Back Then

“Nothing exists beyond what can be measured or observed.” That’s what I used to believe. I got a note from a friend, and a member of the e-mail list, who found himself in a polite argument recently in which he confronted this very assertion.

In other words, the universe is what it is only by accident—or so the assertion goes. It is not that God definitely does not exist. Rather, whether God exists is irrelevant, because no God is involved. We might not know all of the precise mechanisms by which the universe accidentally arose, but that is what happened. The beginning of everything was just a vastly unlikely event that, in a vastly unlikely moment, did occur. Then, over time, the random collisions of particles eventually lined up in just the right way to produce self-sustaining life. Then, over still more time, the random accumulation of circumstances affecting that life gave rise to a machine-building and civilization-building lifeform—us.

In all of this, God has no place in the conversation, no matter what your scripture says. God is not needed. Again: So the assertion goes.

However, my own scripture says that—in this conversation—it is the scripture itself that is not needed. Really. That is: God is so obvious from what we know of the material world that no scripture is required to see him.

Personally, I find this to be a wonderfully self-effacing fact for a scripture to make plan. Using that idea as a starting point (specifically, Romans 1:19-20), I pursued the question of how we can know God is real. I hope you enjoy the argument. You can find the series of posts on that subject starting here.

In a way, though, that argument is beside the point. We all do need our arguments for why we believe in the God we do. We all need apologetics—see I Peter 3:15. Yet back when I believed the assertion at the very beginning of this post, no argument by itself could have shaken that belief. Our beliefs do not begin in the place that argument touches. Our beliefs do not take root in our thinking brains—much as we would like to think this is the case. Our beliefs instead begin elsewhere. In my own case, I had read the gospels before without meeting God in them. I had read them solely as literature. The breaking point in my system of belief came when I made the seemingly small choice to accept helplessness, admit vulnerability, and allow my heart to be changed. God swept in through this space. Only after that did I read the gospels with different eyes.

This is why, even though I have spent paragraph upon paragraph on arguments in this blog and elsewhere, I also know that we should not put too much hope in the weight of our arguments alone. I do not think the weight of just our arguments can reach people. Over top of the arguments of the thinkers, we also need the prayers of the faithful. In the end, it is not the sheep who save sheep. It is not even the lost sheep’s own bleating that saves sheep. A lost sheep is saved when the Shepherd moves.

I was not merely being “logical” when I committed to a godless worldview. In fact, I was not being “logical” in any way. The assertion at the beginning of this blog post actually fails by its own standard. The claim, “Nothing exists beyond what we can observe” is an example of a negative statement—and it is logically impossible to prove a negative. Therefore, this seemingly “logical” assertion is one that cannot be tested by logic.

In other words, it’s not just that my logic was incomplete. It’s not just that I needed to add something else to the structure of my thinking. That was not the extent of it. To cling to and insist upon an assertion that is fully unproveable is a commitment—and a different sort of commitment than we imagine we are making when we presume the cover of logic.

Back then, I was pretending to be logical, though at a deeper level I was holding a particular assumption in a place more sacred than logic. Back then, in other words, I was exercising a faith. I was staking out the bounds of a religion.

Try Surrender

In the book of Acts there is a magician who tried to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit. He wanted to buy it for a price, through a cash transaction (Acts 8:18-19). His proposal sounds absurd. And yet, don’t we sometimes seek to do the same thing?

I do. The Spirit provides love, joy, peace, and other fruits (Galatians 5:22-23)—fruits that I often feel are missing. The Spirit provides an informing, uplifting, transforming power, and when I feel that I am lacking in that power, I want to more aggressively go after it. I want to figure out the steps or formula for finding, chasing, and capturing the Holy Spirit, just so I can willfully follow through with that formula. I want to bottle the Spirit like a jar of fireflies so I can take it back with me into my own darkness.

Yet the language of scripture is more passive than this. We are to “be filled with the Spirit.” That phrasing—very familiar to many—implies a couple of things. First, it implies that the pouring is already being done. We just have to “be filled.” Second, it implies that we already have the capacity. We just have to see our own waiting capacity get filled with the right thing. Indeed, this second point is more than just implied; it is explicitly stated. Scripture cites being “drunk on wine” as an example of something to get out of the container so that the Spirit can more completely fill it (Ephesians 5:18).

In other words, finding God via the Holy Spirit is not a matter of striving. It is not a matter of active and energetic attainment, and not a matter of paying a sufficient price. It is not a matter of these things—no matter how much I might like the exchange to work this way, during the times when I am so sullen and closed-in that striving and paying prices are all I can think to do. Rather than what we actively attain, the Spirit is found in what we passively deny. It is found in what we give up. Indeed, I seem to relearn this each time I finally do reach the bottom of despair. Hitting the bottom one more time again, I give up.

I give up.

That is, I give up on seeing the aims of my personal pride realized.

I give up, finally, on the hope of seeing the slights against me avenged.

I give up on expecting the various rewards and indulgences to which I feel I am entitled.

Once I reach the point where these things are no longer the demands I revere, then more space is left for the Spirit to fill me. Try it yourself. Try surrender, and when you do this, see if love and peace do not find you as if by accident. God is doing the pouring.

***

Photo: Pedro J. Pérez

Becoming a Tree

The blessings of Jesus Christ extend even to those who do not give much thought to Jesus Christ at all—those who are (so it is said) “as free as a bird.” That is my reading of the parable of the mustard seed, in which Jesus says (according to Matthew 13:31-32):

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus made the point that God provides for the birds of the air—taking care of them though they don’t seek or notice this provision. God loves not just human beings, but also the smallest bird (Matthew 6:26). Now, in the parable above, we learn that the kingdom of God starts as something even tinier than a bird. Indeed, it starts as a mustard seed, a seed that is tiny alongside other seeds. But just like the mustard seed, the kingdom of God flourishes.

Mustard grew wild in Jesus’ time, a ragged bush that was regarded more as a weed than as a crop. Certainly it did not grow in cultivated rows planned by men. Like this bush, the kingdom of God advances in unpredictable ways. It grows “greater than the herbs.”

But there is something else, a further stage. The parable offers another striking detail. This flourishing spice that is greater than the herbs goes on and “becomes a tree.” In nature, a mustard seed will never produce a tree, yet this mustard seed does. The very nature of the plant transforms, the plant making a (literally) supernatural change. Through this change, it becomes something different than the wildly flourishing spice. Now, it is an organism strong enough, stable enough, and tall enough to be a comfort and a shelter to the birds of the sky.

Oswald Chambers wrote, “The final stage in the life of faith is attainment of character.” That word, character, offers the sense of a reserve of strength great enough that some of it can be offered to others. Character implies stability, the stability of being rooted, just like a mature tree.

By contrast, to be unrooted, like a bird, is not to be free. Not really. Birds can fly, but their flight is a physically demanding effort that the birds must perform in order to find safety and food. Birds also sing, but many of the songs you hear through your window are actually bullying assertions of territory. Smaller birds are hectored by bigger birds. To be any bird except the very largest is to live a life circumscribed by fear. It is in the very midst of this flying and crying that we are called to serve.

Specifically, those who have heard the call of Christ in their lives understand that it is indeed a call—a call to play a role, to continue the work that Jesus began. We aspire to provide the branches, somehow—stable perches for those among us who might otherwise be lost in the sky. We aspire to be the tree.

The reason to do this is not because we expect anything in return from the birds. We do so instead because we have been invited to love as Jesus loved. He was God come into the world. He was God come to serve. The Lord on earth was simultaneously humble and tall, just like the tree. And his life and love both continue to advance for as long as the forest continues.

You

During a recent period of rest and solitude, I went a different way. I made a right-angle turn in my heart.

It simply occurred to me that, throughout the course of my belief so far, God has always been beside me or above me. That is the place I’ve assumed for him. I have been focused on my challenges and aims. I would call out thanks to God for the victories, or I would call out to God for help when I felt in peril. Either way, I have called out to God.

The right-angle turn consisted of looking at God instead. Making him the focus.

The turn consisted of seeing my life such that those challenges and those objectives are now to one side of me, not him. He is in the front. My challenges might not be overcome in this world. My aims might not be met. Yet he is in control. He has a plan, he has somewhere to take me in this world, he has things he wants to impart—and I am less interested, now, in being distracted.

With this turn, with this shift in focus, certain verses now make more sense than they ever made before. “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17) is one of those verses. The Lord, I realize, is continually creating—making everything around me, every part of my experience. If I look for him, if he is my focus, if I am attentive to his active choosing of what he wants to show me, then we are unceasingly communicating.

“Seek my face” (II Chronicles 7:14) is another such verse. That sphere of experience all around me is part of God’s face. It is part of the expression God wears on his face—the expression God wears toward me. Such a face is at least as rich with expression as any human face could ever be. Think of how people’s faces communicate. Facial expressions are so subtle, so nuanced, that they send meaning right into our hearts that words cannot contain. Now consider how much more elaborately expressive the face of God must be.

I find the most basic consequence of my turn toward this face, the Lord’s face, in the softer and simpler way I now address him. I used to call him “God.” I used to call him “Lord.” I still do. But when you look at someone, they know to whom you are speaking. More often now, I find myself simply addressing him as “You.”

“I AM” is Present Tense

The Lord is not just eternally everywhere but also eternally now. His name, “I AM,” is present tense. Jesus emphasized this with the most profound violation of grammar ever spoken. In John 8:58, he said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

Yet the present tense is also the presence of tension. “Your word is a lamp to my feet,” says Psalm 119:105. This is as much a challenge as a comfort. All we are given to see is where to step next—nothing more. Is this enough?

The phrase “eternal life” consists of two words that deserve to be unpacked. “Eternal” means unbounded in time. “Life,” by definition, involves development and growth. Every living thing is changing. To have “eternal life” is to have eternal change. To have eternal life, in other words, is to have boundless becoming—the state of forever turning into someone new.

Alongside such a promise, the finiteness of earthly life is just a paltry threat. Earthly life will end, but we will not. Nevertheless, most of us still live as though the ticking clock contains us. Many of us still worry as though the passing of each year’s calendar diminishes who we might be.

We who have experienced forgiveness can appreciate that walking with God means leaving the prison of the past. However, the walk with God just as truly involves leaving the shadow of the future. God is now, and it is God, right now, who invites us to know him. It is God who invites us into the joy of joining with the fresh and flourishing work that I AM is doing today.

To seek God, we turn away from our fascination with past and future alike.

To discover the gift of God, we open up the present.

Get the Basket Out of the Way

...and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
—Romans 1:4 NIV

...who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.
—Romans 1:4 NASB

...and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
—Romans 1:4 NKJV

Was the Holy Spirit the One who raised Jesus from the dead? That is at least the implication of the verse above. The act that fully and finally revealed Jesus Christ to be the Son of God was (it would seem) performed by the Holy Spirit. To be sure, other verses of scripture suggest that Jesus raised himself from the dead—see John 2:19-21 and John 10:17-18. With these latter verses, though, Jesus might have spoken from the Spirit’s perspective. I do not know. Suffice it to say: One possible picture painted by Romans 1:4 is that the Spirit released on the cross (John 19:30) turned right around and released Jesus from the tomb.

That picture is profound not just theologically, but also in a personal way. Most or all of the Holy Spirit’s roles in a human life are internal. The Spirit liberates, instructs, guides, intercedes, and so on—see this list. However, right here at the simultaneous low point and high point of Jesus’ mission, we see the Holy Spirit expressing its utmost impact on a human life. Here is the Holy Spirit physically, materially, and literally remaking the man. Accordingly, here is the reason why inviting more of the Holy Spirit into our lives presents a visceral challenge to every one of us.

A “visceral” challenge? Yes. Our resistance is bodily and instinctive, because we sense where this is going. The Spirit’s concern is not to exalt us personally. The Spirit’s concern is not to give us greater power for the sake of our own thrill in being powerful. Rather, the Spirit’s concern for each of us is to make us purer agents of God’s will. The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, says Proverbs 20:27. That lamp is lit by our own spirit touching and getting filled with God’s Spirit. And the way of God, when a lamp is lit, is not to allow that lamp to be concealed. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, says Matthew 5:15. The way of God is to get the basket out of the way of the light.

The Spirit gave Jesus a new body. The process of transformation was not pleasant. It entailed a crucifixion. Our own suffering almost certainly will be tiny by comparison. But still: In the process of letting your light shine, in the work of revealing the fullness of who you might be, what if the Spirit transforms your “body” as well?

I put “body” in quotes here, because this body of yours might include any of your outward worldly aspects. It might be your flesh that is touched, or it might be your wealth or reputation. As Francis Chan wrote, “The Spirit may lead me into total sacrifice, or he may lead me toward humiliation in the opinions of other people around me.”

As I say, we sense where this is going. We resist and brace against the work of the Spirit in our lives because we still, all of us, succumb to the error of thinking that our passing earthly lives are really where life is located. Yet we only sense part of where the Spirit is going with us, the fearsome part, the brief part—the transition point along the way to something eternal. The aim of God is that your joy might be complete (John 15:11). The fruits of the Spirit’s work are abundant, and the list begins with love and joy (Galatians 5:22-23).

Yes, God will get the basket out of the way. But imagine this: Alongside that light that has been revealed there is now this basket—at last inverted, at turned up the right way, at last able to hold all of the fruits that remain eternally sweet.

The Heart is the Hard Part

....that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
—Romans 10:9

The famous verse above offers a one-sentence summary—actually, just a half-sentence summary—of two conditions that are necessary for obtaining the renewed and reawakened life that Jesus gives. Those conditions are: (1) confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and (2) believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

Which of these two conditions is harder to satisfy?

It would seem as though the second condition is easier to meet. The heart is (seemingly) a safe and secret place in which to entertain faith. Presumably, a person could just believe there, muttering the belief only to himself, whispering the belief in his thoughts. The first condition, confessing out loud, is different—that involves exposure. More, it involves almost certain humiliation. People will turn away, smirk, and judge you naïve.

However, the ordering of the verse above suggests that condition 2 must be something more significant than just an easy follow-on to condition 1. There is the sense of a progression here, a stairstep ascent toward “you will be saved.” What if condition 2 is actually the greater commitment?

Peter (portrayed by El Greco in the painting above) met condition 1. He confessed that Jesus is Lord. He confessed it aloud, just as the verse says. In a powerful moment, in fact, Peter was among the very first to perceive and proclaim the divinity of Jesus in an inspired and genuine way (see Luke 9:20). At this point, Peter had committed to following Jesus and he would soon find himself empowered to heal and drive out demons in Jesus’ name. But did he believe? As it turned out, not yet.

Of course, while Jesus was with him, Peter could not believe God raised Jesus from the dead—that hadn’t happened yet. Still: Jesus was with him. And Peter’s confession showed how he recognized who Jesus was. But in spite of this, when a crucial moment came, Peter denied his association with Jesus. He lied to cover it. He denied Jesus aloud—repeatedly. Luke 22:54-62 tells this story—the moment when Peter’s belief was revealed to be just skin-deep, just voice-deep. Belief had not yet fully entered his heart.

From time to time, I re-examine why it is that I believe. I ask why I made this choice.

Getting into heaven was not the reason. Life after death held no fear for me. Heaven must be an accepting and welcoming place, I assumed. If there really was some special requirement for getting into heaven, then I assumed God would understand why I didn’t meet that requirement—why I apparently got confused and missed it during this life. If God did exist, I reasoned, then I could talk to him when I saw him. I could learn the truth then. Indeed, scripture shows a picture of something like this very thing. A criminal appeals to Jesus with his few remaining breaths, and the criminal gets into to heaven on the basis of only this appeal (Luke 23:42-43). I didn’t know about that story back then, but still I assumed I’d have some similar chance to offer up my case—if and when it mattered. I didn’t give much thought to heaven then. And I still don’t.

Now, however, the reason why I don’t give much thought to heaven is different. The new life, the life after this world, has begun already. The adventure within freedom has begun. And the reason why I have chosen belief, why I chose to believe in the way of the resurrected Son, is because of this very adventure—the journey of stepping out, facing fears, and walking on the waves.

Yet first there is a choice. I met people who confessed God and I decided to join them—but still there was a choice.

I called out to God, to the Son, and I came to recognize the ways in which he answers—but still there was a choice.

Finally, I opened my heart to Jesus. I did this not upon discovering the reality of Jesus, but later than that—upon discovering the reality of my heart. There is a real and vital center to each of us that is more than just an abstraction. Rather than being unreal, the heart is hyper-real—because it has the potential to be bigger than this world.

A person could be forgiven for not knowing that—not knowing that he or she has such a heart. Unknowingly, I gave my heart to pride, approval, income, and other temporary comforts. These things left me cheap and starving and small. Setting my heart free entailed releasing it from the prison of such submission, the submission to tiny things. The only problem was: I was in love with this prison. I had fallen in love with walls and bars. My heart had become this prison. Each of our hearts, in fact, consists of many such prisons. And each time we lose one of the most confining and defining prisons that contain us, we initially experience this change in our lives with a feeling of pain or tragedy or loss. Indeed, the world often cannot see anything else, anything of value, in the sorts of changes that accompany faith.

Peter did not believe, not after all the time he spent with Jesus. He did not have faith. He did not find this faith until he came to the end of who he had imagined himself to be.

Peter lied to protect himself. He lied to deny Jesus. He failed publicly and profoundly—and he watched himself do it. He was shattered by a self-inflicted blow to the spirit, and when it was done, he fled back to his old life as a fisherman (John 21:3), not knowing what else he could do.

But the resurrected Jesus forgave him. And over time, Peter accepted the forgiveness. He lived the life of the Spirit. He stood up from the self-inflicted blow.

To believe is ultimately to know this transformation, and on some level, to choose it—to choose the rising up so completely that we also choose the fall that precedes it. There is, of necessity, a demolition that precedes rebuilding. I gave my heart to Jesus once I found this heart. And I made the discovery of my own heart—I began for the first time to feel my heart’s depth and fullness and potential—only after that heart had at last been sufficiently broken.