nakedpastor

I want to consider our supplemental Jesus. Most of our writing and talking is supplemental in nature. We get so excited with and carried away by the next new idea, the next new leader, the next new book, the next new method. But there is really nothing truly new about it all. They are accruals upon the past. They are installments on a faulty loan. They are renovations on a condemned building. It is our attempt to stretch an already stretched old wineskin. We customize what we already have. Like an old car that has been condemned to the scrap heap… it doesn’t work! We add new parts and detail it, but it still doesn’t work! We need a new vehicle. Or no vehicle at all in fact. For the past 12 years I have been deeply suspicious of any new method that comes down the pike, any new book that has the next best strategy. I always feel like a rabbit in Watership Down: I’m being baited with fresher carrots, that’s all! Anyone with any common sense should be able to tell when they are being swindled. We all should be able to tell when we are being bamboozled.

No more strategies. No more visions. No more methods. No more renovations, customizations, and tweak jobs. Please! Jesus is not a supplement to boost my quality of life. He promises me death. And the life he does promise is not an enhanced life but a resurrected one, which is something totally other and probably beyond the domain of sensual experience. And this is what I’m holding out for.

sorry feeders… typo in my latest cartoon. fixed.

The problem with grace is that you can’t control it. You can’t control the effects of it either. The results can be disastrous in a community context. In a milieu of grace where we can literally get away with murder, people get murdered. In a context of grace where we can safely admit our weaknesses and sins, weaknesses and sins abound. Because that’s the way we are bent. Which lead to the Roman heresy of concluding since grace abounds where sin abounds, grace must permit and even encourage sin and its expression so that grace can have greater expression. Unless people are jumping to this erroneous conclusion because of your teaching, then you are not teaching grace in its most true and radical form.

My God! My community is in such a mess! Sometimes I pine for the old days when a little bit of religious expectation could lay an attractive veneer over all our crap. But what we are seeing in our community is what’s really here. Why hide it? Why pretend it isn’t here? It IS here! Let’s face it. We all, ALL like sheep have gone astray and there isn’t one of us who is without sin. Not one! Here is bitterness, unbelief, depression, hatred, lust, adultery, promiscuity, separations and divorces, abuse, theft, laziness, lying, drugs and drunkenness, etc.. It’s all here! And it’s all there too, whether you admit it or not. All our feet are swift to shed blood. Not one foot is innocent. I’m always suspicious when people claim that revival has happened in a certain place and everything is just wonderful praise god. What has really happened is that sin has been driven deeper underground.

When I think about “church” this all makes me want to give up. But when I’m thinking right and am thinking about the people, the fellowship of my community, then I’m still in the game. No matter how chaotic it gets. Because this is how I’ve been treated. This is what grace does. Doesn’t it?

I would like to use a word that I can’t find in any of my dictionaries: “symptomatography”. I would like to use it because I believe that all the issues and problems that we normally treat are symptoms of a deeper malignant disease. It is crucial that we recognize this and develop the skill of diagnosing the disease and the symptoms it presents. The reason being that we settle with simply treating the symptom with band-aids… an interim measure that may decrease or even provisionally eliminate the presentation of the disease. Anyone can apply disinfectant, salve, gauze, band-aids; and some can even cut and sew. But fewer people can actually diagnose and confront the disease.

I recognized this early in my relationship with Lisa. It was through our commitment to prove our love over the long haul that I learned that everything I do that hurts Lisa is not just a simple mistake or oversight. I began to realize that all my little trespasses against her were symptoms of deeper issues that needed astute diagnosis and serious attention if I wanted to stop hurting her. This is why, in the church context, I try to take the time to diagnose every little problem that comes along. This is why all the terrible things I have experienced in the name of love, God and the church are not simply written off as little slips or slights in human error, but significant manifestations of a deeper malevolence that need brutally honest detection and committed treatment. The abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of church leaders, other Christians, the insane chaos of a church split, being fired from another international ministry for “insubordination”, etc., are all not just little episodic blemishes in church life, but revelatory symptoms of deeply serious defects, profound flaws, and continental faults that need immediate and radical treatment.

I am not willing to say: “Well, let’s go back and try that again!” Why? I ask again, Why? Why go back and apply the same old remedies to the same old problems ad nauseam? I contend that we need to cut open the chest, stretch apart the ribs and go in… straight for the heart! Or shave the head, peel back the face, saw open the skull and hold the diseased brain in our very hands!

This is this week’s illustration friday submission under the theme “hoard”. Well… a hoard of kids with their teacher. I went on a long motorcycle ride today with a few of the people from my community. Sorry for no cartoon. Stay tuned though. Plenty in the noggin. Hoards, in fact!