My Song "More Like You"

 

Way, way back in 1973, I wrote a song for our wedding (for Linda) called "More Like You."

At the time, there was a Christian band called "The Archers." 

One of them, Gary Archer, picked up my song and recorded it with Light Records (1975).

Note my name - misspelled.  :) 

Guidelines for Civil Discourse: #1 - Love Others

Flicker, in my back yard

(I don't read what people post on social media. I don't have time to do this. I am on Facebook, but I unfollow everyone except my family and our church staff. 

I'm not on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumbler, Snapchat, or Whatsapp. Or anything.  

I post this blog to Facebook. Some respond to my blog, and I often interact with them. Thank you.

I have always been a culture-watcher. I am interested in human behavior. I study moral behavior and its sources like a madman. I am interested in how we Jesus-followers should live and act and have our being. 

I have personal experience with humans abusing each other verbally. Even among Christians. Even, sadly, at times, me.

This post is about how someone who claims to follow Jesus should conduct themselves, in any medium, in all human interaction.)

***

If you are a follower of Jesus, this is for us. 

Though the world fails in civility, we must engage in civil discourse.

Our foundation for civil discourse is love. We are to love others, in our behaviors. With the love of God, exemplified in Jesus. We must love like Jesus loves.

This includes those who disagree with us. It encompasses our enemies. They are among our "neighbors."

Love is the sign, the mark, that we are what we declare we are; viz., Christians. If we don't love, we have nothing. (See 1 Corinthians 13) If we don't love, we don't have our identity, at least in the eyes of others.

Jesus affirms the call to love in John 13:34-35:

“A new command I give you: 

Love one another. 

As I have loved you, 

so you must love one another. 

By this everyone will know 

that you are my disciples, 

if you love one another.”

People will know that you and I are with Jesus as we love one another. If we fail to do this, we will be considered to be far from Jesus. Or, people will think of Jesus through the lens of our rudeness and uncivility.

When Christians hate one another on social media, they fail to display what is supposed to be their distinguishing mark; viz., love. When we get disgusted, show irritation, demean, mock, slander, ridicule, or bully, we dishonor people made in God's image. And bring shame upon our Lord.

Francis Schaeffer, in his classic The Mark of the Christian, writes:

"We are to love our fellowmen, to love all men, in fact, as neighbors. 
All men bear the image of God. They have value, not because they are redeemed, but because they are God’s creation in God’s image. Modern man, who has rejected this, has no clue as to who he is, and because of this he can find no real value for himself or for other men. Hence, he downgrades the value of other men and produces the horrible thing we face today—a sick culture in which men treat men as inhuman, as machines. As Christians, however, we know the value of men. 
All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be loved even at great cost." (Schaeffer, pp. 15-16)

It is clear, is it not, that in all our discourse with people we are to love them. This is the higher ground, where Jesus was suspended on a cross.

The love principle applies even when in sharp disagreement with others. Remember that to love is not equivalent to affirmation, and that disagreement is not a justification for hatred.


***
My books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas 

What the Dark Night of the Soul Is, and Is Not, About

The "dark night of the soul," 

at least according to the originator of that phrase, 

is not about "going through a hard time."

At times I have read or heard someone say that they are going through a "dark night of the soul," and by this refer to a time of personal suffering. This is not the "dark night" St John of the Cross was speaking of in the classic The Dark Night of the Soul. This "dark night" is far more interesting than that.

To explain. John of the Cross was a mystic. "Mysticism" comes from the Greek word muo, which means "to conceal." There is, on mysticism, a way of "knowing" God that cannot be gained via things like the physical senses. Mystical literature speaks of such knowing as "dark knowledge."

John of the Cross, in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, writes: "The first night or purgation is of the sensual part of the soul, which is treated in the present stanza, and will be treated in the first part of this book. And the second is of the spiritual part; of this speaks the second stanza, which follows; and of this we shall treat likewise, in the second and the third part, with respect to the activity of the soul; and in the fourth part, with respect to its passivity." In the first "night" or "purgation" of the soul one's senses are "darkened." If one wants to know God in the sense of a God-encounter then this, precisely, cannot be gained via the five physical senses. The five senses must be darkened.

For John of the Cross, there are a series of darkenings, which then leave the soul without any of its ordinary tools to rely on in the quest to know and be known by God. This is good, since, for a mystic like John, God cannot in principle be known this way. John writes: "And the second night, or purification, pertains to those who are already proficient, occurring at the time when God desires to bring them to the state of union with God. And this latter night is a more obscure and dark and terrible purgation, as we shall say afterwards." (Ascent)

The soul is purged of its active senses, and eventually becomes passive, receptive. This is what Meister Eckhart means when he uses the word "Gelassenheit" to mean a passive "letting be," as opposed to an active grasping-after God. In the "Passive Night of the Senses" God purges the soul of its default ways of knowing. John calls this purgation "horrible," since in it we lose our normal way and can feel disoriented. But this is a holy disorientation, as we are being prepared for a unitive knowledge of God that cannot be gained with the separative physical senses. One experiences a great sense of loss, only to emerge into the greatest gain possible: knowledge of the ineffable God that comes to meet us.

The heart of John's "dark night" is expressed in these words:

"The night which we have called that of sense may and should be called a kind of correction and restraint of the desire rather than purgation. The reason is that all the imperfections and disorders of the sensual part have their strength and root in the spirit, where all habits, both good and bad, are brought into subjection, and thus, until these are purged, the rebellions and depravities of sense cannot be purged thoroughly."

I have long been attracted to the mystical tradition, for the following reasons.

1. Surely knowledge of God cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language.
2. Surely God, in his essence, is beyond what our abilties can grasp.
3. If "God's ways are not our ways," then it seems reasonable to think that there are limits to our human abilities when it comes to knowing the ways of God.
4. I have often had the sense, especially in times of praying, that I am meeting God in a way that is both "beyond" me and more real than sense experience.
5. Weekly, I talk with ordinary non-theologians in my congregation, who describe encounters with God that are both real and indescribable (in essence).
6. Jesus' words in John chapters 14-17 imply a strong "in us" and "in God" experience that is better captured, often, in Christian mystical literature than in the evangelical hyper-rational environment I was trained in and loved. And, btw, still love.

The greatest danger of over-emphasizing mystical experience of God is that, at times, the mystical literature describes the contemplative union with God as an ontological union, a union of being. Here one gets "lost in God" to the extent that one is metaphysically the same as God. Surely, on Christian theism, there remains a metaphysical distance between us and God. Mysticism, at its extremes, conflates us and God so that we are ontologically one. I do not think that is true, nor do I find it helpful.

On another note, when I read the early pages of Dark Night I see similarities between the way our church and others worship. Reading sections of Dark Night remind me of worship songs that are sung by the beloved to the Lover of our souls. To me, that is very good, since there is a hymn-culture that more stresses the distance between us and God, thus taking the Emmanuel-encounter out of the church.

Breaking Free from Institutional Measures of Success

(Ladybug, in my home office)

Dallas Willard's interview on measuring spiritual growth among Jesus-followers is prophetic and subversive (the two often go together!). Many churches, he says, measure the wrong things, "like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts."

Why don't churches measure spiritual effectiveness by these things? Because these qualities are "not worth bragging about." "We'd rather focus on institutional measures of success."

People in today's American churches are suffering, especially pastors and their families, because "much of North America and Europe has bought into a version of Christianity that does not include life in the kingdom of God as a disciple of Jesus Christ. They are trying to work a system that doesn't work. Without transformation within the church, pastors are the ones who get beat up. That is why there is a constant flood of them out of the pastorate. But they are not the only ones. New people are entering the church, but a lot are also leaving. Disappointed Christians fill the landscape because we've not taken discipleship seriously."

Churches, and Jesus-followers, must change their definition of "success." Or, perhaps, abandon it entirely. Like Mother Teresa, who once said, "I am not trying to be successful. I'm trying to be faithful."

"They need to have a vision of success rooted in spiritual terms, determined by the vitality of a pastor's own spiritual life and his capacity to pass that on to others. When pastors don't have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success—models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture. They begin to think their job is managing a set of ministry activities and success is about getting more people to engage those activities. Pastors, and those they lead, need to be set free from that belief."

***

My Books

 Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

Deconstructing Progressive Christianity

31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship

31 Letters to the Church on Praying

The Great Invasion: 31 Days of Christmas 

Rejecting "Church" as an Entertainment Center

                                                            (Sterling State Park, Lake Erie)

I like this little interview with Chuck Swindoll at christianitytoday.com. Swindoll says that, when church becomes an entertainment center, biblical literacy is the first casualty. 

I'm so thankful we're not putting money into entertaining the people at Redeemer. A main goal of mine is to increase Jesus-literacy. So, we preached through the four gospels over a period of seven years. Now, we are finishing preaching and teaching through the book of Hebrews. 

The world doesn't offer this. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "When the church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first."

Church leaders don't want to be hated, so they focus on attracting more and more people.  Swindoll says: "But if we're here to offer something the world can't provide, why would I want to copy the world? There is plenty of television. There are plenty of talk shows. There are plenty of comedians. But there is not plenty of worship of the true and living God."

Besides, "Jesus never suggested that crowds were the goal. He never addresses getting your church to grow. Never. So why is that the emphasis today?" 

The Peace that Transcends All Circumstances

                                                                    (Flowers, in our front yard.)

A few years ago Linda and I vacationed in Cape May, New Jersey. It's a beautiful area, with a great beach on the ocean. We stayed in a very cool, old Victorian Bed & Breakfast. Cape May has wonderful restaurants and places to see and shop. All was well except... the weather. It was cold and rainy. The circumstances were not what we wanted, because what we really like is sitting under the sun on the beach, and reading and talkin,g and listening to the sound of the crashing waves.

Such is life. Circumstances often do not go one's way. In spite of the conditions, Linda and I enjoyed Cape May, and had inner peace.

The good news is that the "fruit of the Spirit" in Galatians 5:22-23 is not circumstance-dependent. Part of that fruit is "peace." There is an inner well-being available to all who live the Jesus-connected life. This inner well-being does not rise and fall with the external environment. It's more like a thermostat than a thermometer; it is non-reactive and consistent. 

When I abide in Christ, my inner thermostat is set to "peace," even though my outer thermometer is reading "cold."

Howard Thurman writes:

"Here we come upon the most interesting aspect of personal freedom - the living of one's life with confidence that transcends discouragement and despair. This means that one does not have to depend upon the favorable circumstances, the fortuitous "break," the applause, approval, and felicitation of friends, as important as these are...
"Seek ye first the rule of God," the Master says. And after that? The key that one needs for one's peace is in the heart. There can be no personal freedom where there is not an initial inner surrender."
- 40-Day Journey with Howard Thurman, 64

Surrender your entire being to the rule of Christ today, and discover the peace that transcends all circumstances.

5 American Myths of Successful Churches

'91 Ford Aerostar

I'm theologically in sync with Joseph Mattera's "Five American Myths of Successful Churches and Ministries." He writes: "Many of the ways American churches measures success are in fact direct violations of the teachings of Jesus in Matthew 23. In this passage Jesus speaks against people loving titles, celebrity status, and desiring prominent places in public events."

Much of this has to do with the metricization of the Church.

The 5 Myths are:


1. The size of the church shows success. The American church often measures itself numerically and monetarily. The early church did not. Paul's leading question to his churches (Ephesus, et. al.) was not: "How big is your church? 

Mattera writes: 

"Unfortunately many saints with low self-esteem or ego need to attend one of these “successful” churches because they feel it gives them status. This is a far cry from the early church that numbered in the thousands after the Day of Pentecost because of mass conversions and the contemporary persecuted church (for example, in Muslim nations) who often meet from house-to-house, break bread, and covenant with one another as brothers and sisters, and are willing to risk their lives for the gospel by being baptized! I am all for explosive church growth: the kind of church growth that involves mostly new converts rather than transfer growth."

Yes. If you see a new church that is "growing" rapidly, it's not real growth, but transfer growth (people shifting churches).

2. The amount of the budget shows success. The apostle Paul never asked his churches "What's the size of your budget?" As if budget size was some indicator of "success!" How could that be, since most of the first churches had no money, By American cultural standards they were failures.

3. The celebrity status of the leader shows success. In America we have a celebrity cult. In the early church people like the apostle Paul were cultural unknowns. So what? It did not seem to bother Paul that he was not posterized. Mattera writes: 

"In the past 30-plus years of full-time ministry I have seen many people who call themselves apostle, bishop, chaplain, or reverend who did not have the ministry, training, or the fruit to back it up." 

4. The title of the leader shows success. "Many believers equate success with the status that comes with a title." "Title" is the lowest level of leadership.

5. The affluent lifestyle of the leader shows success. For many years I drove a rusted out '91 Ford Aerostar. Did this mean I was failing as a pastor? And what about Jesus, who didn't even have a roof over his head?

Why People Try to Control Others

 

(Sterling State Park, on Lake Erie, in Monroe)

I still have control issues. This is not good.

I meet a lot of control freaks and controlees. Many marriages are the coming together of these anti-types. Every control freak needs a controlee, and vice versa. I call these "master/slave" marriages.

Most people, if not all, struggle with control issues. I have, and at times still do. The Control vs. Trust polarity is an ontological reality; i.e., it lies at the base of human personhood. 

"Control" is the antithesis of "trust." Trust is huge in the Jesus-life, and life in general, since we control so very, very little.

Keith Miller writes: "control is the major factor in destroying intimate relationships." (Compelled to Control: Recovering Intimacy in Broken Relationships., p. 7) Why do we do this? Why try to control others when we can't control our own selves, and are often out of control? Miller writes:

"The fear of being revealed as a failure, as not being "enough" somehow, is a primary feeling that leads to the compulsion to control other people. When we were children, the fear of being inadequate and shameful was tied to our terror of being deserted or rejected and we had little control over getting what we needed. To counteract that basic terror, we have evidently been trying all our lives in various ways to "get control" of life. This includes controlling other people." (14)

A controlling person is an un-free person. Insecurity is the emblem of control. I like the way Richard Foster once put this: God wants to free us from the terrible burden of always having to get our own way. "Walking in freedom" and "controlling other people" ("always getting our own way") are oppositional. 

The control freak crushes the spirit of the other person, who wears a sign saying, "Crush me." "I'm in control of you"/"Control me" - "I'm in control of you"/"Control me" -  this is the cycle that destroys marriages and relationships. The antidote is trust. Because where trust is, control is not. 

Begin breaking free by learning trust in God. Pray to be less controlling than you now are. Pray to be less controlled by others than you now are. Trust God even when you don't trust other people. Understand this: You will rarely have all your ducks in a row, especially when it comes to people.

Go basic, repeating and praying Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;

    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.

Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;

    he’s the one who will keep you on track.

Don’t assume that you know it all.

    Run to God! Run from evil! 

(The Message) 

To trust God when around distrustful people is an experiential act of freedom. God can use you to be the catalyst that heals others of their fear of not measuring up.

The Bible - Read Slowly, Go Deep

 

 

    (Levi and family in our backyard.)

I am a reader.

A slow reader. 

I read meditatively, even the newspaper.

I slow-read the Bible. In brief pieces.

I have always done it this way, over my fifty-three years as a follower of Jesus.

I have never been able to "read the Bible in one year." I would never keep up! I am the tortoise, not the hare. Which means I get there, slowly, and for me deeply, over time.

I have found that this slow, meditative reading of the Word builds something solid in my soul, over time. God-knowledge accrues. 

Dallas Willard writes, "If you read the Bible, desiring that God’s revealed will should be true for you, do not try to read a great deal at once." (Willard, Dallas. Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, p. 242)

Speed Worship, and the Endless Desire Where There Is No Need

 

                                                             (One of my slow places.)

So many books, so little time to read them. 

I added Columbia University religion professor Mark Taylor's new book to my amazon wish list - Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have So Little Left. I was pointed to this book by Taylor's essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education - "Speed Kills: Fast Is Never Fast Enough." Taylor's essay is a nice complement to another book I'm currently reading - Slow Church: Cultivating Community In the Patient Way of Jesus. 

I like slow. Slow living increases productivity. Speed living kills the soul. I'm doing some "slow" today and experiencing life. All that's missing is some succulent Slow's BBQ, whose owners understand there are certain things in life that should not be microwaved. 

"Slow" syncs with my minimalist theology.

Our culture is obsessed with speed. The idea that speedy technology would give us more leisure time was an illusion. Many are trapped within the prisons of their quick-gadgets. Taylor writes: "Contrary to expectation, the technologies that were supposed to liberate us now enslave us, networks that were supposed to unite us now divide us, and technologies that were supposed to save time leave us no time for ourselves."

Social status used to be measured by how little a person works; now it is measured by how much a person works. "If you are not constantly connected, you are unimportant; if you willingly unplug to recuperate, play, or even do nothing, you become an expendable slacker."

The worship of fastness has created its own value system. "Good" is understood by words like individualism, utility, efficiency, productivity, competition, consumption, and speed. The Speed Regime has repressed values like sustainability, community, cooperation, generosity, patience, subtlety, deliberation, reflection, and slowness. Taylor argues that we must recover these repressed values to avoid a psychological, social, economic, and ecological meltdown.

"Speed," writes Taylor, "has limits. As acceleration accelerates, individuals, societies, economies, and even the environment approach meltdown. We have been conned into worshiping speed by an economic system that creates endless desire where there is no need."

There's a lot of helpful analysis in Taylor's essay. All who are concerned that the American Church has been seduced into the Babylonian Captivity of Speed should take note. By the rivers of this Babylon we've laid our instruments down, not because we have no songs to sing, but because we have no time to sing them.