But Out

In my experience, most people in churches of all denominations wrestle with one primary issue: Does God really love me?

The question is phrased in various ways like: What must I do to be saved? Why is there evil in the world? What about hell? Why did Jesus have to die? What is acceptable worship? What does God want from me? What is my purpose in life? Am I gifted enough? What is my ministry? How can God love me if there is so much misery in the world?

We could go on and on, but you know the questions. You’ve asked them, and maybe you’ve sought answers in churches, from theologians, and in prayer. Churches tend to respond in the affirmative, yet they often negate the answer with one little word. “But.”

God loves you, but you must stop sinning. God loves you, but you must speak in tongues. God loves you, but you must be baptized. God loves you, but you must go out and change the world. God loves you, but you must acknowledge the creeds. God loves you, but if you don’t do all of the right things in all of the right ways, then God will make sure something really bad happens to you—either now or in the hereafter.

Oddly enough, this message is habitually packaged as “good news.”
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Parousia…Authoring Your Life

There’s a difference between an author and an editor. The author creates ex nihilo. She looks at the blank page — computer screen, canvas, chunk of marble, or sketchpad — and fills it. Ideas take form in words, images, and pictures. Often crude, rough, and unrefined, they spill from the heart and mind of the author. It’s the real and untouched overflow springing from within. The author’s first draft stands like Adam and Eve — naked and unashamed.

Then comes the editor. The editor looks at the text with a critical eye, examining it for flaws, mistakes, and errors. His job is to find defects and to recommend corrections. The editor wants to refine the initial product like an instructor from a finishing school.

Rarely, if ever, does the audience see the original manuscript. It’s messy, filled with incomplete ideas and roughly worded phrases. The earliest document is a spontaneous declaration, but the edited version has been pored over, worked on, and chiseled away. In the world of publishing, the best books often result from the best editing. Life is different, however. In life we excel from authentic authoring rather than extensive editing.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg is an illuminating book designed to help people hone the craft of writing. In it, she reveals startling truths about living by helping people discover themselves. In her chapter “Trouble with the Editor,” she observes, “It is important to separate the editor from the creator or internal censor when you practice writing, so that the creator has free space to breathe, explore, and express.”

As we author our lives, we may hear the voice of our internal editor telling us that we’re not good, bright, or worthy. The editor looks disapprovingly at all we feel, believe, do, and hold dear. It tells us that we not as qualified as others to have opinions. That we’ll probably make a fool out of ourselves. That we’ll look, sound, and even smell horrible. The editor tells us that we’re less than perfect.

After a while, we tend to believe the editor. We take the editor’s suggestions and try to incorporate changes. We get a mentor, look to a guru, find someone to model our lives after. Hoping to please the editor — or just to shut him up — we search for someone who agrees with the editor. Yet, no matter how hard we try the editor continually marks our lives with red ink and track changes.

Eventually we might even attempt to imitate Jesus. If we can just force ourselves to be more like him, maybe the editor will be satisfied once and for all. But before long, we discover something shocking. We can’t live like Jesus because we’re not Jesus.

That’s not something to bemoan or regret. It’s just the reality. Jesus was Jesus, and you are you. And besides, neither Jesus nor God ever expected you to be Jesus. You’ve been called to be you, and that’s enough. Why would you settle for being less than you? If you feel compelled to follow Jesus, follow his example of living genuinely and fully before God, himself, and others. Jesus lived out of an authentic sense of being himself, and he didn’t model his life after anyone-not the prophets, not Elijah, not John the Baptist. He would be himself, regardless of any voices of judgment. When the soldiers came to arrest him under the cover of darkness, he reminded them “Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts.” Jesus lived openly. He would author his life, not edit it.

But you might wonder: What happens if I mess up? If I spell the words of my life incorrectly? If people read me and laugh? If it’s a horror story rather than an inspirational novel?

In that case, you might be tempted to turn to God as an editor. To correct all your mistakes. To cut this word and paste that one. To take something nonsensical and straighten it all out. Sadly this approach leads to greater disappointment and a more heightened impulse of self-editing. It turns God into a cosmic critic whose primary concern is finding fault. It squelches spontaneity, sincerity, authenticity by assuming that life as it has been lived is less than as it should be.

God is not an editor because God does not believe we need one. The voices attempting to edit our lives deny our legitimacy and even our humanity. They want us to be something other than who we are. Perhaps it may help to realize that anyone trying to edit you is actually longing to edit themselves.

God is quite different because God wants you to be no one besides yourself. The true you. God’s not interested in precise grammar or fastidious margins. God knows that a frank life sometimes misses a comma or spills past the borders. That’s cool with God because God is at peace with himself, and that allows God to be at peace with you.

So author your life. Boldly. Blatantly. Fearlessly. Don’t cut out the parts that may seem less than flattering. Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.” Don’t despise your being. Don’t hate you. Embrace the fullness of your divine inner self, and when you do you will find yourself fully present with God and all of life.
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Originally published on May 26, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

Blessed are the Merciful

Here is my latest article on the Presence site. It deals with the Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful” and sets it in context in the book of Matthew. I discuss how it relates the the kingdom of God and the salvation of all Israel. It starts like this.

Nothing Jesus ever said sounds more comforting than the Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. At the same time they may strike a chord of fear in the hearts of the insecure. If only the merciful obtain mercy, what shall be the end of the insensitive, pitiless, and callous?

If we isolate this saying from the other Beatitudes, we’re likely to read applications into it that Jesus never intended. That’s especially true with this Beatitude. By taking it out of its textual setting, we could see it as Jesus’ comment on the eternal fate of dead souls.

Click here to read the whole thing

Transmillennial Book Getting Closer

We’re getting closer to the publication of my (Kevin) book. Transmillennial: An Introduction to a New Heaven and Earth will be a relatively brief and basic description of the way I see the story unfolding and what it means for us today. More than a crystal ball supposedly telling us the course of predetermined events in the future, the Story opens unlimited creative possibilities for us to shape our world in a kosmos of light and love. I’ll let you know when it’s released. If you’re kind enough to read it, I’d love to get your feedback. Incidentally, we’re working on some ways to make the book available. I’ll keep you updated.

Parousia…Amazingly Graceful

Sometimes I wonder how God feels. Maybe there’s a danger in potentially conflating my feelings with God’s, and I suppose we’ve all done that to some degree. I feel that the world is unjust, so God must. I feel upset when I look at the state of world affairs, so God must be less than thrilled also. It bothers me that people read the Biblical story in ways that differ from my own; therefore, God is surely troubled, too.

It’s very easy to equate God with our individual ego. Meanwhile, plenty of voices remind us that the two are not identical.

Consider the oracle found in Isaiah 55:8-9. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” Perhaps Isaiah is informing us that we can’t possibly know God. Even so, I tend to see this as an affirmation that God performs acts of amazingly gracefulness. After all, this saying comes in a context where the prophet extols a merciful God “who is generous in forgiving” (Isaiah 55:7).

Then, of course, Paul makes a statement similar to Isaiah’s. “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). Like Isaiah, Paul connects God’s unfathomable judgment to His comprehensive grace. “For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32).

No wonder we have trouble understanding a God who shows mercy on all, whose grace is so abundant that our cups overflow. It doesn’t seem natural for anyone to be so graceful, so generous. How do we wrap out heads around that?

Granted, I’m assuming God has feelings. I live with the working assumption that God is passionate, emotional, and even sensitive. I believe that God’s expressions of emotion are authentic. After all, for God to be love, how could it be otherwise? Love is emotional and not simply a function of detached logic.

Maybe that’s the issue. We’ve been trying to make intellectual sense of God and grace instead of simply feeling its welcoming embrace. We try to makes sense of the irrational. Who can explain love?

Yet, I still wonder . . . how does God feel about our penchant for treating grace as primarily something to be received? How does God feel about our tendency of making grace a commodity you acquire in order to cover your sins so you can enjoy a pleasant afterlife? How does God feel about our proclivity for making God’s grace about us and what we get? How does God feel about our long term response to grace?

Frankly, because God is egoless and gracious (which may be synonymous terms) I don’t suspect God is too upset about not receiving acknowledgment. Besides if God bestowed grace only upon those who fully appreciated all of the nuances of grace, grace would cease being grace. Grace is about God-from alpha to omega. Grace is God’s indescribable gift.

Of course, receiving is an element of the grace experience. Certainly, grace covers a multitude of sins. Definitely, deep gratitude and exuberant worship are proper responses to an awareness of God’s grace. All the while, our ego may feel a little twinge when contemplating the reality that grace is not ultimately about taking us anyplace except beyond our individual identity.

But what about God’s feelings to our response to grace. Instead of gushing sentimental displays directed upward, I believe God would be happier with our graceful transformation directed outward.

Consider Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:23-25. In an act of grace, the king forgives a debtor who owes a huge amount. Yet, the forgiven man acts dis-gracefully by throwing his debtor into prison. In seeing grace as a product for his own selfish benefit, the man failed to undergo graceful transformation. He was grateful to have his debt forgiven, but not graceful enough to forgive his friend.

John Newton’s classic hymn celebrates God’s amazing grace that saves wretches. Grace delivers us from the wretchedness of selfishness, egocentricity, exclusivity, and isolation. To the extent we grasp on to conceited narcissism we have not yet experienced the complete saving power of grace. Grace that does not call us out of ourselves is pseudo-grace; it promises freedom but brings only the bondage of self-absorption.

Grace becomes effective as our thinking changes from “I got mine” to “How can I pay it forward?” Grace becomes amazing as we transform from reservoirs of grace to living streams of grace. The greatest act of thanksgiving and the most profound worship occurs as we embrace and practice our divine likeness in becoming grace givers. What’s more, our infinite capacity for gracefulness enlarges and expands as we practice grace and perform generosity.

When we extend grace toward others, God’s thoughts and ways become ours. When we have mercy on all, we’ve fathomed the depths of God’s wisdom. When we live gracefully, we’ve searched out God’s ways and judgments. And this is what I believe God absolutely revels in.

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Originally published on April 28, 2008. (c) Presence International. Parousia is a free Transmillennial publication of Presence. To receive Parousia in your inbox each week click here.

Revelation Literally

Do you take the Bible literally? It appears to be a simple, even innocent, question. Yet it comes packed with assumptions. This is no value-free inquiry that can be answered with a plain yes or no. This is a test question.

Depending on the questioner, it means different things. To someone describing herself as a Bible-believing fundamentalist, it’s a test of orthodoxy. If you take the Bible literally, you are a good and faithful servant of God worthy of all acceptance. If not, you are a heretical heathen headed for hellfire. However, if the questioner sees himself as a progressive and ecumenical believer, taking the Bible literally may signal a closed minded, regressive extremist.

Like most of life’s questions, “Do you take the Bible literally” is not a binary operation. Most questions of any significance can’t be answered with an unadorned yes or no.Consider this one: “Are you blue?”

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