Salvation

I've been avoiding writing on this topic. Largely because I have a hard time understanding the way that Christianity generally preaches this message, specifically that being saved can be boiled down to a prayer you say that has specific elements (e.g., I am sinner, I am sorry, I believe Jesus is Your son, I believe he died for my sins and that you rose Him from the dead, please take my life, I want to be yours, etc.)

Actually, looking at this list itself - I don't have any issues with the list. They are all beautiful and essential pieces of salvation, of knowing God and our Savior in their fullest. I think what does bother me is an implicit message that we send when we make the prayer into a static list of things you must say. Specifically, it has always made me feel like we are trying to make God into a genie that responds only to a certain set of commands. Like a scene in Backyardigans Episode my daughter just watched where the genie would not grant your request UNLESS you said "I wish" in front of it. This does two really bad things to the message of salvation.

First, it minimizes God. Specifically, this is the God of the universe we are talking about here! He sees through all of our bull straight into our hearts and from what I can tell what the Bible and this prayer are trying to tell us, is that if we will call to Him in our brokenness and except His message, His plan, His way above our own message, our own plan, our own way - He is faithful to meet us and change us and be with us forever.

Second, it places our salvation into our hands. Let me give you some context to illustrate this point. You know all of the stuff in Christendom where we argue about what exactly is necessary to be saved. Some places you must say the sinners prayer, others say the sinners prayer and be baptized, some you have to say the sinners prayer and walk forward in church, some you have to receive the gift of tounges. You know what the problem is with all of this, it places the responsibility for our salvation in the things that we do or do not do. For example, I was in the car with a Christian friend of mine when I told her I never did the come forward thing at church... "uh, uh" I could see in her eyes - "That's the WRONG way to do salvaton." We can also get caught up in the prayer, authenticating one another's faith, "Well did you say this part? If you didn't say this part then your not in?" Or "Did you really understand this part? If you didn't really understand that part then your definitely not saved." Are we serious?? Is this how we really think the God of universe, Jesus Christ our Savior, intended us to approach salvation - in this endless cycle of doubt? Prodding each other with suspicous questions? I gotta tell you, it is one of THE MOST unattractive qualities of the Christian church today and it is not bringing one soul any closer to Christ.

I think this is why we are told to put on the helmet of salvation in the Bible. Not because we are confident in the way we said the sinners prayer or the way our denomination preaches salvation (all people, all broken) but because we are confident in our Savior's faithfulness. We are assured of His righteousness. Because at the moment of salvation we are not right. If salvation is about getting right or doing it right we are all doomed! The only way to describe us at any moment before God is at the center of our lives is wrong, lost, or broken. Salvation is about the end of denying that and resting securely in the knowledge that our Amazing and Faithful God loves us anyway and is faithful to wash us clean. We are meant to KNOW that he is faithful to save, not that we are faithful to have said the sinners prayer the right way.

I get the sense that the sinners prayer was written as a means to simplify and assure worried souls that they were doing it right. And that is so, so noble. Hush child - you've said all you need to say, you are His now. But without understanding it is Christ alone who saves - it can easily become a lie, another trap the enemy uses to keep us believing in ourselves instead of Christ.

Jackie's Wedding Update

Jackie sent me this picture from her wedding a few weeks back. She entitled it "A Picture of Redemption." To give you some context, the is a picture of the moment when hail fell at Jackie's wedding and is described fully in my blog post entitled "Jackie's Wedding (Part II)". You can actually see the hail (it's the sparkly drops) and the joy - check out our faces.

What a great reminder of God's love! We are such lucky ladies.

The Great Romance

I went on a retreat last weekend with Calvary Chapel Spring Valley's women's ministry. We devoted the weekend to the study of the similarities between God's redemptive plan and the Jewish wedding ceremony. Specifically, if you know anything about the Jewish wedding ceremony (which I really didn't), it brings alive much of what Jesus talked about near the end of his life.

For example, the Gospel of the Apostle John, Chapter 14 begins with some words of comfort Jesus gave to his disciples before heading to the garden at Gethsemane. He said

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God - trust also in me. My Father's house has plenty of room; if it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

By any contemporary Jew this would have been recognizable as the speech a bridegroom gave his betrothed after they'd agreed to marry. It signified that the agreement to marry had been sealed and a time of separation had begun. A separation that began when the bridegroom gave that speech and left to make a place for his new wife at his home and ended with their reunification and beginning of their united life together. It was a time of waiting and longing, of anticipation and romance.

This is one of many times in the Bible (either in the Gospels generally, by Jesus himself, or in the Epistles) that the romance of the Jewish wedding ceremony is used to described our place in the Redemptive plan or on world's time line generally. It places us, His church, in the role of the lovestruck, excited virgin bride anxious for the arrival of her new husband and the beginning of our new life together.

This would be fine, of course, if I didn't hate romance. I mean I really hate romance. OK maybe I don't hate romance in the technical sense - some part of me is remembering an advanced English class where my teacher redefined romance and it didn't mean sappy puppy love - but I really do hate that sappy, sickeningly sweet love of teenagers. Seriously, the only thing I appreciate less than the general self-absorbed melodrama of teenagers is the way they experience first love, so deluded and blind.

I honestly can't help but roll my eyes and gag a little bit when I think about Romeo and Juliet, Titanic, the Notebook, Twilight or any other in a long series of ridiculous stories were two young adults are "meant to be", "soulmates" or "complete each other". Yuck, yuck, yuck. Thus, envisioning that a part of my Christian life is to wait on baited breath for Christ's return, wooed by His advances and cooing over how I'll finally be complete when we are together makes me cringe inside.

Ugh! The vulnerability of it all. I remember loving like that, hoping that he would love me in return. Staring anxiously across the gymnasium floor at Michael Casey Jr. (God was he beautiful), hoping, that of all the other 8th grade girls he would think I was the prettiest. Praying desperately that he would ask me to dance. And he did a few times. And my heart melted.

I remember loving like that. The purity of it.

I also remember when Michael Casey Jr broke up with me and dated my best friend. And when, two years later, he told me he "could never see us as anything more than friends" and my heart breaking open with a sickening disappointment that screamed NEVER again. I will NEVER love like that again. I will NEVER buy into that BS again, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER AGAIN.

Why does God have to heal it all? Isn't it enough that I believe in Him? That I would die for Him? Isn't it enough that I would give my very life to Him? No it's not. He wants it all. I can't even keep this safe, He wants to break it open and heal it.

I gotta tell you, I've never been so reluctant to hand something over to Him. Those moments hurt so, so bad. But I must, mustn't I. That Punk.

My beloved bridegroom,

I give myself to you, broken hearted. It is so hard to love you with all of this history. Take it. Wash me, make me clean again. I trust you.

Amen.

The Cosby Show

I've been watching the Cosby Show a lot recently. In some ways it's made me a bit cynical about the age we live in. I mean seriously - name 1 weekly show you can actually watch with your children that isn't loaded with broken people making seriously bad decisions. And I am not saying that shows that provoke conversations about real life are to be avoided, but shouldn't there are also be some shows that give us an example of what it looks like when you are doing things well? A target to aim at, if impossible to achieve?

Because I can tell you something, my family may not look like the Cosby family but I sure want it to. I want to raise children that respect me and one another. I want a marriage that is full of laughter and forgiveness and grace. I want to lip sink and dance to jazz music in the living room. I want to show those around me that I am both serious and not serious. I want to be creative in showing my children the consequences of their choices (Hello! Theo and living in the real world!).

But the biggest truth about the Cosby family is that it felt so incredibly safe. You know, you see Dr. Huxtable rolling his eyes at another of Denise's impulsive decisions but you don't ever think he's going to reject her or tell to "get the H!@? out of his house." You know that he loves her but sees her faults and all. I want that. I want to be that for my daughter.

And yes, it is incredibly sad that very many of us (most in fact) were not born into the Huxtable family. And perhaps it feels a bit like pouring salt into an open wound to watch a family who has something that you don't. But I think this trend toward making shows more like "reality" is really a trend toward diminishing hope. The message is something like "Don't hope for safety, don't work for love and connection because those things are a fantasy." But my sincere belief as that these things are not fantasy. They are also not related to wealth. They are not accessible to only the privileged few. It is about a small number of people, making a choice to be a safe place for each other and everyone else. And when that happens God is in it and things will change.

As Margaret Mead put it:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

P.S. Here's a Cosby Show Treat to make your day.

Hero

I am in love with this song: Hero

It's just beautiful to listen to: acoustic, raw, somber and true. It's both provoking and soothing. Check it out.

How Christian Living Looks

I am reading this amazing book called Chasing the Dragon. It's about a Christian, English, woman, missionary who served (serves actually, I think) in Hong Kong. At the point the book was written she was specifically serving a non-governed (that's right anarchist) city near Hong Kong called the Walled City.

Now her story is miraculous and inspiring, so much so that I am sure there is all sorts of controversy (both within Christendom and without) if I were to dig it up. I mean she was a very young (20ish) woman, who was living alone in Hong Kong, during the 1960s in the middle of what was possibly the most drug infested and dangerous city in the world during that time. Yet she serves and survives and sees miraculous things. You should seriously pick up the book.

What I felt compelled to share with you this morning, is a section of the book where she discusses the transformed life of one of the women she served. It knocked me over and screamed "Now this is the redemptive plan in action." So here it is:

So the family in our house grew and was further augmented by constant appearances from Mrs. Chan who I had come to know months earlier through her son, Pin Kwong. He was vicious addict of nineteen who has no intention of changing his ways and collected money by holding up victims at knife point in the public toilet. I often asked him about his widowed mother, but he refused to allow me to visit her saying, "She is an old idol worshiper. She won't want to hear from a Christian."

When Pin Kwong was arrested and put in prison for the fifth time I sought his mother and found her lying on a little bed in her Walled City room. She had decided to die, because her son had been arrested once more. She had no husband or family and Pin Kwong was all her life. Chinese women are very proud of their sons, but he was rotten and took away any money she ever had so she had no more will to live. He had not wanted me to visit her for fear that I would discover he had been exploiting his mother for the little amount she could collect selling vegetables and herbs at the market. When we found her, she had already laid there for some days without eating and was very weak. The boys went out and bought chicken essence and bones to boil for soup, and we set about restoring the elderly lady. While we fed her we told her about the Father who had given her His most precious possession, His only son, because He loved her.

Mrs. Chan was a simple woman who had never been to school. She had never heard of Christ before, and could not follow long sentences. We laid our hands upon her and prayed out loud, asking God to teach her in a way she could comprehend. After the prayer, she looked up, grinning from ear to ear, saying that when we prayed she had been cured of her "sickness of the lungs" and could breath clearly for the first time in years. It never returned.

That night she dreamed that a man in a long white robe came to her, and holding out His arms asked her to come to Him and be baptized. Since that time she was quite radiant, and when I moved to Lung Kong Road, she was delighted. We gave her a key to the new home and she pottered in and out happily cleaning everything in sight, cooking meals and introducing all her local market vendor friends, who would sell us provisions cheaply. Bestowing on me a signal of honor she became my kai ma and I her kai neui, meaning godmother and goddaughter. She adored her new family and bossily clucked around us all.

A women, lying in her bed, ashamed of her life, cut off from love, abused by an addicted son. Visited by a Christian and then by Christ, regains her sense of significance and meaning by becoming the mother hen of not one but many boys, who were formerly addicted but needing a mom. Only God could orchestrate a healing so complete for so many.

They're ready, We are not

This morning my Bible study focused on the end of days (e.g., the second coming of Christ, the Millennium, etc.). Part of what was covered were the descriptions in Isaiah about what the rule of Christ will be like. Specifically, there are several passages in Isaiah discussing radically different relationships between God, Earth, Animals and Humans. The fact that all the Earth will know the Lord, that all animals will live harmoniously (lions and lambs raising their young together), that humans will live harmoniously with one another and with animals. It is described as this wonderful and glorious time established because we will all know God.

During part of the study, the author made an exclamation, referring to Roman's where it is written that the very Earth aches for the return of Christ. And this got me thinking, the Earth (mountains, rivers, trees), animals (dogs, lions, eagles) - according to this scripture are presently aching for the return of Christ. They can't wait because they are ready live in harmony with God.

Yet they ache, long for, exist in this separated state... why? For us.

That's right, from a Christian perspective, God is holding off the second coming of Christ, the heavenly kingdom on Earth, because He patiently waits for more of us to get it together. To wake up to our selfishness, betrayals and greed and return to Him.

This provides a radically different perspective on Christians relationship with animals and the earth. Specifically, we should understand that the earth and all it's non-human inhabitants are doing us a HUGE favor. They exist in a broken world because of us and they await reunification with God to provide time for us.

This speaks to me about the way I should look at and treat the inhabitants of this planet and the planet itself. I am not suggesting no longer cutting down trees to make homes or giving up meat, but I am suggesting that we be good stewards of their lives. That we are not flip or superior about their existence. It seems clear to me that we aught to experience a sense of gratitude for our planet and to the non-humans with whom we share it.