pursuit. Indeed, never mind excellence, the reason art matters at all is sometimes questioned. With grief, loneliness, addiction, pain and fear all around us, what’s the point of literature? Why paint? Why sculpt? Why dance, or act, or sing? Why not devote oneself to something practical instead?

Near the end of the book of Job, after that unfortunate man has lost his children, his fortune and his health, after he has suffered the interminable counsel of well-meaning friends who insist he somehow brought disaster on himself, after he has come perilously close to blasphemy while demanding an accounting from his creator, after all of that, Job finally encounters God. Strangely, when God appears it is not with explanations. Job learns nothing of the reason for his suffering. He gets no answer to Rabbi Kushner’s famous question, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ Even so, in the end Job is satisfied. God appears, and Job says, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” God appears, and his appearing is enough for Job.
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My friend Brad, a professor at a well-known college of fine art, tells me it’s been fashionable for many years in the art community to question the existence of beauty. Not to question beauty’s definition or value, understand, but to question its very existence. One person finds Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon lovely, while another person thinks it’s ugly. In the world of art theory this divergence of opinion has sometimes been taken to mean beauty is nothing but a social construct.

It is an old idea. It is the lament of Ecclesiastes. Everything is meaningless under the sun. Yet not everything, for Job saw God and that was enough.

Once I suffered from severe depression. Like Job I cursed the day of my birth. I was saved from the temptation of suicide by snowcapped mountains, golden birches, and the sparkling Milky Way. I was saved by reflections of God’s beauty.

I don’t mean to say God is beautiful. No mere adjective applies to him. St. John tells us “God is love.” God is beautiful in exactly the same way. Like love, beauty is God’s essence. Beauty does not describe God; it is the fact of God. It is his glory, his weight, the very thing the prophet Moses begged to see on Sinai.

The gospels tell a story of a woman who poured very expensive perfume on Jesus. His disciples were indignant. "Why this waste?" they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."

And what was Jesus’ reply?

"Why are you bothering this woman?” he asked. “She has done a beautiful thing . . .”

Beauty exists because God exists. To reveal beauty is to reveal God. Therefore, if our art is beautiful, if we struggle to write good words instead of merely readable ones, then sometimes, just for an instant, God appears and God’s appearing is enough. In a world of grief, loneliness, addiction, pain and fear, no act of man could be more practical than that.

The original version of this essay was first published May 20, 2010 at Novel Journey

On Beauty I

2010-06-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

It was an obvious mistake. Long ago during my life as an architect I designed a restaurant’s floor plan with the front doors swinging inward. If there had been a fire and a crowd rushed out, those who got to the doors first would have been unable to open them because of the press of people coming from behind. In the years since then as a full time novelist, I have spent a lot of time with other authors exploring the best practices of plotting, characterization, theme, setting, and craftsmanship. Strangely, I cannot recall a single conversation about beauty. This is remarkable omission for professional writers, easily as inexplicable as an experienced architect who draws a pair of entry doors that swing against the flow.

When I first realized what we were missing, I thought perhaps it was because the goal of beauty in a novel is so obvious we think conversation is unnecessary, much as people rarely talk about the importance of air.

Yet that can’t explain it, since we spend so much time discussing other aspects of good fiction which are also obvious. If we feel characterization is worth our consideration, or plotting, or theme, why not beauty, too?

Next I wondered if we might ignore the topic due to the mistaken belief that beauty is the end result of every other aspect of a novel. If we do those other things well, beauty will—so the theory goes—follow naturally. But it seems to me this makes no more sense than a pair of tourists who plan a journey to the last detail without ever mentioning their destination. To arrive at a place, one must set out for it. To set out for it, one must have it in mind.

Maybe we’re embarrassed by the idea of discussing beauty in our work. Maybe we feel it is immodest to admit pursuit of such a goal. Or maybe we’re intimidated by the subject. Maybe we fear open talk of beauty makes us more accountable for its absence from our words.

Whatever the reasons, I think it strangest that I didn’t notice this omission earlier. When novelists get together to talk about their work, beauty (or the lack of it) is the elephant in the room, the emperor’s new clothes, the front doors swinging inwards. This is particularly odd for Christian authors, who write in service of the One who “shines forth in beauty” as the Psalmist said, and who are commanded to pursue an unfading beauty which “is of great worth in God’s eyes.” We create because we were created in the Creator’s image. God called all creation “good,” which is to say, beautiful. Since beauty was God’s end result, it must have been His intention in the beginning. Should it not be so with us?

The modernist movement in architecture, guided by Louis Sullivan’s famous statement “Form ever follows function,” brought us those boring glass boxes that now pass for good design among the skylines of our cities. But consider something like a rose. Certainly its scent and color serve a purpose, but does the rose exist in all its glory simply because form follows function? I think not. Surely nature could have achieved the same effect without going to so much trouble.

We are taught to focus on grace and good works will follow. So it should be in a novel. Beauty ought to be an intentional focus, and from that focus will come excellence in craftsmanship and characters, plots and settings. If our work is an offering to God, let us not rely on accidents to make it worthy. Let us search out the finest words deliberately with beauty as our goal, as shepherds once searched through their flocks for lambs without a blemish.

Perhaps some will object that they find glass box buildings beautiful.

If so, far be it from me to disagree. Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, if I may fall back on cliché to make the point. What I am concerned with here is not some universal standard that makes a novel beautiful. I am simply saying a novelist should strive for beauty with all his heart and soul and mind and strength. If lust equals adultery, and anger equals murder, surely the principle works in the positive. What matters most as people and as writers is what we hope for, what we dream, what we strive to do. Even the most discriminating art collector would find a misshapen lump of clay beautiful beyond compare if it was formed as a gift by the small hands of a loving son or daughter. If a Christian author’s novel is her offering to God, let her strive to make it beautiful however she defines the term, and it will be so to God.

Commercialism, fads and apathy toward the subject are perhaps the worst enemies of beauty in fiction. Commercialism begins with the wrong motive, when motive is a fundamental quality of beauty as I have just said. The pursuit of fads, while popular with some marketing professionals, yields nothing more than slavish imitation, when nature’s infinite variety reveals beauty and originality as inseparable. And apathy is the opposite of love, when love is the underlying purpose of all things beautiful. An author who cares about beauty in her work will rigorously avoid these things.

The best friends of beauty in a novel are deep contemplation, honesty, intentionality, originality and love.

Deep contemplation, because lasting beauty is never superficial. Honesty, because duplicity is ugly. Intentionality because true beauty comes only from beautiful motives. Originality because again, nature’s variety proves it inseparable from beauty. And love, because it is both the purpose and the Source of all things beautiful.

Sadly, our culture values instant gratification above everything, even at the cost of ugliness and mediocrity. Television, fast food restaurants and tract houses testify to this. Even more sadly, Christian readers are as guilty of it as anyone. The popularity of simplistic answers to the many paradoxes in the scriptures is one proof of this.

Only pride or money could explain why a novelist would pursue readers who demand easy answers to the vast enigma of the Godhead, who have no time for sunsets, who find an ocean view too empty, who barely see the roses, much less stop to smell them.

We are told no one can serve two masters. Write for pride or money, and you do not write for love or beauty. Yet we are also told our novels must burst upon the reader’s mind with all the urgency of a fire drill. We must hook them. We must do it right away or they will rush off to the next shiny lure, and we must keep them on the hook, wiggling like a dying fish until the bitter end. But beauty does not operate that way. Beauty demands nothing. It does not insist. Beauty whispers. It entices.

For those who love in spite of the unknown and unknowable, for those who gaze in awe at sunsets, ocean views and roses all ablaze with color, there is another sort of hook.

Just to pick one fine example, consider One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Marquéz. I found little in the plot to justify so many pages, and today I do not recall a single character’s name, but the words . . . the words! Contrary to the usual advice, for me it was no page-turner. Instead my mind lingered, dreading the coming end because each page turned meant one page closer to the ceasing of those beautiful, beautiful words. The joy they sparked within me will not die until I do.

How I wish the world was filled with novels of such beauty! How I strive and strive to write such words, every single one an offering without blemish to the Source of beauty. And how I search for those who also strive to write that way, that I might have a chance to read them when the Lord is done.

This essay was first published March 4, 2010 at Novel Journey

Proof of God

2010-03-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

Jesus didn't pick His metaphors lightly. Jesus is the Word after all, so every word he spoke was chosen with complete precision. He could have picked any symbol in the universe, yet he said “turn the other cheek.” Why? Clearly He intended us to think in terms of being willing to allow another slap. Does that mean He wants us to be slapped? Of course not. But Jesus does want us to remain within arm’s length—slapping distance—of each other.

At this point, some people always want to fly to worst-case scenarios, so please understand I do not mean that an abused wife should continue to allow herself to be beaten. But real forgiveness always involves some level of engagement—as much as possible within the confines of good sense. This is true because God is love. Everything God does and every command God ever gave can ultimately be traced back to a desire to nourish loving relationships between us and our neighbor, and between us and Him. The one thing that makes a loving relationship impossible is to push a person completely out of your life. The entire point of forgiveness is remaining open to reconciliation. Anything less than that is a counterfeit forgiveness, which is to say, a lie.

If Jesus’ metaphor means anything, it means you cannot forgive a person from beyond arm’s length.

Another important aspect of forgiveness is the fact that it’s a choice, not a process. We may need to make the choice a thousand times, and that choosing and re-choosing may look like a process, but in fact it is not. We are commanded to forgive. The command came with a promise and a warning, in order to teach us it is not an option, not a suggestion. It is a sin to disobey. To call it a “process” is tantamount to calling obedience to any other command a process. “I’m working on being faithful to my wife.” “I’m working on leaving other people’s possessions alone.” “I’m working on telling the truth.” These are morally identical statements to “I’m working on forgiving.” There is no middle ground, no process involved. There is only the choice to obey Jesus in this area in this moment, or not.

Finally, at no time has God ever commanded anyone to do anything impossible. This means God’s will for us is never contingent on God’s will for someone else. Forgiveness is a choice. Repentance is a choice. The two choices are completely independent of each other. I have no moral right to wait on your repentance before I forgive you. On the contrary, I am commanded to forgive you, period. I am commanded to forgive whether you repent of what you’ve done or not. The same is true of repentance. I must repent of my sins against a neighbor, whether that neighbor will forgive me or not. These are clear commands. But reconciliation is not commanded, because such a command would be beyond any individual’s ability to obey. Reconciliation requires not only my obedience, but also yours. Again, God never makes one person’s obedience contingent on another’s. Relationship is what we get when forgiveness meets repentance, but forgiveness and repentance each stand alone as the moral obligations of the parties involved. Both are commanded; neither is contingent on the other, and both are pleasing to the Lord.

Forgiveness may well be the most difficult of all of God’s commands, because it demands a total denial of pride and it leaves no room whatsoever for illusions or half measures. Why does God expect so much? As Dale Cramer wrote in his beautiful novel, Levi's Will, “God is love. Love is the proof of God, and forgiveness is the proof of love.”

Saved and Lost

2010-03-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

What can we do about this filthy church? The short answer is...nothing. No matter which way we turn, which path we choose, we ourselves can only contribute to the mess. On the other hand, God might have a plan...

In her comment on the “Filthy Church” post, Dianne made such an important point. She wrote, "...many confuse justification with sanctification, which is where the "working out" part is supposed to start..." For those who are unclear about the theological terms “justification” and “sanctification,” here’s the gist of Dianne’s point: Too many of us in the American church today view Christianity as a single act of belief, a one time leap of faith which gets us “in,” with no further obligation ("justification"), but if that faithful moment is sincere it will be the first leap of a lifetime lived in obedience, which is to say, a lifetime lived in love ("sanctification").

“The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 2:4) Many of the people in the “filthy church” are not truly Christians, of course. As John said, they are liars. Mostly I think they are lying to themselves.

But there are others whose belief is sincere, even though their lives show little sign of their belief. I know, because I was once one of them. And since that is true, since there truly are believers living life like pagans, what can be the matter?

The problem starts with a terrible misconception about God's grace. “Grace” is God stooping down to save us from ourselves, even though we don’t deserve it. That’s the definition. Unfortunately, many Christians seem to understand God’s grace only in terms of justification (God stooping to the cross to get us “in”) but not in terms of sanctification (God stooping down to guide us ever closer to Him). In other words, we think our need for God’s grace was over when we trusted in the cross. We think, “Grace has done its work, now it’s up to me...” as if Christian life were a relay race, and God has passed us the baton. But we are weak, so of course in trying to take over for the Lord, we are bound to fail.

Then comes the guilt and shame. A terrible burden, and so painful, because we know we do not measure up. Usually we slip into denial as a form of self-defense, unable to obey, and unable to be honest about our disobedience because of the way it makes us feel. We fill our lives with distractions, making little gods out of possessions or other people (often our own children). We cover ourselves with them the way the first man and woman clothed themselves with leaves. We pretend we think these things please God. They are “blessings.” Yet we do know better. We know our attention and devotion has slipped down from the Creator to the mere creation, and in knowing this, deep within we live in misery.

Paul wrote eloquently of this to the early church in Rome. He says, "What I want to do, I do not do—no, the evil that I do not want to do, this I do." So even Paul—a true believer if ever anybody was—even that same Paul, still sins. He goes on to say, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" And here the word to focus on is rescue. Think about this: powerhouse believer though Paul is, still he needs to be rescued. What can “rescue” mean to Paul if not the ongoing work of God’s grace in his daily life? And this is proven with his very next words: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!” followed quickly by those most welcome words in the entire Bible: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Jesus said, “If anybody loves me, he will obey my teaching," yet how can we obey Him while we are in these wretched bodies of death? Obedience is the only right response to the grace of the cross, yet only through God's grace is obedience possible. It’s no good pretending. Since God knows us better than we know ourselves, we might as well admit there’s something in us which still longs to sin sometimes. Our desperate need for rescue did not end at the cross. On the contrary, for a true believer, the cross was only the beginning. Something in us remains out of balance with the cosmos. The cross only makes us more aware of it, aware of how wretched we remain without God’s grace—without God’s stooping down to us—and how desperately we still need His grace every second of every minute of every day.

This then is the paradox:
“...you have been saved, through faith...not by works...” (Eph 2:8-10)
Yet also...
“...a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)

Paradox is exactly what we should expect when striving to draw near Almighty God, whose mysteries are “beyond tracing out.” And as always, when faced with such a paradox concerning Him, the answer is never to pick one side over the other, but rather to say, “Yes” to both. “Yes” to God’s grace working through faith in the cross, and “Yes” to God’s grace still working through faith even now, to rescue us from our bodies of death, to guide us as we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose.”

If you have tried to live a Christian life and failed and failed again, here is my advice: stop trying.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His Glory and Grace.
(Helen Lemmel)

In trying so hard you are only looking to yourself, your puny efforts, your little plans, your hopeless strategy. Or you are hiding behind those tiny idols you have made in life. Step out from behind there. Be naked before God so God can clothe you with his Son. Look to Jesus. Look only to Him. Focus on His love for you, and let His love reignite that glorious flame of love you felt when you first believed. Christian, it simply is not possible to be rescued by His love while you are so distracted. So stop already. Just stop, and look to Jesus...

Filthy Church

2010-02-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

The American church is dying. The signs are everywhere: rampant hedonism, materialism, infidelity, superficiality, mediocrity, cowardice, compromise...the list goes on and on, but the one charge we must not level at the church is the one which seems most common.

Hypocrisy is the favorite explanation given by people who claim to follow Jesus and yet will not go to church. But it misses the whole point.

This lovely photo is what I used to think of church. A place. A thing. Now when I think "church" I think people. Not “people” in a general sense, but specific people. Names. Faces. People I belong to. I am theirs and they are mine. My place in the cosmos--my designed purpose--is to serve them, which is to say to do love to them or be love for them in a sacrificial way. My purpose and place does not change if they are prideful, hurtful, or hypocritical. As Jesus said, they are my family. Most families have their dysfunctional side. Even so, most families are deeply committed to each other. Most of us have at least one family member who drives us crazy sometimes, yet we would die for them. In exactly the same way, my role is to love the church--these particular people--just as they are, just as Jesus does.

Church is just that simple, just that wonderful, just that hard. Love in spite of everything. When it comes to ideas about organized religion, all else is a human construct and a lie.

Because “church” means people, it is possible to maintain a humble and hopeful spirit while obeying the command which is “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing.” And make no mistake; it is a command. Yet some who claim to follow Jesus treat it as a suggestion. Jesus said, "If you love me you will obey what I command." Could He be more clear? We follow Jesus by obeying his commands. And what is his greatest command? To love the Lord with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. So who are the hypocrites? People at least trying to live together in relationship even with their flaws, or those who claim to follow Jesus Christ but will not even try?

I wrote my most recent novel, Lost Mission, out of a sense of revelation, an understanding I have gained. It expresses an old hope I had, a desire to find a church (a place, a thing) where I could experience God without distractions. It explores the depth of meaning in the fact that those distractions end up being the very places where the Lord awaits me. Human frailty is the stuff of God on earth. Whose image are we made in anyway, if not the image of a man upon a cross? God does His best work through the feebleness of human hands, the superficiality of our prayers, and the inadequacy of our offerings. When I am weak, then I am strong. The Lord creates His church whenever and wherever flawed believers come together intentionally to praise and worship Him. God doesn’t need perfection. He doesn’t expect it. He knows us better than that, yet He stoops down to us anyway. Should we not do the same to each other?

It is not good for man to be alone. We were created to worship God in community. It is part of why God came to earth in a manger, why He endured temptation, why Jesus partied with us and grieved with us and fought with us and chose the gruesome mess that was the cross. He showed us that the Way is pure and holy, but it is not clean and easy. We can praise the Lord in solitary moments, but anyone who prefers the false perfection of solitude to the mess (and filth, sometimes) of church deludes himself. God will not be worshipped in that way, because it is not possible to love the Lord with all my heart unless I love my hedonistic, materialistic, cheating, superficial, mediocre, cowardly and compromising neighbor, who is so often a reflection of the me myself whom I so love to love.

So yes, the signs are truly everywhere: the American church is dying, and to save it we must join it. There is no other way.

Well Isn’t That Special?

2010-02-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

Irony sometimes cracks me up. I belong to several email lists (loops, whatever) and on one of them recently I wrote a comment about Christians who claim to read fiction, but who actually seem to enjoy it mainly for the chance it offers to be offended. Most novelists working in the world of Christian fiction have received outraged letters from these people. In my email comment I referred to them as “dreaded blue haired church ladies.” Of the 1,000 or so other people on the list, most understood exactly what I meant (probably they were Dana Carvey fans), but a tiny and very vocal group took me to task for using that phrase. They responded to the entire loop, saying one should not reinforce negative stereotypes; one should be more sensitive to other people’s feelings. Oh, you would have thought I’d called Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton the “N” word!

One of the funny things about irony is the way it’s usually lost on those who need it most. How I laughed when I realized these people had been so easily offended by words I used to describe people who are easily offended! But then I started getting private emails. People I had never heard of wrote to say they had stopped speaking their minds on the list out of fear that they too would be slapped down. Soon I realized there was a deeper problem than simply a few folks who wear their feelings on their sleeves. The situation wasn’t funny anymore. To understand why, I think we have to start with this:

The Bible is not a rulebook for life; it’s a book of higher principles, which are illustrated by examples we too often mistake for rules.

Consider the Internet and especially email, for example. They can be wonderful things. I don’t know how I got along without them before. (Just think of how much money it would take to buy a stamp for every note you email today!) What a blessing to be able to fire off notes so quickly...and what a curse. Sometimes emails can be as difficult to control as our tongues.

Take a moment to read what the Bible has to say about this problem, and notice that it offers no rules about emails. Instead it gives a principle which applies perfectly to a technology the author never dreamed possible.

This can cut both ways. I believed my words were innocent, of course. I believed the offended people were just oversensitive. But what if they were right? Should I have been more sensitive with my words, in case they reached some actual old lady with blue hair and very strong church affiliations, who might have had her feelings hurt because she thought I was referring to her? Well, maybe. Humility is not thinking less about yourself; it’s thinking more of others. So maybe I wasn’t thinking enough about the real “blue haired church ladies” out there.

If so, it leads to another principle that applies.

"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17) NIV

If we are offended by someone’s words in an email, taking them to task for it and copying an entire list of others is like stepping up behind the podium in a church sanctuary and accusing someone by name of a sin before the entire congregation. How strange that people who would never dream of doing that except as an absolute last resort can be so quick to do it via email. What a shame we don’t apply Jesus’ principle instead.

Similarly, in any public exchange of ideas such as an email list (or a blog comment), we Christians ought to guard our words as closely as we ought to guard our tongues. While the Bible says a lot about controlling speech and nothing about how to write an email, the principle applies equally to both. “In your anger, do not sin” as Paul commanded the Ephesians. He might just as well have written, “In your offense, do not email.”

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21) NIV

It's Torah Time!

2010-02-05T07:21:00.001-08:00

Where do you live? If you're anywhere near Laguna Beach, CA, I'd love to meet you. I'll be teaching a 13 week series on my book, The Gospel according to Moses, every Thursday night at 7:00. We're meeting at The Little Church by the Sea. You can get directions here. Once you arrive, go around behind the sanctuary and through the gates into the courtyard. Look for us in the large meeting room (it will be the one with the lights on). Be sure to introduce yourself!

The Gospel according to Moses is a bestselling memoir about my five years studying the Torah with the rabbis at the nation's second largest Reform Jewish congregation. I was the only Christian in regular attendance among about 100 Jews. During the first six months of so, only the senior rabbi and the man who asked me to attend knew I was a Christian, so I got a brutally honest peek at what Jews really think of Christians. After I "came out," I was warmly welcomed, and the next few years revolutionized my faith.

The subtitle is What My Jewish Friends Taught Me About Jesus, and that pretty much sums up the content of the book. I learned more about Christianity from Jews during those five years than I've learned from Christians in my entire life, not because the Jews taught me intentionally, of course, but because they challenged me to dig so deeply into the doctrine that were discussed every Shabbat. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

"Being a conservative Christian at a liberal Jewish temple has never been easy or painless, but I have accepted the cost because my religion teaches that constructive growth is worth a little pain. (James 1:2) Key positions of Christianity have been strongly disputed almost every week at Chever Torah by highly intelligent people who know the Scriptures well and find very different truths there. At first I responded to the challenges with dogmatic inflexibility, experiencing a range of unpleasant emotions from anger to anxiety. Only God’s subtle prodding can explain why I kept returning. Then somehow—again, I believe this can only be explained as an act of God—I found the ability to set aside my preconceived notions and truly hear the new ideas these Jews tossed back and forth. From that moment on, the people of Chever Torah began to coach me in that decidedly Jewish pastime: wrestling with God. Now, after years of Bible study among them, I have learned to think about important things like faith and obedience, justice and mercy, and rebellion and redemption in Jewish ways, and in so doing I have found deeper meanings within every word uttered by Jesus and his apostles."

Copies will be available for you at my cost, and of course I'd be delighted to autograph yours.

The study I experienced among the Jews was unlike anything I've ever known in a church. It was passionate, intellectually challenging, sometimes irreverent, and above all, inspiring. In the series I'll be teaching, I'll do my best to recreate that powerful experience. I hope you can come!

God Laughs

2010-02-02T07:41:00.000-08:00

It’s so easy to forget the way of things. Months ago I began to ask God to “enlarge my territory.” It’s the prayer of Jabez, which many will recognize as the title of a best selling book. I haven’t read the book, but of course I read the Bible quite a bit and there it says...

Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request. (1 Chronicles 4:10) NIV

This, it seems to me, is an excellent prayer, and the fact that God answered with a "Yes" seems to indicate he thinks so, too. As Jesus said just before giving us his famous Golden Rule, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?”

So “Lord, enlarge my territory” has been on my lips for months, and I have been confident that God would answer. But forgetting the way of things, I made a big mistake.

I’ve mentioned here before that there was a terrible error made in the launch of my latest novel. In the publishing business, the usual path to success lies in building anticipation for a book before it hits the stores, but in this case no advance copies were sent to critics or to bloggers, so for the first time in my career a novel received no print reviews whatsoever. Most of my fellow bloggers didn’t even have a chance to read the novel and review it until it had already been published. When added to the fact that 2009 was perhaps the worst sales year on record for the entire publishing industry, this meant the novel was pretty much dead on arrival. Not the direction you hope your career will take after seven books in print.

It seemed prayer was the only marketing plan that could possibly yield results. Remembering Jabez, I began to ask God for more territory. And here is where I made my big mistake: what I really meant was, “Let me sell more books.”

Over the months as I prayed, I began to ask myself if I was ready. A sad story hit the headlines of a man with the wonderful name of Abraham Shakespeare, whose life was ruined and then lost when he won $31 million dollars. It’s common for lottery winners say the money ruined their life. I began to wonder what would happen to me if God worked a miracle and this latest novel sold a million copies. Could I handle it? Could I withstand the temptation to take the credit? Or would my territory become too large? Would my pride get me lost in all that extra space?

In asking these questions, I remembered why I started writing in the first place. “Write what you know,” as the common wisdom goes, and when you get down to the heart of life, I know nothing that really matters except “Christ, and him crucified.” So I write about the Lord, for the Lord, in the hope that people who don’t know how beautiful he is might be moved a step closer to falling in love with him as I have, and people who do know him as I do might be moved to love him even more. And suddenly one day I realized I had been praying for the wrong “territory”.

I could have asked God to let me spread his love far and wide. I could have asked him to let me share eternal life with people who are lost and dying. I could have asked for those wonderful, amazing things and left the details up to him, but there I was, praying to sell books. Such a petty little prayer!

“Man plans; God laughs” as the old Yiddish saying goes. It’s so easy to forget the way of things, so easy to ask God to bless my plan, instead of asking him to reveal the blessings he has planned.

When I quit praying with book sales in mind and started simply asking the Lord to enlarge my territory any way he wished, some interesting “coincidences” began to happen. A pastor at my church told me the elders want me to start preaching there soon. I was asked to teach a series based on The Gospel according to Moses, thinking maybe ten or fifteen people would come, but when the series was announced, twenty percent of the entire congregation signed up. My latest novel may be D.O.A. (or maybe not...who knows?) but now that I’ve remembered the true way of things, my territory seems to grow a little every day.

How about you? Are you asking God to bless your puny plans, or are you asking for the kind of miracle only God could plan?

Bad Theology

2010-01-17T18:28:00.000-08:00

They say a blog entry should be short, but what can you do when a man like Pat Robertson causes such a mess? Some things take a while to clean up. Hopefully you’ll bear with me.

If you somehow missed it, you can read the text of Pat’s comments and see the video here. To be fair, he said these things in the context of a broader report in which he expressed sympathy for the Haitian people, and it was part of a fund raising segment for earthquake relief, so I’m not going to comment on his intentions. Pat Robertson may have genuine love in his heart for the suffering people in Haiti. But what he said was very wrong.

Many people have slammed Pat, of course, and I hate to pile on too, but to my dismay, some friends of mine—well-known Christian authors who should know better—seem open to the idea that Pat was right. “Look at all the times God punished other nations with disasters in the Old Testament,” they said to me. “It’s Biblical!”

Well, no actually, what Pat Robertson said is not Biblical. On the contrary, it’s heretical.

Before I mention a few of the many theological arguments against this grave error in thinking, let’s ponder the human cost. If we allow ourselves to start believing any specific natural disaster is the result of any specific nation’s sins, we need not go much further along that same path before we find ourselves calling a specific case of cancer (for example) a punishment from God. After all, in the same way the Bible shows God using disasters to punish nations, so it shows Him physically punishing individuals for their sins. Think of Nadab and Abihu, or Ananias and his wife. The Bible does indeed teach us God has sometimes supernaturally entered history to physically punish both nations and individuals for their sins. It also says God will do it again one day. But how heartless it would be to use that as an excuse to tell a woman she just lost her breast to cancer as a punishment from God!

That is essentially what Pat Robertson said to the Haitian people the other day. Maybe he simply has a very inappropriate sense of timing. Maybe the love is there. I don’t know his motivation, but I do know there are grave dangers in what he said. Judgmentalism. Legalism. Isolationism. Fatalism. So much evil can flow from the prideful notion that we are equipped to know a disaster on any level, national or individual, is a particular punishment or admonishment from God.

Ask yourself: after we have moved from attributing God’s wrath to nations to attributing it to individuals, what is the next step? Why, imposing divine wrath on God’s behalf, of course.

Nineteen men and women were hanged and one was crushed to death in Salem because of a natural extension of this theology. Here’s how the logic went: “The Bible says God blesses good people in this life, and curses bad people, and I am being good yet bad things are still happening, so the neighbors must be devil worshippers.” After all, the same Bible that tells us about God’s use of natural disasters also says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And sure enough, following exactly that same logic after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson famously blamed their neighbors, their fellow Americans who are “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians.”

So much for the human cost. Let’s look at this heresy of Pat’s from a Biblical perspective, beginning with the fact that the Bible says “In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.” Certainly there are places where the scriptures tell us the righteous will be blessed and the wicked will be cursed, but elsewhere it says the righteous sometimes get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get the rewards of the righteous.

This is not a contradiction. It simply means we don’t know nearly enough about God’s intentions to be able to connect any person’s behavior with the earthly blessings or curses he receives. God has his own reasons for giving easy lives to some and trials to others. We can never fully understand those reasons.

This should be especially obvious to Christians. After all, Jesus taught us that our righteousness will often lead to suffering. We are told we must pick up a cross to follow Him, and “In this world you will have trouble.” If God-fearing believers are guaranteed suffering in this life (and we are) where is the logic in Robertson’s statement that Haiti’s suffering is a curse for devil worship? Isn’t it just as possible, based on what the Bible says, that this earthquake is a cross for the faithful Haitian Christians to bear?

In the wake of Robertson’s comments, some have pointed to passages such as this one, this one and this one to assert that humanity’s sins can “defile” the “land” though sins such as sexual immorality, the wrongful shedding of blood and idolatry. Read those scriptures carefully and you’ll see it’s a giant theological stretch to apply them to any "land" except the promised land of Israel, but never mind that for now. Let's pretend "the land" means any land, anywhere, just for the sake of conversation.

If any land could still be "defiled" by sexual immorality, the wrongful shedding of blood or idolatry, then every land on earth would be pretty much equally defiled. After all, what nation can claim it is innocent of those sins? Yet few nations have ever suffered a natural disaster on the Haitian scale. In fact, many nations which have been "defiled" by those sins have been richly blessed on the whole, including the USA of course, despite our rampant adultery, homosexuality, history of genocide against the American Indian and the African slave, and widespread worship of the almighty dollar and all the idols it can buy. So while the idea of cursed land makes for a great scenario if you’re a novelist, it just doesn't have any basis in observable history.

Another flaw in this theology is found in the root of the word translated in all those verses as "defile." That root is tame, the same Hebrew word translated elsewhere as "unclean" to describe houses where a person has died, bowls which have contained unclean food, chairs where an unclean person has sat, and of course unclean foods, among many other inanimate things. We know from Peter's famous vision of the sheet filled with animals that God has made all foods "clean." That's one of the proof texts used in support of the doctrine that Christians are no longer required to observe the letter of the Mosaic law. Funeral homes, dishes, chairs and pork are no longer "defiled" for us. Would this be true of everything inanimate except "the land" itself? Of course not.

The idea that the land of Haiti was somehow “defiled” centuries ago in a way that caused an earthquake here and now runs counter to everything the New Testament teaches about the law.

If we apply those Hebrew verses to "the land" of Haiti, then we have no consistent justification for disobedience to anything else the Mosaic law has to say about cleanliness and uncleanliness. Are we really prepared to return to that? Or do we agree with Paul that "...through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death"?

Moving on, consider a similar discussion that once took place between some Jews and a rabbi. Rather than comment on it I’ll just quote the conversation, with a few minor modifications to make it more obvious how it relates to the topic at hand (please do compare my version to the original):

“Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the New Yorkers whose blood Osama bin Laden had mixed with their office building. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these New Yorkers were worse sinners than all the other Americans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those thousands who died in the earthquake in Haiti — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in the Caribbean? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’”

If we ever had any doubt what Jesus meant when he warned us “Do not judge,” this conversation should remove those doubts. Don’t let anybody tell you different: Jesus doesn't want Christians saying the kind of thing Pat Robertson said the other day.

You Can Be a Winner!

2010-01-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

Win autographed copies my novels! Tim George, over at Unveiled, has a great contest going. Here’s a quote from his blog:

“To kick off 2010, Unveiled is going to give an autographed library of Athol Dickson novels to one lucky winner. Each week two questions will be added to this page. Points will be given for correct answers and comments left at appropriate reviews posted throughout January. Just follow the link after each question to find the answer. Email your completed list of answers no sooner than Feb 1st and no later than Feb 5th, 2010. Be sure and leave a comment to let us know you plan on entering the contest.”

So far there haven’t been many comments, so I’d say your odds are good... Have fun!

God of Discipline

2010-01-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

Do you worship discipline? Two days before the Christmas that just passed, I had the privilege of giving a kind of commencement speech to a group of men who were graduating from a Salvation Army rehabilitation center. All of the men had been at war for six months against the powerful urge to drink or to do drugs, and all of them were about to leave the program to continue the battle in a hostile world. I was asked to speak because several staff members of the center had read The Cure, and thought I might have something useful to say to their graduating residents. That novel has now become a favorite in several rehab centers that I know of. Probably they like it because it rings true. I wrote it from personal experience. In the heady flower child days of my late teens and early 20’s I did a lot of drugs and drinking, and developed a serious “problem” with amphetamines. I was also homeless for a time. But since I don’t struggle with alcoholism and it’s been decades since I had the urge to do drugs, some might wonder what makes me think I can offer meaningful advice to people in a rehabilitation program. The truth is I fight the very same battle every single day, for I am just as deeply addicted as any of those men, and you know what?

If you have a pulse, you’re an addict, too.

Sin is nothing more than the original addiction. It reveals itself in countless ways, but make no mistake about it: we’re all in the same condition, one way or another. So here is what I said to those brave warriors, a few words about the cure, offered in the hope that it might help you, too...

***

Everything I’m about to say assumes you men who are about to leave this place are Christians. If you are not a Christian, then what I’ll say won’t make much sense to you, and all I can offer you in the way of advice is, come to your senses and submit yourself to Jesus Christ. You do not want to be on your own when you walk out of here.

It may be that some of you were not Christians when you first walked into this place, so you may only recently have learned about God’s amazing grace. In that case, let’s make sure you fully understand the thing that saved you. Many people think grace is mercy, but they aren’t the same at all. Mercy is when you’re guilty and the judge decides not to throw the book at you. Mercy can actually be a bad thing, if it comes at the expense of justice for the wife and child whom you abandoned for cocaine, or the pedestrian you hit while driving drunk, or the shopkeeper you robbed to get a bottle or a fix. But grace is always good. Grace is when the judge does the right thing, when he goes ahead and throws the book at you because you’re guilty as charged, but then he comes down from the bench and suffers your punishment for you. And as every Christian knows, that’s exactly what Jesus did for us. That’s the whole point of the cross. God sentenced us to death for what we’ve done, which was only right and just, but Jesus took our punishment, so we are innocent in God’s eyes now.

Now, what does God expect from us in return for this? Absolutely nothing. God’s son died for us. How could we ever pay that back? We’d have to die to make it up to Him, and what good would that do when the whole point of the cross was to save us from our punishment? So it makes no sense to think we could do anything “in return” for this amazing grace. We can accept it. Period. That’s all. We can’t repay God. We can’t serve him. We can’t even obey him.

Yes, you heard me right. I just said we can’t obey God. But before you start thinking they let some kind of a pagan in here to talk to you, some kind of wolf in sheep’s clothing, let me quickly mention that the Apostle Paul said exactly the same thing in the Bible. He said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.... What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

See? Paul said it a long time before I did. We cannot obey. I don’t know if Paul was an alcoholic or addict, but he sure sounds like it when he says, “What I hate, I do.” I hear that, and it’s like he’s quoting from the Big Book (although of course it’s really the other way around). He’s saying, “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.” He’s saying he “made a searching and fearless moral inventory of himself,” and he came up short. So if you’ve ever secretly felt guilty because it seems like obeying God is still impossible for you even though you’re a Christian now, if you think you must be weaker or more flawed than other Christians, damaged goods, then I want you to remember this: even the Apostle Paul agreed with the first step. Even Paul found his life unmanageable. Does that mean he was an alcoholic or a drug addict? No. But Paul was an addict all right. We’re all of us addicted to some kind of sin, one way or another, and as far as God is concerned there are many secret sin addictions which are just as bad as doping or drinking.

So, Christians, since we were powerless over our sins before we trusted Jesus, and we remain powerless over our sins today, obviously it’s a waste of time to ask, “What can I do?” But did you notice that question Paul asked at the end? He asked, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” That’s the smart question to be asking. Who will rescue me? Because if there’s no way you can win a fight, you need to be rescued. And praise the Lord, when a Christian begs for help, he will indeed be rescued. Every Christian believes along with Bill and Bob that there is “a Power greater than ourselves [who] could restore us to sanity.” Every Christian knows our Higher Power is not some wimpy little god “as we understand him,” but a mighty god we could never understand. Every Christian knows God personally, because we have met our higher power in the flesh on the cross. And if Jesus saved us then, He will go on saving us now, unless we start putting faith in our own will power instead of having faith in Him.

Listen now, this is important: Jesus didn’t give us power over sin. Jesus is our power over sin. What this means is, God’s grace wasn’t finished at the cross, it remains available for us right now, this instant, in every moment that we live. We were saved by grace through faith in Jesus, and not by our own works. We continue to be saved in exactly that same way. What good news this is! What a relief!

The secret to a happy Christian life is not to work harder at being sober. In fact it’s just the opposite. It’s to let Jesus do the work for you.

What does this mean in the day-to-day challenge to be sober? It’s very simple. When the devil sends that first little tickle—you all know the one I mean—you have just two choices. You can put your faith in your own willpower, or you can put your faith in Jesus Christ. If you tell yourself “Be strong,” if you put your faith in willpower, you will surely fall. But if you start praying, if you say “Jesus, I can’t win this fight! I’m too weak! Rescue me!” then the Lord will surely step right in to rescue you.

Does this mean Jesus will remove the urge to drink or use completely? Usually not. But you know what? If God leaves that urge in us, it’s because—hear me now, this is really important—if God leaves that urge in us, it’s because that urge is what keeps us turning back to Jesus.

We don’t know exactly what drove Paul to cry out, “Rescue me!” but we do know he wrote in the Bible about having something he called a “thorn in my flesh,” and a “messenger from Satan.” Sounds like an addiction, doesn’t it? Paul says, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” Was Paul disappointed that God refused to take away his thorn, his Satan’s messenger? No. On the contrary he wrote, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses.” But why did Paul boast about his weaknesses? Here’s the answer in his words again: “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Hear that famous line again, Christians. “When I am weak, then I am strong.” There’s your key to a successful life, regardless of your sin of choice. Probably most of you have begged and pleaded with the Lord to take away your addiction. Since you’re here, that means God said “No” to you, just as he did to Paul. And like the Apostle Paul, you should praise God for that answer. Think about this carefully.

Do you really want to put your faith in discipline instead of in Jesus Christ?

If God took away your sin addiction, would you really be a stronger person, or would you be tempted to think you don’t need Jesus quite as much? Would you be tempted to pray a little less? Read His word a little less? Worship Him a little less? Spend less time with other Christians? Focus on yourself a little more, until you are alone again just as you were before you met him at the cross? Sober, but alone and terribly, terribly lost? Is that really what you want? Is sobriety worth that?

Now it’s time for the next battle, and as you prepare to go, I hope you will remember that your weakness makes you strong if you embrace it. Your weakness is a blessing. Don’t fight it; celebrate it, as Paul did. Boast about your weakness and take delight in it, because if you will do that, then your weakness will always point you back to Jesus.

Think about this carefully: your weakness is a blessing.

Don’t ever feel sorry for yourself because you have to fight this battle. Instead, pity the person who seems to find it easy to be “good,” who looks like they have life under control. Pity the poor Christian who is “only” addicted to gossip, or “only” surfs porn on the internet in secret, or “only” lusts for money. Those Christians may look clean and sober on the outside, but because their sin addiction is well hidden they can go for years—for all their lives in fact—without ever getting past the first step, without every going beyond the entry-level grace they found on the first day they were saved. You, on the other hand, have a particular thorn in the flesh that’s impossible to ignore, so you’ll always find it easier to embrace your weakness, easier to put your faith in Jesus instead of in your own will power, and easier to walk deeper and deeper into the amazing grace that’s always there to rescue you.

To Steal, Perchance to Tithe

2009-12-28T06:55:00.000-08:00

Sometimes art imitates life, but sometimes it’s the other way around. Those of you who have already read Lost Mission may remember Tucker Rue, the founder of a storefront mission in a poor Southern California barrio. Tucker is concerned about the American church's tithing problem, and I think he’s got good reason to be worried. A survey by the Barna Group famously determined that only 6 percent of Americans who called themselves “born again Christians” gave 10 percent or more of their income to churches and charities during the recession of 2002. (For more on stingy people who claim to follow Jesus, see Ron Sider’s 1977 classic, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.) I haven’t seen statistics on what the current recession has done to Christian giving, but this is an age old problem, which surely will remain with us until the end of days. In Lost Mission, Tucker Rue decides to resolve it by stealing from rich Christians to give to the poor.

A missionary who steals to help the poor . . . does that shock you?

That was certainly my intention when I wrote the Tucker Rue character. In Flannery O'Conner's classic book on writing Christian fiction, Mystery and Manners, she said a novelist must sometimes use “violent literary means to get his vision across to a hostile audience, and the images and actions he creates may seem distorted and exaggerated.” Following that strategy I invented Tucker Rue as a wild exaggeration, a larger-than-life example of the bad mistake we Christians often make by trying to solve spiritual problems with earthly strategies. But a Christian minister who steals from those who will not tithe . . . even with O’Connor’s advice in mind I wondered if readers would consider it too outrageous.

Now it turns out Tucker Rue may not have been violent enough, or distorted or exaggerated or outrageous enough, because believe it or not, there’s a Christian minister in the real world who is advocating much the same approach. Check it out.

At first I watched that video and marveled that a vicar would seriously suggest shoplifting for the poor, but after giving it some thought I decided there isn’t much difference between that and hoarding God’s blessings for myself. In Matthew 25, Jesus makes it crystal clear that God has blessed me so I can bless the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. Jesus says to the extent that I give to needy people I give to God, and to the extent that I withhold blessings from them, I withhold from God.

In other words, a stingy Christian steals from God.

With countless blessings in my life, as I consider year-end giving during this final week of 2009, that thought really hit home.

Hope During Advent

2009-12-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

Feelings of loss and loneliness tend to well up in me at this time of year, which is ironic. For a Christian, next to Easter this should be the most joyous season. But I find my thoughts straying back to Christmas past, and longer dinner tables flanked by laughing loved ones, now absent.

Something a friend said to me today reminded me of a TV show about D-day I once saw. There were interviews with old veterans who had survived that terrible slaughter, interspaced with film clips shot in the midst of battle. One old man described being on the beach, taking shelter from deadly machine gun fire behind a tiny obstruction. Another soldier beside him began to crack up. The old man in the interview said, “I just told him, ‘Think positive, man,’ and we kept going.”

The remarkable courage of that statement has always stayed with me. In the end, it really is that simple. You think positive, and keep going. And in a Christian’s case of course, thinking positive is thinking Jesus. I am so grateful for the hope found in the manger, and in the empty tomb.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9)

Happy birthday Jesus!

Peace During Advent

2009-12-04T18:45:00.000-08:00

During the Advent season I think about the angels’ announcement to the shepherds tending their flocks in Luke 2:13-14 “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” These angels aren’t talking about some cheap, bumper sticker kind of peace. Real peace isn’t about us visualizing anything; it’s a gift from God. In John 14:27 Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Notice Jesus contrasts his gift of peace with a troubled heart and fear. In Philippians 4:6&7 Paul does the same: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” I’ve learned that peace, not courage, is the opposite of fear. Brave people can act in spite of fear, but our hearts cannot contain both fear and peace.

One day last spring, when I went to the bathroom my urine was bright red with blood. The doctor said it could be cancer of the kidneys, liver, or prostate, or else a fourth undetermined cause. So the odds were three-to-one that it was cancer. He also said usually by the time one has bloody urine it’s pretty far along so my chances would not be good. Then he said we wouldn’t know until he some tests were done, so in the meantime I shouldn’t worry.

Being of little faith, I ignored his advice. I was afraid. Since God obviously knew that already, I thought I might as well admit it. So as Paul said, by prayer and petition I asked God to help me past my fear so I could desire His will with thanksgiving, even if it meant a painful death in my near future. And being afraid, I prayed the prayer in Mark 9:24 where a desperate man cries out to Jesus, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

I had to wait two weeks for the test results, two weeks knowing it was likely I had advanced cancer. But what a wonderful two weeks that was! I learned the Lord will always answer a prayer for faith with “Yes!” even in the valley of the shadow of death. He answered by filling my mind with an eagerness for heaven I had never felt before. I watched the sun set over the Pacific, and as beautiful as that sunset was, instead of worrying about cancer I couldn’t stop thinking that sunsets would be a million times more beautiful in heaven. And I can honestly say when the doctor told me it wasn’t cancer, my relief was bittersweet, because as Isaiah says in 57:1&2: “...the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death.” And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:55&57: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? ...thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Rarely, but sometimes, things are so bad we can’t find the words to pray. I had such a day, many years ago. After fighting leukemia for months it was my father’s time to go. He was like a baby, lying naked on his bed, unable to talk, unable to control his bowels, bald from chemotherapy, going home in much the same way we come into life. It broke my heart to see my mother wiping his bottom, this man who had always been so strong. As I helped her by bringing in clean towels and carrying soiled towels out, I wasn’t praying. I was beyond all words. I was just too deep in grief, totally numb.

Then, as I crossed my parent’s bedroom with a filthy towel in my hand, all of a sudden the heavens opened up and God’s holy presence came shining down on me. I don’t care if this sounds like a cliché or not: it was like standing in a beam of light. God’s warming love flowed over me and all my grief and pain was simply washed away. Just for a moment there was no room for anything but glorious peace from head to toe. And I want to make this clear: in His infinite mercy, God’s peace came without any prayer on my part. In Romans 8:26 Paul makes a promise that was certainly true for me. He says, “...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.”

Although God's gift of total peace lasted only a few seconds, and then my grief returned as was only right and proper, after all these years that moment remains a rock solid promise. Even when I’m so overwhelmed I can’t find the words to beg for help, I’ve learned my loving Father will be here with me.

Another thing I’ve learned is this: Peace cannot be possessed. Imagine if you were so greedy for air that you took in breaths but refused to exhale. You’d end up gasping for the very thing you tried to hoard up for yourself. In Isaiah God speaks of “peace like a river,” and I think He chose that simile because peace cannot be stagnant; it must always flow. God expects you and me to be the riverbed through which His peace flows into the world.

Jesus tells us how to do this in his Sermon on the Mount. Turn the other cheek, he commands. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” That noun, peacemakers, includes an action verb. It means we who follow Jesus have a job to do. We are to obey Jesus, to make peace, to be His hands and feet to a fearful world. Our own peace is impossible if it doesn’t flow on through us to help fulfill the angel’s Advent promise of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

This doesn’t mean obedience to Jesus’ commands causes God to give us peace. It’s completely wrong to think any action on our part imposes some kind of reaction on God’s part. The Lord is the cause and we’re the effect, and it’s never, ever the other way around. It’s impossible to obtain the peace of Christ by trying to be good. Peace cannot be earned. Our obedience has no effect on God (except of course to please Him). God requires obedience for our sake, to turn our thoughts away from ourselves, away from our pain, our troubles, our fear, so we can be capable of accepting His gift of peace that transcends understanding.

As we cannot possess peace, so God’s peace must possess us. We must surrender ourselves to peace as we surrender ourselves to Christ. To the extent that we trust Him, we will receive peace, by grace, through faith and not through our good works.

I was reminded of that recently. As many of you know, I am a novelist. Last September, my eighth book was published. It was a disaster. Due to illness on the part of a key person, and a badly managed corporate restructuring, the publisher forgot to promote the novel. Normally they would send advance copies to several hundred influencers—newspapers, magazines, bloggers and so forth—but for the first time in my career, not one advance copy was mailed. Unbelievable as it sounds, they simply forgot. Bookstores stock novels based largely on the advance buzz in the press. Since there was no buzz, the stores bought only about a third of the usual number of copies. So, unless God wills otherwise, this novel is dead on arrival.

It means I’ve lost over a year’s worth of hard work. That’s how long it takes me to write a novel. And it’s not something I do in my spare time; it’s my full time job. So you can imagine how devastating this was. Since I’m far from perfect, I was furious at first, and then I was depressed. I lost a lot of sleep, and I felt like a failure. There was certainly no peace in my heart.

Then one night my pastor asked some men to pray for me, and in his own prayer the pastor spoke about the Lord’s book. Not my book. The Lord’s book. It was such a simple concept, it had escaped me, but that prayer reminded me that what I write is not my own. I write to serve my Savior. I write to spread His peace on earth, His goodwill to men. And so long as I surrender my life to God, no matter what the world may do there can be no such thing as failure. It’s really just that simple, because as it says in 1 John 5:3&4: “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world....”

Here’s another delicious quote, from Psalm 85:10: “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” As a writer, I think those words are particularly beautiful. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. As a follower of Jesus, I know the Psalmist speaks here about God’s righteousness, not mine. I can no more possess peace than I breathe without exhaling. To be at peace, I must surrender to it, be possessed by it, and pass it on. So I’m not dwelling in grief or anger about my last book anymore. On the contrary, I’m hard at work on another novel for the Lord, about a troubled man who finds peace in the end.

When you’re troubled and need to find peace, admit your fear and ask the Lord to help your unbelief. But if you are too overwhelmed to even think to ask, never fear; even then the miracle of peace is given to those who love the Lord. Just don’t try to possess God’s peace. Be possessed by it instead. Resist the temptation to turn it inward. Look for someone you can share it with, and the gift of peace that transcends understanding will surely flow through you like a river, no matter what your circumstances.

The More Things Change...

2009-11-20T10:41:00.000-08:00

Things are changing fast in Book Land. Last month, the world’s largest Christian fiction publisher decided to convert one of its traditional imprints into a self-publishing division. This week, the world’s largest romance fiction publisher announced they have entered the self-publishing business, too. Never mind the troubling ethical questions and conflict of interest concerns that many have raised about established publishers choosing to blur the lines between traditional and self-publishing this way. That’s another blog. Today I’m interested in bigger trends.

Some people think we’re looking at a future filled with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people putting out their own novels. Given this new thrust toward self-publishing, and the ease with which a manuscript can be uploaded to the Internet as an e-Book, why not? Any author who has ever done a book signing will tell you that everybody seems to think they are a writer. Now they can prove it without having to jump through all the traditional hoops of getting an agent, attracting an acquisitions editor and satisfying a publication board. Write it and post it. It’s just that simple!

Some people also think the Internet has changed everything when it comes to production and purchase in the arts. We used to be macro-consumers. Now that it is so easy to get “published,” we’re going to become micro-consumers. No more blockbuster novels. Everybody will be reading something different because there are so many different things to read.

The Internet, they say, has changed everything, and we published novelists had better get ready for hard times because there is a wave of words coming that will overwhelm us.

I don’t believe it for a second.

Take Hollywood for example. At the end of the day, after Johnny uploads his latest YouTube video creation, I think he still sits down to stream a blockbuster Hollywood production on Netflix, right along with a million other people every day. No matter how many Youtube videos get uploaded, I don’t think that’s going to change the fact that the blockbuster Hollywood production is much more fun. And if Johnny does watch someone else’s Youtube video, on what does he base that decision? On the fact that a whole lot of other people have already watched the same video, of course. Take away the view counter and Youtube would die of lack of interest. We don’t have millions of people watching millions of different videos. We have millions watching a few videos. All the other millions of videos are seen by the people who make them, their friends, and family. Sort of like home movies.

In exactly the same way, Johnny might upload his novel to some file sharing site, but for his own reading he’s still going to choose a Steven King title over some unknown person who wants $1.50 for a download from Scribd.

I’m thinking about general trends here, and of course there will always be a few people who swim upstream, but while the Internet allows us to produce stuff at a micro-level, but that doesn’t mean the vast majority of us want to consume stuff on that level. This is due to basic human nature. Human beings have a heard mentality, and no technology will ever can change that.

There’s so much proof. Anyone could start a “news” service like Matt Drudge’s. All the man does is post links to other people’s news stories. Countless bloggers have tried to do the same, and it’s safe to say many of them post the same news links, or more interesting links, but Drudge still gets 28,000,000 hits a day while all those others get maybe 50 to 5,000. Why do millions of people go to Drudge every day? Because millions of people go to Drudge.

People have a herd mentality. We always have. We always will.

We see a line; we get in it, whether we know why or not. It just seems easier, somehow. How many times have you seen this at a ticket booth? A couple of lines, one long, one short, both for the same thing? And what is your first instinct? If you are like most people your first instinct is obviously to get in the long line, because that’s why it’s longer in the first place. It takes extra thought to get in that short line, and it takes a little courage, because a little voice warns us that the longer line must be better. After all, everybody’s in it.

Since we’re wired to take the well trodden path our marketplace will always be driven by that instinct, which means sales will always pile up in a few places rather than being thinly spread all over the place. How many search engines are there? How many people use Google, versus all those others combined? We’ve even turned “google” into a verb. We might enjoy the fantasy that someone’s out there reading our blog or looking at our video, but when it comes time for us to do some reading and looking, the Internet hasn’t changed our herd mentality. On the contrary, the Internet enables it.

What will probably happen as traditional publishing slowly dies as some predict, is a corresponding period when it’s every author for himself, with a proliferation of websites like Scribd where you can market your wares. Then one site will rise to dominance, a la Google, Drudge, Amazon, Craig’s List, Youtube, and etc.. That dominant e-publishing site will include a download counter for each title. And just as we see on Youtube, the titles with the most downloads will attract the most downloads. Tipping point will remain a fundamental marketing dynamic. Buying patterns will continue to exist just as the do today. A few authors will rise to the top, and all the others will sink to the bottom. At the end of the day, fiction authors will be in much the same place as we were ten years ago, with a small pool of the luckiest or the most talented professionals selling 95% of the novels, and a few million others wannabes splitting the other 5%. There will always be a need for professional editing. PR and marketing will still be necessary. The dominant e-publishing website will eventually change their business model and start taking a percentage of sales, of course. And being very poor negotiators, I suspect we authors will still be lucky to retain our usual 5% to 15%. In the end, unless human nature changes, life as an author will remain essentially the same in spite of everything.

Piracy, on the other hand, could ruin everything for everyone, authors and readers alike, but that too is another blog.

Thoughts on Humility Against Despair

2009-11-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

I chickened out last night at a weekly men’s discussion group at church. Rather than our usual Bible study, our pastor chose a chapter from Thomas Merton’s classic New Seeds of Contemplation. At first I was delighted, because as it happens I’ve kept a copy of Father Merton’s book on my bedside table for occasional inspiration for the last year or so. But then I saw the topic of our discussion would come from chapter 25, “Humility Against Despair.” While it’s a timely treatise for these difficult times, as we talked about Father Merton’s observations on the relationship between humility and despair, I found myself feeling more and more cowardly.

Father Merton begins that chapter with these words: “Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love.” As it happens, I disagree. But I wasn’t willing to say that, because I was afraid of having to explain why.

Later in the chapter I think Thomas Merton was right to point to humility as absolutely necessary for release from despair. I also agree some forms of despair are fueled by prideful self-pity. But I am not convinced by the father’s unqualified statements in the opening paragraphs of his chapter, where he also writes, “Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God...”

Because I didn’t know my pastor planned to present this topic for discussion last night, I didn’t have time to psyche myself up to talk about it transparently. But today I decided it might help someone if I wrote about it openly, so here’s what I was too chicken to admit yesterday:

I know quite a lot about despair. I once suffered from it to the point of being sorely tempted to commit suicide.

The Bible tells us in many places all trials are beneficial for believers, even when they cause us grief. Here is some of what I learned from my particular trial...

Jesus, quoting the Hebrew scriptures, teaches us to “love your neighbor as yourself,” so in spite of Father Merton's phrasing, self-love itself is not the problem. One cannot love another without first having a healthy appreciation for the fact that the Creator of the universe considers us worthy of a deep and sacrificial love. Who are we to disagree with God on this?

But of course self-love can be taken to an unhealthy extreme, as all good human impulses can. For the sake of conversation I suppose it is convenient to select a word for that condition, but I wish Father Merton had chosen more carefully. In most English-speaking peoples' minds “despair” is synonymous with “depression” (it certainly seemed that way in last night’s discussion) and that’s where I find I can’t agree with the father, because there are several reasons for depression that have nothing to do with improperly conceived self-love.

According to this source (which I highly recommend) depression can be hereditary, or chemically induced, or the after effect of prolonged physical or emotional stress, or an involuntary reaction to a major change in life’s circumstances. Merton’s definition matches yet another of the usual suspects, something called “endogenous depression,” which psychologists believe is the result of a prolonged and deep-seated anger turned inward at oneself because it feels unsafe to direct it outward at the cause. In other words, there is a kind of depression which can be caused by clinging to unforgiveness.

I believe “unforgiveness” is a far better term than “despair” to describe this form of spiritual corruption, this “absolute extreme of self-love” Merton describes, because unforgiveness is the spiritual action undertaken (when the cause is spiritual), and despair is only the result.

But again, not all depression is the same. For me despair (or depression) came during a three-year period in my life when I suffered through a series of unrelenting personal betrayals, losses and grief. Each of those evils attacked me hard on the heels of another. In every case I had good reason to mourn.

There is nothing wrong with grief, of course. After all, “Jesus wept.” In this fallen world, it’s natural. But when one suffers through a Job-like period with life handing you one evil after another, if it lasts long enough, against your will it can change the way you think. That’s so important it bears repeating: against your will it can change the way you think.

This is an established medical fact. It is possible to become involuntarily addicted to a beneficial drug if circumstances require you to consume it long enough. In a similar way, depression or despair is sometimes caused by a long immersion in the grief and pain which is a natural and logical and proper emotional response to very bad events. If you have never suffered from severe depression and you don’t believe it’s possible to end up there against your will, ask a combat veteran. Ask an abused child.

So here is the question I would ask Thomas Merton if I could: should we tell a combat veteran or an abused child that they feel despair because they are insufficiently humble? And if we are not prepared to do that, who are we to decide to draw the line elsewhere, to say to anyone, “He and she have a legitimate reason to struggle with depression and despair, but you do not”?

Maybe a stronger faith, with its accompanying humility, would have kept me from the depression that led me to thoughts of suicide. But maybe not. Deeply faithful people become sick and it has nothing to do with a lack of humility. So was my depression a form of sickness, or was it sinful pride as Merton suggested? I can offer two evidences that Merton was wrong in my case.

First, when I thought of ending my life—and I did so many times over a period of several months—again and again I chose not to do it for one reason only: I knew it was against God’s will, and I knew it would break my wife’s heart. In other words, while Merton summarily dismisses all despair as “the absolute extreme of self-love,” I chose life in the midst of despair for the sake of outward focused love.

My second evidence is a guiltless conscience. Not once since that time have I sensed the Holy Spirit’s conviction in the matter, and while I am often disobedient, I am nonetheless very aware of God's displeasure when it comes.

I find great inspiration in Merton’s work and in his life-long example, or I wouldn’t keep his book so close at hand. And nobody gets it right all of the time, of course, so disagreement on one point is no reason to ignore a hundred other pearls of wisdom. Even in this chapter of New Seeds of Contemplation I agree with the good father to this extent: humility is indeed essential in the fight against despair.

In Christ’s case, only his infinite humility could have saved his sanity when he was driven by unrelenting evil to cry out with the despairing Psalmist, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” In my case, God’s beauty as revealed in His natural creation finally drew me up and out of despair. I could not have connected with God’s beauty if I had remained focused on myself, so that part of Merton’s premise is correct: in all humility I owe everything to God. There was no room for pride. I was utterly helpless; God had mercy on me, and I was rescued, plain and simple, just as I was rescued when I first surrendered myself to Him through Jesus, my Messiah.

The other men in the room touched on this final point last night and I was very glad, but I wish I had been brave enough to take it one step further, because this truth contains an important contradiction with Merton’s initial statements: God is under no obligation to rescue anyone, and whether He chooses to do so or not is not a function of human humility, therefore it is possible to be completely humble, and yet remain caught up in despair simply because it is the perfect will of God.

In other words, sometimes, despair is simply a test, like so many other forms of evil.

Some Christians are not rescued as I was. Some, like Paul with his famous thorn in the flesh, are left by the Divine within the fight. Indeed, Paul’s thorn was left in place precisely so he would not fall into self-love. So who are we to say depression can only exist because of self-love? Not only is that assertion judgmental in the sense Jesus hated, but once we take that step, we must be prepared to accept the same explanation for things like schizophrenia, or cancer.

I do believe—I know from personal experience—that humility is essential in recovering from depression and despair, I don’t think it follows that corrupt self-love is necessarily the cause of all despair, nor do I believe corrupt self-love is an essential characteristic of despair. Sometimes it is there, for sure. Maybe even most of the time; who knows? But to say as Father Merton did that “Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love,” is to do a grave disservice to those who continue to suffer from depression or despair, and yet who, like Job, resist the beguiling temptation of release that death would bring, solely because of their selfless obedience to a God they dearly love.

P.S. Do me a favor, will you? If you reading this, let me know you're out there by leaving a comment, even if it's just to say, "Hi Athol. I'm here." Thanks!

Artful Conversation

2009-11-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

Interviewing novelists is an art form. Most radio interviews I've done have been pretty disappointing, because the person asking the questions clearly didn't understand fiction, and didn't have a clue about how to take us into interesting territory without giving away too much of a novel's plot. But Victor and Alicia Gentile at Kingdom Highlights are masters at doing exactly that, and they truly understand the purpose and meaning of literature.

Recently Victor and Alicia interviewed me for the second time. They began our talk with a discussion of the idea that authors can use style and voice in the service of a story rather than being tied to one style or voice for every story.

In other words, should an author "sound" the same in every novel, or are there good reasons to adjust one's voice for the telling of particular stories? Victor then led us into a critique of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and an exploration of the passage of time in the written word. From there we sailed off into how story ideas come to writers, using the inspiration for my latest novel, Lost Mission, as an example

That took the conversation deep into the state of the church in America today and how American Christians are perceived by Christians in the rest of the world (Alicia is from Peru and offered first hand knowledge of that topic). We then segued into the importance of following God's vision rather than asking God to bless our own vision, and from there we got into the difference between the prosperity gospel's view of blessings and the true nature of blessings.

For me it was a fascinating conversation, so if you have the time I hope you'll head on over to Kingdom Highlights, click on "Listen to our Guests," and then "Athol Dickson - Lost Mission". I think you'll find it very interesting.

The Trouble With Theme

2009-11-06T17:53:00.000-08:00

I love to talk about art with artists, and had the opportunity recently when my wife and I had dinner with our friends, Terry and Regina Jacobson. Terry is a talented architect who specializes in designing churches, and Regina is a wonderful painter (as you can see in her painting, "Spinning in Infinity" at left) who explores spiritual themes. We had a good talk about the joys and challenges of expressing our faith in our work. At one point in the conversation I mentioned the strange fact that there’s no faster way to start an argument among people who write Christian fiction than to bring up the subject of theme.

“Right away, we divide into two camps,” I said, making two fists and putting one on the dinner table to my right, and the other on the table to my left. Lifting one fist I said, “Over here are authors who insist Christian novels have to kowtow to the most prudish people in the pews, and speak about the gospel so plainly it crosses the line into propaganda.” Lifting my other fist, I said, “But the authors over here think being authentic and relevant means we must show profanity and violence and sex realistically, and they’re willing to avoid all hint of Christianity rather than risk being seen as preachy.”

Nodding, my friend Regina zeroed right in on the problem. Pointing to one fist she said, “Too much truth.” Then she pointed to the other fist. “Too much grace.”

Regina knows her Bible. She knows you can never really have too much truth or too much grace. What she really meant was, not enough harmony.

People are like pendulums. We can’t seem to stop swinging from one extreme to the other. Sometimes this is good. Passion is important. But in addition to passion, all the finest things in God’s creation have a sense of harmony. It’s true in Regina’s world, where the best painters pay as much attention to the background, or “negative space,” as they do to the subject matter, or “positive space.” And it’s true in fiction, where the best writers devote attention to theme, style, setting, plot and characterization without giving any one of those fundamental elements too much emphasis, or too little. Everything works together, harmoniously.

When we swing so far in one direction that we ignore or oppose the other end of the spectrum, it’s a sure sign we are lazy. It’s easier out there on the ends. The gray areas in the middle require much more work. In those middle places we can’t thoughtlessly accept simple black and white ideas; we have to think about everything. This applies to writing, and it applies to Christianity itself.

It’s lazy writing to layer a theme onto a story superficially and it’s lazy to turn one’s back on theme for fear of overstatement. That’s why a good writer will wrestle with a theme, always aware of the dangers of going too far, and always aware it’s just as dangerous not to go far enough. Some wrestle with their theme up front; others let the theme develop as they write and then go back to wrestle with it later. Either way this is a lot of work, but it’s also the only way to write a novel that matters.

Similarly, it’s lazy writing to demand thoughtless compliance with rigid rules simply to avoid causing offense, and it’s just as lazy to break those same rules merely to appear relevant or authentic to the outside world. A good Christian novelist will offend even fellow Christians if there’s no better way to make a point that should be made. A good Christian novelist will also do the extra work it takes to write about the fallen world without contributing to the fall. Jesus ate with prostitutes and “sinners” but not once did he emulate them.

A long time ago I was advised by a Jewish agent and an unbelieving editor to add a stronger spiritual subtext to a plot, only to be told later by a Christian author that the novel was too preachy. More recently, another Christian author assured me that my upcoming allegorical novel about God’s love is a waste of time, because only people who already know God will understand the symbolism. (I could not help remembering that God is not mentioned in the book of Ester, nor does that book contain any commentary on the actions of the characters. Apparently God trusts readers, even if we don’t.)

These experiences are fairly typical of what I’ve found in several organizations where Christian authors discuss writing. We often talk about how to create sympathetic characters, or how to write a page-turner of a plot, but amazingly enough, we almost never discuss how to communicate a theme. When it comes up we tend to flee to separate corners, with those on one side saying, “You abandon the gospel!” and those on the other side saying, “You write sermons, not novels!” The finger pointing is easier than doing the work it takes to speak to readers deep down, between the lines. Although we are all in the business of writing about Christian ideas one way or another, theme is a touchy subject.

Oh, the irony!

Whether the genre is romance, speculative fiction, mystery/suspense, general fiction or chick lit, writing about Jesus means letting go of safe assumptions and easy shortcuts. It also means approaching every novel as if it’s the first one we ever wrote in order to encounter our stories in a middle place where life is gray and complicated, because that’s where true harmony is found. This is only natural, since that harmonious yet complicated place is also where Jesus lives. The apostle John tells us Jesus came “full of grace and truth.” Jesus never compromised on one for the sake of the other, and He calls us to live our lives the same way. Imagine the power and the glory if our novels did that, too.

How to Pray

2009-11-03T17:57:00.001-08:00

Feeling distant from the Lord? Today I received some practical advice on how to pray from my friend and pastor, Jay Grant, a man who routinely prays for miracles and receives them. Here in Jay's own words are his excellent suggestions for those of us who sometimes feel we're talking to the wall instead of having a conversation with God:

Helping You Pray: There are times when praying is difficult. We may be tired or distracted or frustrated. Perhaps we have been away from the Lord and feel little inspiration to pray. It could be we’ve had a relational breakdown that has left us discouraged. And sin can deeply affect our desire to pray. When prayer becomes difficult here are a few helps…

1. Pray Scripture: Take a passage, read it, and pray over it. Such as; “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but should have eternal life.” I would pray something like this: “Lord, your love for a world that largely rejects you astounds me. Where would we be if you hadn’t sent your Son to die for us. I thank you for opening my heart to believe, that I can now have full confidence that my eternal destiny has been assured. I am immensely grateful.” Scripture is a great way to help you pray.

2. Worship: When prayer is difficult, worship can bring release. Read a series of worship Psalms out loud such as 8, 47, 48, 63, 84, 95, 96, 100, 103, 145. Worship makes prayer enjoyable and easier.

3. Thanksgiving: In a funk? Finding it hard to pray? Take out a piece of paper and write down all the blessings of God, everything He has done that has been wonderful in your life. Then thank Him for all the favor you’ve received. For instance: “I thank you Lord for my wife, Nikki, my family, for such a fantastic place to live, my health; for Little Church by the Sea, your grace, mercy and forgiveness, etc.”

4. Confession: Sin definitely waylays prayer. It freezes our hearts and clogs up our spiritual lifeline to God. The solution? Simply confess your sin and receive God’s forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9 Confession frees us to pray.

5. Resisting the Enemy: James says, “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” An impasse in prayer, feeling stifled when desiring to pray, can occur through the intimidation of the enemy. Know the enemy hates prayer and will do anything he can to discourage it. When I feel hindered in prayer and sense it’s the enemy, I ask for the blood of Christ to cover me and then say, “Satan, the Lord rebuke you, you and all your helpers.”

6. Praying/Singing in the Spirit: Scripture exhorts us to pray and sing in the Spirit which can be an immense help when praying is difficult (Romans 8:26-27; Ephesians 6:18; 1 Corinthians 14:15). Words of Spirit-filled adoration combined with a melody from the heart breaks us through to God and helps us pray more effectively.

7. Walking: Staying stationary in prayer can sometimes make prayer difficult. Sitting, kneeling, or laying down and trying to pray can be challenging. Walking (on the beach, in my back yard, or in the Upper Room) helps me to pray more alertly. Or perhaps you’d like to run/jog while praying.

Athol here again. Jay suggests that you print this page and keep it with your Bible, to help you the next time you feel you're not connecting with the Lord. Sounds like a great idea to me!

Our Calvary

2009-11-02T18:35:00.000-08:00

These beautiful, wise words came to me from a friend today. My friend didn't know for certain where to find the source in print, and although I tried to find confirmation of the author or a copy of the poem via Google, they were nowhere to be seen. But I believe the author would not object to finding it here. Anyone who understands this truth as well as the poet clearly does, would want the world to know by all means possible.

Our Calvary

The tree

That fell last year

Knows now just why it fell;

Why came that hell

Of axe and saw, and leaping, clear blue flame.

To the world's uses it was set

In pit, or ship, or polished cabinet,

Or other needs of man.

The spirit of the tree

Knows now the plan

Of that, its agony.

So we,

Fall'n in the mire

Shall someday surely know

Why life held blow

On blow, and sacrificial fire and knife,

Seeing one stand the firmer for our rout,

Or some brave, laughing ship of youth sail out

The braver for our pain.

So-know, seeing-we

Shall smile again

At this, our Calvary.

- Constance Holm

American Idol for Writers!

2009-10-18T14:29:00.000-07:00

Want to have some fun? Enjoy American Idol? Enjoy speculative fiction? In that case, you're in luck! My friend Jeff Gerke sent me a copy of the following press release this morning. I think it's a great idea. Check it out:

***

(Colorado Springs, CO)--Marcher Lord Press, the premier publisher of Christian speculative fiction, today announced the debut of a revolution in fiction acquisitions.

"Marcher Lord Select is American Idol meets book acquisitions," says publisher Jeff Gerke. "We're presenting upwards of 40 completed manuscripts and letting 'the people' decide which one should be published."

The contest will proceed in phases, Gerke explains, in each subsequent round of which the voters will receive larger glimpses of the competing manuscripts.

The first phase will consist of no more than the book's title, genre, length, a 20-word premise, and a 100-word back cover copy teaser blurb. Voters will cut the entries from 40 to 20 based on these items alone.

"We want to show authors that getting published involves more than simply writing a great novel," Gerke says. "There are marketing skills to be developed--and you've got to hook the reader with a good premise."

Following rounds will provide voters with a 1-page synopsis, the first 500 words of the book, the first 30 pages of the book, and, in the final round, the first 60 pages of the book.

The manuscript receiving the most votes in the final round will be published by Marcher Lord Press in its Spring 2010 release list.

No portion of any contestant's mss. will be posted online, as MLP works to preserve the non-publication status of all contestants and entries.

Participating entrants have been contacted personally by Marcher Lord Press and are included in Marcher Lord Select by invitation only.

"We're also running a secondary contest," Gerke says. "The 'premise contest' is for those authors who have completed a Christian speculative fiction manuscript that fits within MLP guidelines and who have submitted their proposals to me through the Marcher Lord Press acquisitions portal before October 29, 2009."

The premise contest will allow voters to select the books that sound the best based on a 20-word premise, a 100-word back cover copy teaser blurb, and (possibly) the first 500 words of the book.

The premise contest entrants receiving the top three vote totals will receive priority acquisitions reading by MLP publisher Jeff Gerke.

"It's a way for virtually everyone to play, even those folks who didn't receive an invitation to compete in the primary Marcher Lord Select contest."

The premise contest is open to anyone with a completed Christian speculative fiction manuscript that meets MLP guidelines for length, content, genre, worldview, audience, etc. To enter, authors must complete the acquisitions form found at the Marcher Lord Press site and supply all the components listed below on or before October 29, 2009.

Marcher Lord Select officially begins on November 1, 2009, and runs until completion in January or February 2010. All voting and discussions and Marcher Lord Select activities will take place at The Anomaly forums in the Marcher Lord Select subforum. Free registration is required.

"In order for this to work as we're envisioning," Gerke says, "we need lots and lots of voters. So even if you're not a fan of Christian science fiction or fantasy, I'm sure you love letting your voice be heard about what constitutes good Christian fiction. So come on out and join the fun!"

Marcher Lord Press is a Colorado Springs-based independent publisher producing Christian speculative fiction exclusively. MLP was launched in fall of 2008 and is privately owned. Contact: Jeff Gerke; http://www.marcherlordpress.com/.

Other People's Blogs

2009-10-16T07:32:00.001-07:00

I've been branching out lately, guest blogging over on Brandilyn Collins's site, where I wrote about my motivation for Lost Mission. I also posted a piece about the relationship between architecture and literature on Rachelle Gardner's blog. Rachelle is giving away copies of Lost Mission to anyone who agrees to read and blog about it. I hope you'll check both posts out, and drop in at Brandilyn and Rachelle's sites here and here to comment. And a huge THANK YOU to Brandilyn and Rachelle! (If you're interesting in Lost Mission, scroll down to read the complete first chapter.)

Lost Mission - Chapter One

2009-09-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

Lost Mission
By Athol Dickson

Published by Howard Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.howardpublishing.com
Lost Mission © 2009 Athol Dickson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Howard Subsidiary Rights Department, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
WordServe Literary Agency
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK
ISBN-13: 9781416583479
ISBN-10: 1416583475
HOWARD and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Manufactured in TK
For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact: Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com.
Edited by Nicci Jordan Hubert
Cover design by DesignWorks
Interior design by TK
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.

***********************************************************************************

The two angels arrived
at Sodom in the evening,
and Lot was sitting
in the gateway of the city.
When he saw them,
he got up to meet them
and bowed down
with his face
to the ground.
—The Book of Genesis

In the event of a suspicious find
those exposed should be re-vaccinated
and placed under medical supervision for 21 days . . .
The potential risk to public health is so great
that a contingency plan must be in place.
—Margaret Cox,
“Crypt Archaeology: an approach”
Institute of Field Archaeologists, Paper Number 3

Capítulo 1

La Día de los Reyes, 6 de Enero, 1767

Let us begin the story of La Misión de Santa Delores on the holy day of the three kings, in Italy, in Assisi. To commemorate his twentieth year among the Franciscan brothers, Fray Alejandro Tapia Valdez made a pilgrimage to his beloved San Francisco’s humble chapel, the Porziuncola. For more than a week the friar prayed before the chapel’s frescos, rarely ceasing for food or sleep, But despite his lengthy praises and petitions, despite his passionate devotion to Almighty God, Fray Alejandro was a pragmatic man. He did not believe the rumor, common in his day, that the frescos’ perfection was beyond the reach of human hands. As we shall see, in time the friar would reconsider.

The Franciscan stood five feet four inches tall, an average Spaniard’s height in the eighteenth century. He was broad and unattractive. Heavy whiskers lurked beneath the surface of his jaw, darkly threatening to burst forth. Fray Alejandro’s brow was large and loomed above the recess of his eyes as if it was a cliff eroded by the pounding of the sea and ready to crash down at any moment. The black fullness of his hair had been shaved at the crown, leaving only a circular fringe around the edges of his head. His nose, once aquiline and proud, had become a perpetual reminder of the violence that had flattened it at some time in the past.

For all its ugliness, Fray Alejandro’s visage could not mask the gentleness within. His crooked smile shed warmth upon his fellow man. His hands were ever ready with a touch to reassure or steady, or to simply grant the gift of human presence. When someone spoke, be they wise or not, he inclined his head and listened with his entire being, as if the speaker’s words had all the weight of holy writ. In his eyes was love.

Love does not defend against the sorrows of this world, of course. On the contrary, each day as Fray Alejandro knelt in prayer at the Porziuncola he became more deeply troubled. His imagination had recently been captured by strange stories of the heathen natives of the new world, isolated wretches with no knowledge of their Savior. This tragedy grew in Alejandro’s mind until he groaned aloud in sympathy for their unhappy souls. Other brothers kneeling on his left and right cast covert glances at him. Many thought his noisy prayers an uncouth intrusion, but caught up as he was in sacred agony, Alejandro did not notice.

Then came that holy day of the three kings, when in the midst of his entreaties for the pagans of New Spain, Fray Alejandro suddenly felt a painful heat as if his body was ablaze. In this, the first of his three burnings, Alejandro became faint. He heard a whisper saying, “Go and save my children.” The bells of Saint Mary of the Angels begin to peal, although it was later said the ropes had not been touched. As startled pigeons burst forth from the bell tower, Alejandro rose.

How like the Holy Father to command such a journey on that day of days! Without a backwards glance Fray Alejandro strode away from San Francisco’s little chapel as if following a star, determined to return at once to Hornachuelos, in Cordoba, there to seek permission from the abbot of the monastery of Santa Maria de los Angeles for a voyage to New Spain.

The abbot’s assent was quickly given, but Fray Alejandro spent many months waiting on the vast bureaucracy of King Carlos III to approve his passage. Still, while the wheels of government turn slowly, slowly they do turn.

Finally, in late May of the year 1767 the good friar stood at the bulwarks of a galleon in the West Indian Fleet, tossed by the Atlantic, quite ill, and protected from the frigid spray by nothing but his robe of coarse handmade cloth. In spite of the pitching deck, always Alejandro faced New Spain, far beyond the horizon. His short broad body seemed to strain against the wind and ocean waves with eagerness to be about his Father’s business.

But let us be more patient than the friar, for this is just the first of many journeys we shall follow as our story leads us back and forth through space and time. Indeed, the events Fray Alejandro has set in motion have their culmination far into the future. Therefore, leaving the Franciscan and his solitary ship, we cross many miles to reach a village known as Rincon de Dolores, high among the Sierra Madres of Jalisco, Mexico. And we fly further still, centuries ahead of Alejandro, to find ourselves in these, our modern times.

Accompanied by norteño music blaring from loudspeakers and by much celebratory honking of automobile horns, we observe the burning of a makeshift structure of twigs and sticks and painted cardboard, which seemed a more substantial thing once it was engulfed, as if the trembling flames were masons hard at work with red adobe. The people of the village of Rincon de Dolores were encouraged by the firmness of the fire. All the village cheered as the imitation barracks burned before them. They cheered, and with their jolly voices dared a pair of boys to stay in the inferno just a little longer.

There was much to enjoy on that Feast Day of Fray Alejandro—the floral garlands, the children in their antique costumes, the pinwheels spun by crackling fireworks, the somber procession of the saints along the avenida—but one citizen did not join the festivities.

Guadalupe Soledad Consuelo de la Garza trembled as she watched the flaming reenactment of the tragedy of La Misión de Santa Dolores. Who knew, but possibly this year the boys would stay too long within the flames? Who knew, but possibly this time the sticks would burn, the cardboard become ash and rise into the sky, and “Alejandro” and “the Indian” would not emerge? Spurred to foolishness by those who called for courage, might this be the year when merrymaking turned to mourning? The young woman with the long name—let us call her merely Lupe—feared it might be so, while the imitation barracks burned and the boys remained inside.

As was their ancient custom, after the fire was set by eager boys in Indian costumes, the village people chanted, “Muerte! Muerte! Muerte! Death to Spaniards! Death to traitors!” Their refrain arose in tandem with the flames. Only when the fire ascended to the middle of the mock barrack’s spindly walls did some within the crowd begin to yell, “Salido! Salido! Salido!” Come out! they called, a few of them at first, mostly girls and women, then as the minutes slowly passed this call became predominant, until the entire village shouted it as one, Come out! and the boys inside could flee the fire with honor.

Yet they did not come.

“Agua!” someone shouted, probably the boys’ parents, and nearby men with buckets hurried toward the crackling barracks walls. “Agua rapido!” they shouted, and the first man swung his bucket back, prepared to douse a small part of the flames.

Such wild and forceful flames, and so little water, thought young Lupe. Holy Father, please protect them.

Even as she prayed, the first man thrust his bucket forward. Water sizzled in the burning sticks and rose as steam, and from the conflagration burst two little figures. One boy came out robed from head to foot in gray cloth, the cincture at his waist knotted in three places to bring poverty, obedience and chastity to mind. He carried a bundle, the sacred retablo of Fray Alejandro concealed in crimson velvet, a small altarpiece which no one but Padre Hinojosa, the village priest, would ever see. The other boy came nearly naked with only a covering of sackcloth, his bare arms and legs agleam with aloe sap as protection from the heat. The fire around them roared.

Chased by swirling coals and sparks the two brave boys went charging through the crowd, yet no one turned to watch. It was as if young Alejandro and the Indian were unseen, as if they were already spirits on their way to heaven. All the village chanted “Muerte! Muerte! Muerte!” again. All the village faced the burning barracks. All of Rincon de Dolores called for death to Spaniards, death to traitors as the two small figures fled invisibly across the plaza to the chapel, where they entered and returned the treasure, the retablo handed down through centuries.

Alone among the village people, only Lupe seemed to see the boys escape. Watching from the shop door, she alone thanked God for yet another year without a tragedy; she alone refused to play the game, the foolish reenactment they all loved so well, pretending blindness as two boys cheated death. Lupe’s imagination would not let her join the celebration of their unofficial saint’s escape from murderous pagans. She had never felt the kiss of flames upon her flesh, but she had suffered from flames nonetheless.

Often Lupe recalled the winter’s night when her father had laid a bed of sticks within the corner fireplace. The flames took hold and a younger Lupe drew her blanket up above her head as other children did when told of ghosts. Even now the memory of resin snapping in the burning wood intruded on her dreams, conjuring a thousand nightmares drawn from Padre Hinojosa’s homilies about Spanish saints who perished in the flames, Agathoclia and Eulalia of Mérida, and the auto de fe, that fearsome ritual of early Mexico, the stake, and acts of faith imposing pain on saint and heretic alike. Her most grievous loss, many sermons, dreams and sacrifices of the flesh had left her terrified of fire.

Watching from the doorway, Lupe heard a voice. “Do you think this is how it was?”

Although she had not heard him come, a stranger stood beside her, a man in fine dark clothing with full black hair that shimmered slightly in the midday light like the feathers of a crow. From his appearance this man might have been her brother. Like Lupe, he was not tall. Like Lupe his features called to mind stone carvings of the ancient Mayans. Like Lupe, he had a smooth sloped forehead, pendulous ear lobes, and cheekbones high and proud. His golden skin was flawless, as was hers. Like hers, his lips were thick and sensuous, his teeth the flashing white of lightning, his eyes a pair of black pools without bottoms.

“Pardon me, señor?” said Lupe, unaware she might be looking at her twin.

“Do you think this is how it was?” asked the stranger once again. “With Fray Alejandro, and the Indian?”

Lupe only shrugged. “Who knows, señor? It is a very old story.”

The stranger nodded, his unfathomable eyes focused on the plaza.

Perhaps, being a stranger, he did not know the story of Fray Alejandro, how the Franciscan had walked two thousand, four hundred kilometers to Alta California with two other Fernandino brothers. Because he was a stranger it was possible the man knew nothing of the apostate priests who corrupted Alejandro’s efforts to advance the gospel, how his hope to be the hands and feet of Christ to pagan peoples in the north was undone by Spanish cruelty and indulgence, how Alejandro, forced to flee his beloved mission in the north, had escaped the burning buildings with the Indian, his trusted neophyte companion, the two of them miraculously unseen even as they passed among bloodthirsty savages, much as Saint Peter once had passed his guards in Herod’s prison.

If the man knew nothing of this history he would surely learn that day, for every year at Alejandro’s feast all was reenacted by the village children to commemorate the holy man’s exploits. Rome had thus far not enshrined Fray Alejandro among the saints, but Rincon de Dolores had nonetheless adopted him as their patron, for the man of miracles had settled in their little mountain village when the pagans in the north rejected him, and through many acts of kindness he had become their eternally beloved padre, entrusting them with memories of the mission he had lost up north, somewhere in the hills of Alta California.

Lupe considered speaking to the stranger of these things, but he had departed unobserved. She searched the crowd beyond her door to find him. With the Burning of the Barracks finished now, people strolled throughout the village, passing in the shade of well-trimmed ficus trees around the plaza or along the tiles beneath arched porticos where they haggled with the venders who had traveled from afar to set up booths for the fiesta. Some of the venders offered plastic toys for children: balloons, whistles and balls in a hundred riotous colors. Others hawked recordings of mariachi and norteño music. Sweets, hand tools, shawls and pottery . . . everything was there. Near the chapel on the far side of the plaza one could purchase votive candles and milagros, those tiny metal charms that symbolized the miracles requested of the saints. In spite of so much competition, a few still patronized Lupe’s tiendita, her little shop where soda pop and newspapers and other such necessities were offered to the good people of Rincon de Dolores, Jalisco, high in the Sierra Madres.

Forgetting about the stranger, Lupe left her place in the doorway and tended to the customers who visited her shop all afternoon, both villagers and strangers. She took their pesos as the sun outside moved closer to the western mountains and the shadows lengthened. Finally it was almost time for the best part of Fray Alejandro’s fiesta: the gathering at the plaza. The young woman stepped across the stone threshold of her little shop, where the sandals of a dozen generations had shaped a smooth depression. She closed the wooden door. She felt no need for locks. Dressed in a blue cotton skirt and white blouse with a traditional apron, wearing no jewelry and no makeup, with her pure black hair restrained only by a plastic clip, Lupe approached the plaza.

She followed the familia Delgado along the avenida, Rosa and Carlos in their finest clothing normally reserved for Sunday Mass. Rosa’s blouse was perhaps a bit too tight and too low cut in Lupe’s opinion. Carlos was very handsome with silver tips and silver heel guards on his pointed boots. The three Delgado boys were likewise attired in formal fashion, and the youngest child, darling Linda, toddled on the cobblestones in patent leather shoes, with petticoats and a pretty pink dress trimmed with sky blue ribbons.

Lupe sometimes wished for children. The thought arose in moments such as this, but it was always fleeting. At other times she praised the Holy Father for her call to chastity. It was good to be unmarried unless one burned with passion, as San Pablo said, and her passion was for Christ.

When Lupe reach the plaza, oh, such a festivity! She saw men at their carts selling little whimsies—empanadas and tamales and nopales from the prickly pear—and strolling toy vendors with helium balloons and plastic snakes on sticks, and groups of girls approaching marriage age who moved about the plaza casting covert glances at the boys whom they pretended to ignore. Soon everyone would laugh as mariachis in the central gazebo serenaded blushing grandmothers, then the people would ignore the mayor as he promised vast improvements through a needless megaphone, and they would admire Rincon de Dolores’s own ballet folklorico, the handsome boys in black charro suits with felt sombreros and shoulders proudly squared, and the beautiful girls in swirling multicolored skirts like rose bouquets.

Lupe traversed the plaza, greeting all as friends, for she was a friend to everyone. Like Fray Alejandro, she longed to be the hands and feet of Christ to them. She went slowly, smiling on her way, touching this one, kissing that one, freely offering her kindness. Normally this bonhomie was as natural as breath to her, but that day it was a kind of sacrifice she offered. It came from force of will. She did not feel it in her heart, and she was uncertain why. Perhaps her dread had lingered since the moment when the barracks flames had nearly claimed two boys. Yes, probably it was only that. Yet she sensed something else at work within her heart, a conviction, and a fear.

On the far side of the plaza Lupe approached the embers of the imitation barracks, a mound of charcoal now, a black mark on the beauty of the day. It frightened her, yet drew her closer. Remarkably, it still emitted smoke. Only Lupe gave attention to that fact. All the others laughed and strolled and savored conversations unawares, but Lupe there beside the blackened ruins felt her pulse increase and heard the beating of her heart within her inner ear. She found it necessary to remind herself to breathe. She saw the smoke still rising like a slender column standing far above the village, straight and true, until it met the burning fringes of the sunset. Surrounded by festivities, she turned her face up to the sky and saw the strangest thing among the orange and purple clouds. She saw it, yet it could not be.

“Concha,” she called to a passing friend. “That smoke. Would you look at it?”

The woman, whose seven children swirled around her knees, replied, “I told those foolish men to pour more water on those ashes.”

“But the wind . . . .”

Concha and her perpetually squirming offspring had already passed into the crowd.

Lupe wiped sweating palms upon her apron and tried again to find someone to observe this thing and tell her it was real, but the mariachis had begun their brassy serenades and the people moved away from her, toward the gazebo in the center of the plaza. She stared up at the sky again, and asked, “How can that be?”

Someone behind her said, “Perhaps it is a sign.”

Guadalupe Soledad Consuelo de la Garza looked around and saw the stranger with dark hair that shimmered slightly like the feathers of a crow. She felt comforted immediately, for he too had seen the cause of her confusion; he too stood with face turned toward the sky, toward the smoke arising from Fray Alejandro’s ruined mission, the smoke which drifted north against a wind that traveled south.

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If you want to read more, you can get the novel now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or ChristianBook.

If Necessary Use Words

2009-08-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

“Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” While this famous quote of St. Francis of Assisi was intended to guide us in our daily living, it is also marvelous advice for Christian novelists. Many of us have been guilty of using words to preach unnecessarily in our novels through the years. Much has been written in lamentation of this fact, going back at least as far as 1969 and the collected essays of Flannery O’Connor in Mystery and Manners. By now every Christian author knows, or ought to know, the danger of a heavy-handed theme, so on that point we need no further criticism. On the contrary, what we need today, it seems to me, is a reminder that Christian themes remain essential even if they have been seriously abused. Also, it would be helpful to consider a few constructive ideas on how best to achieve a proper balance.

“The storyteller must render what he sees and not what he thinks he ought to see, but this doesn't mean that he can't be, or that he isn't, a moralist in the sense proper to him." ("The Teaching of Literature," Mystery and Manners).

True to human nature, having once identified the problem of overstated themes (often bemoaned as “agendas” or “propaganda”), many Christian literary critics and authors immediately made the mistake of fleeing all the way to the other end of the spectrum. They now advocate a level of restraint that would render theme completely invisible to all but the most psychically gifted of readers. This is nothing but another form of excess, and it is equally lethal to good literature.

As with almost everything, moderation is the key to success. The Christian novelist must not allow the pendulum to swing from overstatement past subtlety into nonexistence, because it is impossible to write a great (or even a good) novel without giving careful consideration to a story’s underlying and unifying meaning. The trick is to do that in proper proportion to all of the other fundamental components of good storytelling. After all, a heavy-handed theme is not the only way to ruin a novel. One can also write a story that is too narrowly focused on the plot, characters, setting or style. On the other hand, imagine the disastrous result if an author decided to abandon one of these aspects of fiction, or reduce it to such obscurity as to be indiscernible. Successful novels always include them all in proper balance. This does not mean they must always be present in the same proportions, of course. Some novels are most notable because they makes us feel we know the characters as well as we know ourselves, while others intrigue us most because of their fascinating plots, and still others are best loved because they transport us to a lovely time and place or amuse us with the author’s clever turn of phrase, but in every case the successful novel will not allow any one component to rise or fall too far in relation to any of the others, and that includes the theme.

With so much debate about the proper level of thematic influence on a story, the writer’s first task in this area is to find a way to judge whether she has gone too far, or not far enough. For that the standard is very simple, really. We know a proper thematic balance has been achieved if readers tell us they did not rise up from the story to think about the theme while they were actually reading the novel, but they did feel compelled to think about it when the book was put away.

Unfortunately, in literature there is a long time between the writer’s act of creation and the reader’s experience (unlike other fine arts such as music, dance or drama) so it is very difficult to use the reader’s experience as a feedback loop to help us keep theme in proper proportion while we write. How can a writer know if she is maintaining a proper thematic balance as she goes? I have three suggestions.

First, the author must gauge it through honest self-examination. Is the writer predisposed to overstate her underlying point? Then let her pay particular attention to subtlety, even if she has the constant feeling that she might not be expressing the moral of her story quite plainly enough. Is the writer prone to understatement? Then let him write with the constant feeling he has gone a bit too far. By pushing past our personal preferences this way, we have a better chance of finding equilibrium.

Second, it is helpful to distribute copies of early drafts to several trusted readers—I suggest five or more, if possible—asking them to note their thoughts and feelings in the margins as they go. In that way one can connect the reader’s responses directly with the passages in question. The readers chosen should be experienced in reading fiction, should appreciate the multiple levels of communication in fiction, should understand the role of theme in fiction, and should understand that unmerciful honesty is required for this kind of feedback to be helpful. The author is the final arbitrator of balance in the novel, of course, but if the majority of one’s advance readers find a particular passage overly didactic, or perhaps even simply “slow”, it is usually worth cutting.

Third, we can achieve thematic moderation with the assistance of a skilled editor. Before a developmental or a line editor goes to work on a manuscript, the writer and editor should discuss the story’s thematic goals thoroughly. This will better equip the editor to determine if those goals are being met. It will also give the writer a better comfort level with the editor’s thinking in this area. (If the writer is uncomfortable with the editor’s grasp of the thematic goals of the story, it may be worth the awkwardness involved to ask the publisher for another editor.) Once the writer and editor have reached an understanding in this way, the writer should trust the editor’s instincts. With the possible exception of style, theme is the most subjective of the fundamental components of fiction. This makes it extremely difficult for the writer to assess dispassionately, which is why it is essential to trust one’s editor in the matter.

Hopefully we have now moved past the question of whether Christian fiction ought to deal with theme and are now solidly into the question of how best to deal with themes in a well balanced way. We have reviewed three ways to gauge that as the story moves through the creative process, but how do we go about communicating theme in the first place?

The writer has many thematic tools at his disposal. They include the various forms of symbolism, use of the grotesque, contrast, repetition or refrain, and the careful selection of words to establish mood. Probably there are others, but these are the ones I know best, and I believe mastery of them is more than enough to accomplish the goal. I hope to discuss each of these techniques in future posts. I also have a few thoughts to share on the interaction of theme with style, setting, plot and character. Look for posts on these topics in weeks to come.

A Garden of Words

2009-07-26T06:46:00.000-07:00

A writer friend and I have been discussing the role of theme in novels. He seems to believe an author ought not deliberately set out to convey a Christian truth between the words, for fear of spoiling the integrity of the story. We have some more talking to do before I can be sure, but I think he's really saying it's important not to be "preachy," which is of course, quite true. But in the course of our conversation, he mentioned his son-in-law, a gardener, and said he writes stories the way his son-in-law gardens, as a Christian for sure, but without "a motivation of changing lives." That got me thinking.

How is a writing a novel like planting a garden?

In a gardener's world, integrity and attention to excellence means one doesn't go about planting just anything haphazardly, simply because it's pleasing to the eye at first. Some plants thrive in shade; some don't. Some require good drainage; some like wet roots. Such things must be given as much consideration as aesthetics, or else the end result is less than excellent, regardless of whether it pleases the eye at first, because the plants will quickly die. This is similar to plotting a novel.

Excellent gardeners also consider the interrelationships of shape, height, color and so forth of a plant to the others before deciding where to place it. One doesn't place taller, bushier plants in front of low flowers, for example, or else the flowers are not seen. One puts plants where they do their best work, be it as a centerpiece, or in a supporting role. This is similar to characterization.

But the very best gardens, the ones that are so excellent as to be inherited by future generations of gardeners who carefully and lovingly attend to them in order to keep their beauty alive, are also planted with a sense of something more. As we stroll through them we feel we have been somewhere like this before; we are certain these plants and fountains and winding paths are telling us something true about another world; they instill a longing for something beyond words, a subconscious belief that things could be glorious again if only we could understand this feeling beyond words. In short, they remind us of something wonderful that we have long forgotten. If you've ever been in a world-class garden, you'll know exactly what I mean. And this is tantamount to theme.

It's possible to plant a perfectly acceptable garden without this third design element, of course. In fact, most gardens don't have it. They have the same pretty flowers and shade trees and so forth, but that indefinable quality is missing. People still enjoy them while they're there, but once they are beyond the garden's boundaries the pleasure they felt is quite forgotten. I want to take my readers deeper, to leave them something when they close the book. I want to try to capture the magical quality of a world-class garden, a sense of God's limitless love, an ache within the reader, a feeling that this love one senses is true, and could be restored if one only knew which path to take to reach it.

My friend calls this propaganda. If that is true, it's not the usual "do as you're told" kind. I'm looking to awaken truths that are already there in the reader's heart, not plant a new idea or further an agenda. In a small way with every novel that I write I want to take readers back to primal memories they already have, back to a certain garden as it was before the fall.

Must I Really Change the World?

2008-06-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long break as I had to focus on my current project, working title: Lost Mission. Thanks, Kay, for that post encouraging me to keep blogging. I certainly intend to do so, but only when I have something to say that seems worth saying. Some people have fascinating everyday lives; I’m pretty much a bump on a log. So there’ll be none of those daily musings on doing the laundry or walking the dog here. Also, I can only write here when I have some spare creative energy from my day job as a novelist. Unlike a few other writers (Angie Hunt and Robin Lee Hatcher come to mind) I can’t seem to juggle lots of writing projects all at once. For me, blogging steals creative thunder from the novel writing process, especially during the first draft. But that stage is almost finished now; I can see the ending clearly, so it’s possible to widen up my focus just a bit.

This new novel asks the question, “Are Christians supposed to change the world?” It may surprise some people, but my answer is . . . no, not really.

To explain, I need to define “the world”. It means the whole thing: believers, unbelievers, nature, everything that is lost and broken. In other words, Lost Mission asks the question, what is our responsibility to this world which was broken by the Fall? Hospitals, orphanages, and humanitarian initiatives of every kind throughout history testify to the Christian drive to fight against this fallen world’s corruption. But consider this:

Our own the scriptures say we cannot save this world. The Bible says this world will become progressively more corrupt until the end of days, when God will replace it altogether with a “new heaven and new earth”. If we read only those prophesies, it would seem pointless to try to resist the inevitably worsening corruption by concerning ourselves with earthly problems. God does not mean to save this world. He means to replace it.

However, the Bible is also filled with commandments for believers to engage in acts of love and compassion in spite of the coming destruction. In fact, one place tells us we will be rewarded or punished at the end of days in accordance with our response to those commands. (See Matthew 25:31-46) So basically, we are commanded to do love while also being told our loving acts will not hold back the ever-growing corruption of the world. It's a paradox. Why does the Bible call for loving social action in the face of certain failure?

There are two reasons, I think. First, Jesus says whenever we love the ill, the imprisoned, the poor, etc., we are really loving Him. (See the Matthew quote above.) Social action—loving our neighbor—is one of the main ways God wants to receive our love. Who knows why? You might as well ask why your lover wants flowers. It’s what our Father wants, and anyone who loves Him will long to give him what He wants. (John 14:23) Second, Jesus says we should do good acts so others will see and praise the Father, in other words, for evangelical reasons. (Matthew 5:16) The explanation for this is much more obvious: God loves our neighbor just as he loves us, so He does not want anyone to perish. (2 Peter 3:9)

Where we get into trouble is when we forget these underlying reasons for our work on earth, when we start thinking the work itself is the main thing, rather than seeing it purely as an extension of our love for God, and God’s love for us. That leads directly to the kind of superficial, hypocritical or judgmental behavior we evangelical Christians have unfortunately become stereotyped for. Every Christian who fits that stereotype (and there are many, sadly) believes he or she is living righteously. Inevitably, such Christians still feel a strong desire to change the world, but they have forgotten why it matters.

Here is my prayer for today:

Lord, teach me to love all of your creation from the deepest places in the ocean to the tallest mountaintop. Let me yearn to heal its wounds. Teach me to love my neighbor sacrificially, as I love myself. But above all else Lord, show me how to love you with my entire heart and soul and mind and strength, because unless I love you first like that, all my other loves are bound to fail.

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives…” (2 Peter 3:10-12)

I’ll share more thoughts that I've been playing with in Lost Mission soon. It’s good to be back!

The Secret Name of God

2008-03-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

I am still amazed by something a friend emailed to me yesterday, a quote from a devotional called Behold and Be Held, the Memorial Name of God, by Aaron Rabin. I can't find this devotional on the web, or I would link to it. I won't quote the whole thing here, lest I infringe on Mr. Rabin's copyright. So I'll just get to the bottom line.

In the devotional, Mr. Rabin refers to the tetragrammaton, YHVH. This is the most holy name of God, given to Moses at the burning bush, the one that most English translations render as “I AM”. The Hebrew letters sound like "Yud Hey Vav Hey". YHVH is also the "forgotten" name of God, which Jews say has a meaning and a pronunciation that was lost because their ancestors have refused to speak it aloud since about a generation before the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. (To learn more about this, visit this site, and scroll down to "The Name".) Today YHVH is most often rendered as "Yahweh" when written or spoken by Christians and others. It is still never pronounced aloud by Orthodox Jews. “Jehovah” is an older, less accurate rendition. YHVH is also the name most often printed as the LORD (all caps) in English Bibles. (Sometimes "Adonai" is translated that way as well.)

Anyway, in his devotional Mr. Rabin refers to a conversation he had with an Orthodox rabbi, which drove him to question his Christian faith. Here is a quote:

"As I spoke to the Orthodox rabbi and used the Scriptures to support my faith, I felt like a child in a highchair trying to explain the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein. He called me an apostate Jew, accusing me not of finding Messiah but of embracing a pagan religion. He wielded the Scriptures like a sharp sword, slicing my faith - and my heart - into smaller and smaller pieces.

"My testimony, which had always been to me like a beautiful stained glass window that I could gaze at to see the power of God's saving grace, now seemed like a pile of broken glass. My faith was in crisis. I knelt and pleaded with God to restore the joy of His salvation in me."

This is very like the crisis I felt myself after spending years studying the Torah with several rabbis in my home town. (You can read about it here.) Like me, Mr. Rabin turned to the Lord and to the Bible. In the midst of his search for truth, he says the Holy Spirit led him to the story of the burning bush, and the secret name of God, YHVH.

Mr. Rabin investigated the ideographic meaning of the Hebrew letters Yud Hey Vav Hey. An ideogram is a symbol that represents an idea, like those little male and female shaped signs you see on the outside of public restroom doors. This is similar--but not identical--to the Chinese written system, or ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Hebrew letters have had ideographic meanings since ancient times. (Learn more here). I knew this, but I never thought to check the tetragrammaton against those meanings as Mr. Rabin did. When I verified his assertion here, here and here, I was amazed. There are several ideographic meanings for each of the letters. Hey, for example can mean both "window", and "look" or "behold". Vav can mean "hook", "peg", or "nail". But in each case the ideas represented by the letters are closely related. With all of this in mind, using the ideographic meanings of Yud Hey Vav Hey most commonly accepted by Jewish scholars throughout the centuries, I found they absolutely match Rabin's translation.

Symbolically speaking, the most holy name of God, YHVH, can indeed be translated as:

"Behold, the hand. Behold, the nail."

The Easter Equation

2008-03-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Strange, but with Easter coming up tomorrow I find myself thinking about people I don’t know, the Spitzer family in New York to be exact, and most especially, Governor Spitzer’s wife. Why on earth is she still there, standing beside that man? There’s no way to know for certain without knowing her, of course. Maybe she hasn’t left him yet because she is in shock. Maybe she’s only staying from longstanding habit. Even Mrs. Spitzer might not fully understand her reasons. But there’s always the possibility of forgiveness, and with Easter morning just a few hours away, it seems appropriate to think about forgiveness, and repentance, and the reason for the cross and empty tomb.

When a hateful thing is done, the first question we must ask is, “Do I care enough about this person to continue the relationship?” For a Christian, there should be one answer only. Jesus made it clear that we must pick up a cross and follow him, and the cross means reconciliation. Consider this:

Reconciliation = Repentance + Forgiveness

There is a missing portion of this formula which I will add, one last thing that makes it worth the effort, but first I want to point out that this equation means no one person can repair a broken relationship. It takes two, and hard things are required of both.

Maybe Mrs. Spitzer is standing there because she’s willing to do her part. If so, I salute her. Very few people seem to have that kind of courage these days. As a Bible teacher, whenever my classes get to passages dealing with forgiveness I like to bring up marital unfaithfulness because for most of us adultery is one place where the rubber really meets the road. It’s interesting how almost everyone will agree that people who do wrong ought to repent, period, and no excuses, but when it comes to the forgiveness part of the equation we feel free to apply conditions and equivocations. While all of us can easily imagine ourselves in the position of the wronged party, it’s a sad reminder of the fallen human condition that so much effort is required to put ourselves in the shoes of the wrongdoer. Any Christian who says, “I could never sin as horribly as Mr. Spitzer did,” has failed to learn a basic Bible fact. Remember Moses, the murderer. Remember David, the adulterer and murderer. Remember Peter, the betrayer. Heaven forbid I should ever see myself as less of a sinner than any of them, because such pride does indeed go before a fall. In fact, such pride is a fall. If I went around thinking, “I’d never sin that badly,” I would be sinning then and there. Jesus had a special anger in his heart for hypocrites.

Also, as a Christian I don’t get to say, “You’re only sorry because you got caught.” Being a Christian doesn’t mean I have to be naïve, so of course I’d be crazy not to watch for signs of that kind of insincerity, but in the meantime when someone comes to me and says “I hurt you and I have no excuse and I’m truly sorry and I hope you will forgive me,” then as a Christian bound to lift his cross, I have to say, “Okay, I forgive you.” Often, forgiveness is the very cross we have to bear. Only God can look into a person’s heart and know if they are insincere. The Bible does not speak of a spiritual gift of “discernment,” if by that we mean the ability to read minds. Prophesy, knowledge and wisdom, yes; mind reading, no. After all, if a person had discernment enough to know a confession is insincere, there would be no need for the confession, because such a mind reader could not have been betrayed in the first place. Of course a person with the gifts of knowledge and wisdom might say, “Most people are not totally sincere about repenting under these circumstances, so the odds are this guy doesn’t really mean what he says.” But a truly wise and knowledgeable person would also have to add, “‘Most people’ does not mean ‘all people,’ and no person can know for sure if an apparently heartfelt expression of repentance is sincere. Only the passage of time could reveal that truth.”

This is precisely why Jesus commands us to “turn the other cheek.” Being God, he did not pick his metaphors lightly. He meant we cannot read each other’s minds, so we must be willing to risk another slap. He also meant we must be willing to stand within slapping range. If that were not his meaning, he would have used a different metaphor. Again, he is God, and says just what he means. “Forgiveness” from a distance to avoid a second round of pain is not forgiveness, at least not by Jesus’ definition. When someone hurts me horribly, then they come and say, “I hurt you and I have no excuse and I’m truly sorry and I hope you will forgive me,” as a Christian, I not only have to say I forgive them; I have to prove it. I have to step close to them, to be with them, to re-engage with them. Although I may have done nothing wrong, I must risk another slap. This is not always a literal requirement. For example, I don't believe the Lord expects an abused wife to endure her husband's blows. But it is possible to get distance on one level while remaining within arm's length on another. Forgiveness exists for the sake of reconciliation, and reconciliation means relationship.

This kind of engaged forgiveness is very hard, but it must be remembered that the same is true of real repentance. True repentance is humiliating. Very humiliating. In a case like Governor Spitzer’s it means being willing to hang around a person who knows what a louse you’ve been, and never being able to deny it, or escape it, or downplay it. For someone who does not really believe they did a horrible thing, or someone who does not care, this is fairly easy. You hang on to your foolish pride through foolish denial. But for a truly repentant person, for someone who truly understands, accepts and mourns the depth of harm they did, it is misery to have to face your failed reflection in a loved one’s wounded eyes. How much easier to simply walk away, to get the emotional distance you need to at least pretend you are a decent person. How brave it is to stay there in plain sight, humiliated daily for the sake of the relationship.

How can any Christian turn away from that second slap? How can any Christian chose pride above the humiliation of sincere repentance? To endure a punishment not deserved, to endure the humiliation of a wrongdoer, are these not the very things Christ did for us upon the cross? Can any authentic follower of Jesus do less?

Yet if I was part of the Spitzer family this Easter weekend, I would wonder how any mortal could possibly carry such a cross.

The answer lies within the question. We can carry a cross because we follow the Cross. The example Jesus set is itself the Way to live by the example. Sacrificial forgiveness and repentance are required by God, and possible through God. He stoops down to make us great. And if he stoops for your sake and for mine, who are we to stand before each other when he humbly bids us kneel? God is love, which explains the rest of that formula, the part that makes it worth the effort:

Reconciliation = Repentance + Forgiveness = Love.

Humiliation for the sake of love. Sorrow for the sake of love. Suffering for the sake of love. This is what Christ did for you and me on the cross and in the empty tomb. This is also what he asks of you and me. So on tomorrow’s Easter morning, search your heart for bitterness and pride, and then confess, repent, forgive and above all, love, because he first loved you. This is the Easter equation, the only thing that adds up to a life worth living.

Being David

2008-02-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

Running for his life seems to be a theme of David’s in the Psalms we’ve been studying at my church during this Lenten season. So far we’ve heard sermons on Psalms 59, 56, 34, 52, 54, 7 and 57. All of them have at least this in common: David is in trouble. Consider these quotes from the titles (NIV):

“When Saul had sent men to watch David's house in order to kill him.”

“When the Philistines had seized him in Gath.”

“When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left.”

“When Doeg the Edomite had gone to Saul and told him: ‘David has gone to the house of Ahimelech.’” (This man “Doeg” then murdered David’s allies and their families.)

“When the Ziphites had gone to Saul and said, ‘Is not David hiding among us?’” (Another betrayal.)

“Concerning Cush, a Benjamite.” (We don’t know what this “Cush” did to David, but from David’s words in Psalms 7 it is clearly very bad.)

“When he had fled from Saul into the cave.” (Imagine being “the Lord’s anointed,” yet having to hide in caves.)

We have seven preachers in a weekly rotation at our church, and those wise men have offered many excellent life lessons from David’s experiences. For example, although David has God’s promise that he will be the king, as a private citizen David never takes justice into his own hands by attacking Saul, because he knows that would be usurping God’s authority. Instead, David waits on God’s justice, in God’s time. The message is for us is to do the same. Justice is not our job; it is God’s. Wait for it.

A few other things our preachers have not mentioned keep leaping off the page at me:

First, one word for Christians who believe being "anointed" by the Holy Spirit means an easy life: nonsense. Look at all the years David had to live on the run, harassed and threatened by a powerful enemy, forced to live with strangers, cowering in caves. We have no promise whatsoever that the Jesus Way will be comfortable or easy, no promise of earthly rewards, no reason to assume we will get any blessings in this life except the only one that matters: peace with God. On the contrary, the Jesus Way leads to some kind of a cross for every one of us.

I also noticed David usually begins these kinds of Psalms with pleas for mercy and help against his enemies. He then follows with a proclamation of his own righteousness. His bold ability to tell God, “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness” is a little startling to me, since I am always conscious that “all have sinned and fall short,” and I see the sin in myself most of all. But I have begun to find comfort in David’s example, because upon reflection I realize he is right to proclaim his innocence.

Here's the thing: I have accepted the free gift of Jesus’ sacrifice for my sins on the cross, and that means God no longer sees me as a sinner. Like David, I am now guilt-free, or “righteous” in God’s sight. David’s Psalms inspire me to remember this when I approach the Lord in prayer. I used to come as a prodigal son, a beggar on my knees. Now, thanks to David’s example, I have learned to stand before the Lord with confidence, knowing I will be received with a proud father’s unconditional love. I sense a much stronger connection with my Father when I go to Him this way.

I’ve noticed something else. David starts these Psalms with pleas for mercy and professions of innocence, often calling upon God to defend him from his enemies, then, at some point in almost all of these Psalms, one way or another he behaves as if God has already answered his prayer. Consider (NIV):

For you have delivered me from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of life. (Psalms 56:13)

I will praise you forever for what you have done; in your name I will hope, for your name is good. I will praise you in the presence of your saints. (Psalms 52:9)

I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you; I will praise your name, O LORD, for it is good. For he has delivered me from all my troubles, and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes. (Psalms 54:6-7)

I will give thanks to the LORD because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High. (Psalms 7:17)

They spread a net for my feet — I was bowed down in distress. They dug a pit in my path
but they have fallen into it themselves. (Psalms 57:6)

In all of these cases David assumes—even as he’s asking—that his request has already been granted. He begins by asking for things to be given in the future, and ends by saying things like, “you have delivered me,” and “I will praise you forever for what you have done.” At first I read those kinds of words and thought, “But God hasn’t done it yet!” Then I realized this is the complete assurance of a man who knows he is his Father’s righteous son. Obviously, I can’t live rebelliously and expect this kind of confidence, but if I love the Lord with all of my heart and soul and mind as David did, when I ask, I too will receive.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7:7-10 NIV)

So does Jesus mean I can ask for a new car and I will get it? Again, that's nonsense! When I love myself first, I will want certain things, even if I don't need them, even if they are ultimately bad for me. I will believe some fool of a preacher when he speaks of God's "anointing" as if it's guaranteed to lead to earthly gain. But when I love the Lord with all my heart and soul and mind, I will want different things. God’s desires become my deepest hope as well, including whatever cross He has for me to bear. Does this mean I must resign myself to endless suffering, a cross to bear that leaves me miserable? Not at all! I must and will accept whatever may come in this life, but because God loves me completely, whatever He has planned is what is best for me in the long run, even if it's hard to bear right now.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile." (Jeremiah 29:11-14 NIV)

David, as the Lord’s anointed king, knew God wanted him to take command of Israel after Saul was no longer king. Secure in that assurance, David could afford to celebrate God’s plan many years before it came about. Although he was still living in caves like a hunted animal, David was so certain of his Father’s love he praised God for the future as if it was the present. In the same way, I know if I begin my prayers as David did, begging for the very things God wants for me, for my neighbors and for the world, I can end my prayers in praise and thanksgiving, because the perfect things I have requested are as good as done.

Lent Among the Folds

2008-02-06T10:58:00.000-08:00

Beginning with the end in mind
I pondered the empty tomb on this first day of Lent. I remembered an email someone forwarded to me recently, one of those sentimental legends people pass around the Internet. It starts with one verse from the Apostle John’s eyewitness description of Jesus’ empty tomb: “He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.” (John 20:6-7) Focusing on that last detail, the folded cloth, the email says:

“In order to understand the significance of the folded napkin, you have to understand a little bit about Hebrew tradition of that day. The folded napkin had to do with the Master and Servant, and every Jewish boy knew this tradition. When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it. The table was furnished perfectly, and then the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch that table, until the master was finished. Now if the master was done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers, his mouth, and clean his beard, and would wad up that napkin and toss it onto the table. The servant would then know to clear the table. For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, "I'm done". But if the master got up from the table, and folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table, because… The folded napkin meant, ‘I'm coming back!’”

It is a nice little story, but I’ve made something of a study of Judaism, including Jewish traditions and cultural practices at the time of Jesus, and never have I heard of such a tradition. So at first I was skeptical. We Christians often try to read too much symbolism into Jewish practices. For example, you will hear it solemnly pronounced at churches around Easter time that the baked brown stripes and rows of little holes in those unleavened wafers Jews use in their Pesach seder (a Passover supper, or service) symbolize the wounds on Jesus’ body when he was crucified. But those stripes and holes only came about in modern times when people started baking matzo mass-production style in factories. Unleavened bread in Jesus’ time would have had neither stripes, nor holes. So we need to use some common sense when we read or hear these kinds of quasi-Messianic theories about Judeo/Christian symbolism.

Still . . . the little story did get me thinking about the folded cloth in the empty tomb, and a certain ancient Jewish dinner table. Since at least the time of Jesus many Jewish families have used a folded napkin in the Pesach seder to hide the afikomen, which is a broken piece of unleavened bread hidden away until the end of the meal, when it is “found” and eaten. We know it was this last piece of bread—the broken afikomen quite possibly retrieved from a hiding place within the napkin folds—that Jesus held aloft and said, “Take and eat; this is my body.” We know this because the next words in the Last Supper account are, “After the supper…” and the Talmud tells us this broken piece of bread was the last food eaten in the seder.

Only three days separated the empty tomb from the moment the disciples witnessed Jesus comparing his own broken body to the afikomen taken from the napkin folds. It makes sense that the folded cloth in the empty tomb would symbolize what Jesus had just accomplished, his broken body risen from the folds of the earth, rather than evoking a second coming thousands of years in the future as the little story above would have us believe. Foremost on Jesus’ mind as he folded his burial cloth would have been the disciples, the people for whom he had just risen from the dead, the people who must now be taught the meaning of the cross and empty tomb. If the gesture of that folded cloth was connected with a dinner table tradition at all, it was not just any Jewish master’s supper, but the Master of all Master’s own Last Supper. Jesus was not thinking of his second coming; he was reminding his disciples to “take, eat, and remember me.” Or so I thought.

Then I remembered the Lord never does just one thing at a time.

It is a sign of God’s omniscience that He accomplishes countless good things with a single word. And in perfect keeping with this fact, God’s “word,” the Bible, often speaks of many things at once. So I began to wonder if that folded cloth might be about both of those Jewish dinner table traditions, the Pesach seder / Last Supper, and a typical Jewish master’s signal to his servant. With that in mind, I remembered this: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26) There they are together in one verse: the gospel and the second coming, and both of them connected with the Last Supper. If the bread and wine proclaim the Christ’s death in our place until he comes again, perhaps the folded cloth does the same, pointing to the meaning of the Gospel and to the promise Jesus will come again.

My Lenten meditation was producing fruit. I began to ponder other possibilities, and of course, the Bible being an endless divine self-revelation, several came to mind.

I have not read Sigmund Brouwer’s book, The Carpenter’s Cloth, but I understand it says carpenters and other manual laborers in first century Palestine, as today, kept a cloth handy to wipe away their perspiration as they worked. Being illiterate for the most part, they could not leave an invoice or a note to their customer when a project was finished, so it was a common tradition to signify a completed contract by leaving that cloth on or near the work, neatly folded. It was a tactful way of saying, “I’ve completed the work.” Jesus was a carpenter after all, so the folded cloth might have come naturally to him as a fitting gesture that his Passion was complete. This ties in nicely with the fact that the afikomen was the final piece of bread, and with Jesus’ own words on the cross, “It is finished.” But when the workman sends that signal, he also sends another. The workman’s folded cloth also asks for something. It tells the one for whom the work was done, “I’ve finished my part, now it’s your turn to deliver payment.” We can never repay Jesus for giving his life in place of ours, nor does he expect it. But he does expect our faith to lead to Christian love—to righteous action—otherwise we have no faith at all. Jesus was very clear on this: “If you love me, you will obey what I command,” (John 14:15), and of course we have James writing these famous words on the same subject: “Faith without works is dead,” (James 2:26).

Once I really started looking, I kept finding more. John tells us the head covering was neatly folded while the rest of the linen that covered Jesus’ body was only “lying there.” If that means only the cloth around the head was folded, signifying completion, while the cloth from around the body was wadded or disheveled, it might relate to these words, which Paul wrote about the very moment when Jesus rose from the dead: “[Christ] is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead….” Might the contrast between that neatly folded head cloth beside the disheveled body cloth signify that Christ’s “body” on earth, the church, must respond to what the head has done? While for Jesus “it is finished,” we still have work to do on earth. Surely Jesus knew his followers in later years would cherish Paul’s abiding metaphor for the church as his body. Surely Jesus also knew that some of us would look back on those two cloths in the empty tomb and connect them with Paul’s metaphor, and be reminded in yet one more way that “Faith without works is dead.”

I found another, more mundane explanation in Adam Clarke’s great old commentary: “The providence of God ordered these very little matters, so that they became the fullest proofs against the lie of the chief priests, that the body had been stolen away by the disciples. If the body had been stolen away, those who took it would not have stopped to strip the clothes from it, and to wrap them up, and lay them by in separate places.” Matthew Henry agrees with Clarke: “Any one would rather choose to carry a dead body in its clothes than naked. Or, if those that were supposed to have stolen it would have left the grave-clothes behind, yet it cannot be supposed they should find leisure to fold up the linen.” In other words, that folded head cloth might have been Jesus’ way of saying, “No one stole me away. On the contrary, I rose up alone. I walked out alone. I alone did this, for I alone could do it. I am Almighty God.”

Still meditating on the layers in the folded cloth, I realized John has some kind of fascination with cloths and clothing. In an earlier part of John’s gospel, he writes of the resurrection of Lazarus, using language very similar to his description of the cloths that Jesus left behind. He tells us of Lazarus’s face cloth and the “strips [note the plural] of linen” that Lazarus had upon his body. When John gets to the crucifixion, again he writes of a cloth that covered Jesus. Strangely, out of all the details he might have mentioned at the outset of this all-important portion of his story, John chooses to begin with soldiers casting lots for Jesus’ underclothes. He takes pains to tell us the garment was “seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.” It is as if he wants us to compare Jesus’ clothes in a before-and-after kind of way. He wants us to notice that Jesus wore one seamless cloth before his death, and many pieces after. But why? Why should this “disciple whom Jesus loved” describe Jesus' underwear of all things, instead of starting the crucifixion scene with his dying rabbi’s suffering? Why take the trouble to tell us very specifically Jesus wore something “seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom” before the crucifixion, but left behind many separate pieces afterwards?

Before Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the tabernacle / temple was the site of countless animal sacrifices for the sins of God’s chosen people. This sacrificial process was overseen by a high priest. The first century Jewish historian Josephus tells us this high priest wore an undergarment that was “…not composed of two pieces, nor was it sewed together upon the shoulders and the sides, but it was one long vestment so woven as to have an aperture for the neck; not an oblique one, but parted all along the breast and the back." (See Antiquities of the Jews, book 3, chapter 7, sentence 4.) In other words, the Jewish high priest wore something seamless, woven in one piece. The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us the tabernacle (which later became the temple in Jerusalem) symbolized God’s dwelling place in heaven, the animal sacrifices were symbols of Jesus’ crucifixion, and the high priest symbolized Jesus, the ultimate priest, who entered God’s actual dwelling place in heaven to offer himself as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. The rituals at the Jewish tabernacle and temple were living prophesies, intended to prepare the Jewish people to recognize their Messiah when he came. Hebrews also tells us Jesus’ sacrifice was perfect and final, unlike those of the high priests. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, there is no more need for Messianic prophesies, because the real thing has been done. So the contrast between the single, seamless garment Jesus wore closest to his skin as he offered the final sacrifice, and the many cloths he left behind afterwards, symbolizes the fact that there is no more need for the temple, or the sacrifices, or the high priests, or the seamless garments they wore. The ultimate high priest has offered the ultimate sacrifice, which is all anyone will ever need from now on, and forevermore.

In close relation to that, yet another possibility occurred to me. I remembered Numbers 4:5-15 where the Bible says whenever the tabernacle was moved, all of the mysterious, prophetic items within it from the Ark of the Covenant to the Bread of the Presence were to be covered from sight with some kind of cloth. Only when the tabernacle was set up again and those items were again out of sight behind curtains could the covering cloths be removed. We know the main purpose of the tabernacle from God’s own words in Exodus 25:8: "Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.” It was built for prophetic symbolism as I already mentioned, but the purpose of the symbolized Messiah was to establish intimate fellowship between us and God. We know this, because John used the very words of Exodus to describe Jesus’ mission: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” But look at the next thing John says of Jesus in that same verse: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

To see the glory of the One and Only, the Lord Most High . . . what an extraordinary claim.

Any Jewish student of the Torah will tell you it's impossible. The purpose of the cloths in tabernacle days was to hide even the symbols of the Lord from unclean human eyes, lest the people be literally consumed by God’s perfect holiness like moths flying too close to a purifying fire (as were Nadab and Abihu). There was a time, as the Lord told Moses, when no one could see His face and live, but Jesus came to change that, and Jesus did change that, as John says very clearly: “we have seen his glory.” There was a moment when John saw a hint of Jesus’ glory. But I don’t think that’s what John meant. The glory John described as “the One and Only” was not just the risen Christ, but also the fearfully holy Creator of Everything, somehow (we can never know how) made visible and touchable. Remembering his warnings to Moses thousands of years before (“cover the Ark”, “you must not see my face”) the God who was Jesus took time to fold that face cloth so those who knew his Torah would notice it, and think about it, and perhaps come to understand some small portion of the wonderful fact that it was no longer necessary.

I enter Lent this year acutely aware that I once hid from God instinctively. But the need for coverings between God and me is over. Jesus died, and the temple curtain hiding the Ark of the Covenant was split from top to bottom (another covering cloth divided, of course). Jesus rose again, with his holy face uncovered. And Jesus can lift away all the other barriers between me and my Creator, if I will just believe.

Just as there is no end to God, so everything Jesus said and did means more than I can ever fully know. In fact, I’m still far from understanding everything there is to know about even one detail: that little folded cloth. But beginning with the end in mind on this first day of forty in the wilderness of Lent, I have come to see the empty tomb as far from empty. It is filled to overflowing with eternal riches, so it is not the end I had in mind at all, but the best of all beginnings.

Aftereffects

2008-02-04T10:20:00.000-08:00

Alone behind a mule in a stranger’s black-dirt field, the sweating boy used all his strength to lift the plow and start another furrow.

Something happened then that changed your life forever.

The mule shifted, the harness tugged, the boy slipped, the plow blade fell and the boy’s foot was sliced in half from front to back. Medicine was crude in East Texas during the Depression. They saved the foot somehow, but only at the cost of missing bones and toes piled up together. The boy’s plowing days were over. He stayed at home and did his best not to be a burden to his mother and his sisters. While his share-cropping father and brothers labored in other men’s fields, the boy read and learned. Unable to make his living behind a mule, he harnessed words and set them to work. He became a smooth-talking salesman and ended up making more money for the family than his father and his brothers combined. Then, twenty-eight years after he split his foot with a plow, he himself became a father. He taught his son to love words. And eighty years after that plow fell in that East Texas field the boy’s son wrote the very words you are now reading, words which have already changed you, however slightly.

How have you changed? Well, now you know a little something that you did not know before, and because you know about that poor boy and his plow and foot and words, you will think of some things just the slightest bit differently from now on. That small difference will influence someone else, however slightly, and they in turn will touch still other lives, and so on and on forever. Everything we do has an aftereffect.

Sometimes when I think these big thoughts, I get melancholy. Thankfully, it’s too late for a mid-life crisis, but after living more than half a century I do wonder sometimes if my living was worthwhile. There are so many things I could have done better, or should have done, or should not have done. I think of great men who built nations or cured diseases or led multitudes to faith, and realize I have lived a mediocre life by comparison. I have dwelt too long on trivialities. I have wasted months and years on naps, complaints, pulp fiction and television. It is too late now for so many things I might have done: so many wonderful, glorious, important things.

And yet there is still hope, because my father dropped a plow some eighty years ago, therefore you are reading this.

If I step outside my door today, and speak kindly to a stranger at just the proper moment, might that minor kindness have a similar long-term effect? Might a small act of forgiveness, a moment’s pause to help, or a little unexpected gift send ripples through eternity? Who knows the aftereffects of everyday behavior? Only God could know it all, of course. But such things will have some effect on others, for better or for worse, and as long as people influence people even slightly, the aftereffects will ripple on and on.

Think of a man and woman eating forbidden fruit, and the immediate effect: "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life… By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground.” At the dawn of human history came forbidden fruit, and then the curse, and then countless other aftereffects until a sweating boy in painful toil slipped and dropped a plow. Now here you are, reading this, and changing.

How wonderful this is! It means anyone at all can leave a splendid legacy. We may be getting old. We may have wasted half a life or more. We may be lame and crippled. But it takes countless little acts of love rippling through time to shape and mold the ones who will build nations, cure diseases and lead multitudes to faith. A piece of stolen fruit, a curse for countless years, a boy who made the best of things, a son who wrote a few words on the Internet, and now it’s down to you. You are not insignificant. Even your smallest acts are everlasting.

Let love be your aftereffect.

"Dog" is "God" Spelled Backwards

2008-01-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

They warned me about California before I left Texas. They told me all the crazy things you hear about these people out here are true. And at first I thought they might be right, when I encountered “laughter therapy” on the beach, and a bearded man in a furniture store wearing a sun dress. He was also wearing sandals, and his toenails were painted black. His beard was rather gray. And the strangest thing of all . . . no one else in the store gave the man a second look.

There was other weirdness everywhere, but after a couple of months I got used to it. Then came church last Sunday.

I sat in a pew about halfway down on the right. The pastor was speaking up front, making the usual weekly announcements about church activities, when a woman in the pew behind me started whispering. It sounded like she was trying to calm her baby. “There, there,” she whispered. When she continued talking during a prayer, I turned around to look. On the pew beside her, peering from her massive purse, was a brown and white Chihuahua.

Immediately, I faced forward again. I felt embarrassed, as if I’d accidentally witnessed someone doing something intimate, or shameful. Then I felt a growing sense of outrage. It was shameful to bring a dog into that holy place! But before my outrage had a chance to grow to action, I heard the woman speaking to a person sitting next to her.

“Excuse me please, I see my family up front. I need to go sit with them.”

She rose while all the rest of us were seated, and as the pastor spoke up front she passed along the crowded pew behind me, whispering, “Excuse me. Excuse me,” and she walked up the church aisle with her little dog in her arms. Then the woman repeated the process in reverse, entering another pew, whispering her excuses, until at last she reached the place where she wanted to be, and sat down again.

Suddenly I was not outraged anymore.

The woman’s utter lack of awareness of her inappropriate behavior had reminded me of a movie I saw recently, The Year of the Dog. (Spoiler alert!) It's about a woman whose deepest relationship is with her pet beagle. When the beagle dies, the woman is shattered. She copes by becoming involved in animal rescue work, ends up with about 50 dogs running amuck in her house, loses her job when she forges corporate checks to animal rights groups, and loses her family’s trust when she destroys her sister-in-law’s expensive fur coats and traumatizes her little niece by taking her to an animal processing center. Through it all, there is a nice young man in the background, and one hopes she will eventually transfer her affections to him, but he is not interested in anything but dogs. In the end, she rides off on a bus filled with other animal activists, intent on making the world a better place for animals, and utterly alone in the crowd. This was supposed to be a comedy, believe it or not. I almost cried.

So there I was in real life—or as close to real life as one can get in Southern California—and this woman walked the aisle in the middle of a worship service with a Chihuahua in her arms, and I remembered the character from The Year of the Dog, and suddenly I realized the woman had no idea there was anything wrong with bringing her little pet to a worship service because her dog was her best friend . . . perhaps her only friend. I almost cried.

“Dogs are man’s best friend.” I tried to imagine how shallow life would be if that were really true. Don’t get me wrong; I think dogs are one of God’s very best ideas. But a dog’s love is bread and water compared to the lavish banquet Jesus offers.

“If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:10-12)

I understood that woman perfectly. She had brought her imitation Jesus in her arms, just as I had so often brought mine in my heart. We were much the same: both of us settling for far too little. Puppy love is not enough, just as love of money, sex, career, or even family is not enough. Only God’s love is enough, because only “God is love.”

Call me just another crazy Californian, but I hope the woman comes back to church again this Sunday, and I hope she brings her dog. At least she’s being honest about how lonely she really is, which is more than most of us can say. Naïve honesty like that gives God something He can work with. It means there’s real hope for that poor woman. And as far as I’m concerned, it means she, and her dog, have come to the right place.

Huckaplan For Foreign Policy

2008-01-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

For some reason people like to say Mike Huckabee is weak on foreign policy. I’d like to know who is stronger. Among all the congressmen, senators and ex-senators, ex-governors, and ex-mayors in the running, no one exactly has the resume of a diplomat. None of them has even been on a congressional foreign affairs committee as far as I know. Governor Huckabee is every bit as qualified as any one of them, and he is definitely a man with a good plan. Want proof? I can’t convince you with a sound bite. If you have an hour to spare, you can hear his strategy for yourself, in a recent speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Or you can read a 24 page transcript of his speech. Or you can read the following summary, which is longer than my usual blog but still a lot shorter than his speech.

Since “foreign policy” these days mostly means dealing with the Middle East, here’s a crash course on Mike Huckabee’s plan to defeat terrorism:

Open lines of communication with Iran. Always leave the military option on the table. (Huckabee: “There is no way Iran will acquire nuclear weapons on my watch.”) However, acknowledge that 30 years of avoiding diplomatic relations with Iran has accomplished nothing constructive. Meanwhile, many people on the streets in Iran have no problem with the US. After 9/11, when the Palestinians celebrated, there were spontaneous candlelight vigils in Tehran. Iran’s government offered to provide boots-on-the-ground intelligence during our invasion of Afghanistan, but the Bush administration refused this offer, and announced they were part of an “axis of evil.” If we had parlayed their offer into open diplomatic relations, there is an excellent chance we would have known the truth about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction before invading. We should be talking to Iran about everything, not just nuclear weapons. Here’s a Huckaquote: “We should always put the protection of our citizens above our own pride and being bullheaded by saying we’re not going to have any conversations with these people.”

Assert ourselves militarily in Pakistan if necessary. While Iran has national interests we can understand and exploit, al Qaeda is a stateless enemy that can only be destroyed. Our failure to destroy al Qaeda’s leaders in Afghanistan led them straight to a “perfect base of operations” in the Pakistani no-man’s-land along the border. (Al Qaeda means “the base.”) Immediately after 9/11, Musharraf promised us full military access to this lawless region to destroy al Qaeda. The Bush administration later allowed him to go back on that promise, even though we have had “high confidence” intelligence reports on the exact locations of al Qaeda leaders there, and Navy Seal prepared to attack the area. Now Pakistan says they will fight the terrorists, while simultaneously saying they can’t fight them because they don’t control their own territory. Narrowly averted terrorist plots on the order of 9/11 have been directly linked to planning by al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan. Huckaquote: “If al Qaeda attacks [the USA] tomorrow, it will be postmarked ‘Pakistan.’ Pakistan has become the new Afghanistan.” Pakistan cannot or will not attack al Qaeda’s leaders. We must do it ourselves, or suffer the inevitable consequences.

Be wisely benevolent. If religion provides the spark for terrorism, poverty provides the tinder—yet the USA devotes only 0.25% of its national budget to foreign aid. In most Muslim countries, massive wealth is held by a few dictatorial rulers, while most people live in poverty. In Pakistan, for example, 25% of the national budget goes to the military, while less than 3% goes to social, health and educational programs. The USA has given over $10 billion in foreign aid to Pakistan since 9/11. Less than $1 billion of it reached the Pakistani people as direct aid. Meanwhile, like all forms of tyranny, terrorism flourishes whenever there is a wide gap between the upper and lower classes, with little or no middle class to function as a buffer. The USA cannot always export democracy, because sometimes too much political freedom too soon only allows violent extremists to win elections. But we can and must export socioeconomic reforms (a free press, fair courts, and functional economy), which gives real hope to the citizens of other countries, reducing their desire to support terrorism. Thus, our strategic security concerns coincide with our moral obligations as a rich neighbor. Using foreign aid wisely will generate good will with the Middle Eastern people and simultaneously remove the poverty and ignorance that inspires suicide bombers.

Finish the job in Iraq. Look at the map. Iraq is the physical buffer zone between the Persians, Kurds, and Arabs; a barricade between the Sunnis (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt) and the Shiites (Iran, Syria). Huckaquote: “Iraq is the crossroads where these cultures meet. If it is nor a peaceful buffer, it will be a tinderbox. Al Qaeda sees its central location as the perfect place to create anarchy and have it spread.” The USA upset this balance and opened up the possibilities for al Qaeda when we removed Saddam Hussein. To leave now, before balance is restored, would open us to serious security risks, especially with the looming prospect of nuclear weapons in Israel and in Iran. Fortunately, by all objective standards, the surge is working. While politicians in Bagdad and Washington fumble and bluster, there is a true bottom-up revolution taking place in the peaceful moments created by the surge, with Iraqis on the street stepping in to make a difference. We must remain in place until the Iraqi people are able to complete their transition to a stable nation. To do otherwise would not only leave Iraqi men, women and children in horrific danger from insurgents like al Qaeda, but would also leave us with the prospect of regional war, perhaps even world war, with Iraq’s many neighbors stepping into the vacuum to protect their interests.

Follow the “Powell Doctrine” of overwhelming force. From a foreign policy standpoint, overwhelming force aids diplomacy because it means less chance we will actually have to use the military option. It allows us to, as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” And in the event of military action, it means fewer American lives lost. When the former Yugoslavia was liberated under President Clinton, for example, peace was maintained by 20 soldiers for every 1,000 civilians with virtually no civil unrest or military casualties. We have less than one quarter of that ratio of soldiers-to-civilians in Iraq, and that’s after the build-up for the surge. This explains in part why we have lost over 3,700 men and women since President Bush gave his “Mission Accomplished” speech. We spend 3.9% of our budget on the military today, compared to 6% under President Regan during peace time. Meanwhile, our national guard and reserve troops are being asked to give far more than they signed up for, with our military strained to the breaking point. We are at war. We need to get closer to the 6% figure. If we faced another military situation elsewhere in the world at this time, then as Governor Huckabee said, “God help us.”

Become energy independent…now. Our own money spent for Middle Eastern oil is being used to fund the very terrorists who want to kill us, Our dependence on oil also means we have to pander to state sponsors of terrorism, instead of, as Governor Huckabee puts it, “dealing with the Saudis like we would the Swedes.” Of course, all the other candidates would agree so far, but only Huckabee seems willing to give this the sense of urgency it deserves. Consider the governor’s words: “Energy independence really is a matter of urgent national security and ought to be addressed not with the attitude of, ‘Well, maybe someone will come up with it in 20 years.’ Look, this is the country that had the technology of bottle rockets in 1961 and John Kennedy said we’re going to put a man on the moon and come home in a decade. Eight years later Neil Armstrong had his feet on the lunar surface. It requires that kind of commitment and I’m convinced this country has the capacity and innovative quality to be able to pull it off.”

Start acting like a nation at war. Since the American people are in a war, we ought to behave like a people at war. On this one, I’ll just quote the Governor from a question and answer session after the speech: “…after 9/11…essentially the instructions the American people got to fight global terrorism was, ‘Go back and live normally.’ …we were not called upon to have some ownership of the fight against terror…I think history will reveal [that] was the single greatest mistake that we made. Because what should have happened was what happened after every other international crisis America has been involved in. Everyone’s got to pull together. I can remember it didn’t take us long to go from Democrats and Republicans linking arms on the Capital steps and singing God Bless America, and every house sporting an American flag out front to—within a few months—there was the same kind of partisan bickering and complete isolation that we’ve seen happen in this town [Washington, D.C.]—total polarization, total paralysis, and the result has been just incredibly detrimental. If we’re going to fight this war…we all have to have some skin in the game…there ought to be a greater sense of shared sacrifice and participation.”

There you have the basics of Governor Huckabee’s speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies on foreign policy, and terrorism in particular. In the full speech the governor gives a brief but masterful analysis of the various historical and cultural forces at work in the Middle East, but this is his basic plan. It makes perfect sense to me, and I hope and pray he will get a chance to put it into action.

The Inner Life of a Cell

2007-12-18T08:21:00.000-08:00

It's been too long. I've been in the weeds again, what with the usual holiday happenings, a deadline on the Winter Haven galleys, and a cold I can't seem to shake. But my smarter brother just sent a link I have to take the time share with you.

Some guys at Harvard’s medical school got together with some top-flight computer animation guys and came up with this simply amazing short film, which depicts “unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli.” You have GOT to watch this video. Every image you are about to see is medically correct, even the little walking things, which my brother tells me were only discovered a couple of years ago, and really do move that way. (The article says the main compromise made graphically in the film is an unnatural amount space shown between the various components in the interest of clarity, because in the real world all of this is so densely packed we could not distinguish one function from another if it was shown realistically.) As you watch, think about the fact that this is happening in all of your body’s countless cells at the very moment that your cells are collectively enabling you to watch it happen on the screen. What a wonder!

I am reminded of a Hebrew poem, written nearly 3,000 years ago:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake, I am still with you.
-Psalm 139:13-18

How wonderful to know, as the Psalmist did, although the Creator is capable of such infinite complexity, even so, when we awake we are with Him. Jesus made this same promise, but note that he expects a response from you and me in return for such Divine devotion: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." (Matt 10:29-33)

To those who say there is no God, to those who say whatever god there may be could not possibly care about little you and little me, I can only reply: for heaven's sake, watch this video and open your mind. As Mies van der Rohe said, "God is in the details."

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one!

In Mexico

2007-12-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

Research for a novel is always interesting, but that word doesn’t come close to describing my experiences over the last week. While working on background for a story I’m calling Lost Mission, I traveled to the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. There I stayed in the town of San Miguel de Allende (pictured here) and made side trips to nearby villages and cities. In the midst of our nation’s concerns about illegal immigration, more U. S. citizens should travel beyond the usual beach towns and visit Mexico’s interior to learn about the history and culture of our beautiful neighbor to the south. A little less fear and a lot more friendship would go a long way to finding solutions everyone can prosper from, in my opinion. But I won’t get political here, not when there are so many more interesting things to say.

The town where I stayed most of the time, San Miguel de Allende, was renamed in the early 1800’s, retaining the name of the priest who first settled there (Fray San Miguel) but adding the village’s favorite son and one of Mexico’s founding fathers of the Mexican War of Independence (Ignacio Allende). “San Miguel” as the locals call it, is incredibly photogenic. This blog includes a few shots I took there, but go to this link and scroll down to the “Galeria Fotos” near the bottom to click for more lovely visions. Believe me, the images you will see there (and here) are unretouched. Even with nothing but a disposable camera, anyone can take of perfect photograph in that glorious place!

The sense of history in the state of Guanajuato is everywhere. I was honored to visit the little town of Dolores Hidalgo where Father Miguel Hidalgo gave his famous El Grito de Dolores (The Cry of Dolores) speech to rally the people and begin the struggle for independence from Spain. Looking at those famous church steps, I had the same sensation of awe I have experienced at the Alamo and at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Hidalgo, along with Allende and two other leaders of Mexico’s war for independence, were captured and executed for the cause of freedom, a price every signer of our own Declaration of Independence knew he might be called to pay. (Learn more about Allende and Hidalgo here.)

I also visited the Valencia Hacienda (now a restaurant) in Guanajuato, where the Valencia family lived across the street from their own private cathedral (see photo at left). That’s right: they had their own personal cathedral! The Valencias were among the richest people on the planet at that time, in direct control of 25 to 30 percent of the silver produced in Nueva Espanola, or “New Spain”. When you consider that New Spain accounted for about two thirds of all the silver mined on earth, the Valencia’s wealth defies imagination, easily reaching the level of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet today.

Guanajuato itself has a lovely European ambiance, with pedestrians wandering cobblestone streets lined by limestone and stucco facades, and drivers navigating a strange underground road system created by the miners who originally gave the city its wealth. 48 kilometers of tunnels under the city left the downtown area free of the noise and exhaust that plagues so many other towns. Diego Rivera was born there (on the right is a photo of The Lovely Sue and Yours Truly in front of Rivera’s boyhood house), and a major university is right downtown, which may explain the sense of creativity and energy I felt throughout the city.

The strong connection between my country and Mexico reveals itself in the strangest details. For example, did you know the Mexican Revolution was initially led by Francisco Madero, who studied at the University of California, Berkley? In San Miguel I attended a world class jazz concert along with an elegant crowd of well heeled people from all around the world. This, in a theater marred by bullet holes in its limestone façade, evidence of the firing squads that operated with ruthless efficiency there during Mexico’s revolution early in the last century. What a surreal contrast between that grim reminder of Mexico’s bloody history outside, and the sublime gypsy-swing music of the Hot Club of San Francisco on stage inside! I also had a chance to see Doc Severinsen play with Gil Gutierrez and Pedro Cartas (the classical guitarist and violinist duo known as “Gil and Cartas”). These three guys were awesome together, with beautifully arranged music spanning from straightforward jazz, to moments of classical Spanish guitar, to Django Reinhardt type “gypsy jazz.” I’m listening to one of their CD’s as I type these words, and if you can get a copy, you should listen, too.

All of this in only one week, and believe me, this description barely scratches the surface of the sights, sounds, and people I encountered. Mexico. What a beautiful, amazing, and fascinating country it is! I went south unsure of the final direction I should take with Lost Mission, and came home overflowing with grand ideas and creative energy. Now at last after months of preparation it’s time to do what writers do and . . . write!

What Would Jesus Buy?

2007-11-20T17:34:00.000-08:00

Reverend Billy says the Shopocalypse is coming, and you can color me commie, but I believe he's right. Kiddos, it's time to assume the position underneath your school desks. Grownups, duck and cover, because Halloween is over and you know what that means:

It's Christmasshopomadnesstime!

The intercontinental bombardment has begun, with a 673.8 percent increase in junk mail-order catalogues slamming into a mailbox near you. That's right: you my friend are ground zero, and Madison Avenue has an itchy finger on the button. So brace yourself for shopoactive atmosphere everywhere you go, fueled by those holy hymns of yesteryear, Jingle Bell Rock and Santa Baby. Even with the full body protection of a liberal line of credit, you're bound to absorb enough guilt and envy to start glowing in the dark. But don't worry; by the time the bankruptcy is over you’ll be so numb you won't feel it anymore.

Or . . .

You could fire back. Little ones must get their goodies from Santa, of course. But in the past, The Lovely Sue and I have also given Christmas presents to people who really need them (sick people, poor people, orphans). We gave them in the names of our adult friends and family. Then we sent fancy Christmas ornaments to our loved ones. On the ornaments, we used gold or silver paint to inscribe a description of the gift some person got in their name (“Sally with leukemia got a tricycle given in your name—Christmas, 2007”). Through the years we hope those ornaments will be used to deck the halls, and help us and all our loved ones to remember what Christmas really means.

How about your family? Do you have traditions or ideas for keeping Christmas centered on the Christ?

Cause For Celebration!

2007-11-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here's great news for those who still believe it's possible to elect an honorable man for our next President. After lagging in fifth place for so long, in the latest Rasmussen poll Mike Huckabee is moving up while the others are slipping down. He’s now in a dead heat with McCain, Romney and Thompson for second place nationally for the Republican nomination. Also, in the latest American Research Group Poll he is only 2 percentage points behind the frontrunner in Iowa, well within the 4 percent margin of error for first place in the nation’s first Presidential caucus. The latest CBS Poll also has him in second place in Iowa and “surging” toward the lead, with nearly two months still to go before caucus night (Jan 8)—plenty of time for Huckabee to bypass Romney.

What’s amazing is the way Huckabee has gained so much momentum with so few resources. Giuliani raised $14 million in the first quarter of this year alone. McCain was “disappointed” to only raise $13 million. Romney raised $21 million dollars! Meanwhile, Huckabee raised less than one million dollars during the same period. In this CNN article from last April on the candidates' war chests, Mike Huckabee was not even mentioned!

Yet here he is, solidly in the running.

As I said before, this guy is a real “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” story. Not only does Mike Huckabee have no money to speak of by comparison to the others (and doesn’t that prove he is in nobody’s pocket?); he’s a beltway outsider, by far the most vocal critic of the Republican establishment (except for Ron Paul, of course). Although Mike Huckabee is a Southern Baptist, he gets very little help from high profile evangelicals, in fact most of our evangelical “leaders” (whatever that means) continue to either ignore him or come out in favor of the pro-choice Republican national frontrunner because they think the frontrunner has a better chance of “winning” (whatever that means). Huckabee does not fit into a simplistic red state / blue state mold (he’s passionately Christian and a foreign policy conservative, yet he’s also a fiscal revolutionary and a genuine social liberal in the original best sense of the term). All of this means he should have fallen by the wayside long ago.

Yet here he is, solidly in the running.

While Romney and Giuliani tell us what they think we want to hear, professing strong beliefs today that directly contradict what they said the last time they ran for political office, Mike Huckabee is gaining traction for one reason only: this man tells the truth exactly as he sees it, exactly as he has always seen it.

To those who still say Mike Huckabee can’t win, it’s idealistic to think he could, it’s not practical, I can only reply, "Tell it to the polls."

To everybody else, I say, Don't just sit there; stand against the cynicism! Now is the time to get behind Mike Huckabee with your money and your time!

Interview on Writing

2007-11-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Jon Brisbin was kind enough to ask me to discuss writing and a few related topics over at his blog. I hope you'll check it out. If you want to talk about some aspect of our conversation further, drop me a comment here and I'll do my best to keep my end up. And if you appreciate Jon's interview skills as much as I do, be sure to let him know. He asked some outstanding questions!

THE CURE, The Theme

2007-11-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

Spoiler alert. What follows will give away important parts of the plot of my novel, The Cure, so if you have not read it and you think you might some day, you may want to stop reading today's post right here.

Still reading? Okay, you were warned. Here goes:

I received the following email today from a reader: "I read The Cure and I really did not get the ending. Riley was cured of alcoholism, so why did he have to become an alcoholic again to have to overcome it? I'm all for leaving things to the imagination, but did he get right with God?" Since this is not the first time a reader has asked me this question, I thought it made sense to answer here, where I can send other readers in the future. Following is my reply.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking time to ask this question. It's an important one.

The short answer is, Yes indeed, Riley does end up being "right with God." To understand why, we first have to open up the story a bit more broadly. Jesus did not die and rise to save us from our sins; he did it to save us from our sin addiction, the broken thing inside that makes it impossible NOT to sin. (We were "slaves to sin" as Paul says in Romans 7, from which I chose an epigraph for The Cure.) So when you read about Riley's alcohol addiction, think of the story in broader terms. The Cure is not just about one man's struggle against alcoholism. It's about your own struggle against your particular sin addiction, no matter how it might be manifested in your life.

We know willpower alone cannot save us from our sin addiction, and in the same way, we know there is no cure for sinfulness in technology. We can "cure" gluttony with stomach stapling; we can "cure" pornography with filters on computers, and so forth. But nothing human beings can do will cure us of our sin addiction. This is why Jesus had to die and rise, and why only God's grace is sufficient.

But your question remains a good one: why would a Christian voluntarily accept the urge of alcoholism?

Notice what Riley tries to do about his addiction. He takes the "cure" while he's still drunk on Scotch. Like Riley, the apostle Paul had a "thorn in the flesh," but Paul was wise enough to ask God to remove it. Riley does no such thing. Taking the cure is not a decision he makes with God; it is a choice he makes completely on his own while in the grip of the very thing he hopes to cure. Riley never prays for forgiveness; on the contrary, he prays for "something good to drink." Then the technology kicks in and Riley no longer "needs" to drink, but notice why: it is the technology at work in him. It is not the Holy Spirit. So while the external evidence of his sin addiction is controlled, the internal cause--the thing that made him start drinking in the first place--remains unchanged.

Remember Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. God doesn't just care about murder; He cares about anger in our hearts. God doesn't just care about adultery; He cares about lust in our hearts. Again, Jesus did not come to save us from external sins; He came to save us from the broken thing inside that forces us to sin. And although Riley is no longer drinking, that internal brokenness remains. Riley is not drinking anymore, but he is far from right with God.

We see this in the fact that Riley carries an overwhelming sense of guilt in spite of his sobriety. He often says he feels "weighed down". What does he do about that? He does what any pagan who is scared of hell would do. He works hard to try to make up for all the bad things in his life. He works hard to be "good." But of course, all his efforts come to nothing. Indeed, they are worse than nothing; they actually cause more damage. Hope is suspected of taking bribes, his daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, the town is dying, and all because "When I want to do good, evil is right there with me," as Paul said in Romans 7. Finally, when technology and willpower and good works have all failed, when the town is in ashes, Hope is in the hospital, Willa is dead, and Riley is in jail for murder, at last we come to this (on page 318):

"He thought about the weight that never lifted no matter what he did. Sober, drunk, broke or flush, in love or alone, it did not matter. And suddenly he realized what it was he had forgotten in a clearing choked with carnage seven years ago, the reason for his incapacitating weakness. When I am weak, then I am strong."

Now Riley knows his mistake. He was weak in his alcoholism, but he must allow himself to be weak in an entirely different way in order to accept the strength of God's amazing grace. He remembers what he once forgot: God will give no grace to those who think they're strong. But how can Riley Keep be weak, when he is now sober and the richest man in Maine?

You know what he does with the Communion wine, how he voluntarily accepts his alcohol addiction back into himself, and hopefully now you are beginning to understand his reason.

Riley's drinking started with a spiritual mistake. He needed a spiritual solution. Another Christian might not express that solution the way Riley did. I'm not saying they should. That's the kind of individual decision each person must make with the Lord. But lest we be tempted to condemn Riley's choice in his own case, remember God said "No" when Paul asked for his "thorn of the flesh" to be removed. Remember God explained that Paul was better off with that thorn right where it was. And as much as it hurt, Paul accepted this. In fact, he boasted about it. This is the very event that led him to write those famous words: "When I am weak, then I am strong." The idea for The Cure came to me one day when I asked myself, "If someone had come along with an instant cure for Paul's particular problem, would he have taken it in spite of what God said?"

When faced with trials, a Christian's decisions must never be made on the basis of what's easiest, or least painful, or less of a struggle. Christians are not called to easy, painless, struggle-free lives. This is the meaning of the sentence on page 326 of The Cure, just before Riley drank the Communion wine and took the urge/thorn back into his flesh:

"He had begun to remember crosses to be lifted up and carried, and follow me, and follow me."

So, dear Reader, now that you understand these things the way Riley understood them, I hope The Cure will help you think about the meaning of your own particular sin addictions, whatever they might be. In your struggle for holiness I hope this story helps you think of your sinfulness as an opportunity to be weak before the Lord. I hope it reminds you not to try to cure yourself. I hope you will remember you can't do that, except maybe on the surface. Deep down where it matters, like Riley Keep you are utterly powerless when you try to be strong, but if you have faith enough to let yourself be weak, the Lord will make you strong enough to do more than just survive the trials of life; if you let yourself be weak, you will boast about the triumph of the Lord's amazing grace in you.

WINTER HAVEN Sneak Peek!

2007-11-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

Do you blog and enjoy novels? Have I got a deal for you! The publisher is ready to mail advance reader copies of my next novel, Winter Haven. I’d love to send you a copy (free, of course). All I ask is that you contact me no later than November 14, 2007 with your promise to a) read it in the near future and b) blog about it.

More on how to get your copy of Winter Haven below, but first, here’s the back cover blurb:

Answers are impossible

when questions are too terrible to ask.

Athol Dickson’s “powerfully imagined” River Rising received rousing acclaim from numerous publications including Booklist (who chose it as one of the top 10 Christian novels of 2006), Publishers Weekly, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It was a finalist for Christianity Today’s Best Novel of 2006, and received a Christy Award for Best Suspense Novel.

His next novel, The Cure, received rave reviews from critics like Library Journal, and readers alike. Now he entertains and enthralls readers once again with a mystery that goes beyond the surface of everything we know and see . . . .

Thirteen years ago, Vera Gamble’s brother, Siggy, ran away from home in Texas never to be seen again. Now his body washes ashore on the tiny island of Winter Haven, Maine. His only surviving kin, Vera travels north to claim the body—and finds herself tangled in the impossible: Her brother hasn’t aged a day since last she saw him.

Determined to uncover what happened in those lost years, Vera soon discovers there are other secrets haunting the island. As legends of lost colonies and a witch bent on vengeance come to life amidst a forest where no creature dares to live, Vera is hemmed in by unearthly fog and distrusted by the locals. Her only help is the mysterious owner of a grand but dilapidated mansion poised on a rocky cliff. Will Vera survive her desperate search for answers, or will her quest become yet one more dark Winter Haven legend?

If you want to be one of the first people on the planet to read Winter Haven, just send me a private email by clicking on “Contact Me” on the far right of the navagation bar above. Please be sure to include all of the following in your email:

1) Your name.
2) Your blog’s address (sorry, copies not available for those who don't blog).
3) Your mailing address (P.O. boxes are fine, but street addresses are better)
4) Your promise to read Winter Haven in the near future, and blog about it.

Remember: I need to hear from you no later than November 14, 2007.

Thanks, and happy reading!

Work, Pray, Love

2007-10-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

Long ago I learned that C. S. Lewis’ personal motto was “laborare est orare,” or “to work is to pray.” Recently I learned his motto’s source. The original is from St. Benedict, who said, "Orare est laborare, laborare est orare" ("To pray is to work, to work is to pray"). Before I knew the first half of the original quote, I thought of Lewis’ motto only in terms of work being like prayer. Now I understand the connection is much deeper.

For the Christian who thinks of them properly, work and prayer are not merely alike; they are one and the same.

When faced with work I do not want to do, it helps to remember the first work ever, which was Creation itself. It helps to remember the first work given us in the Garden of Eden, and Paul’s admonition to Colossian slaves to work for their earthly masters even when their masters were not watching and would not know. "Work," said Paul, “with all your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for men.” It helps to remember the (all too rare) moments of communion when I have sensed God's pleasure with my meager efforts. In the midst of these memories, I realize why Benedict and Lewis placed such emphasis on this idea, and although work is often difficult, although that difficulty was God’s curse for the first sin, I remain deeply grateful work was still allowed.

Even in a fallen world, work and prayer are one if done with God in mind. Work connects my spirit with the Lord’s. In work I sometimes give my best reflection of God’s image and likeness as Creator. In the beginning, work was creation. It remains so today. Creation is a gift, a flowing outward, the opposite of consumption. Pagan gods devour the earth; Jesus Christ sustains it with the perpetual gift of Himself, constantly creating everything. God's work is never done, and so may it always be with me.

Unlike prayerful petitions for my own sake or for others, unlike even prayers of thanks, when I work for God’s sake (although the work might be most menial) I return something of myself to my Maker. This is why the Lord commanded work in Eden, and why He let us take it to our exile. Because "God is love," work in imitation of His image, work for His sake, is not just a form of prayer; it is also love.