In the Desert...You Can't Remember Your Name

Today’s rambling may be completely random…I have three strands of thought in my head that I hope I can cause to converge in my thought process to make a complete puzzle…so hang on while I try to put the pieces together…

I LOVE the biblical story of the exodus of God’s people from Egypt—but for ALL the wrong reasons.  The “good stuff” is all sort of “self-evident”…it is like a child’s flannel graph story from Sunday School in the 1970’s…it is hard to miss the point—God at work in the lives of His chosen people—He is faithful even when we aren’t.  The narrative of promise and the theology are all there…but it is the geographic content that intrigues me, and for that we need to step back a little further.

I’ve never been to the “Holy Land” but I have seen pictures, videos, and I talked with several people who have witnessed it first-hand.  Parts of it seem quite beautiful (even though it has been war-torn nearly since Jesus left the earth) but there is a stark contrast to the beauty—the barrenness of the desert (also called “wilderness”). The Hebrew can be translated as “desert” or “barren wilderness”…no words better describes MOST of my spiritual life than these.

Since the time I felt called by God to enter the ministry I have always sought God’s leading.  Often I felt clear direction and sensed the Spirit’s prompting for me to make certain choices—and CLEARLY they have been just that…MY CHOICES.  I am not a Calvinist and do not believe in deterministic predestination—I fully believe that God has an overall plan but gives us free will to make choices, and I have always thought that I have tried to see God’s plan and make choices that aligned my will with God’s will—obviously I have not always been successful at that (at least from my perspective)—so I feel like I have spent my life “wandering in the wilderness” (a good spiritual metaphor for me).  I have always believed that God was with me in my wandering (and even in the wilderness) but I have often felt exiled NOT because of God but because I was bearing the responsibility of MY choices (Sartre would be proud of my existentialist leanings here…taking the responsibility for both my choice AND what I didn’t choose!).  Too often my self-imposed exile left scars.

Last week I was listening online to a streaming audio sermon by Mike Breaux.  It was an okay message (long on pop/socio psychology and short on theology grounded in Scripture for me but that is a WHOLE other issue) but he was talking about Moses when he said a phrase that has been stuck in my head.  He spoke about Moses killing the Egyptian taskmaster and then fleeing to the desert for safety.  He went on to tell how Moses stayed in the desert, and then he said this, “Moses was in the desert and the desert was in him.”  It was the Fred Craddock moment of the sermon…it was not his main point but it was so powerfully worded that it was impossible to miss!  This was the epitaph for my own life.  Please note, God was still with Moses in the desert (even though he was now a murderer—for ALL the right reasons—but a murderer all the same)…I suspect He was waiting…for Moses to dissipate and for the desert to set in.

It is the nature of sin in our lives.  It is the effect that it has on our souls.  I am reminded of two powerful scenes from the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.  Both scenes are prompted by the power that the ring (the symbol of evil) has over the  “ring-bearer” (and btw remember Galadriel’s words to Frodo: “to be a ring-bearer is to be alone”).  The first is the opening sequence of the movie that shows what happens to Sméagol and Déagol the day Déagol finds the ring.  Sméagol kills his friend to gain “ownership” of the ring, and then:

They cursed us. Murderer. Murderer they called us. They cursed us and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind . . . We even forgot our own name…

The second is near the end of the movie.  Frodo and Sam are near the top of Mt Doom (where the ring is to be destroyed) and they are exhausted from their long journey…Sam ponders the future:

Sam: Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?

Frodo: No, Sam. I can't recall the taste of food... nor the sound of water... nor the touch of grass…

It is what happens when the desert overcomes us…we forget!  I have been accused of being unsympathetic, introverted, and distant (even though I don’t think I am—it could be a by-product of my too modernistic rational theological education), but I am NEVER unmoved by those who suffer debilitating neurological disorders…who “forget” to eat, to communicate, loved ones, their name…themselves. 

We are, in part, who we are because of our names (though we can legally change them—we cannot change the genetics behind those names). Names are important.  My wife and I went to great lengths to make sure that the names of our children told their stories…and as they shape their own stories growing up—their names are helping to shape them serving as reminders of what our (my wife and I) visions, hopes, and dreams, were of them and for them.

When I was younger I was learning to play the acoustic guitar…and though I wanted to ROCK…I began with easy folk and country songs. But what I wanted to play was those “soft-rock/folk-rock” songs of the 70’s…one of the first ones I tried to play was “A Horse with No Name” by the group America (man am I getting old!!)…I have always tried to figure out just what that song was about---and I have read MANY explanations (none completely satisfied me) but I have always been struck with the phrase, “in the desert, you can’t remember your name…”—whatever they meant they understand how the desert gets in us..and we forget.

I’ve been there.  I am there.  I have been lost and disoriented but I have never been alone.  The desert has consumed me…it lives in me…I am dry, and barren inside and out, and yet I have never felt completely alone nor devoid of hope (though it has often dimmed!).  One reason is because I know that I have been sustained by those who love me, even when I am unlovely—they have prayed when I could not, they have gone when I decided to stay, they cared when I didn’t, and they stayed strong when I was weak.  And somehow when I don’t want Him or when I least expect him…God shows up and reminds me that I have a new name…Christian…and even when I forget…He doesn’t.

So once again I find myself at a crossroads.  Just when I thought a break from ministry was immanent…God seemingly has other plans…plans that only He could have orchestrated.  So I will do my best to follow—knowing that trying to do it on my own will only end in failure but recognizing that my failure is His specialty…because when I am weak HE IS STRONG.  I believe…help my unbelief.

Church Shopping?

Have you seen the new Allstate commercials?  They all compare shopping for insurance with some type of actual comparison shopping (my favorite one is the guy with a baby on his chest shopping for diapers). I agree that one SHOULD “shop” for both diapers and insurance---in this economy we deserve to get the best deal that we can on anything that we choose to purchase!

However, deeper issues are at stake…these commercials only serve to reiterate the fact that we live in a consumerist culture.  There is nothing new about consumerism…it is the bedfellow of capitalism.  When I see these commercials I see so much more…a culture that cannot wait, who is entitled to instant gratification, and church buildings full of people suffering from this mentality that are desperately seeking something to cling on to in our ultra-modernist world that, by nature, desires change. 

Several writers in the early 90’s jumped on the “McChurch” and “McCulture” bandwagon. These authors intended to use these term derogatorily suggesting that we had become a church or a culture that was “cardboard” and undesirable…but instead, it came to be used of situations that require “fast food mentality.”  There is, perhaps, no business as consumer driven as the fast-food industry---it is expedient, cheap, and convenient.  WIWAK (when I was a kid) there was fast food…but is was not consumer driven---it was just food that was convenient (ur um…fast), but along came “Burger King” where “special orders don’t upset us” and they birthed a notion with their slogan “you can have it your way!”  We didn’t know it then but they were well ahead of their time.

Today it would seem absurd to drive through a fast food place and be forced to have an order that was NOT able to be conformed to the desires of the consumer…and oddly enough we feel the same way about the Church.

I grew up in a town of about 1,700 people with 5-6 churches and they were ALL the same!  Whatever differences they had were theological differences that most people really didn’t know much about…when you went to any of these churches you were going to experience pretty much the exact same atmosphere, the same music, and the same preaching (I haven’t been back for over 15 years but I would guess it is still pretty much the same!)…today people under 40 years old cannot even discuss where to get coffee or what to have IN their coffee without starting an argument!  So the Church tried the “McChurch” approach and found that it worked really well for awhile but the spirituality that was coming out of that environment was still stale and “inauthentic.” What we found was that whatever we were doing was NOT really bringing us closer to God…so we blamed the Church.

BUT…was (is) it really the Church’s fault?  Or is it our fault for having unrealistic expectations?  After all…we have a “specialist” for every age group (which relieves that parents of having to actually teach their children about anything spiritual), we have worship bands that sound JUST like the most current guys on KLOVE (or whatever other station we choose to listen to)—but oddly enough they are not preparing us for worship, and we have guys “giving talks” in their jeans and T-shirts about how much God loves us and how the concept of sin and hell are outdated theological notions…don’t we really need just need to “hang out” with each other to “build community?” Note that none of these things are bad in and of themselves…but none of them are really calling for us to change or for us contribute to transforming the world we live in!

I am not sure what bible everyone reads…but the one I read uses words like “one-another” and “sacrifice.”  In fact, at one point someone mentions about “denying oneself!” No wonder the Church is in trouble…NOBODY wants to hear or talk about these things anymore!!! Maybe that is PRECISELY the problem?  Or as church consultant Tom Bandy states, “Despite what they say, most Christians really don’t want to be LIKE Christ! Why? Because following Christ always sears your lips, dislocates your hip, drives you to talk to your enemies, and changes your name.”  I guess if it was easy everyone would make it (BTW…I am NOT a universalist), and clearly some will NOT make it…I am saved by grace but I continue to work out my salvation with MUCH kicking and screaming (translation mine)..why can’t somebody else be the one who is called to “go” and to “follow” by “denying themselves?”  No wonder the prophets all tried to get out of “being called!”

Let’s STOP shopping for the church that has everything we want…and START being the Church that God has called us to be! Someday we just might learn it has NEVER been all about us, AND (as predicted) “good thing come to those who…are faithful and obedient.”

Too Sexy for...GOD?!?

According to dictionary.com an idol is:  “an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed.” Our English term “idol” is from the Greek “eidolon” which can mean: image, idol, imprint, or example. Oddly enough the ancient etymology of the term is unclear, Mundle, in NIDNTT, notes that the term was generally not used for the image of ancient Greco/Roman gods..but is often found being used for “an unsubstantial form” (like an image in a mirror, or a reflected image on the water). The Hebrew language has fifteen terms for idol, and the prohibitions of worshipping such images appears early on in Old Testament literature (for instance it was at the TOP of God’s list of the Ten Commandments!!).  The New Testament simply carries both the vocabulary and the condemnation of the worship of false gods from the Old Testament.

Our world is filled with idols and idol worshippers. Someone told me once that if you want to see what you really worship all you have to do is to look at your calendar and your checkbook…the things that you spend the most money and time on are the things that you probably worship!  However, the depth of our idolatry goes much deeper than that.  I find it telling that professional athletes who are on the roster but will never actually play on the field make several times more for “warming the bench” than the average person in the US makes for working every day.  The highest echelon of actors makes more for one single movie (which may take months--up to a year to complete) will make more to show up the first day than the rest of us will make for an entire year of work, AND will make more money than the average person would see in SEVERAL life times by the time we take the movie in at the local theaters.

By now you may be asking what the point is in “raging against the machine”…I have often said publicly that Christians cannot blame the world for being the world! There is also an old proverb that goes something like this: all that is necessary for evil to thrive if for good people to do nothing.  But what can one person do?!?!?!?

Actually, there was a PERFECT example of this in, of ALL places, TIME magazine (vol 178, no 14, 2011—“Special Money Issue”), it is a small side bar story on page 55, and oddly enough it is listed under “agriculture” in the “Culture” section.  The article states that a farmer in Northern Ireland agreed to allow pop star Rihanna to shoot a video in his barely field.  However, when the crew and star arrived and began filming the owner of the property immediately stopped the filming and asked everyone to leave because the singer was “too scantily dressed…” and he recommended that “she and her friends…acquaint themselves with a greater God.”  I am not naive enough to think that this little article is not fraught with all sorts of implications (as opposed to simply and categorically stating the truth) but clearly this is an example of a person who has decided to throw a wrench in “the machine” and I applaud him for tilting at this particular windmill!

Will his suggestion be heeded? No, because we live in a world where sex sells and money & image rule—so they will simply find another barely field or create one via CGI for the video which will undoubtedly generate income for everyone involved. But I am reminded of a verse in scripture that is all too often quoted at a time like this, and almost always quoted out of context…Matthew 10:32-33 where Jesus says:

³² “Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. ³³ But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

In the context of Matthew chapter ten these verses mean more than simply “being a witness” for Jesus.  In this chapter Jesus is sending out “the twelve” those whom He chose to carry on His ministry and bear witness to His testimony. All four of the gospels name the twelve and then give vivid descriptions of Jesus’ directions to them about their mission.  These directions including specific instructions about how to travel, what to take on the journey, and what to expect as the begin their ministry (for those who might be considering “ministry” as a vocation…it is NOT pretty…I suggest you skip this portion of Scripture for now and come back to it later!). Then Jesus details the difference between Spirit and flesh and the world and the Kingdom, ending in verse thirty-one with an illustration of how much God cares for us…the reason that we are not to fear! Then Jesus inserts these famous verses about confessing before men and the Father.  The context does not change the meaning of the way it is often quoted out of context but it does make it vital that we understand the circumstances that we are expected to encounter.

It is because of God’s great love, through Christ Jesus, that we can have faith to “make a stand” when we find ourselves in adverse circumstances.  This verse simply tells us to wage war carefully, expecting both good and bad things to result, knowing that we are called to a higher standard as citizens of the Kingdom, resting on the promise that God’s love is greater than any circumstance, and that following Jesus in not always easy, predictable, or safe.  In the words of C.S. Lewis, “he is not TAME...but he is good!”

I am doubtful that we can change the world, perhaps not even our little corner of it, but I believe that we serve a God who already has, and will continue to do so through the faith of those like the Irish barely farmer.

Sex might sell in a world gone wrong…but not on his farm…and not in the Kingdom he serves.  Tilt on Irish farmer Quixote…I will gladly play Poncho and support your right to decency on your land…there is a “greater God” than the one the world serves and perhaps through our “tilting at windmills” some might find Him, “get acquainted” with, worship Him, and ONLY Him.  Sola Deus!