Made For Glory

By now many of you have probably read about or watched Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's Got Talent. If you haven't, you can watch it below

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent

I don't normally like that sort of show but when I came across this this morning I was completely blown away. Here is someone who spent her entire life being despised and rejected. She got up in front of the crowd and was mocked by 3,000 people. Then, over the course of a three minute song all that got turned on its head. Just as He promised He would, God used the foolish things of this world to shame the wise.

The whole time I was watching it God kept raising in my heart Romans 8:19, "For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are."

Christianity offers is a return to the glory we were always meant to have. It's a restoration process that will ultimately one day culminate in God revealing our restored and glorious hearts to the world.

It's so easy to forget that. In our day to day lives a casual agnosticism sets in. We forget that God is fighting for us, is restoring us, is transforming us. We don't worship a distant God. We worship a God who wants to be active in every part of our lives so He can spread His glory in us.

That's why stories like Susan Boyle's, not to mention all the other stories, true and fiction, that stir your heart, are so important. They point us to the larger truth of what God is up to. We might be despised, hated and mocked but in the end He'll reveal the glory, the good work as Paul says, that He's been building in our hearts since we came to Christ.

Susan Boyle's performance is one of the most powerful examples of this I've ever seen. But it's nothing compared to what's coming, the day when God reveals His true children and the glory He's created in them.

Six Months Later

Six months ago I started working on the largest puzzle in the world (24,000 pieces). As of yesterday it's all done: put together, glued and hung!

I finished it on February 14th, about Four months after starting. It took a few days to glue and then. Annie and I decided to put it in the upstairs living room. Since it wouldn't fit going up the downstairs stairs, I had to wait two months for the snow to melt so I could take it outside and get it in through the front door.

It's great to have it done but unfortunately there's no where else to go but down with my hobby. That might be a good thing though since I don't think I have wall space for another one this size!

Whole and Holy

I've been spending some time this past week reflecting on Holy Week. What God keeps bringing back to my mind is the Lord's Supper, the wine and bread, His body and blood.

The human race didn't get very far before we crashed and crashed bad. We were intended for glory. Instead we exchanged the glory God had given us for a life of shame and evil. We were meant to live full and complete lives. Instead we willing let ourselves, our hearts, be literally shattered.

We hear a lot of different theories in today's world about why Christ came. Some say He came to be a good teacher or give us a new way to go about our day to day lives. These reasons, and others like them, are true but incomplete. The main reason Christ came, His central mission, was to put us back together again. He came to rescue us from our fall and the eternal consequences that would follow, He came to release us from the sin we turned to in our brokenness and He came to restore us to the glory we were always meant to have. To put it another way, He came so we could be whole and holy.

That's what the Lord's Supper is all about. With His blood He covers our sins. But it doesn't end with forgiveness. His blood might start as a covering but it is meant to go onto complete transformation. The goal of the atonement is not only to set us right with God, though without that we could not go any further, but to make it so that one day, though not one in this world, we can look back on sin as a half forgotten nightmare.

In the second part of the Lord's Supper, Christ's body is broken so that our hearts can be made whole. After the fall, our hearts became evil and wicked (Jer. 17:9). Christ's being broken turns all that around. Our heart of stone is removed and we are given a heart of flesh (Ezk. 36:26). But like with the atonement this is only the beginning. Our basic nature has been changed but the work of Christ isn't done. He wants to put us back together again so that we can be restored to glory. So that we can be whole.

If you spend some time this weekend reflecting on Christ's death and resurrection, remember that it's about more than just forgiveness. Christ wants to restore you to who you were always meant to be. That's why He came, so that we could be whole and holy before Him. No wonder we've spent 2,000 years calling this good news!

The Essence of Fellowship

I've mentioned a couple times before that Annie and I are part of an awesome small group. This week brought more reminders of the power of fellowship, of what it means to fight for others and to be fought for.

As all this has been going on over the past couple days I've found myself thinking of this quote from the St. Crispian's Day speech in Henry V just before the battle of Agincourt. It sums up perfectly what Christian fellowship is supposed to be about and it only gets more powerful every time I read it.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Fierceness

Well I won't back down, no I won't back down
you could stand me up at the gates of hell
but I won't back down
-Tom Petty

Fierceness. It's not the sort of word we usually associate with Christians, Christianity or Jesus. If you were to ask people to associate words with the name Jesus you'd probably get words like compassionate, merciful, loving, sacrifice, etc. All good, all true, all essential to our faith. But if that's the only side we see of Jesus or of our faith then we're cutting ourselves off at the knees. Because while all those words are true of Jesus they're not the whole truth. He's also a passionate and fierce warrior fighting for our freedom.

Christianity is a fighting faith. We were born into a world at war and we live every day as part of a violent clash between two kingdoms. When Christ came to Earth it was an invasion, an act of war. And what He's fighting for is our hearts, our freedom, His right to restore us to who we were always meant to be.

If you could see the look in Jesus's eyes when He thinks about our freedom it would be a gaze you couldn't possibly meet. It would be so fierce, so devoted, so set, stubborn and determined to do whatever He had to to set us free. In Isaiah 63 God tells us that He is in the field warring for us, fighting so hard that His clothes are literally stained red with the blood of His enemies. No wonder Paul asks, "If God is for us who can be against us?"

We have a role in the battle too. We need to develop that same fierceness, as best we can in this life, as we fight for our own freedom and the freedom of others. It's the type of ferocity reflected in the quote I put at the beginning of this point, the type that says it doesn't matter if I'm backed up against all of hell itself, freedom is worth it and I will not back down even if it kills me.

And hell will come. Not only is our freedom opposed but so is any attempt for us to see God as the warrior fighting for our freedom and calling us to fight alongside Him. To survive this fight we're going to need more than just grace, mercy and love. Those are important but we also need the fierceness of Christ when He went to the cross and tore open the kingdom of darkness.

Now it's our turn to follow Him and fight alongside Him. Our world is at war. The enemy's kingdom is going down but it's not there yet. And in the meantime there are many hearts, including yours and mine, that need to be passionately fought for so we can be free and fully alive. Let's recover our fierceness and fight.

Intimacy With God

I'm going through a time in my life right now where I'm stepping into my calling as never before. Even this week over the past few days I've watched God reveal His mission for me and show me how to begin living it out.

It's a wonderful experience and as it happens I feel His pleasure. But it also reminds me that there is something in the Christian Life that is higher than living out the mission. The more I step into my purpose, the more it leaves me thirsty for intimacy with God and I'm reminded that that is really the point of it all.

Matthew 7 provides a sobering picture for us. In it, Jesus explains that there will many people who will come to Him wanting to tell Him all about the great stuff they did in life. He sends them away saying, "I never knew you."

I'm not suggesting, and I don't believe Jesus is either, that intimacy is a requirement for salvation. What I believe His point is that intimacy is a natural and expected outcome of a heart that has been reconciled to God and is being restored to glory.

All that we do is meant to flow out of this closeness with God and all that we do is meant to drive us back to into it. Intimacy is the hub, the center, of all God means for us to do and experience in the Christian Life. And thank God for that! For as wonderful as stepping into purpose is, it can't satisfy our hearts the way intimacy can. It was never meant to.

Finally, let me say that this is available. This isn't something that's reserved for those who've made ministry their vocation, the very holy or the super spiritual. God intended intimacy with Him to be a normal part of the Christian Life no matter where we're at in that journey. We're not to wait until we have it all figured out. We're to figure out by walking closely with Him, hearing His voice and feeling His presence. Only then will our hearts find the satisfaction they were meant to experience.

Recovering The Spiritual Middle Ground

For the past couple weeks I've been reading Ed Murphy's The Handbook For Spiritual Warfare. Towards the beginning of the book he spends some time looking at spiritual worldviews. He points out that we have a tendency, especially in Western theology, to acknowledge both the spiritual and physical worlds but deny the middle ground where they interact. The result is that while we believe in angels, demons and all the rest we tend not to see that world as having much of an impact on our day to day lives.

I really think he's got a point. We've lost something both in our theology and in practice. The Life that God has for us is fiercely opposed and if we're to find it we're going to have to recover the middle ground between the physical and spiritual worlds where the two interact.

As I've thought about this, I've been rethinking the story of Balaam in Numbers. In case you need a refresher the basic gist of it is this: Israel's enemies hire Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam is on his way to do the job when his donkey stops dead in its tracks. He beats the donkey but it won't move. Then God opens the donkey's mouth and it tells Balaam that there's an angel that's going to kill him if he takes one more step, that God is not about to let him curse His people.

It's a great story. Normally when we hear it our reaction is something like, "that's pretty neat that God made the donkey talk!" And while that is pretty cool, the question I keep asking myself is why did God make the donkey talk? If we live in a world where the physical and spiritual don't meet and mix, where spiritual warfare is the exception not the rule, where curses don't matter, then what possible difference would it make if Balaam went on his mission and cursed Israel?

The implication of the story is that what Balaam did or did not do mattered. He was a man gifted with being able to interact in the spiritual world and the choices he made about how to use that gift had huge ramafications in both the spiritual and physical worlds.

We might be uncomfortable with it in our scientific, "enlightened" era but that is still the reality today. Angels, demons, curses and blessings not only exist they impact our lives in ways we're not even aware of. We are not just physical beings, we are spiritual beings and those two aspects of ourselves are not all that separate. Spiritual warfare is not an option, we live in a spiritual war whether we acknowledge it or not.

There are a lot of heavy implications here and I'm all too aware of how the enemy loves to exploit them for fear. I want to make it clear that while this stuff is true, God's love it truer. The point of recovering the spiritual middle ground isn't fear, it's to wake us up so we can fight the battle and step even deeper into the Life God has for us.

Mythic Music

This is something of a tag-on to my last post. If you haven't, you should read that first.

Music is, for me, probably the most powerful source of myth in my life. These are two of the songs God has been speaking to me through recently.

The first is May It Be by Enya. Both the lyrics and the music are incredible.




The second is Metamorphosis One by Philip Glass. The piano music here is haunting and beautiful.

To See With Our Hearts

It is God's highest desire to pour life into us and restore us to who we were always meant to be. All that He's doing and working for comes back to that: restoration and life.

But it's often very hard for us to see that. Not only is this world full of distraction the takes our focus off of God's focus but we have an enemy hell bent on blinding us to what God is up to. To get through the lies and push aside all distraction we need to approach what God is doing completely different from how we approach any other part of our lives. Our minds are not enough. We must see with our hearts.

To do this we must begin to look at our world mythically. The word myth has come to mean something very different than what it originally meant. We've come to see the word as synonymous with false. But it's not and that's not how I am using it. When I say myth what I mean is anything that stirs your heart to look towards Truth. Myth calls us into the Larger Story. It is that which focuses our hearts on God and His work.

To see mythically all you must do is pay attention to the movements of your heart. You're walking in nature and your heart is overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. That's myth pointing your heart to the beauty of God. You're listening to music and the sound of notes expresses something in your heart that could never be put into words. That's myth at it's deepest level. You're reading a book or watching a movie and a scene or character stirs you and makes you feel caught up and alive. That's God calling your heart to what He has for you.

There's no formula to living mythically but if this is something that's new to you I'd recommend starting with story. Think about the stories you love. Not the ones you find just entertaining but the ones that seem to awaken something in you when you revisit them. Start there and pay attention to why your heart is drawn there. Open up to God and let Him speak through the myth and draw your heart to Him.

And above all else, walk with God in this. The more you're open to His voice, the more He'll bring myth into your life in ways you didn't expect. Annie and I have spent the last year and a half intentionally living mythically and it has changed our lives. Give it chance and watch as God uses to myth to pour life into your life and bring you into who He's always meant for you to be.

A Treasured Possession

The LORD has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured possession as he promised, and that you are to keep all his commands.
-Deuteronomy 26:18

What are we to do with all of God's commandments in the Bible? That is a question the Church has always struggled to answer and though we've come up with answer I believe that most of those answers are anything but satisfactory.

Most Christians come down somewhere between two extremes. The first says, don't worry so much about the dos and don'ts of the Bible. After all, we're under grace. The second says do whatever you have to to obey. Beat yourself into submission if that's what it takes. After all, God said what He said and He meant it.

There's plenty of middle ground, but if we're honest I think most of us would admit we lean towards one or the other of those extremes.

Thank God there's another option! Thank God He intended us, and His commands, for something better!

Take a look again at the verse at the beginning of this post but this time realize the context. God has just finished reviewing His law with His people before they enter the promised land and in this passage specifically He's explaining how important it is that they do what He has told them to do.

And in the midst of that He says to them, "You are mine. My treasured possession." Think about that for a moment. Those words change everything. They turn our whole preconceived notion of morality and God's commandments on its head.

To the first extreme and those who lean in that direction, how can you say don't worry about what God said to do and not to do? You are His treasured possession and He would not see you degraded and destroyed through sin. To the second extreme and those who lean towards it, how can you say we should beat ourselves submission? We are God's treasured possession. Don't we deserve better than that? The purpose of God's law is not to beat us down but to lift us up.

We need to remember that the story of the Gospel, the story God has been telling since the beginning of the world, is a love story. It's the story of God's love for His creation, a Father's love for His children, a Bridegroom's love for His bride. It is our birthright, our purpose, to live as God's treasured possession.

If we could live like that, live knowing who and what we were made for, it would change everything. Maybe then we'd be able to see that we were always meant, and are supposed to approach God's law from a place of life, passion and love.

The Hands of the King

There's a great moment towards the middle of The Return of the King (the book, not the movie) where Aragorn has finally returned to his throne at Gondor. He's just finished defending his city in The Battle of Pelennor Fields and though he's escaped unharmed, there are countless others who have not.

After the battle, he comes to the houses of healing where the wounded are. He doesn't come just to visit or boost morale but to heal them. Aragorn may primarily be a leader and warrior but as Tolkien explains in one of the most memorable lines from the trilogy, "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer."

The same is true in our lives. You don't get through this life unwounded. It's a 100% guarantee that you will be hurt and that the pain will often be deep enough to leave permanent wounds. Even Jesus experienced this. All through the Gospels He is constantly being missed and misunderstood by those who should have loved Him the most. Isaiah calls the Messiah "a man of sorrows."

The difference is that Jesus understood who His Father was. He understood that the hands of His King were the hands of a healer. And so well we constantly see Jesus hurt and wounded we also see Him constantly turning to His Father for healing.

Healing like this can only be found in intimacy with God, be letting Him speak into our lives and guide us through our wounds. It's something we've largely lost and forgotten as a church but it's something God always intended to be a normal and available part of the Christian walk.

Most of our problems with sin come because we don't understand this about God. If you don't turn to Him for healing you will turn to something else. And so healing becomes another way for God to rescue us from our sin and restore us to who we were always meant to be.

Rescue and restoration. That's what God is wanting to do in each of our lives. But we won't be able to receive the fullness of all He has for us until we begin to understand what J.R.R. Tolkien knew: the hands of a king, of our King, are the hands of a healer.

Warning: Very Nerdy Post Ahead

This past week The Guardian published a list of the best scifi/fantasy novels of all time. I love these sorts of lists and my inner nerd compels me to comment. There's a bunch of stuff on the list I've never heard of so I'm only going to comment on the ones I've actually read and then rant about some of the HUGE omissions from the list.

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy - This is an amusing enough book but way, way overrated. Still, it has a big enough following that it's place here is probably deserved.

Isaac Asimov: Foundation - The first volume of the series is pretty good but the rest get a little tedious. Definitely a classic very much worth reading.

Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio - An OK book but one of the best ever? No way.

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass - if you've only ever seen the Disney cartoon you have no idea how weird these books are. Great reads.

Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Cut 500 or so pages off this book and it would be great. But at it's actual length of nearly 1,000 pages it's long, boring and way overrated. It also has no business being on this list.

Philip K. Dick: Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep and The Man in the High Castle - High Castle's place here is well deserved but Electric Sheep is only here because it was the source material for Blade Runner, one of the few movies to be way, way better than the book.

Neil Gaiman: American Gods - I would have chosen Neverwhere instead but I'm glad Gaiman has a book on the list. American Gods is a great read but it gets a little slow in the middle and has too much sex.

Joe Haldeman: The Forever War - I have a strange relationship with this book. I hate and completely disagree with it's ultra left wing politics and stance on war but I still love the novel. It's extremely well written and deeply moving (even though I disagree with where it wants me to move towards!)

Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land - The first half is great. The second is weird and disgusting. Starship Troopers is not only better science fiction but a better novel.

Frank Herbert: Dune - A great, great book. If you haven't read it you should.

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House - The best and scariest haunted house novel ever. Every page of this novel is unbelievably good.

Stepehn King: The Shining - Probably King's best work. I love how the tension slowly builds and then completely explodes in the final act. If you've only seen the movie you need to read the book.

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris - This is a great book and one of the first to show that science fiction can be deeply emotional, passionate and human.

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend - I don't care what Skip says, this book rocks!

China Mieville: The Scar - This one's pretty good. I don't know if it deserves a place on this sort of list but it's entertaining enough. Unfortunately, Mieville followed it up with the putrid Iron Council, which reads like The Communist Manifesto with monsters (even though that sounds kind of cool, it's really not)

Walter M. Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz - Yawn. I have no idea what people see in this one.

Larry Niven: Ringworld - Overrated. Niven has written much better.

Chuch Palahniuk: Fight Club - I don't and never would support banning books but if I did this would be at the top of my list. A disgusting, despicable, filthy and worthless novel. If you watched The Dark Knight and found yourself agreeing with everything the Joker said and did, then this is the book for you. For the rest of us who aren't nihilistic anarchists: keep as far away from this one as possible.

Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space - I'm so happy this book made the list. I'm a huge Alastair Reynolds fan and Revelation Space is my favorite.

J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - I love Harry Potter as much as the next guy but this is not one of the best fantasy novels of all time. The series as a whole, maybe. But not any of the individual volumes and especially not the first couple.

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein - A great monster story even 200 years later.

Dan Simmons: Hyperion - Dan Simmons is my favorite living fiction writer and Hyperion is one of his best. A great, great book.

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Not nearly as good as you'd think.

Bram Stoker: Dracula - You've probably seen some sort of adaptation of this at some point. Do yourself a favor and read the original. It's well worth it.

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine and War of the Worlds - These are not really that wonderful. Influential: yes. Well written: nope.

T.H. White: The Sword in the Stone - This is the best volume of The Once and Future King. The rest are a little tedious but this one is definitely worth a read.

Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun - I never have finished this one. I found it good but something didn't quite click when I tried to read it. I'll have to give it another try sometime.




Omissions

Lord of the Rings? Narnia? What possible excuse is there for leaving those off this list? None whatsoever. It's too bad, because this is actually a really great list overall. Unfortunately, leaving off Tolkien and Lewis effectively turns it into a big joke. Completely inexcusable.

Roger Zelazny should have had an entry on here. Lord of Light is one of my favorite novels ever. It's not just good scifi, it's a great and very deep literary work.

I also think it's pretty outrageous that Lord of Light, Ender's Game, Fahrenheit 451, A Wrinkle in Time, 1984 and Earthsea were left off. Those aren't as big of omissions as LOTR, Lord of Light and Narnia but each has been extremely influential not to mention they're all great novels.

I also think it would have been nice to see something from Vernor Vinge, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Terry Pratchett and Peter Straub. It's memory has been tainted by the horrible movie made out of it but Battlefield Earth is a actually a pretty good book that I would have included.


Overall, I like the list a lot. I can't imagine what possessed them to leave off Tolkien and Lewis. But putting that aside, there a lot of great reads here.

36 Years Later

Yesterday marked the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. I've been spending some time this week thinking about the pro life movement. In some ways it's a depressing time. Less than a week into the Obama administration we're already feeling the affects of his extreme pro-choice views. One of his first acts has been to issue an executive order overturning a ban on federal funding for international abortion groups.

The evil freedom of choice act also is looming on the horizon and if it passes virtually every pro life gain that's been made, including the partial birth abortion ban, will be overturned. (side note: please, please, please visit fightfoca.com and do what you can to help stop this legislation.)

But I also think this can be an exciting time. Let's face it, with a Democratic president and congress we're not going to get a lot done in Washington over the next couple years. That will force pro lifers to look beyond the political arena and that is a very good thing. Don't get me wrong, I think the political side of the life battle is extremely important. I'm terrified of FOCA passing and I believe President Obama's view on abortion is depressing and tragic. But we need to remember that abortion existed long before Roe vs. Wade and it will be around when that decision is eventually overturned.

The pro life movement didn't begin in politics and even if we win every political battle we cannot let it end there. For as much as I wish we had pro life leaders in Washington, the current situation will force us to look beyond politics and focus on saving lives in our own communities. It will remind us that our primary focus isn't politics but saving babies and caring for hurting mothers who feel trapped.

Finally, we need to pray. Pray for a culture of life to come over our nation. Pray for comfort for scared mothers and life for their unborn children. Pray against FOCA and pray that God will open the eyes of our President on this issue. Pray works. It changes things. And it's a far more powerful weapon than any political victory.

Gran Torino

Yesterday afternoon Annie and I went to see Clint Eastwood's new movie Gran Torino. We both agreed it was the best movie we've seen in a long, long time. In case you haven't heard of it, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired autoworker and widower who spends his days sitting on the front porch with his dog drinking beer and glaring at the Hmong family that just moved in next door. Walt isn't too big on his new neighbors, mostly because of their race, but through several occurrences he gets drawn into their lives and becomes their protector against the inner city gangs that roam the neighborhood.

There's a lot to like about the movies. Most of it's described in other reviews so I won't bother echoing them here. But one part I haven't seen discussed much, the part that struck me the most is the film's brilliant portrayal of masculine initiation.

The Hmong family has a teenage boy named Thao. At the beginning of the movie he walks around with no self confidence, scared of his own shadow. The only chance he sees at actually becoming a man is to join the local Hmong gang. Walt very reluctantly begins to let Thao into his life and their relationship becomes the center of the movie.

Thao is in what John Eldredge describes in The Way of the Wild Heart as the Cowboy/Ranger stage. A stage in life where a boy moves towards manhood through hard work, adventure and testing. Walt teaches him exactly what a boy needs to learn at that stage. He learns about tools, how to work, how to act responsibly. In the midst of his grumpy, crass demeanor Walt answers for Thao the central question every boy and man is asking (do I have what it takes?) with a resounding "yes!"

Thao is initiated into the Cowboy stage but it doesn't stop there. Walt teaches him how to talk to women showing him the beginning of the Lover stage. I won't spoil the ending but the film ends with Walt initiating Thao as a warrior in a way that is both subtle and brilliant. In the closing scenes the scared boy is gone, replaced by a man prepared for life.

Every man needs initiation and it is exactly what God is offering to us. The source of a man's initiation might be obvious or God might use someone as unlikely as Walt Kowalski. But what is portrayed in the movie is available to every man if only we'll let God begin to work in our lives.