Reacting to trouble

"How are you?" may be one of the most common and most disingenuous questions that we ask. Sometimes we ask without really wanting an answer; it has become a replacement phrase for "hello." I have often participated in conversations that go something like this:

"Hey, how are you?"
"Good. You?"
"Oh, you know. Same old, same old."

Or like this:

"Hey, how are you?"
"Hey."

"Hey?" That's really an answer? At least the first conversation pretends to engage the question. Full disclosure: I have not just heard the answer "hey" but have used it myself. I don't recall having someone answer "hey" and being offended by it. In my experience we get (and give) the level of answer that is expected. But of course there are also plenty of times that the question is meant to elicit a deeper response. But how often do we really want to share how we are doing? I guilty of having a canned response no matter how things are going. If things are going good the response is usually, "good." If things are going rough the response might be, "not bad." If things are crashing down around me the response might be, "not too bad."

I think that my response is due to a couple of reasons. The first is our individualistic culture and private nature. There are certain things that we all hold as private. The topics and amount of information may change from person to person but we all have things that we will not share. The second reason is our pride. We generally want people to think well of us and usually don't want people's pity. (On a side note, there can be times when we share our troubles for the sake of pride as well. We can get a sense of pride when we share just how difficult we have it.) Both reasons come down to our desire to control how others see us. In the day of social media we have even more control over how we are perceived by others. (I've written on this before here and here.)

I think that another reason that I respond this way is because of the perception that I am supposed to react this way. It is very easy to read Matthew 8:23-27 and scoff at the disciples reaction:

"And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, 'Save us, Lord; we are perishing.' And he said to them, 'Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?' Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, 'What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?'"

Some of the guys on this boat were fishermen. They made their living by being on the sea and I am sure that this is not the first time that they faced a storm. I am sure that they would know when a storm was just a storm and when to be afraid of sinking. Yet Jesus rebuked them for having little faith and being afraid of the waves. So one of the lessons that we take away from this story is that we should never be afraid of a storm–no matter how bad it seems–when we have Jesus on our side. Buck up. Put on your happy face because no matter how terrible things are going we are "not too bad."

Yet most of us face things in life that look like real crises. They may in face be real crises and near impossible to put on a happy face. There are times when it takes all of our strength just to say that things are "not too bad." So why do we try?

Notice that the storm that the disciples faced was very real. Their fear was also very real. It was so real that they cried out to Jesus to save them. There are times in life that crying out to God is the only thing that we can do. But this doesn't guarantee that the storm will be calmed. Jesus tells us as much in John 16:33:

"I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."

There are times when we are going to face trouble; real trouble. And when we fear the worst we can take heart in the fact that no matter what we face in this world that we have a Savior that has faced just as much as we will ever face. He might not get rid of all of our trouble but in the end–in the life after this one–he will more than get rid of our troubles. We do not need to be afraid of calling out to him for help. It is the first thing that we should do. What we shouldn't do is put on a false front and simply answer "not too bad" when we are asked how things are going.

 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

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The day I became a "picture choosing" expert.

One of the pieces of information that churches sometimes ask for from candidates during their pastoral search is the story of how they came to have faith in Jesus. This morning I was working on my story and I thought that I would share a bit of it here.

I don’t remember all of the exact details of my confession of faith in Christ. That is not to say that I don't remember what happened. There are a few details that I don't quite remember. For example when I was about 7 years old I said something to my parents about wanting to accept Jesus into my heart. I don't quite remember exactly what I said or what prompted me to say something. All I know is that what ever I said caused my parents to have the pastor of our church come over to talk to me. I do clearly remember him coming over and talking to me. I remember it because at first I thought I was in trouble. I was playing in my room and all of a sudden our pastor and my mom walked in. My mom said, "Pastor Hargrove wants to talk to you..." What an ominous way to start a conversation with a 7 year old. It was rather intimidating. He sat on the edge of my bed and my mom was standing in my doorway. I do not recall the content of that conversation but what ever I said satisfied both my parents and the pastor that I was making a genuine confession of faith in Jesus.

The next Sunday I went forward during the Invitation portion of the service and made my confession public. I can still vividly remember the scene. We were a part of a church plant which was meeting in a grade school gym. I knew that I was supposed to go forward during the Invitation and this meant that I was not able to go to the normal children's service. I had to sit still through the whole service and it seemed like it would never end. Finally the pastor finished and he invited anyone that wanted to put their faith in Jesus to come forward. I went forward along with a few other people. I stood up a bit straighter as I walked forward without my mom even having to say anything. Then the few of us that came forward went and stood in the back.

When I got to the back my attention was immediately grabbed by a table of pictures from the latest youth group happening. I was so intrigued by the pictures that I didn't notice when the service ended. All of a sudden a whole lot of of people started to come up and talking to me. Which is sort of odd for a 7 year old; most of the time someone was just telling us kids to stop running. So I took the full advantage of my audience and pointed out which of the youth group pictures were my favorites. And to my surprise and delight every one kept coming up to me and telling me that I had made a great decision. Some of them didn't even need to take the time to look at the pictures. They just trusted that I was picking the best ones. It was right then and there that I decided that I was a "picture choosing" expert.

Of course now I realize that I am not a "picture choosing" expert. But I still made the greatest decision of my life that morning. It would take many more years and a lot of growing to even start to grasp the depth of that decision. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I have come to realize that I would still make that same decision.

 

What is our only comfort in life and in death?

I have never considered myself to be very credal. At least I haven't held to any of the major creeds or confessions; at least in terms of how a "confessional" church would define it. I think that some of the creeds do a fine job of summarizing the Christian faith like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed. And it is also true that the creeds and confessions can serve as a useful educational piece within the church. One of the confessions that my current church–the Reformed Church of America (RCA)–holds to is the Heidelberg Catechism. The RCA says the following about creeds and confessions:

"The RCA is confessional, which means that together we have statements of belief, called creeds and confessions. These statements guide our understanding of faith and shape its practice."

The idea is to have a standard statement of faith across the whole denomination. It is not that different than other denominations or churches having a statement of faith that one needs to accept before becoming a member. In a certain sense these creeds and confessions are just really old statements of faith. And as long as a church does not elevate the confession above or contradict scripture–and I do not believe that this is what the RCA is doing–then I don't see any real problem with them. In fact if they are used properly, they can play an important teaching role in the life of the church. To that end our Wednesday night adult Bible study has just started to look at the Heidelberg Catechism. Last night we looked at Question 1:

"What is your only comfort in life and in death?"

Instead of simply reading the Heidelberg answer, we split into smaller groups and read the scripture passages that the original writers used to come up with their answer. And then we wrote our own answer based on those scripture passages. In my group we didn't end up getting to all of the scripture passages so our answer doesn't touch on all aspects of the Heidelberg answer. But we still ended up with our own answer. This is what we came up with:

"Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and is not our own. We were bought by God and need to honor God with our bodies. We belong to the Lord in both life and death. He purifies us through his sacrifice; Christ's blood washes away all of our sins. Because we are children of God we are ultimately free from sin. Those who put their hope in Christ–because the Father has given this authority to Christ–are in the Father's hands. God will protect us. And in the last day, God will bring us home to heaven. Fear not! God values us. We are important to him and he will protect us."

Not a bad answer if you ask me.

Our answer was based on the following scripture passages:

1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 14:7-9; 1 Corinthians 3:23; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 1 John 2:2; John 8:34-36; Hebrews 2:14-15; 1 John 3:1-11; John 6:39-40; John 10:27-30; 2 Thessalonians 3:3; 1 Peter 1:5; Matthew 10:29-31; and Luke 21:16-18.

 

Are Cool Celebrity Christians good for Christianity?

I came across this article on the Fox News website a couple of weeks ago. The headline asks what can be considered a fairly provocative question. "Are young, religious stars like Justin Bieber and Tim Tebow making Christianity cool?" The intro to the article chronicles how Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato and Tim Tebow have all been in the news lately regarding their Christian faith. Author Jo Piazza then asks the question:

"So are these young, hip and very public Christians in the worlds of music, television and sports are making it cool for the highly connected Generation Z to embrace Christianity?"

It strikes me that this question–while it may be a valid question–makes two categorical mistakes about Christianity. The first is that celebrities might be good for Christianity in general. The second is that Christianity needs to be perceived as cool in order to be embraced–particularly by young people.

Celebrity Christians create a complex set of issues. First celebrity status is so fleeting so those that are popular today can quickly fade into oblivion. On top of that the news cycle today is so short that we usually do not get much more than soundbites from people. This means that complex thoughts and belief systems are distilled down into just a few sentences at most and sometimes end up being just a phrase or two. Then there is the "sensational news sells" mentality that is pervasive in our culture. It is far bigger news when a celebrity couple goes through an ugly divorce than the existence of Mr. and Mrs. Average's happy marriage. What this then means is that it is far bigger news when a Celebrity Christian stumbles than if they continue to live a solid life. The sordid details of a stumbling Celebrity Christian are shared far and wide while the repentance and restitution details are either ignored or viewed skepticism.

I don't share this as a complaint against the state of the media; that is a completely different post. I share this because it isn't a matter of if a Christian is going to stumble. It is only a matter of when. We all make mistakes. Being a Christian doesn't mean being mistake free rather it means that our mistakes are forgiven in the eyes of God. It also means that we should be taking steps to correct our mistakes and quite often those corrections come over a long period of time. Unless we are a close personal friend, we never observe Celebrity Christians on a personal level over a long period of time. 

While Tim Tebow sounds like a great guy that is living an authentic life (I really don't know much about Justin Bieber or Demi Lovato), we should not really be holding him up as an example of how to live a Christian life. That role should be left for those that we observe on a daily or weekly basis. It is far more important to watch someone going through the ups and downs of life and handling them well. It is far more powerful to watch someone go through the long process of getting up, dusting off and walking again after they have made a mistake than to observe a Celebrity Christian for a short period of time. It is far more powerful to watch someone endure a period of suffering and pain only to come out stronger on the other side than it is to watch a sports figure point to the sky after a great play.

Christianity is not about being cool enough to be acceptable for young people. There may be those that decide to investigate Christianity because some celebrity said it is what they do. But the staying power of Christianity will not come from a cool factor it will come from everyday people living lives that are obviously transformed by their faith in Christ. Without that authenticity, young people will only be around until the next cool thing takes hold. And in this day and age then next cool thing won't be too far away.

Encouraging the Encouragers

Every one has a story to tell. We can all tell the story of how we became the person that we are today. The las week or two I have been working on my story and there are two critical people that have led me to be where I am today. I thought that I would take a few moments and share a part of that story which highlights those two people.

I was born and raised in a Christian home. One of my childhood memories is of my Dad sitting in his study chair preparing Bible Study lessons which led me to wonder who, what, why and how. All of those books he would read fascinated me and the one that I found most irresistible was his lime green Strong’s Concordance. It had so many pages of strange words that were not even shaped the same way as any words that I knew. I remember playing with the other kids while our parents engaged in Bible study and always being mindful of the discussions that would keep the adults captivated for hours. I look back and see the fire that burned within my father to properly understand and apply the Bible. It makes me wonder about the content of those studies. In a lot of ways it helps me understand these same passions that burn within me. My father passed on those books to me when I started leading Bible studies as a young adult. Those books now captivate me–including the lime green Strong’s Concordance–as much as they captivated him. I thank God for my father, who laid this foundation in me and continues to encourage in me.

In 2004 I married my best friend. Onya and I met when I was working as a youth pastor in Chicago. She was one of the adult volunteers that helped me and was a big part of the youth ministry. During that time we were not romantically involved at all but we slowly built a solid friendship that eventually turned into our getting married. At the time of our wedding I was working for a captive finance company. It was quickly clear to my wife how unhappy I was working in the business world. She encouraged me to think about what it was that I was passionate about. Through our discussions and prayers it became clear that what I was most passionate about and best gifted to do was some form of ministry work. That led to me go to seminary to pursue my Masters of Divinity and now on to full-time work. My wife not only made that possible but she has been my biggest supporter during my studies. She is still my biggest supporter and encourager as I am going through the job search process.

Both my father and my wife have played a large role in shaping me into the person that I  am today. This is not to minimize the very helpful and influential roles of others like my father's wife; my brother and his wife; my aunt and uncle; my cousins and cousin-in-laws; my brother-in-laws and their wives; my father and mother-in-law; and my many classmates, pastors, and friends. But I wanted to take a moment and share how two of them have specifically shaped me. It is good for all of us to take a moment and think about how those around us have shaped us. Sometimes they shape us for the good and sometimes for the bad. What we need to do is recognize those that shape us for the good and to make sure that we encourage and increase their influence on us. 

 

A Joyous Sadness

One of my favorite people passed away on Friday and today I will be going to her funeral service. My wife and I affectionately referred to Lydia as the "coolest old person." She was a marvelous person and we will greatly miss seeing her every week at church.

I found Lydia to be so special because she was always so encouraging. She encouraged me as a youth pastor. She encouraged me as a seminary student. She encouraged me when I preached. She encouraged me when I led worship. Whenever she saw my guitar she would ask me: "Are you going to play for me today?"

I also loved how Lydia related to people regardless of their age or place. She would strike up a conversation with the other seniors in the church as well as with the youth. Her comfort level with everyone is a model that I am trying to emulate. I think that her persistent smile and winsome manner are what ingratiated her to everyone. I cannot remember ever seeing her when she was in a bad mood.

But the last year or so had been extremely hard on Lydia. You could see it in her face and in her demeanor. It was obvious that she was slowing down and having great difficulty. Yet that smile was still on her face every time I saw her at church. The woman that would be at church every Sunday suddenly started to miss church more and more. At 93 years old she finally lost her battle with a tumor and pneumonia.

It is very sad to see such an example of how to act like Christ pass from this world. I will miss her greatly.

But it is very joyous to know that she is now with the very person that she emulated. While there will be sadness for us while we celebrate her life, it will be wonderful to know that her new life in heaven will be a great celebration.

Lydia, my wife and I are so glad that you are living in the splendor of the King and singing how great is our God.

Was Peter wrong to get out of the boat?

There is a book sitting on my bookshelf entitled If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. It is a book that is centered around the story of Jesus and Peter walking on the water as found in Matthew 14:22-33. My understanding of the story, shaped by years of learning, has always been the same. Last night I heard a different angle to the story that substantially changes the lesson to be learned.

What I have known to be the teaching of this story is that Peter took a great leap of faith to get out of the boat in order to join Jesus in doing the miraculous. Peter took those initial steps of faith and was able to walk on the water as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus. Peter then started to doubt the power of Jesus when he focused on the waves. Jesus then rebuked Peter for not having enough faith to continue to walk on the water. 

The moral of the story is that if we have faith in Christ we can "walk on water." In other words faith can overcome all obstacles and doubt brings disaster. This message fits in well in our current American culture of individualism and exceptionalism. Yet I think that there are people all over the world and throughout history that would take exception to this understanding of faith. It makes faith out to be the magic potion found in the "Name it and Claim it" perversion of Christianity.

Now calm down. Don't start beating me over the head with your "Through faith all things are possible" club. Remember that faith isn't the battery that runs the Energizer Holy Spirit that plays the drum for us. John states: "And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us." And James states: "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." All the faith in the world does not overcome something that falls outside of God's will–even if it is something that we think is good and should be within God's will.

My point here is not to engage in a discussion on the nature of faith. Rather I would like to take a fresh look at what happened in the story of Peter walking on water. What was it that Peter did not have faith in?

My pastor spent two weeks last month in Israel on a tour led by Marlin and Sally Vis. As they were on a mountain overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Marlin started to teach on this passage. We watched the video of his teaching last night at small group and everything that I am going to share next is from his teaching.

The mountain on which the tour group was standing could very well have been the mountain upon which Jesus was praying just prior to walking on the water. The Disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee heading towards the other side. They were really struggling because of the high winds and strong waves. Jesus comes down from the mountain and starts to walk on the water coming towards them. At first the disciples think that it is a ghost but Jesus said: "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." Peter then said: "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water."

Peter, according to Marlin, is not content like the rest of the Disciples trusting the with the word of Jesus. He is actually testing Jesus and saying in effect: "If it is you, show me a sign." When Jesus rebukes Peter it is not because Peter sank into the water but rather it is because Peter needed to get out of the boat. Peter doubted the word of Jesus and needed further proof.

Marlin concludes by saying that the only one rebuked here is Peter. The other Disciples were not rebuked for not having enough faith to get out of the boat. This changes the meaning of the story from us needing to do miraculous and spectacular things in order to please God. Instead it means that God is pleased with us when we are trusting him and we are doing the ordinary things that we are supposed to do. Marlin argues that this is the more culturally correct way of understanding Matthew 14:22-33.

While Marlin's teaching may fly in the face of our traditional understanding it does sounds like a reasonable interpretation. It will be interesting to see if his interpretation has any traction. I would have loved to bring this up to a couple of different professors in seminary to get their input.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

How should we handle difficult passages?

The story of God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac has always troubled me. It is one of those passages in the Bible that I could do without. And in a certain sense I would be happier if it was completely absent. Of course the next best thing would to be able to explain it away somehow.

This passage was the passage that we looked at last night in Bible Study. We discussed a couple of possible lessons to learn from this story and one that was somewhat satisfying for me was that at the end of the day God will provide. He might not always do so as we expect but he will provide. But there was a large part of the conversation that centered on why God would ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

And my conclusion is that I don’t know. This passage has all sorts of crazy in it. To me it seems crazy that God would ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It seems crazy that Abraham would go along with it. Just a few chapters earlier we see Abraham standing up to God when God declares that he is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. We don’t have any record of Abraham wrestling with God over this command which doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.  But we don’t see it and I want it in there. Finally it seems crazy that Isaac would go along with everything. Abraham is over 100 years old at this point and Isaac was old enough to carry the wood for the sacrifice. I’m guessing that he would be strong enough to fight back against his father, which I think would be a natural and understandable reaction of self preservation.

It is very important to point out that from the context of the passage that God never intended for Abraham to actually sacrifice Isaac. God was only testing to see if Abraham was obedient to God to the point of giving up the promise of God. Abraham was promised to be the father of a great nation through Isaac. It was quite a promise that contained a lasting legacy. To this day Abraham is known as the Father of Israel. God wanted to test Abraham to see if his obedience lay in the things that God could provide for Abraham or if his obedience lay in the fact that God is God.

But still. There are parts of this passage that just do not make sense and there are parts that I do not like.

And that is ok.

The Bible is the revelation of God and I cannot shape God in my own image. I cannot simply black out the parts that I do not like. In a certain sense I have to accept them and live with the tension. I also cannot sweep them under the rug. When someone challenges me on my beliefs based upon this passage it is perfectly fine to say that I don’t understand it and I don’t necessarily like it.

This is a passage that we need to take on faith. It is not a blind faith trusting that God will simply wave his hands and make everything disappear. But rather it is the faith that God was ultimately in control and that one day when we see him face to face that we will understand. There are difficult passages in the Bible that cannot be ignored or explained away. We need to face them head on and make as much sense as we can of them. But we should not ignore them or try to explain them away.

Further Reading:
Why did God tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?

Faith of our fathers?

Thursday's post covered the topic of whether or not God holds us accountable for our parents' sins and the answer is an emphatic no. But what about our parents' faith in God? Does that transfer over to us?

I has the privilege of interviewing a number of people that became Christians later in life. Some of them reported having little or no religious background or influence while growing up. Some of them reported having a nominal religious background where their parents had some sort of faith in Christ but it was not very explicit. Then there was one person who told me how they were raised in a Christian home and went to church every Sunday. They even taught Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. But it wasn't until after this person was married and had children that she really made her beliefs her own beliefs.

I also had a very similar experience. I was born and raised in a Christian home. There was never any real doubt about what I believed growing up. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that I had to make a choice for myself. Don't get me wrong, I had made a choice for myself in terms of actually trusting in Jesus when I was young and that decision has held firm since then.

But as an adult that decision had to weather many different storms.

The first major storm was in regards to how I was going to live my life. As an adult I no longer went to church because my parents went to church. I had to do it for my own reasons and initially I did not do so because I had not made my own decision to make my faith my own faith. I had to make a decision to pursue Christianity on my own.

The next major storm was in regards to Christianity in general. I ran into an odd pair of friends in college on day. One was a Muslim and the other was an Atheist and they engaged in a sort of tag-team challenge to my faith. I remember as I was fielding their questions thinking about how odd these two were. They were obviously friends and had approached me together regarding my belief in Christianity. Some of their challenges sent me in a tailspin. I realized that I could not simply rely on the beliefs of my upbringing and needed to start getting my own answers.

That is when I started to do some very serious research into the reasons that I should believe in Christianity that went beyond saying, “Well the Bible says…” Do not hear what I am not saying. I am not saying that the Bible is not sufficient for life and faith. But rather I was being like the Bereans in Acts 17:11. I needed to see if what the Bible said was reliable. Is there any evidence for what it says?

As I started doing this research I ran into authors and speakers such as Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Hugh Ross and Greg Koukl to name a few. It was at this point that I really started to make Christianity my own faith rather than simply the “faith of my fathers.”

We all face this decision and can go one of two ways. We can either try to continue relying on the things that we were raised to believe. Or we can make them our own.

But it isn’t just a onetime thing. What I really started to think about the other day was how I am constantly coming up against the “faith of my fathers.” There are certain doctrines - or sets of beliefs - that I realize that I have held simply because that was the way I was raised to believe. It is not that they were wrong but rather I had not thought them through and truly decided what I believed. Quite often I have affirmed the belief but I now have the belief for a completely different reason. And then there are the beliefs that I have come to change. (I must state that at this point I am talking about peripheral and not essential beliefs.)

It really drives home the idea that we are in a continual growth and learning process and will never really know it all.