Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

Re-emerging?

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Wow, it’s been something like nine months since I’ve last posted. I’m not sure why – there’s been a lot of turmoil in life, but it’s not like I haven’t been thinking, or praying, or living, for that matter. I just haven’t posted anything; most of my thoughts have been so focused on the moment I’m in that none of them have really been worth preserving.

I had lots of thoughts about the recent election in the United States – one that resulted in our election of the “Honorable Donald J. Trump,” with few apparently recognizing the sarcasm inherent in that phrase. However, my thoughts tended to be negative – I have a hard time accepting the election of a President with whom I’d be unwilling to leave my wife alone. I try to keep negative thoughts away from this site, so I curtailed the subject.

My sons have been enduring their own challenges, based on their maturations; my youngest entered high school, my middle son is finding out about life as an adult, and my oldest is trying to determine a direction in life. They’re all struggling, in their own ways; I’m proud of all of them, but they’re all having to endure sea changes of their own.

They’re doing it with as much support as my wife and I can manage to offer them, as far as we think it proper to give. (At some point, they’re adults – or young men, at least, in my youngest’s case – and too much support from their parents would stunt them.) However, something my wife said a couple of days ago was one of the saddest phrases I think I’ve heard in a long time.

We relied too much on the church.

In a way, she’s right. We expected the church to support us – instead, the social structure of our church actually worked against our kids, even though the church was (and is) sound theologically. They mean well. They were just not successful with our kids; our kids ended up being marginalized by the church, relied upon without compensatory support, expected to lead against their wills and before they were ready to commit to such leadership.

Make sure your church pays attention to every one of its members – even you.

Power

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One of many distressing things about the church and its internals is the use and abuse of power.

It’s be easy to look at priests’ abuse of children, and see those as mere aberrations – or things isolated from “our church,” which is surely an excellent place with no such abuses.

But this view, an example of an external locus of control, is not always accurate.

Mankind’s story in the context of God (or is it “God’s story in the context of Man?”) has always involved power. The book of Genesis is filled with examples of the struggle for power and security: Adam, Joseph’s brothers, Esau, Noah.. even Abraham. Over and over again, you have Man claiming power that is rightfully God’s, in the attempt to control his own destiny and fate.

It isn’t limited to Genesis, either. The Perushim and Zadokim (“Pharisees” and “Sadducees,” respectively) struggled for power among themselves; their struggle for power caused them to miss the Messiah, to cause Him to be put to death. (This was in accordance with prophecy, so it’s not like they had a whole lot of choice, I suppose, in the end… they’re to be pitied rather than hated.) Herod slew the innocents out of a lust for the preservation of power.

The examples are numerous – going through them would include most of the Bible, I think. Ahab, Jonah, Job, Paul, Peter, Hezekiah, Absolom, Josiah, Ezra, David, Solomon… it goes on and on, covering the saints and sinners alike.

However, as I started with, the use and abuse of power goes far beyond stories, or even those unfortunate events we see in the press.

Power rules Christian life, as well. Paul’s writings, for example, are often used to control the structure of modern churches, by reading his edicts concerning the proper qualifications for deaconship, or about marriage, celibacy, gender roles, personal finery, riches, all kinds of things.

The key to reading these, for me, is to keep in mind that power isn’t necessarily absolute, nor is it permission to rule. Power, in the Christian life, is about responsibility, not control.

For example, my wife is to submit to me, as stated by Paul. But that doesn’t mean that I’m “over” her (and, if you’ll pardon the pun, I’ll never ever be “over” my wife, nor do I have any desire to be.) My wife serves me as I serve her, as the Bride of Christ serves Him and as He died for us.

However, while Christ serves as a perfect example for us and our relationships, we are not perfect. It’s here that absolutes turn into weapons.

For example, can a woman teach a class of men? Or serve as a deacon? Or perhaps serve as a pastor?

I’d have to say it depends. I have no issue, personally, with a woman of God teaching me; I’d welcome teaching no matter from whom it was. I have no issue being led by women in worship or in any other endeavor; those whom God has appointed are those whom I accept.

And that’s the crux of the issue. If a woman happens to be the most suitable candidate for the position of deacon, and God leads a church in such a way that a woman is selected… rock on. I don’t say this to say that every female deacon (deaconess?) is “right” or “approved by God” – only that I don’t see God as being limited in who He chooses to place in a given role.

Therefore, would I accept a female pastor, as well? Again, I don’t know – I suppose it’d be an oddity to me, but then again, that’s natural conservatism at work. I’d have to evaluate the specific situation. God has certainly chosen women to lead in the Bible (D’vorah, Hadasseh), so why would He be unable to do so today?

Again, that doesn’t mean a blanket acceptance of every woman in a given role – or of every man in that same role.

The key is to be mindful of the role of God in our lives, and to recognize that His power is greater than anything else; that which He chooses to be is not ours to fight.

And our natural bent and desire for power does exactly that.

Shalom.

Originally posted on January 5, 2012.

What does it mean to be focused on Christ?

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One of the things that I like about the church that I currently attend is that it maintains a very tight focus on Jesus – but what does that mean?

Well, the church has two primary focuses, two goals.

One is to make the body larger, to bring people to Christ. The other is to strengthen the body, to make it stronger, to make the body more knowledgeable or more spiritual – to educate.

Making the body larger is a matter of communicating that Jesus died for your sins and mine, that man is sinful and in a fallen state, and needs Christ to enter into the presence of God. This is what people traditionally think of as the purpose of the church, to make the body larger. It fulfills the commandment to go speak to people around the world, found in Matthew 28:19, and really is the primary mission of the church.

This is a good thing.

However, the church that focuses only on making the body larger is, while a good thing, a seeker church. My family and I have attended seeker-oriented churches and greatly enjoyed them; there’s nothing wrong with them. However they tend to have a basic focus, a tendency to refer to very basic things; man is sinful and needs Christ, over and over again.

For one who isn’t a seeker, it can get a little… tiresome, even while the energy and excitement can be infectious.

For one who wants to become a mature believer, seeker churches tend not to be the ideal place to spend the rest of your Christian life. Because the focus is on bringing new Christians in, the learning tends to be very basic, very introductory.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Some churches go the other way and don’t focus on seekers at all; they focus solely on maturity. They tend to be fairly conservative, and take a lot of things for granted that new believers might have a hard time understanding at first. That isn’t to say that new seekers can come to Christ in such environments but it’s a little bit harder because the energy is different. The knowledge that leads one to Christ is assumed, rather than continually illustrated.

There’s nothing wrong with this, either.

However, there is a medium.

You can focus on Jesus Christ without being solely maturity-focused; you can also focus on Christ without being purely seeker-oriented.

You can actually serve both audiences – the ones who need to grow stronger as well as the ones who need to join the body of Christ – without losing either one and it’s actually one thing that our church does very well.

That’s what being Jesus-focused is really about, being focused on what’s important – pointing everything to Him.

That can present difficulties for people like me.

As a writer, it’s very easy to present my point of view, just like in this paragraph, and therefore, it’s very easy to allow the focus to stray away from Jesus and perhaps on to what Jesus has done in me, without properly focusing on Jesus in a way that illustrates Him to others. It’s a very fine line to cross. I find that many of the things that I do artistically focus on effect rather than cause and that is not really what I want to have happen in a Christian expression.

Consider this expression: “I feel wonderful because Christ is in my life.” Is that a Christ-focused expression? It could be. However the primary focus of the expression is not Christ – that’s the cause. The effect (“I feel wonderful”) is the main things in the expression.

Perhaps it would be more Jesus-focused if it were to be expressed as: “Christ is in my life, this makes me feel wonderful.”

However, I find this wanting as well. It still focuses on me, more than it should. It would be better if I were left out of it and perhaps it focused on us: “Christ has come to us. This is wonderful.”

Now it’s an expression that leaves me, as the believer and author, out of it; it now focuses on the beginning and end of what’s important: Christ.

Shalom.

Originally posted on January 4, 2012.

The Role of Forward Momentum

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This morning, I caught myself thinking that if you traced the motion of a leaf on the wind, you’d end up with something approximating the face of God.

More rationally, you’d end up with a bunch of squiggly lines, but then again, who are we to say that’s not a valid representation of the Most High?

It’s not a traditional representation, after all, of anything that relates to God. We think of God in the abstract. Most Jews don’t think of God as a concrete image at all, because of the injunction against graven images, so even the squiggly line might be out of bounds, if it’s considered an image of the Holy One.

But tradition is a huge thing in today’s Christianity, more than it should be.

There’s a huge movement in the church today to “revert,” to do what the original Christian church did; meeting in houses, fellowshipping in small groups. Less formal services, more direct communication among believers; it’s a model that you follow when your church has no money and no space.

Now that churches do have money and space, it’s not as necessary; we also have a professional leadership (seminaries train pastors, and we see “lay pastors” as different than, well, “actual pastors.”) Pastors no longer always know everyone in their congregation; the congregations are too large for “successful churches.” Productions are elaborate; services are more like performances.

This is our forward momentum now, this is our tradition.

The move towards small groups in today’s church is an oddity – a welcome one, but an oddity. Small groups enable believers (or, well, anyone) to minister directly to others, to connect with them directly, in ways the larger church cannot.

For example, in my small group (“life group,” or “study group,” or – in our case – “Truth Project group,” which deserves to be mentioned on its own in another post), one member recently found that his employment situation was unstable, and I had a death in my family – but neither of these things have a place in the larger church environment.

But in the small group, it’s natural and proper for those things to be shared and prayed over, commiserated with and understood. The result is that everyone feels closer and connected, and the Spirit of God is closer to each of us.

Yet this is something that’s both very old (in that it’s how the church existed in its second phase) and very new (in that churches are just now starting to encourage this kind of connection again.)

(Why “second phase?” Because the really early church was a collection of Jews, who met in the synagogue, who happened to think that the Messiah had come. The more traditional, non-Messianic Jews kicked them out, and they ended up meeting in homes. Thus, “second phase.”)

Forward momentum has a huge role in our lives, not only cultural but religious momentum informs everything. It creates our assumptions and it informs everything we think and do; much of how you believe and what you believe has to do with a sort of “belief trajectory” that incorporates everything you’ve experienced.

Thus, for me I carry the cultural mores and traditions that say who Moses was, and who Elijah was, and who Jesus was, even though the histories and descriptions we have from the Bible draw much less information than we have. These traditions and mores affect very much what and how I believe.

You, also, do the same thing; chances are very strong that there is some common ground in the traditions (because the same seed cultures created all of our modern cultures) but the differences inform everything we do.

The main thing for me to remember in all this is that momentum is good because it exists; the willingness to revert or try new things is also good, but the measure of propriety is how much any change glorifies God.

Shalom.

Originally posted on December 27, 2011.