Stupidman

Spiderman -- Peter Parker screws up because he cannot come clean with anyone about his mistakes, and he won't tell anyone who he is. This means that he is fighting his own demons that no one knows about, and his enemy is the only one who knows who he really is. His family and friends are in danger, but he doesn't think it right to tell them the truth... why? "It might put them in harm's way"... dude... THEY ALREADY ARE!

Batman -- Bruce Wayne is awesome, he is by far my favorite superhero, because he's not "super"… He's just a very driven rich guy. However, he falls into the same lie. He helps the Gotham police, but the only one who knows who he is, and therefore the only real friend he has, is his butler. Now, Alfred is awesome, but you need more than one real friend. The Dark Knight is the friend of all of Gotham, but he himself has very little support. No one can survive that, no man at least, we are relational beings and need community…

All this can extend to a ton of heros, all with the same sort of fault: Neo in the Matrix, Superman, both Chuck Norris AND Jack Bauer, Michael Westen, Neil Caffery, shoot… I'm giving away all the shows I watch…

However, this brings me to the question: What's the big beef people have with telling the truth? Does it matter if people can "handle it?" In fact, they will have to deal with the truth being true whether or not you tell it to them.

So called "Superheros" act… well… the way we all do. We don't want help, we think others will think we are weird, strange, DIFFERENT! I know what it is to have a struggle that I didn't want to share, a burden that was my fault and I made it all my own. It didn't work.


Now's the time when I turn this discussion toward the Bible, because that book and it's author mean a lot to me. Paul was guided to write in Galatians 6:2 "Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Now, these Superheros are all great at that, but they forget to realize that others are there for them too.

In this passage the "burden" we are to bear is from a word that can also be translated "heaviness, weight, trouble." Later in the same passage (Gal 6:5) Paul also says "For each will have to bear his own load." What? Is he contradicting himself? No. The word here is different. Here "load" refers not to a "trouble" but, in the literal, to freight on a ship.
It's the word Jesus uses in Matthew 11:30 -- "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Friends, Superheros are great, but it's better to be a real person in this real world. I'm daily learning the wonder that God offers in discipleship, in accountability, in opening up my faults and troubles to others, and listening to them in their distress. Please, seek to be the way you were created to be: a relational being that needs friends, not just acquaintances, that needs love, not just acknowledgement.

Otherwise, I dare say (paraphrasing and taking some liberty) you may save the world and lose yourself.

Irresponsibility: Are You Willing to Fall?

Don't you love apathy in the United States? You know that it's two-sided apathy, right?
It's not just people unwilling to go, to do; it's also people unwilling to stop, to change.
Both "It's not my job" and "It's not my fault" come from the same heart, and it's a selfish one.

The illustration that brings this to mind is actually a "Despair.com" poster. If you are not familiar with them, they are wonderfully ironic, challenging, stabbing... hilarious and painful... demotivational posters. Here's the one that brings all this apathy and responsibility stuff to mind:



"No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood."
Besides the fact that a raindrop cannot believe... lacks the ability to do so... how true is this?
Think about the Nazi regime, Nuremberg trials, and the many that said they had no choice.
Think about the missed opportunities you have had to make a difference in a life today.

And, yes, I am trying to motivate and inspire you using a poster that was meant to demotivate...

Anyway, I also brought this up because I feel like sharing a poem I wrote on this subject, where the speaker is that raindrop that might just fall and become part of a tidal wave of renewal...


Responsible (Rain)
I am not responsible
To see the whole world changed.
I am not in charge:
I cannot, nations, rearrange.

I am but cloud, vapor,
Hanging in the atmosphere
I am bodiless, weightless,
I can do nothing up here…

What if I condescended to coalesce?
Came together as one entity,
Changed from vapor to liquidity,
Discovered that I could be weighty?

What if I fell, I barreled down,
Took my thimble of water to the land,
Allowed my self to be a sacrifice
Even just to dampen a grain of sand.

What if a hundred joined the crusade,
A thousand saw the spectacular fall?
What if a million heard of the news
And decided that it was worth their all?

Then we, we dirty few down here
Who quench first the dusty land,
Would see first-hand the waters rise,
See this act that God has planned.

See, I am responsible
To see my world changed:
For my heart affects my vision,
My mind and soul need grace.

See, I am responsible
To see my life rearranged:
With power beyond imagination,
From life, I need not be estranged.

Dive with me! Bring down the clouds!
Come! Splash! Ripple!
Never let the land be parched!

You, responsible to be used,
Play your tiny, wondrous, part!


(As always, any edits, questions, comments, disagreements, clarifications, etc. are welcome here, in my email, and in person :-) )

Heart of Gold / Heart of God

*Disclaimer: This is going to be one of my most random connections… but if you know me… you already expect this.*

This morning I was listening to music on my phone (on random, skipping to only upbeat songs because I was late to work), and Switchfoot's "Faust, Midas, and Myself" started playing. I know most if not all the words, but still some of it hit me pretty hard. "A heart that's made of gold can't really beat at all. / I wanted to wake up again… / without a touch of gold."

Backstory real quick: For those who haven't heard the song, here it is. If you don't want to listen, here's the short of it: The singer makes a deal with the devil and becomes Midas, then makes the realization that his life where he has "everything" is fake-- realizes that he has "one life left to lead" not "one life let to leave" (which is a hard-to-notice lyrical change at one point :) ).

Anyway, this image of idolatry really hit me: allowing something I desire to become my heart, to become the source of my life, the one thing that I think will make me happy… This morning I needed to hear that… Thank God for the providence of "shuffle songs!"

This leads (in a convoluted way) to another "Heart of Gold"… a very obscure one at that…
I am referring to the spaceship that is fitted with the "Infinite Improbability Drive" and is taken on a joy-ride by the main characters of the "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. Why, you may (should) ask, do I bring up something so random and off the wall? Well, there's a potency to this "Heart of Gold" that almost matches the next one I'll talk about.

This "S.S. Heart of Gold" is able to go anywhere, and do anything, instantaneously. Though the technology proposed is purposefully absurd (wonderfully purposefully absurd in my opinion), the ship is the most powerful thing in the five part trilogy (yes, I meant to say that). This ship can literally go anywhere instantaneously, turn a pair of missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of tulips, and even produce an infinite number of typing monkeys who want to talk about their rendition of Hamlet (don't worry, I'm not as insane as Douglas Adams, all those were from the books).

However, as random and potent as the "Heart of Gold" is, let's look for a second at how it is used. Basically, it is randomly joy-ridden around the cosmos. The pilots have no purpose, the ship has no inherent purpose, and the "Heart of Gold" goes to the uttermost reaches of time and space without enhancing a single life, helping a single soul, or righting a single wrong. Why is this? Why is it abused, not used? I think there's a simple answer, and it goes back to the fact that it was stolen. It is a "heart" that has been taken over by other purposes than those it was meant for (however purposeless those purposes are…).

Now, for the last heart: and this one is good. This one is the heart of God. Tonight (meaning 5 hours ago), Trent McEntyre, the campus director of Crossroads (Campus Crusade) at Georgia Tech, talked to us about the heart of God. Now, there are a couple places where the "S.S. Heart of Gold" is comparable (contrastable) to the heart of God:
1) Power: God is all powerful, and, unlike the ship, is in complete control of that infinite power. While the spaceship might malfunction and show up as a shoe instead of an intergalactic transport, God knows exactly how to show up in our time of need, and exactly how to show up in any and every culture.
2) Presence: God is all present, and, unlike the ship, is not being joy-ridden. He is able and active everywhere in the world and not in a random "here and gone" type of way.

But, so much more, the difference comes in this: Unlike the others, the heart of God is actually Love (wow… that's obvious…). Love that died. Love for the entire world. Love that will allow this song to be sung in the Consummation (aka. in the end of time in Heaven): “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…" (Revelation 5:9).

God has always loved the world and all therein, from creating it "good," to giving Abraham the first "missionary call" ("in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" Gen. 12:3, and similar in 18:18, 22:18, 26:4). This is the heart of God that we Christians need to show. We need it wherever we are, we need to cast off any ideas of ease or any prejudices that keep us from knowing God's love for every race, every tongue, every person we interact with. God's heart is not one for wealth, and it is not one that gives up on reality, it is one that desires to pump true life into every interaction we are in, and one that may send us to other places to circulate Christ's life-giving blood there.

A principle in Leviticus is the statement that "the life is in the blood" (Lev. 17:11), so what life is our "heart" putting in our "blood"?
How should we be practicing living by God's heart instead of our own?
Are we avoiding prayer, scripture, fellowship, evangelism, discipleship, worship, and/or doing our daily labors for God in some joy-ride through life?
Don't we realize that living fully for God, experiencing his heart, is the most amazing joy-ride of all???

Well, a few more question marks and a really short poem and I'll quit this ramble…

Do I desire something physical, mental, or emotional that I think I need?
Will I just joy-ride my heart around the universe?
Or am I really sold out on the heart of God?



Do I have a heart of gold,
Or the heart of God beating in me?
Concealed in my flesh:
What circulates my reality?

In what fount of life do I find hope,
For what rest do I desire?
The ultimate cold of lifeless gold,
Or life fueled by the Spirit's fire?

"What We Do in Life, Echoes in Eternity"

"Fratres! Three weeks from now I will be harvesting my crops. Imagine where you will be, and it will be so. Hold the line. Stay with me. If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled; for you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!
Brothers, what we do in life, echoes in eternity."

-- Maximus (Gladiator)

There's a lot in this quote… really in the last 8 words… and many places to go with it. In a quick search of that phrase I found this post where someone talks about it in respect to Colossians 3:2 -- Christian Pilgrims ... but I'm going another direction with this :)

Of course, what Maximus says is obviously not perfect. He is speaking to soldiers on the edge of battle: he cannot really promise them "Imagine where you will be, and it will be so." Some are going to die, some are going to be maimed. In fact, in the movie itself Maximus is sold as a slave after his family is killed… but that's not my point.

I thought of this quote during church today… don't know exactly when (one of those random things I sketch in the margin…)
What I do know is that in my mind I connected it to a completely different bible passage than I ever have. What jumped to mind was 1 Corinthians 13, yeah, the love chapter:
Here's verses 1-3

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."

This is a kind of depressing way to look at the awesome quote from Maximus… but it's true. What we do can be completely, utterly unimportant eternally if it is not done of love. It can echo off the walls like a gong, but be just that, a sound, a reverberation, an echo. Personally, I want to live for more than an echo in eternity… even an eternal echo, since it is an echo's nature to be quieter with each reflection anyway.

Everything in this life will pass away. Our track record of tithed time is not what our eternities are about. Our glory in battle is not what will define our eternity, but the love God has for us, and how it bleeds through to others, will.

The only thing that matters in this life is how we love. The charge, the greatest commandment given us as God's creation is to: "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt 22:37,39).

That is our purpose, to love God and then to love others. Christ is our image, our example to do so. What we experience of Christ is what we truly know of love. So, to pick on Maximus again, where is the echo, really?

1 Corinthians 13:12

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

Wow… that's awesome! Wait… "now we see in a mirror dimly… then I shall know fully," where's the echo? This life is the echo, this life is the shade. This life does not echo in eternity but becomes the reality of the reflection it is. If in this life we come to know Jesus as our Savior, then we shall fully know Him for eternity. In this life we can see and know so much of who God is and all His amazing wonders: but then we will know fully. Then we shall meet God face to face.

That doesn't sound like an echo to me, that's the whole orchestra and choir :-)

Because It Matters If It's Real.

I love the movie Inception. I think it is better than the Matrix… and I have been a Matrix fan for a long time… (the first movie only… really)

The first time I watched Inception, however, I was not so enamored… not until a couple minutes after the movie.
That was when I realized the whole movie answers a question that a creepy looking old guy gives somewhere near the beginning:

"They come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise, huh?"

In the most powerful quote in the movie to me, Cobb, the main character does "say otherwise". Talking to his mind's projection of his beloved, though dead, wife, he says:

"I wish. I wish more than anything. But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all you perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough."

Real matters. Cobb does not love his mind's image of his wife, we should not care simply for what the world is to us, but for what it truly is. Our worlds do not, should not, cannot, be completely our constructions, our "dreams" our eternal "limbo" of creating our own comforts and desires.

We live in a real world, and I love this movie because it strikes a resonant cord in my mind: Truth exists, it can be known, it matters.

However, the movie also shows a flip side to the whole bargain: Faith is part and parcel of knowledge. Cobb can "know" that he is in the real world… but to know that he has to accept it. He can test it, he does test it, but he has to believe it too. His wife chooses to believe a lie, and she takes her own life. He chooses to live with that pain, to not try to escape reality, but to face it down with all its imperfections and all its brokenness.

This is why I love the movie Inception. This is how they make you cheer for a hired gun who messes with people's minds and steals from where no man should go. Cobb is screwed up… the ideas of inception and extraction are screwed up… but in the area of of the question "does reality matter?" -- I think the movie has its head screwed on just right :-)

Hard Question

There is a very hard, painful question that a nonbeliever can ask a believer, a question that any Christian has to recoil from a little before answering.
The question?
"Do you think I am going to hell?"

It's a hard one, because it's loaded like a flatbed truck carrying a house… or maybe like an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear payload.
The question is loaded to say "are you wishing hell upon me?"
Hopefully the truth is no such thing. Hopefully we don't think that at all. I pray that my heart would stay right and I would not look at someone and say, or think, "you're going to hell!"

But, wait a second, isn't that what the Bible says?
What about Psalm 1:5-6?
"Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish."

That says there's a judgement, and a different place for the "righteous" and the "wicked." And Jesus himself says in John 14:6
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

No other way to being with God eternally but Jesus Christ… that means everyone else isn't going to be… that means everyone else will be in hell…

So can I answer "no" to the question? Absolutely not! But I have to answer much more than "yes."

Yes, I know Christ is the only way to be right with God
Yes, I know God brings us to judgement for all that we have done
Yes, I know that anything else you have placed your faith in is nothing, and will come to nothing at the Judgement.
But, I know you can be changed
I know God has Grace for even you
I know God is able to reach anyone at any point in their life
I know that God can not only fix a soul's eternity, but also calm every fear, work through every failure, and illuminate even the darkest parts of any heart.
No, I don't wish hell on you
No, God does not desire hell for you
No, I don't think that you are broken beyond God's help
But I do know that you are broken rebel like I am and
Yes, hell is what, as rebellious creatures, we deserve.

Sadly, that's too long of an answer, sometimes, for someone asking this question to want to sit through. Also, it is nowhere near a perfect answer, but it's as good as I know at this moment.

(warning, the rest of this post is off the stated topic, but still interesting… to me)

Of course, the next unavoidable step is why God allowed humanity to revolt at all. I talked about that some in a previous post (Problem of Evil), but there is one more thing I feel I should say here:

When you ask how an all-knowing, all-powerful, and loving God can allow evil in His world, I would ask you to have a thought experiment from God's perspective for a second.
Being the Creator, outside of time and space, defined only by Himself (self-existing), what would it be like to create a temporal universe?
Well, here's the thing: I believe, being who He is, God experiences the past, present, and future of this world as one thing. He knows the sequence we experience, of course, but He sees us as things defined in relation to Him, not relation to time.
God didn't create the world, then see it fall, then plan to come and die to save it, then decide that it would end one day…
NO!
God created the world knowing that men would fall, knowing that He would die, knowing that we would be able to experience and love Him, having the choice for the opposite. God created the world in a way we cannot imagine, knowing, experiencing all of it, for He is outside of it all. God created in a temporal fashion (6 days), lived with us in a temporal fashion (33 years), but in both places He knew all of it.

God knows who will go to heaven and hell. God knew when he created the cosmos, when as yet the earth was formless and void. God knew what each hair on your head would be like at that moment too, long before you were formless and void in your mother's womb. God's the only one who knows.

Do I think any of my friends are going to hell?
I don't know, I hope not, I will not extrapolate, lives can change instantaneously.

So, what does this tell me? What am I to think and do because of all this?
What now?
"[Jesus Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me."
(Colossians 1:28-29)