Tag: Choices

“You Don’t Know Me”

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“Truly, I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen… No one has ascended into Heaven except the one who descended from Heaven – the Son of Man.” John 3:10, 11

“You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent. You pore over the scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.” John 5:38-39

Between the recording of the prophets’ messages and the coming of Christ, the Jews learned to avoid the obvious false gods and maintain temple worship. Admonished by God’s judgement of insincerity, they sought to ensure never to deserve such an accusation again. Rather than passing off whatever they didn’t want, they micromanaged offerings down to calculating tithes even down to the smallest grain of spice. Rather than complain about observing inconvenient laws, they argued and fought over who could be the most specific about how to obey. Synagogues were built where copies of the law and prophets were housed in state and teachers drilled endless litanies of rules into the heads of the general population. Factions and subfactions developed as pride and ambition led leaders to insist on their own interpretations and specifics to laws that God had expressed only broadly. Resentment of unchecked oppression by enemies of God was transmuted into rabid insistence that God would raise up a warrior king to crush them and form a Jewish empire to rule Earth.

When, after centuries of relative silence from God, miracles greater than any performed by former prophets began to flood Judea, these pedantic and self-absorbed leaders could not face the admission that they had been wrong. Every shred of their status and power had been built upon their micromanagement of God’s precious gift, and the sight of God in the flesh flouting their entire national structure was too much for them.

They looked the Lord and Savior of all in the eye and challenged his right to perform the miracles they could not deny. They wrapped scrolls of copied scriptures in the trappings of deity but denounced the source of those words as a criminal for not meeting their mortal expectations. Rather than argue with them, he simply and sadly acknowledged that they didn’t know him. How could they? Blinded by human concerns, they had never seen him; determination never to be rebuked again, to be completely in control of their earthly presentation, had killed any possibility of recognition. Their own version of God had become their new idol; obedience to Christ meant disobedience to that idol, and they killed him for it.

“Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in Heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?” Then I will announce to them, “I never knew you.” Matthew 7:21-23

More

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In an extraordinary act of self-surrender, the Creator and Lord of galaxies and chromosomes bound Himself within the limits of the Earth He formed between His fingers. His tangible presence in our sphere of perception carried the culmination of thousands of years of guidance, the ultimate demonstration that could be absorbed in every physical sensory way. Although He exists in a vastness incomprehensible to finite minds, He became part of the universe He held in the palm of His hand.

Humanity – souls bound into finite bodies, lifespans, and planet – has no tangible ability to expand or escape those boundaries. What we can see, hear, and feel is limited by the necessity of seeing, hearing, and feeling. He became part of us and returned to boundlessness to prove tonus once and for all that there is more.

On the sixth day after the dawn, the first moment of actual time, God filled a clay sculpture with His own breath, containing part of His own infinite identity within the boundaries of the measured universe. Despite our inability to sense it in any tangible way, we are in identity more than our physical limitations. When we surrender the insecurity inherent in such uncomfortable limits, when we acknowledge our true selves as part of God Himself, we return in a way to having access to more. We transcend the need to sense in order to know, and begin to know and experience what it means to be more than our limits.

When God became part of us, His vast nature couldn’t help but have an effect on our boundaries. Battles occurring outside of our physical limitations began to be visible, the voices of demons speaking through human mouths and the structure of natural phenomena defied. Because the full force of His infinity had been brought into finity, the foundations of the universe rocked and humanity caught an unignorable glimpse of more. As part of His infinite nature, we have less shocking but still indelible effects on our physical bounds. Our acknowledgement of and surrender to our infinite identity allows God’s vastness to shine through us in our character, our choices, our attitides, and our treatment of others. When we choose to be more, we fill Earth and all humanity with more. In our more, God is tangible again.

Wait

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This morning I found myself reflecting on my husband’s and my history. When I was a teenager my family attended an annual lecture series at the small college he attended. The students were responsible for a lot of logistics as part of their education, so we would have run into each other multiple times over the course of those weeks. He was 18-20, I was 14-16; we weren’t on each other’s radar and have no memory of meeting at all during that time. Ten years later, a mutual friend introduced us, and the rest is history.

There have been times I wished we had met earlier, had all that time to spend together. The truth is that if we had met as kids we probably wouldn’t be together now. Those ten years shaped the characteristics that drew us together, characteristics that we did not possess as teenagers. We both went through things: failed relationships, first jobs, successes and failures, and other challenges that helped us discover independently who we were. By the time we found each other’s orbit we both understood what we were looking for and how to recognize it.

It is a lesson I have worked very hard to take to heart. So often we try to rush life, demanding whatever we want in the moment as if the course of our lives depends upon it. We push harder and harder, younger and younger, and look back on our lives with regret and bitterness that our rushed decisions didn’t produce the fruit we wanted. My life would look very different now without those ten years. I would likely have ended up marrying one of those failed relationships I mentioned and it would still have failed, or chasing one of those challenges in a fruitless search for fulfillment. Even if a second opportunity to meet had arisen I would likely have rejected it based on first impressions, never realizing the change time could produce.

There is a right time for the right things to happen in our lives. We have to learn to appreciate the wait. Waiting is not wasted time; it’s growing time. What do you choose to learn from your experiences? What changes are you willing to make after your failures? What do you learn about yourself from relationship challenges, and what characteristics do you learn to pursue? No one knows what they really want until they have experienced all of those aspects of life. Celebrate the wait.

The Faith of Free Will

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The story of Abraham and Lot is well known to many. When the herds grew too large to be supported together, Lot moved to the green river valley while Abraham continued to travel in the wilder, less fertile areas. There’s more to this story, however, that we should take the time to consider.

Abraham, in the culture of the time period, was head of the clan. Although Lot had his own household, he still lived under the authority of his uncle. Probably the closest comparison in our western culture would be the mayor of a small town, although theirs would have been a town composed of family and their employees. When the need for separation arose, Abraham had the right to rule as judge on the future of both his and Lot’s households. He could quite easily have ordered Lot to take his herds in any direction, ensured that Lot’s future took an approved form.

Instead, Abraham gave Lot not only a choice, but the first choice. Given the types of choices we see the younger man making after this moment, it’s likely that Abraham knew Lot’s penchant for bad decisions, but he still respected Lot’s need to choose. The reputation of the inhabitants of the river valley was well known and Abraham must have worried a great deal about the outcome of his nephew’s choice, but he knew that choice was out of his control.

We live in a society full of people trying to make other people’s choices for them. Each is convinced that his or her own choices are the right ones. If we didn’t think our own choices were right, we wouldn’t have made them, so this attitude is not a negative trait. It’s how we were designed. The problem only arises when we forget the simple fact that every other individual was designed the same way.

Abraham could not stop Lot from making the wrong choice. By doing so he would have denied God’s design of free will, of individual responsibility to choose. I’m sure, like all who have raised children to adulthood, he agonized and prayed for Lot’s heart to be more eternally focused. We know that he did his best to provide opportunities for his nephew to redirect; he even went so far as to raise an army to rescue Lot from being the spoils of war. When God made the decision to destroy the cities of the valley for their hardened rebellion, Abraham pleaded for Lot’s life despite all his nephew’s mistakes. But not once did he run in and drag Lot away or take control of his life.

Abraham recognized something that many of us have forgotten. Every choice carries its own consequence. God designed humans to learn through our choices. For example, if we touch something hot, it burns, and we learn not to touch hot things. No parent wants to see their child in pain, so often we go out of our way to prevent our little ones from the possibility of touching hot things. Sadly, our efforts fail, because ultimately choice is impossible to deny. Ingenuity and determination will only strengthen until the burn has been experienced and the lesson learned.

Abraham trusted God’s design of His children more than he trusted his own choices to be the right ones. Abraham had seen God use his own bad choices to teach him, help him grow into a stronger relationship with the Creator. Abraham had the faith to know that the God who created the free will of humans knew how to show Himself to us even through our poorest choices.

Free will, the responsibility of each for our own choices, is a frightening reality to accept. It requires accepting true individuality, the absolute certainty that every other person in the world will make choices that are different from ours. It requires accepting that every person in the world will make both right and wrong choices. Even more importantly, accepting free will requires the recognition that as a person my own choices will certainly not always be good ones. Free will requires faith in the One who created it. It requires certainty that He is greater than any human choice, and can use even our worst choices to call us closer to Him. Indeed, He already has.

Isaiah 53:7 (CSB): He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent before her shearers,
he did not open his mouth.

Luke 23:34 (CSB): Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.”

“They”

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We live in a society driven by the concept of “they.” When a problem arises, it’s “their” fault. When disagreements occur, “they” are wrong. When we feel insecure, “they” are oppressive. When we don’t get what we want, “they” are selfish. When dangers appear, “they” cause them.

Certainly there is fixed right and wrong, good and bad, so “they” seems to most a given separation. The problem with “they” is a deep desire for control born just after the beginning of time. “They” must believe what I believe, make me feel safe, give me what I want, do the same things I do, like the same things I like. If “they” are different from me in any way “they” must be immoral and immorality must be eliminated. “They” can’t have choices if “they” choose differently than I do.

God, the Creator of all things, gave us the ability to make choices. He also made each of us unique. That same Creator called for unity among His people, but that unity wasn’t to come from within ourselves. Because of His design, unity from ourselves is impossible.

At the beginning of time, when His children still had intimate connection with His spiritual realm, He imposed only one law: don’t eat from that tree. It wasn’t imposed to control His children; it existed to remind them to trust Him, to appreciate His love and provision. During the years following their failure of trust, His inspired writers recorded no laws set for humanity. Rather, those who longed for the intimacy that had been broken were rewarded by direct communication with Him, and sincere efforts at humility and commitment were accepted with great love.

Eventually, God set His people up as a physical nation, a country with physical boundaries. For them He set a system of laws, a structure. Most of those laws protected innocent life and property, and provided for the health and prosperity of the people. Although it was intended to be a theocracy, laws were even provided to govern the behavior and power of a king, because God knew humans would not be able to hold onto the idea of a King they could not see. The provisions made for worship rituals were not laws in the way we think of laws; they were instructions, provisions for the people to be able to approach a King who was beyond their reach. Indeed, all of the laws given on Sinai were for the purpose of education, a means of demonstrating the character of God for imitation by His people.

Throughout the history of that physical nation God continually spoke with grief of how its citizens misunderstood and mistreated that law. Instead of learning its deep principles of character, they treated it as arbitrary and inconvenient, even when they outwardly followed it. At times they even weaponized it against each other and against non-citizens of that nation, adding specifics and ignoring depth in order to gain power for themselves. When God Himself came in human form He broke the human misinterpretation of His law often, repeatedly emphasizing the lessons it was supposed to have taught. Then He performed the self-sacrifice that had always been the intended end of the physical country and its system of laws.

That sacrifice reinstated the intimate connection enjoyed in the beginning. It tore the curtain between the physical and the spiritual, allowing anyone willing to see the truth to participate in the spiritual while bound to the physical world. Such faithful individuals became citizens of a spiritual nation, a nation that exists as part of God Himself and therefore above the need for physical boundaries and laws. It simply is what it is, and it’s citizens are purified by it.

Sadly, the concept of “they” pervades the human organization perceived as the nation of God. Just like the citizens of the physical country, people today desire control, our own idea of order. Like children, and with a similar lack of experience, we organize a fictional world that makes us comfortable and assume that God agrees with us. Then, in our mistaken fervor, we weaponize our construction against “they,” and weep in confusion and frustration when our weapons backfire.

God addressed the concept of “they” throughout scripture. From that first breach in relationship, He told humans that one day He would restore it for any who wanted it. For the hundreds of years of the physical country He established, He told them over and over that His purpose was to restore true unity of purpose between Him and all of His creation. Even after He had torn the veil, He had to remind confused humanity that in His nation “they” does not exist. He is the unity, and all those who seek Him honestly and long to be a part of His character become citizens of His spiritual nation. These individuals reflect His perfection, the immutable Law of good without need of laws or rules. It is beyond our human understanding, a nation built on complete trust in Him and complete surrender of our own childish worlds.

When we surrender and step into that unity, we begin to understand the love God has for humanity. His children have never been “they,” an enemy to be destroyed. The only enemy is evil, the confusion that Satan seeds in us to pull us away from God and from each other. “They” is simply anyone who succumbs to confusion and forgets Him. “They” could quite easily be “me.”

The Judgment Sacrifice

“Be silent in the presence of the Lord God, for the day of the Lord is near. Indeed, the Lord has prepared a sacrifice; he has consecrated his guests.”

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Zephaniah wrote these words to a people oblivious to God, a people nearing a time of judgment and discipline. The people God had chosen to represent him had instead chosen to mock Him and rebel against Him. Though they would be disciplined in the short term, another five hundred years or more would pass before the day of the promised sacrifice.

When it came, the sacrifice proved far different than any nation had ever offered. God Himself hung on a criminal’s cross, while the curtain that had come to prevent the people’s recognition of their own corruption ripped in two. That moment began a judgment that will continue until the end of the world. In that moment the final victory of good over evil was revealed.

This judgment, this victory, is far from obvious to the wicked. Evil continues to be promoted, horrible acts continue to be perpetrated. The father of lies will never concede defeat as long as he sees opportunity to sow chaos and doubt. Self-absorbed humans will always fall for any excuse offered for refusal to acknowledge God. And always they will attack the faithful, the ones whose unwavering reflection of goodness and truth serves as an uncomfortable reminder of their loss.

Yet Zephaniah says that God’s people cannot be shamed. They are safe and separate from those who practice evil. They are exalted throughout the earth, victors and rulers where their enemies would make them slaves. They have no fear of enemies, and live in a peace their enemies will never experience. They are surrounded by a shield of living water born of that sacrifice; washed clean of evil as they stepped through it, they can no longer be stained by it.

For those who cling to evil and mock victory, however, that shield is made of impenetrable stone. They bash themselves against it with useless howls of pain, fear, and anger, destroying themselves with their own frenzy. Or they stand forlornly with their backs to a wall of water, besieged by their own army and doomed by their own fears.

The victory has been won. The judgment has been pronounced. Whether we suffer destructive defeat or celebrate eternal and perfect conquest depends on the side we have chosen. There is no neutral territory; we are either good, made perfect by the Judge Himself, or we are evil. And as Zephaniah warned the scornful people of Judah, our time to choose has a swiftly approaching end.

The Choice of a Servant

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In the law given at Mt. Sinai, God set economic rules for physical Israel to follow. These rules included a form of servitude designed to pay off a debt. This servitude was completely voluntary, and when the time allotted for the debt had expired, the individual returned to full freedom. On occasion, however, the servant would build a life in servitude based on love and respect for his employer, a life that being released would destroy. In that case the employer would take the servant before all the people and stamp a hole through the servant’s ear against the employer’s doorframe, symbolically binding the servant with the employer’s household forever. Some would say that this binding was a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of choice, but in reality it was the ultimate choice.

On a warm starry night many hundreds of years later, the God of Heaven arrived on Earth as a baby, completely dependent. He would live thirty-three years within restrictions vastly smaller than His own nature, serving His creation, paying a debt to them that they owed to Him. When the time of His earthly servitude expired, he allowed His creation to pierce Him, much as the servant’s ear was pierced, symbolically binding Him to His creation as He was bound to a wooden cross. Some would say that this binding was a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of divine choice, but in reality it was the ultimate choice.

My ear has not been bored with an awl, my body has not been nailed to a cross. These are pictures, symbols, provided to help us understand our purpose and our relationship with God. Our service to Him is not forced; we have always been and always will be given a choice. Choosing to serve Him is choosing to know Him, to become a part of His life as He becomes a part of mine. Unlike human employers, who may not inspire pleasant feelings in their employees, God calls His servants loved children. Once experienced, that love cannot be easily relinquished, and our souls are pierced, joined forever with His. Our wills bend to please Him because we return that incomprehensible, unshakable love to Him. Some would say that this bond is a sacrifice of freedom, a sacrifice of choice. In reality it is the ultimate choice, a choice that is never changing, never ending. It is the choice of a servant.

Blame Culture

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From the very beginning of the world, when Adam and Eve tried to deflect responsibility for their rebellion, humans have relied upon blame culture. Anything wrong is always someone or something else’s fault. Children do it to get out of trouble. Adults do it to avoid dealing with problems. Each generation blames whatever is unfamiliar or new for the failings of the next to avoid facing their own flaws.

Blame is easy. “It’s the company’s fault!” “It’s the phone’s fault!” “It’s my parent’s fault!” On and on it can go. I can’t be wrong because someone else did it. I can’t fix it because I didn’t do it. Why doesn’t someone fix the problem already?! You don’t understand my situation, which makes my problems your fault.

Sadly, blame culture creates side effects. Instead of looking for solutions, we begin looking for more problems. Instead of respecting innovation and hard work, we slaver for indifference or stagnation to feed our indignation. Instead of being strong we wallow in victimhood.

We are not and have never been victims of anything but our own selfishness and laziness. We scream about the dangers of and ban all use of technology that allows mass communication so that we never have to teach how to communicate properly. We bang our pitchforks against the doors of those with whom we disagree, ensuring that those doors remain barred, so that we never have to examine anyone’s motives or face disconcerting truths. We excoriate entire groups of people for the debauchery of our society so that we never have to sit down and answer our children’s hard questions. Despite having all the power and responsibility for change, we use it merely to bully others from a position of cowardice.

I refuse to participate in blame culture any longer. I refuse to leave my children vulnerable to victimhood by never teaching them how to rise. I refuse to consign my own or anyone else’s soul to eternal torment by avoiding the hard process of connection and understanding. God took responsibility for our salvation, knowing full well that we would never live up to His perfection, knowing that we would fight and rebel and take the easy way out over and over again. He placed His power in me and I am no victim; I have no one to blame but myself if I waste it, and neither does anyone else.

Forsaking Assembly

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“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is”

“not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people”

“not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing”

“not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing”

This passage may be one of the most memorized in scripture, at least among people I grew up listening to. It is whipped out like a hammer after a loose nail every time someone isn’t seen at the church building on a Sunday or Wednesday. “Don’t forsake the assembly!” is our usual misquote, with a capital A.

As the people of the Roman empire absorbed the implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus, they experienced a change so great within themselves that they could not identify with the lives they had previously led. They had been empty and became full. They had been meaningless and suddenly had a great purpose. They craved contact with those who shared the unfathomable joy of that revolution, and so they spent every possible moment in each other’s company.

Most of them worked long hours for a meager existence, and many had little to call their own, but what that had they shared. They spent the evening meal in each other’s homes, no matter how plain or poor the surroundings or the food. They socialized with each other on market days in the town square. They gathered informally in public forums or synagogues to read the scrolls available to them and help each other discover the identity of faith.

These transformed people were not a corporation with designated hours to assemble for work. They were a family, and they fed each other’s faith through their shared joy and unrelenting enthusiasm. Unfortunately, as the change they experienced shook the world around them, maintaining such intimate relationship became more and more difficult. Suspected of political revolution, some were imprisoned or killed. Religious jealousy impacted livelihoods and threatened the health and safety of the faithful. Fear began to taint the longing for fellowship, and some began to avoid what they had craved in hopes of escaping notice. The resulting loneliness only exacerbated their fears, putting faith itself in jeopardy.

The writer of the letter to some of the formerly Jewish Christians addresses this problem directly. He reminded them that they had entered a sacred space by becoming a part of God’s family. This sanctuary of the faithful was their protection against the hopelessness around them, the hopelessness and fear that caused others to torment them. If they abandoned that family relationship they became again what they had been before, and the conviction that had been safety within would become doom without.

As millennia have passed and some cultures have made the story of Jesus a familiar thing, we have forgotten the transformation that shook the entire world. Our familiarity has bred entitlement, arrogance, and indifference to the incredible gift our Savior bestowed. Rather than crave the company of like hearts, we relegate our contact to formal designated conferences, and suspiciously guard our inner selves from the knowledge of others. We are not family and our emotional ties are stunted because we either were never changed or drew back from the cost. We may show up when required without fail, but we have forsaken the assembly.

Hebrews 10:19–25 (CSB): Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus— he has inaugurated for us a new and living way through the curtain (that is, through his flesh)— and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, since he who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.

The Purpose of the Pattern

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When I was a child my grandmother made many of my clothes and taught me to use a pattern. If you have never sewed anything or seen a dress pattern, you might have the idea that it looks like the end result and that it contains all the details needed to produce carbon copy replicas. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

You see, patterns actually tell very little about the end product, and while some details are included and necessary, those details are few and far between. In order to create a garment that will shape and drape properly around a three dimensional human being, many smaller, odd shaped pieces must be fitted together. Some larger pieces must be folded and sewn into even more odd shapes. The size of some pieces must change depending upon the size and shape of the person who will wear the garment. The pattern contains marks to ensure correct joining, measurements for correct adjustments, and marks for sufficient seam width for the garment to hold together. These marks are often not labeled with language, however, and the person using the pattern must learn which ones are which and how to apply them.

The pattern itself cannot become a finished garment. Its purpose is to be applied to fabric with the appropriate markings for the individual transferred to that fabric, which will in turn be sewn together into the shape of the wearer. A pattern can be applied to any fabric, usually one reflecting the personality of the wearer. Different types of fabrics require different treatments; finer fabrics are more fragile, thicker fabrics can only be combined in certain ways, and still others stretch or slip easily so must be cut with great care to preserve the correct shape. The placement of designs within the fabric must be considered when a pattern is placed; the direction of the fabric weave must be carefully considered to avoid misshapen garments. Thread colors, trim styles, even fastener types can all be personalized to the needs or preferences of the wearer. The pattern itself doesn’t command any of this; the person using the pattern must take time to learn each person and each fabric before attempting to make the garment required.

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If the same pattern is used to make garments for three individual people, each of those three garments will also be individual. They will be similar, the same recognizable garment, but one might have more space in the hips while another is slimmer in the shoulder. One may be made of sturdy material with a more sober design, while another may be flamboyantly colored silk. One may zip and have no trim, while another may fasten with buttons and be trimmed with elegant embroidery.

My grandmother also taught me that our lives are to be made according to a pattern, the pieces of which can be found in the stories and lessons of scripture. As a child, still learning the basics of sewing, I didn’t understand what that meant, but as my faith has grown I have learned what a beautiful gift our pattern is. You see, God as Creator understands the incredible uniqueness of each individual human. He understands that with that individuality of nature comes difference in application. The pattern He has provided is minimal, with marks for connection and adjustment that we must learn to read as we learn ourselves, the fabric upon which the pattern is to be applied. Just as a garment sewn for a large person would not fit properly on a small person, or a silk garment would be inappropriate for a manual laborer, applying rules based on one person’s needs or preferences to someone with completely different spiritual requirements cannot work.

We all have the same pattern we are to follow. We are all different types of fabric, designs, and trim styles. We each have the responsibility to know both the pattern and ourselves in order to become a finished garment pleasing to God who created both.