PG-13 Small Groups

My pastor talked about rape and murder in his sermon yesterday. So there's that. I got an email last night from my good friend Rob who brings his five-year-old and six-year-old to service. He was concerned about having to explain rape to his little girl. I don't blame him. There's a tricky balance in the Sunday services between family and authenticity, between the raw and beautiful nature of gospel and the innocence of children. The worship team at my church does a terrific job of walking that line and I'm not about to jump into that quagmire. But Rob's email made me ask the same question about small groups. Is your small group Rated G? I hope not.

Don't get me wrong. I love to hear about small groups who include kids. What could be more formative for a child than watching her parents struggle with the word of God and their community of friends? Small groups can be a powerful tool in building stronger families.

But if your small group never addresses mature themes, I have to question how mature it is. I'm not sure you can truly embrace the gospel of the Incarnate God without at least talking about the messed up world he came to save. Adults sometimes need to talk about adult issues and, out of respect for the innocence of childhood, leave kids out. The mission of the small groups ministry at my church is "growing deep relationships that advance the kingdom of God in dark places." There are dark places in the lives of the people in your group — places of lust, greed, pride, and fear. If you're not talking about them, that doesn't mean they don't exist. And if your group has managed to escape the dark places for a while, that's still no excuse for fleeing from them. To be ambassadors of light in a dark world means we enter into the darkness. It means we need to expose their our to the horrors of sex trafficking and abortion and mental illness and terminal illness. It means we have to leave our Sunday best behind the way Jesus left behind his heavenly robe, and wade out into the filth that covers the land of our sojourn.

That's a hard idea to embrace. It means small group won't always equate to comfort. Small group should always be a safe place, but not always a comfortable one. And here's an even harder word: the choice is yours. You're a grown-up. You have all the authority and ability you need to decide when and how to include kids. Is someone in your group struggling with a particularly R-rated issue? Is your group seeking to bless someone who is not a good example for your kids? If so, then it's absolutely appropriate to separate from the kids for a while.

For the most part, our church has decided that weekend worship services are rated PG-13. We are deeply committed to addressing real issues in a broken world. We are forging new pathways in care for victims of human trafficking, in poverty and homelessness. So we're going to talk nitty-gritty on Sunday. We won't be offensive or profane, but we also won't whitewash the darkness. I hope your small group will too.

The light of the gospel shines brightest and most beautifully against the backdrop of a dark world. As the children's song says, let's "let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!"

Declining Church

This morning, my friend Jason sent me a link to this article about declining American church attendance. He might as well have sent me an article that says the sun came up today. The report begins with the same kind of stats we've heard before:

• Church attendance in America has dropped to 36 percent of the population
• Only two in 10 millennials believe church is important
• Almost 60 percent of millennials who grew up in church have dropped out
• Even among elders (those older than 68) only 40 percent believe church is very important. 

Yawn. Church attendance is declining. We get it.

But the second half of the article woke me from my bad-stat-induced coma, because the researchers asked "Why?" Remarkably, here's what they found: the number one reason people come to church is…

To be closer to God.

Far above any other reason, consistent across all demographics, people come to church to meet God. And yet the research says they're not finding him there. "Fewer than two out of 10 churchgoers feel close to God on even a monthly basis."

If our churches aren't facilitating an encounter with God, then what are we doing? Entertaining? Educating? Indoctrinating? Those may be valid pursuits, depending on your faith tradition, but they miss the mark because they miss the market. Believe it or not, the church market is demanding God! People want to encounter the transcendent, eternal, supernatural, spiritual God. I can understand how churches would not give the people what they wanted if the people wanted heresy or compromise or amusement. But they don't! The market demands God and we supply something else.

Think about this another way. Imagine a world where millions of people desperately want vegetables; where everyone likes the taste of vegetables more than meat or bread or even sweets. Imagine people shopping from store to store looking for vegetables. There are websites about where to find the best vegetables. There are podcasts that describe the right way to eat vegetables. There are clubs devoted to growing your own vegetables. There are classes about finding vegetables, using vegetable substitutes, denying the existence of vegetables, and presenting vegetables to others. Now imagine that you're a vegetable farmer. Every week you gather large crowds of these vegetable-craving consumers. And what do you tell them?

"Here's a Twinkie."

I worry that we're doing the same thing: offering people sugary processed filler rather than the real thing.

Now, all of this ignores an important complication: churches can't manufacture experiences with God the way farmers grow vegetables. Church leaders are in the awkward position of facing a consumer demand that they can't meet. God is sovereign and he'll draw people closer to him when and if he pleases. But I wonder if we could at least get out of his way. I wonder if we could stop stepping in to meet the demand with preachers or programs or presentations. I wonder if we should invite the Holy Spirit to show up now and then just wait to see if he does. What would our small groups and church services look like then?

There's another factor being ignored here; namely, what counts as "church". Based on the article, my guess is that when respondents talked about "going to church" they had in mind attendance at a large group worship service. This is also reflected in the reasons they go. Only 10 percent of respondents said they go to church to find community. In our culture, "church" means a performance — an event with a stage and amplification and seating in rows. No wonder people don't find what they're looking for there. In my experience, it is difficult to move closer to God or others in a large group. Almost all of my spiritual growth has happened in circles and chairs — in private prayer or in community with a few brothers and sisters. That's church.

Maybe we shouldn't care much if more and more Americans skip big-stage-performance-church. Would we be happy instead if more and more Americans moved closer to God and his people? Would we be happy if we got the "why" right but the "how" changed? Those are tough questions, but at least they're not boring ones.

Small Groups Chaplains

I was reading in one of my pastor books* about hospital chaplains. The author was telling the story of her service as a hospital chaplain that was part of her seminary training. Nervous, overwhelmed and unsure of herself, this is what happened the first time she was summoned to the emergency room:

“I was paged?” I said to the security guard at the ER desk. She offered me a sarcastic “congratulations” look and went back to her crossword. 

“Uh, I’m from the chaplain’s office?” I said. She pointed to a door that said NO ADMITTANCE and then looked at me like I was an idiot. Apparently my name badge allowed me to go through doors like that. 

I finally found a nurse who would make eye contact with me. I said I was paged, but that I wasn’t sure what for. 

“Trauma one,” she said. 

Inside the trauma room, a nurse was cutting the clothes off a motionless man in his fifties on a table; tubes were coming out of his mouth and arms. Doctors started doing things to him not meant for my eyes and sorely misrepresented on TV shows. Another nurse was hooking things up to him while a doctor put on gloves and motioned for paddles, which he then placed into the motionless man’s freshly cracked– open chest. 

A nurse stepped back to where I was standing, and I leaned over to her. “Everyone seems to have a job, but what am I doing here?”

She looked at my badge and said, “Your job is to be aware of God’s presence in the room while we do our jobs.” **

I've heard my pastor say that he always looks for Jesus when he goes on hospital visits. He looks for the topic, pain, relationship, fear or opportunity where Jesus seems to be camped out, and he just prays about that. So I was taking mental note about how to better minister on hospital visits and then it hit me like a runaway gurney: this is not about hospital visits. This is not just the job of a pastor or chaplain, it's the job of every small group leader.

God is present every time your group meets. Jesus said, "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”*** The job of the leader is just to look for him. And know that you'll probably find him where people are hurting. As gently as possible, probe the places where people seem to be open to God's presence.

"I know you're hurting. I want you to know you're not alone."

"What do you think God is saying through this?"

"What worries you about taking the next step?"

I have a suspicion that if Jesus were incarnate in DFW in the year 2014, he would spend a lot of time at the Parkland ER and Lew Sterrett Justice Center. He would go to the places where people are hurting, to the places where people need hope. Those places exist in every small group at IBC because we all have personal wounds and prisons.

Where are the dark corners of your small group? Where can you see Jesus moving? This week, as your group members crack open their chests to share about their hearts, their lives, and their relationship to God's word, try to be aware of God's presence in the room.

And be grateful you didn't have to scrub in.





* This is a designation freely given to any book read by a pastor. I learned this from the pastor in the church where I grew up. If it's on the shelf in a pastor's study, Fifty Shades of Gray is a pastor book.

** Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

*** Matt. 18:20

Cows & Community

Last week I came across an article that revealed recent research about cows. It turns out, cows learn better together. A researcher at the University of British Columbia named Charlotte Gaillard has actually been studying cow learning. She discovered that cows penned individually have more obstacles to assimilating new information than cows penned with a friend. 

Gaillard thinks that the social calves may have learned to be more behaviorally flexible. “Inflexibility in the individually-reared animals can be explained as the result of living in a more predictable environment; social contact introduces variability into the environment, and animals that are reared without this complexity may be less able to cope with it,” she says. By contextualizing her findings within other research, she hypothesizes that the isolated calves may actually have underdeveloped brain tissue in the prefrontal cortex compared with the social calves, or reduced interconnectedness between the prefrontal cortex and other areas of the brain. 

At the risk of comparing everyone reading this to livestock, may I draw a parallel with small groups? 

Christians learn better in herds. 

We need to "stick" small groupies between the scriptures on one hand and their friends on the other. The scriptures themselves encourage this approach. 

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.

— Prov. 15:22 

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

—Eccl. 4:12

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

—Prov. 27:17

So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

—Romans 7:4

As long as our small group members are "stuck" between those two sources of life — the scriptures and their Christian community — growth is more likely to happen. 

There's another example of growth in community from nature: bananas. My staff roll their eyes every time I share this example, but it's true. Christian are like bananas; they grow in bunches. There's a jingle I learned from watching Sesame Street with my kids.

One banana, two banana, one for me and one for you banana.

Count three or four or even more bananas

But bananas can't grow alone. 

This week when you open the Bible with your small group, think about the cows of British Columbia. Maybe raise a milk toast in honor of the spiritual lesson they're teaching us. What's true of cows and bananas is true of Christians. We don't grow alone. We grow in herds…bunches…small groups. 

My Olympic Commute

This may be a sign that I'm watching too much olympics coverage. This morning, like every other morning, I drove to work. But in my head I couldn't stop imagining how it would sound if the commentators from various olympic sports were broadcasting my commute.

SNOWBOARD
"Sweet! What a drive! That was a combo double-lane-change-McTwist / right-on-red. Super-hard to do and he nailed it! Flaming pistols of awesome-sauce!"

CURLING
"Dan, as we watch Ryan curl away from the house, I think we should remind our viewers how difficult this is. I know driving to work looks easy but it's harder than it looks. It really is a sport. Really."

FIGURE SKATING
"Peggy, notice how the song on the radio crescendos perfectly in time with that acceleration to the on-ramp. So hard to do and Ryan pulls it off with elegance and longing. You can really feel the emotion coming through here. He's forlorn and disconsolate. It's almost palpable. I think it's a reflection of his father-wound."

LUGE
"Well that run was three-one-hundredths of a second slower than his last commute, and I don't know why. Let's watch it again on replay, after which we will still have no idea."

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
"Ryan is driving uphill now! Uphill! Look-it! Uphill in the snow!"

CHRIS COLLINSWORTH
"I've been to a lot of sporting events. I asked Ryan if he was nervous about this commute. He looked cool and calm and said he has done this thousands of times. He's ready. Also, I've been to a lot of sporting events."

BOB COSTAS
"Was that a turn signal? I can't tell. I can't see anything."

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Conclusion

Lisa signed a check and touched the pen to her crooked lips. From the window in her office, she could see the picnicking lunch crowd in the park across the street — couples on blankets, nannies with children, puppies, frisbees, smiles. In half an hour, Harold would arrive with chicken salad sandwiches in a to-go sack, and they would take their place amid the flirting summer breezes. Lisa smiled and her smile ran downhill, toward a deeper sense of things. She glanced away from the window to the Matilda Thacker Award.

The award had arrived in the mail and she kept it on a shelf above her desk. It reminded her why she started the agency. Since that December night when the hotel valet thought she had lost her mind, Lisa's charity had grown to a national powerhouse. Macy's Mirror had provided counseling, career assistance, play therapy and plastic surgery for nine hundred women and girls, free of charge.

Macy was the girl with the newspaper bows. She had become Lisa's first client. Two weeks after Lisa had run into the street to retrieve Macy's bow — to pull a tattered, dirty symbol of beauty from the gutter — Macy was enrolled in school and shopping for uniforms at the department store with her name.

There had been no acceptance speech for the Matilda Thacker Award. In fact, Lisa had never again appeared before any crowd, nor in any plastic surgeon's office, nor, for that matter, at her own office at the newspaper. She had quit her job over the phone on the way to Macy's.

The war was over. Her cheek showed the broken lines of defeat. But her eyes told a different story. She kept the award on a shelf where every visitor to her office could see, propped up next to a photo of a homeless girl, a ribbon of newsprint, and an eyelash curler.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 8

The girl was seven, eight at the most. Even from across the street in the dim, pulsing lights of the city, Lisa could see her eyes — bright and eager and knowing. She wore a dress, which was impractical in her position, with torn pink stockings and black tennis shoes. There was a park across the street from the hotel where Harold and Lisa stopped at the valet stand and made one last check of clothing and makeup on their way into the banquet. Lisa noticed the girl right away. And the newspapers.

She sat on the ground in front of a green metal park bench which supported a mass of ragged clothing and shopping bags that looked to conceal an adult, lying down. Over the mass was a layered array of newspapers serving as a quilt. The girl was taking selections from the quilt, choosing them carefully for her purposes, and tying slips of the newsprint into bows. Three already adorned her matted hair, tossing in the December breeze in unison with the edges of the quilt.

It didn't help. Lisa wondered if the little girl knew that her bows didn't look pretty; they only served to make the scene she occupied more pathetic. Lisa saw her as a gawker sees a Monet. She stared at her idly but intensely and absently shook her head. Something told her she shouldn't think of the girl as an exhibit, as if the valet might become a docent and point out the detail in the girl's bright green, threadbare scarf. But she couldn't help it. She saw her from across the street, but she knew the scene perfectly.

She knew the most minor details — the endless arrangement of strips of pulp that never seemed to align just right; the frailty of the bows; the way they seemed less pretty over time; the gnawing awareness that the bows weren't working; the drive to ignore that awareness; the little girl's fear of looking at the fluttering heap of newsprint behind her because she knew what she would see. She would see someone she didn't understand. Forces larger than her, cosmic and random and unexplained and unfair. Regret. Rejection in the form of charity. Ugliness.

One of the bows blew away from the girl's fingers and both of them watched it tumble down the street, then crash and crumple into the gutter.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 7

The fifth surgery was a mistake, a step backward. It would take a sixth to undo the damage of the fifth. She only hoped the seventh would move the cause forward.

Harold had long since given up on dissuading her. He called from the closet to ask where his tie was. It had been years since he wore it — probably since the fated Christmas party of which they had stopped speaking.

Lisa was in front of the mirror again. She labored there for hours each day, either putting on or taking off various modules of her public face. Tonight, she started a half-hour early. She was going to stand in front of people tonight — hundreds of people — and smile and receive an award.

Ten months before, after stumping through hundreds of storefront businesses and scores of networking lunches, Lisa had landed an account that would set her for all of the surgeries she wanted. Grand Properties managed more than one hundred apartment communities, with more on the way. They would advertise for years to come. Grand had also provide other introductions until, on this night in December, Lisa was primping for a banquet where she would receive the Matilda Thacker Award for the paper's top salesperson.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 6

The second plastic surgeon declared the second surgery a success, though Lisa wanted a second opinion. The skin looked stretched to her. The second opinion on the second surgery led to a second job, this one in retail, and a third surgery. The third surgery begat a third job and the fourth begat a fourth. The fourth job was selling newspaper advertising.

It was a dying breed, the newspaper advertiser. A diaspora of dreamers and traditionalists who believed they could make business dreams come true with a loss leader and a catchy slogan stamped onto paper as cheap as their promises. They had to know, Lisa thought, that only a very few people would actually read their ads and that every single copy would be burned, shredded, recycled or lining the cages of pet gerbils within a week. Surely they knew, but she wasn't going to tell them.

After all, she had made a habit of not stating the obvious. She did not cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" on her way through the Starbucks line. If they couldn't see what everyone else could see - if they couldn't admit the inevitable, then she wasn't going to try to persuade them.

To Lisa, this was progress; from the back corner cubical hidden from view to the out-front salesperson for a very public entity. To many local businesses, especially those like bondsman and personal injury attorneys with ties to lots of local news stories, she was the face of the paper.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 5

The most daunting opponent in Lisa's War On Ugly was not her cheek or her third cervical nerve: it was money. Harold had proved a caring nurse and a devoted lover. If her repulsiveness had ever affected him (how could it not? she thought) he never showed it. He assured her that he loved her inward beauty; he loved her for who she was, not what she looked like.

He was lying.

Or at least she imagined he was. She doubled her gym visits and started to look for work. Harold was doing many good things, but he wasn't funding her War.

Lisa hadn't worked since their wedding, seven years before. They had intended to start a family right way, but that hadn't materialized. Somehow, she imagined, her body was broken on the inside before the accident scarred the outside. Maybe, in a way, it was poetic. Maybe it was time for everyone to see how ugly her empty womb looked.

The first job that came along was in bookkeeping. She answered a want ad in the newspaper, got a call the next day, an interview the next week, and an offer the week after that. She took it. She had a bachelor's degree in accounting, though she had been convinced she would never use it. Her new employer was a family-owned plastics company that manufactured the black caps on syringe plungers. The accounting department had three members. When her new boss, Oscar, walked her to her cubical on the first day, she immediately descended to a darker mood.

Her cube was in the back corner of an office bullpen, hidden by windowless walls and empty desks. She was two cubes removed from her nearest coworker. As if to explain, Oscar pointed out that this cubical was closest to the filing cabinets she would use most.

On Oscar's tour of the facility, they passed the sales department where shiny-haired girls in pencil skirts were zipping up a trade show booth. They shook her hand and smiled faintly, each whispering a silent prayer of gratitude, Lisa suspected, that they weren't deformed.

She worked there for six months and put all her earnings into a health savings account. She scheduled the second surgery before giving her notice. She was packing a cardboard box with the few personal items from her desk when she pondered that the surgery would require an injection. In the consultation with the surgeon the week before, she had learned that Botox would be used. She had worked for six months helping a company make little plastic discs for the right to use one of them on herself. She smirked crookedly, lifted the box, and walked away from her desk. She didn't look back.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 4

The first surgery was a gift. Her church raised half the cost and a plastic-surgeon-friend-of-a-friend discounted the rest.

The improvement was dramatic. Her friends, who always seemed to see the bright side of Lisa's devastation, used phrases like, "beautiful", "natural" and "good as new."

They were liars.

Lisa knew her face wasn't "good as new." "Less hideous" would have been more accurate. The cheek held higher and appeared firmer, but it still drooped unnaturally, and the tell-tale ripples of loose skin under her eye still winked at her in the mirror.

She thanked the doctor and the church, and secretly resolved to continue her campaign.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 3

It was a Sunday night when the truth came to Lisa that attitudes were shifting from sympathy to apathy. She was in the bathroom alone, undertaking the tedious process of removing makeup from her jowl. It had been four months since the accident and she no longer expected to see beauty when she looked in the mirror. She expected to see a sagging cheek pulled grotesquely away from the right eye socket. She expected to see an absence of symmetry reflecting the absence of a working third cervical nerve.

She sagged elsewhere too. With a full schedule of doctor visits and a full complement of stinging stares from the pony-tailed, firm-bodies girls at the gym, exercise had become difficult. Her shoulders slumped. Her hair seemed to clump and drape like willow leaves in rain. Her mirrored ghost appeared as more of a puddle than a person — slack, and lifeless, stretching and distorting its reflection in a polluted medium with little radiating ripples marking the violence.

She had been to church that day. There were the usual hugs and well-wishes from people she had known for decades. But there was a difference in their approach, an ambivalence she barely noticed at the time but seemed impossible to ignore in front of the mirror.

They were distancing.

All the prayers and assurances for healing had gone silent, and now people weren't sure how to treat her, as she wasn't sure how she should be treated. As a pariah? As a project? As a charity case? A survivor? Was she to refuse to let it affect her? Refuse to acknowledge the damage and refuse to let others do so? That was noble but disingenuous. The truth was that it did affect her, all of her.

Was she to "own it" and address it? Come to it with a matter-of-fact acceptance that made it sound like she was talking about the weather? That appealed to her but, given that she was still crying over the ugliness every night, it hardly seemed possible.

She decided, or rather the face in the mirror decided and informed Lisa, that there would be no ignoring or owning. There would only be struggle; a dragging, tear-streaked siege of the ugliness. A prolonged campaign to get herself back in shape.

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 2

The least affected by the accident, at least physically, was the other driver. He walked away with only bruises, though his walk was short and ended at the back seat of a squad car. Thomas Thacker had been a city councilman for less than a month. At the Brookwood Country Club's Christmas party that night, he had celebrated much. The year had brought him to public office, to a corner office with his law firm, and to the manager's office at a luxury car dealership where he was handed the keys to a jet black XK. Thacker blew a point-two-three.

His mug shot was on the front page of the local newspaper that Lisa found folded on the table next to her hospital bed. Harold was asleep in a chair that didn't quite recline far enough. It was dark and quiet except for the ubiquitous beeping of medical machinery — a syncopated reminder that life is fragile. Lisa realized she was in a regular room. There were none of the curtains and gurneys and rushed voices of the ICU she remembered from the last time she was awake. And she realized that she couldn't turn her head, discouraged from moving by a faint instinctive memory and by a thick armor of bandage from chin to collar bone.

She reached for the newspaper and read the account of her near-death. Thacker hadn't seen the Meunsters until he hit them. Harold's instinctive steering had kept them on the road for another four hundred feet after the initial collision, only to be sideswiped again. The second collision had sent the Honda rolling. Thacker had been released on bail, but his future looked grim. Lisa stopped reading after the quote from the mayor.

"If you're the cause of an alcohol-related accident that nearly kills a young couple on their way home from a church Christmas party on Friday, you can't expect to sit in council chambers on Monday as if nothing ever happened."

A Wife Who Wants Beauty - Part 1

It was an eyelash curler that impaled Lisa Meunster's neck. The only thing metal in the car's cabin and it happened to be in her hand at the moment of impact. She wasn't using it, at least not for curling eyelashes. It was a prop for her story about Sylvia and Mary and an undercooked hamburger. Then it was a weapon.

When the Jaguar crushed the front quarter panel and snapped the from axle of the Meunster's Honda, Lisa was pushed forward and to the right against the passenger door, and the eyelash curler, one metal ring still looped around her finger, was jammed between the door handle and her neck. In the days that followed, doctors would explain to Lisa that the eyelash curler had pierced the sternocleidomasoid muscle and split the tiny gap between the internal and external jugular veins. She had been incredibly lucky, they would say. The eyelash curler had been inserted from the front and then levered to the right as if to pry her esophagus out the front of her neck. This prying motion had severed the third cervical nerve, and that was to be the source of Lisa's trouble, though she wouldn't know that for several days.

There were other lucky breaks, she would be told. It had been raining that evening and the car rolled into the median where soft soil slowed it more gradually than the freeway would have. Harold would be released from the hospital the same day. His fractured left tibia might never return to full strength; he would probably have a limp. But he was alive and he would be sitting by Lisa's ICU bed when she woke up.

"Thank God you had your seat belts on," they would say.
"Thank God the kids weren't with you."
"Thank God it wasn't worse."

When their car came to rest, Harold was unconscious and Lisa was hanging helplessly from her seat belt. Their Accord lay on its left side so that Lisa, in the passenger seat, was hoisted into the air. Getting ready for their third Christmas party that month, she had chosen a red dress with a lace hem that encircled her knees, and a white blazer. She felt a pain in her neck — she wasn't sure why — and realized, with surprising disgust given the circumstances, that her clothes were ruined. Bloody streaks of red made it look as if her dress was bleeding onto the white of her favorite blazer.

From her position there — in a ditch, hanging from a seat belt, looking at her unconscious husband, with an eyelash curler sticking out of her neck — Lisa could see through the moonroof toward the freeway they had just left and the city skyline behind. It twinkled. Broken glass was sprinkled with water and the lights blurred and pulsed. Lisa thought it looked exactly like one of the pre-loaded wallpapers on her smart phone, beautiful and out of focus.

The Theology of Christmas Poop

My pastor's sermon yesterday reminded me of a conversation about poop I had with my grade-schooler recently.

Now, I'm not insinuating that the sermon was a load of crap. In fact, I thought it was very good. I have heard crappy sermons before, but I don't think I've ever heard one from Dr. Andy McQuitty. No, what reminded me of the poop talk was Andy's analogy about physical and spiritual bread. Let me see if I can walk this fine line between blasphemy and boorishness to explain what I mean.

Andy talked about a passage in John 6 wherein Jesus feeds 5,000 men and then calls himself the "bread of life". Andy said that the common criticism of religion that it is for the weak is akin to saying that food is for the weak. We wouldn't call someone weak because they feed their body, nor should we call someone weak when they feed their soul. I agree with Andy's premise, but I think I would have come at it a different way. And that's where the poop comes in.

A few months ago, I had one of those conversations you can only have with a seven-year-old boy. My son asked me, "Dad, does God poop?" I had to think about the answer. Was there an answer to that question? And did the answer matter? Or should I just roll my eyes at the kid and tell him not to be silly. After a little reflection I was surprised to realize that, yes, there is a theological truth in the answer to my son's question, one that matters a great deal. I told him, "No, son. God doesn't poop. You know why he doesn't poop? Because he doesn't eat. And you know why he doesn't eat? Because God doesn't need food or water or air or any other source of life outside himself." God is entirely sovereign and self-sufficient. He doesn't rely on any provision. He doesn't need any fuel outside of himself. He is, in fact, the only being of which this is true.

Which brings me back to Andy's discussion of the Bread of Life. I think Andy is right, but I also agree with that old saying about religion. It is for the weak. It is for those of us — meaning all of us — who are not entirely self-sufficient.

Eating is an act of humility, just as is every habit of human survival. Every time we surrender to sleep, every time we draw a breath, every time we tuck into a quarter pounder with cheese, we are making a tiny confession that we are needy, we are temporal, we are weak, we are not God. Isn't it interesting how often we are reminded of our neediness — three times a day by growling stomachs, once a day by heavy eyelids, countless times by our emotions — and yet we can forget to acknowledge this most basic truth?

And that's where Andy's analogy was going. It would take a delusionally proud person to insist that they don't have the human weakness that requires food. And yet we are often proud enough to insist that we don't have the weakness that requires the Bread of Life.

There's one more angle to this theology of poop which is appropriate during yuletide. Christmas is the time when we celebrate that, among other things, God pooped. The all-sufficient, all-mighty, sovereign God of heaven — the Ancient of Days who had never known need, never lacked for food, never feared the future or fretted over scarcity — became human, humbled himself at his birth, at his family dinner table, and in ancient Palestinian latrines in order to offer us the Bread of Life.

Somewhere, between learned lectures of my pastor and the uncouth innocence of my son's potty ponderings, I was given a lesson about God and humankind and poop. If that's not a Christmas miracle, I don't know what is.

Victory In Clay Jars

Considering Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4 this morning:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 

Paul isn't foretelling a glorious victory here for the Christian. He doesn't foresee a triumphant parade for the believer overcoming the spiritual attacks and physical hardships of life. This would not pass muster with the modern American prophets of profit and progress. If you were to tease out a definition of Christian victory from Paul's words here it would be something like "survival". We are perplexed, persecuted and struck down, but not completely destroyed. So at least there's that. Paul is playing not to lose. He seems happy with the moral victory; at least it's not utter defeat. His message might be rendered thus:

"Life is hard for a Christian in the world. After all, it was hard for our leader so we shouldn't expect any different. But hunker down and stay alive. Bend but don't break. We can get through this thing."

Not exactly uplifting.

Of course, the circumstances surrounding Paul's writing are all temporary. A great victory does await when Jesus comes to make all things new. But I think there's some realism in Paul's words that make them appealing, if not inspiring; appealing, at least, to those among us whom life has beaten up.

Jesus said our enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy. Sometimes his destruction comes calamitously — as quick as a gunshot. But just as often he prefers to grind rather than explode. He lays siege to our souls, one disappointment, one failed relationship, one blunted hope, one tiny betrayal at a time. He means to starve us out — to weaken our constitution by degrees until surrender seems advisable, hope pitiable, destruction preferable.

I'm intrigued by the ways scripture instructs to resist evil. Sometimes, we are meant to confront it or expel it (1 Cor. 5:13). Other times, we are told to flee from it (1 Cor. 6:18). Sometimes, though, we are meant to bear it, to "stand up under it" (1 Cor. 10:13). It may be that the best way to combat the attack of a thousand tiny offenses is with a thousand tiny redemptions. So we kiss and make up again, we tuck our kids again, we show up to teach that Sunday school class again, we forgive again, choose love over selfishness again, we ignore the temptation again.

Paul knew what it was to suffer dramatically for the gospel, in shipwrecks and floggings and imprisonment. But he also knew what it's like to feel the siege works pressing in, to endure the daily drumming doldrums that drift us toward despair. And to both circumstances, his message was the same: this life is going to beat you up, especially if you stand for the gospel. Endure it with dignity. Your hope is its own victory.

And your victory will be sweet.

Our Father In Heaven

My friend Nat has three boys in their 20s. It scares me to death to talk to him. His sons are making decisions now that will affect the rest of their lives. They are facing situations that require wisdom and virtue and nuanced thought.

My kids can't decide which pants to wear.

As a parent, I feel responsible to help my kids mature, to grow in character and in capacity to face life's challenges. It occurs to me that God has faced the same challenges with his children.

Last week at church, my pastor explained some of the theological implications of the Last Supper. Jesus was replacing old ways with new. He put himself in the place of the paschal lamb; he is the final sacrifice. He put himself in place of Moses; he is leading the new exodus. He put himself in place of the passover feast; his body and blood sustain us. And he put himself in place of God's first position as our heavenly father — the lawgiver.

God's first interaction with humans (after he made them from dust and whatnot) was to give them a command: don't eat this fruit. In the years between Adam and Jesus, those heavenly laws had expanded to more than 600. The law was a big deal to the culture where Jesus ministered. And Jesus put himself in its place. He said, "A new law I give you: love one another."

What does this have to do with parenting? I think our experience of parenting reflects God's experience with the human race. We parents have to start our relationships with our children with rules focused on behavior: Don't touch that. Don't eat that. Don't hit your sister with that. Our kids don't always understand our rules, and sometimes they rebel against them. They have to learn to trust their parents to know more than they do, and to have their best interests at heart. But we don't want them to stay there. A child must grow not only to trust her parents, but to learn the reasons behind her parents' rules. The goal of parenting isn't just to breed obedient children, but to train up children beyond childish lessons — to become co-adults.

God has done the same thing. The entire sweep of the Bible is from law to grace, from a focus on behavior to a focus on our hearts, from adolescence to maturity, from the concrete to the abstract, from certainty to mystery. We, as a species, have been parented. We have been discipled into deeper understanding of God and his purposes in the world. We are called to higher, nobler, wiser responses to our Father than dumb obedience out of fear.

Of course there is one critical difference between us and God: we will never replace him. We will never put God in a celestial assisted living home and become our own gods to our own little creatures. We will forever be his children. He will always be wiser, higher, and better than us. And that's a good thing because sometimes we face decisions and situations that are, frankly, much too big for us — decisions that affect lives and fortunes and futures and kingdoms. And, if we're honest, some days we can't even decide which pants to wear.

Funeral Reminders

I've been to too many funerals lately. A month ago, a close friend buried his uncle. Two weeks ago, a family in my ministry buried their 11-year-old daughter. Then last week, my church laid to rest one of its patriarchs. Every one of those losses was painful. I watched all three families cry and grieve and sometimes struggle for breath. But as much as funerals are difficult and painful, they are also essential and good. Death is not good, but funerals can be. I never leave a funeral wishing I hadn't gone. Here's why.

Funerals remind us of our mortality. You wouldn't think we need reminding. After all, everyone knows they're going to die. But we often live like we've forgotten. Death no longer happens in our homes or even with our families. Death in our culture is often shrouded by beeping machines and IV tubes and waiting rooms and hospice care. We don't kill to eat and we don't witness death in our own species, so, most days, we go about our lives as if death weren't real.

I was encouraged when I saw that my friend burying his uncle brought his kids to the funeral. It's hard to talk to grade-schoolers about death. But then, it's hard to talk to 40-year-olds about death too. If we're going to live well, we're going to have to do hard things; we're going to have to face hard truths, like the truth that we are mortal.

At the funeral I went to last week, a friend of the deceased summarized his friend's character with three words: empathy, kindness and gratitude. I wondered what three words my friends will use to eulogize me someday. (Probably confusion, dereliction, and fetor, but that's another post.) That, I believe, is a good exercise — to imagine our eulogies, even to aspire to one. I wonder if we would all be better off if we held funerals for our living friends about once per decade, just as a sort-of report card on their lives. I like to think the eulogies would get better.

But funerals don't only force us to face death and encourage us to live well. They do something else.

Funerals remind us of our immortality. We need this second reminder more than the first. As much as we tend to forget our mortality, at least death is something we can see. We file past the open casket and cast our eyes upon the proof of our mortality. But we don't get to see eternity before we enter it. And oh, how we long for a glimpse! It tells us who we most truly are — not accidental collections of biological odds and ends, but players in a cosmic, eternal story; children of God. It tells us where we're going — not to the grave but to the sky, not to an end but to a beginning.

At last week's funeral, the pastor read C.S. Lewis — the last paragraph of the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia — which describes the experience of the Pevensie children after their death in a railway accident. (Yes, one of the most joyous and innocent stories in all of children's literature includes the death of children!)

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. 

If you've ever gone to a Christian funeral and you thought it was all about mourning and despair, you missed the point. It's a send-off, a farewell party, a great big emotional flower-laden arrivederci; a space in our togetherness, as Khalil Gibran would say. Because we will see them again, in a story that keeps getting better and better.

We serve the God of life; therefore life is good, death is bad, and humanity hounded by mortality is not the way things are supposed to be. But when we gather for a home-going we are reminded of truths that outlast life and a God who outshines death. And any gathering that accomplishes that is a good thing.

Author's Note

At the risk of over-explaining, I wanted to add a quick note regarding "A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill". It was so much fun to write! And I dug in to invest much more time and energy in it than the other stories in my summer writing exercise. Even so, I realize that I made several factual mistakes. The entirety of my climbing knowledge has been acquired from one book and a few Discovery Channel episodes. So mistakes were bound to happen. For instance, I know now that Mt. Everest can't be seen from any vantage point in Kathmandu. Also, I'm sure that, despite much Google-ing, I screwed up some of the information about camps, seasons, and equipment used in climbing the word's highest peak.

Still, I hope the ride was enjoyable. I meant to create a yin-and-yang sort-of duality to the story — Aaron's life for Dawa's; Turner's life for Robert's. Every scene has a pair of some kind, and the final scene refers to a kind-of mysterious balance.

So if you're a world-class climber and you were offended by my ignorance, I apologize. The best way to keep that from happening again is to take me to Nepal with you.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 6

Aaron lunged forward and hooked his ice axe around both of Turner's ankles. The Kiwi fell hard and slid off the mountain.

For an instant, Aaron was surprised at how smoothly the plan had worked. As expected, both sherpas had taken ill, but Turner's clients had insisted that he take them to the top. Aaron stepped in to offer his sherpa who could care for the clients, leaving Aaron and Turner to climb together behind. The only other obstacle had been detaching Turner from the fixed ropes. Just as dawn was breaking they had taken a knee to catch their breath just above the South Summit. From there, the climb was steep but smooth up to the Hillary Step. The path followed just a few feet on the Chinese side of a ridge that marked the top of an upturned slab of snow-covered granite the size of a city block. The slope pointed sharply toward a glacier four thousand feet below. Aaron looked above and behind. Four climbers could be seen in each direction, but none were close enough to see what would happen next; none close enough to assign blame. Aaron unclipped his climbing partner as he stood from the breather, waited for him to turn to face the mountain, then, without really considering his actions, without remorse, like an athlete who had trained for this very move, lunged at Turner's legs.

That's where it should have ended. Aaron was just about to exhale, just about to breathe deep for the first time since his father's death, just about to see the sunrise over endless craggy peaks. But that didn't happen. It couldn't. The mountain was out of balance and had to right itself.

Aaron felt his right foot jerk away from the snow. Turner had slowed his slide enough to fling his unclipped rope toward Aaron. It wrapped around his leg and now both men were trying to arrest their slide.

Aaron came level with Turner. They were stopped but clinging desperately to ice axes with barely a half inch of purchase. Turner's red cap had fallen off and his face was a pink smudge of blood and snow. He hissed at Aaron.

"What the hell, Aaron? What are you doing?"

Aaron struggled to kick into the ice with his crampons and refused to answer. Turner reached for him and Aaron slapped him away.

"I'm killing you. Like you killed my dad."

Turner stopped struggling and stared at Aaron, breathing hard, his exposed face already succumbing to frostbite. "I—"

Aaron tried to kick at Turner but his axe slipped and sent him six more feet down the slope, his head even with Turner's feet. He saw turner slide a foot back along the snow and then bring it forward fast to kick at him. Aaron grabbed the foot, one of the crampons digging into his wrist through the down parka.

"Let go, you little prick!" Turner screamed. "I swear I'll kill you too!"

Aaron reached higher and caught Turner's harness, then his shoulder. The Kiwi was flailing and swinging his free hand, but couldn't land a punch. Aaron lay on top of him now, both of them breathing hard through frozen blood and spittle. Turner jerked his head back square against Aaron's nose. Aaron felt the warmth of blood running over his beard and down the neck of his parka. "Why'd you do it?" he whispered, his head right next to Turner's ear.

Turner coughed and choked. Aaron's weight was pulling the parka against his throat. "Your dad was an asshole. He was sticking his nose in my business."

"You mean because he didn't want you bringing fat cat retirees up here?"

Turner jerked his head back again. He missed this time, but the jerk started another slide. They went twenty more feet down the mountain before Turner's axe stopped them again. Aaron looked over his shoulder. Two hundred feet below, the granite slab ended and the free fall began. There was a truce, both men trying to catch their breath. Aaron looked to his left. Sunlight was just reaching the jagged horizon now. Purple peaks tickled the bottom of a pink sky. An airliner glided silently over the mountains to their west, below them. Turner said, "I'm sorry," and Aaron thought he heard him cry.

The wind was calmer this far down from the ridge. It was quiet for several long minutes except for their breathing and Turner's faint whimpers. Aaron closed his eyes and breathed deep. He could smell his blood and his sweat and the ropes, the crisp, bitter cold, the sunlight and snow and harness and a broken handle and a dutch oven and a cheap, tinny stereo. He laughed.

Turner must have interpreted that as forgiveness; he said, "Let's get off this slope."

Aaron thought of his father, and of Dawa Lob-sang. He smiled again and reached for Turner's axe. "Yeah, he said. Let's do that." And he lifted the axe from the ice.

Turner bumped and jostled under him as they slid, a jarring ride like the stiff old suspension in a mud-caked blue 4Runner. Aaron watched the landscape speed past and felt himself sliding over washboard dirt roads. Turner's screams were pitched high and thin. They warbled and soared like a guitar solo. They were all together: Aaron and Trevor, Dawa and Dad. Sliding and bouncing into eternity, across sun-speckled granite, through daybreak breezes, to another mountain ramble with Steely Dan.