The Weeping City

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing

Monday afternoon, two explosions detonated near the finish line of the Boston marathon, killing at least three people and wounding over a hundred others. It left many people, including me, shocked and depressed about the state of the world. How could people do this to one another? How could people become so emotionally numb that they would intentionally harm or kill other people for the simple purpose of sending a message? Do they not realize that people are people wherever they live, having the same concerns and dreams and hopes of their friends and neighbors?

 

And, in all of this, where is God? How can a loving God allow such suffering and evil to happen, when knowing all things, he knew it would happen and could have prevented it but didn’t?

One might argue (in fact, many have) that this supports the idea that there is no God, or at least not a loving one. But this is not true. On closer look, this paradoxically fits exactly with a loving God - the same God of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

God created man out of love, and in creating him, part of what He gave man was free will. God does not force anyone to choose good. Without the choice of good and evil, making the choice to be “good” is meaningless and says nothing about your heart – only about your ability to follow orders. God does not want people to be robots. He is a God of love, and part of love is allowing people to freely choose Him and His ways. That is the only meaningful way on which people can be judged on the individual level. So God often lets people do what they will, even when their actions would be considered evil, without stopping them, though He has the power to do so.

But this lack of stepping in does not mean that God does not care.  Since the days of Adam and Eve when sin entered the world in the Garden of Eden, the world has chosen its own way in place of God’s.  Yet often, sin does not seem that bad to us. How many of us haven’t told a lie when it was convenient, or found ourselves caught up gossiping about someone who wasn’t there? Why is it that many non-Christians will frame Christianity as “So basically you could do whatever you want all your life and then on your deathbed convert to following Christ and still go to Heaven?” as something desirable, or street preachers who emphasize the gravity of sin fall on deaf ears?  It’s because most sin doesn’t sound that bad to us. Sometimes, it even sounds fun. Murders or Rape? Sure, those are bad. Lying? Uncomfortable but sometimes unavoidable. Selfishness? Greed? Hmm, no comment. And doing what we want instead of putting God first in our hearts, especially when he calls to something we don’t want to do or keeps us away from something we desire? Well, sorry God, but I’m going with my way on this one.

The Bible tells us that the ways of God are not the ways of men. “For you, O God, delight not in wickedness…you hate all evildoers; you destroy all who speak falsehood” (Ps 5:5-6)  “for the Lord is just, he loves just deeds” (Ps 11:7). Hear that? God finds lying so detestable that he would destroy all who lie.  The New Testament is filled with calls to repent, to turn away from sin and towards God. To God, sin is ugly – no, even beyond ugly. Abhorrent, rotten, and utterly detestable. And yet to a lot of people, sin just doesn’t seem that bad.

Monday’s tragedy, and all others like it, are caused by sin in the world, and should be a clear reminder that no matter how okay sin seems sometimes, in reality sin is always horrible and results in terrible things.  God is angry and filled with grief every time people sin, yet He allows it to give people the power of choice. In giving us our freedom to choose, He gives us the freedom to do great evil and to hurt ourselves and others, though it causes Him great sorrow.

The Bible tells us, “A man will reap only what he sows. If he sows in the field of the flesh, he will reap a harvest of corruption; but if his seed-ground is the spirit, he will reap everlasting life.” (Gal 6:7-8).

Today, we have seen what sin has reaped. Today, we will weep with God.

Prayer: God, give us a heart like yours. Let the evil in the world be used as an experience to open our eyes to how terrible sin really is, and let us draw closer to you in response.

Scripture for Further Meditation:  Psalm 51

Finding calling

What am I made for? What am I supposed to do with my life? The question haunts me when I am alone, when there is nothing to do, when I am bored, when I am wondering what I should do. It is the anxiety producing existential crisis that has driven some philosophers to become madmen. I want to avoid that fate. I want to find my purpose and find my calling.

I believe the Christian answer, which is that we are created by God for His glory. That is the general call, to serve and glorify God, to live in a relationship of love with God. That answer is hard for others to believe but it is not difficult for me. It is the only answer so I believe it.

But what about the specific call? What am I made to do? I am consumed with the notion that I was created for something, that I have a purpose that is important in this world, but I don’t know what that purpose is. I want to find what that purpose is and have searched for a long time for this. I find a moment which I think is my call, but then the opportunity fails and so I’m left without a call. I’m left in abeyance, left waiting for an answer of what God wants me to do. I’m left waiting for God to reveal what he has called me to do.

In Chapter 10 of Crazy Love, Francis Chan makes an assertion that hits right at the troubled notion of my search for a purpose. He says: "most of us use "I'm waiting for God to reveal his calling on my life" as a means of avoiding action" (p 169). This troubled me because I don’t feel like it’s true at all. I feel I shouldn’t do actions without knowing what my calling is, or I will just end up hopping from one random action to the next. I have searched for God’s calling on my life. I don’t know what it is. I do want to act, but I don’t want to act and do something radical unless I know that’s what God wants me to do.

There are many people who have a clear call from God and who do great things. I’ve read books by these people (such as Mr. Chan) and found that they try to exhort others to do equally radical things, even when those people have not been called to do so. I had a friend tell me something deeply meaningful about this. He said that he has been to many retreats where a missionary from a certain place exhorts people to go to a certain place and give a convicting message that makes everyone think they need to be a missionary to that place, and after the talk, many people “realize” that their calling is to go to that place. The thing my friend told me was that it is not likely that everyone is called to be a missionary to that place. People have to find their own calling for their lives and realize that our callings are unique to ourselves and we can’t replace our own individual calling with another person’s calling.

I thought the quote from Mr. Chan that I quoted above was advocating a reckless move for something radical without feeling called from God, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw that there was a powerful truth there. One thing I have learned from my search for calling is to make sure I serve God in ways I know I should serve Him while I’m waiting for a more specific calling. There are people around me who need love. There are causes I can contribute to. There are places I can help. Even if I don’t feel called to do them, I should still do what I can do while I wait.

I should grow as well. Personally, I feel like the last two years of my life have not really advanced me. I haven’t seen much fruit from them. But I have grown inwardly and focusing on growing inwardly is another thing I can do while I wait for an external calling.

In another entry, I plan to write in more detail regarding what to do while waiting for God’s call, so stay tuned. What are some things you’ve done while waiting for God’s word in your life?

How do we inspire others to be better people?

We’re really struggling in our Bible study to appreciate the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. In it, the author gives a list of traits that characterize in his opinion “lukewarm Christians” and then follows this list with the assertion that “lukewarm Christians are not Christians. We will not see them in Heaven.” (pg 81). The problem with this is that the list of characteristics of lukewarm Christians are so general that they apply to pretty much everyone to some degree. Mr. Chan even says this himself, stating “each of us has lukewarm elements and practices in our life.”* If every Christian is lukewarm to some degree, is anyone really saved? Should Christians worry about their salvation?

*This link [http://riversidedrivebaptistmaine.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/crazy-love-book-review.pdf] does a great job of examining the problems in the book, so if you’re interested in further exploring the issues raised by the book, I’d encourage you to take a look. Also, you can look at the comments to the last entry.

The book gave me two conflicting reactions. The first is my delight in a good argument. I like getting ready for a good debate, almost as much as I like wrestling through the logical issues of this book and proving my point. As much as I enjoy this process and I think it is important to understand the logic behind faith, beating your opponent into submission is not always the best (or most Christian) perspective.

But my second reaction was trying to get at the heart of the book. I think the author had great intentions with the book and the more I explored the book, the more I saw this dissonance between good intentions and difficult sections, some of which seem quite judgmental. Mr. Chan has noble character and great intentions. He wants people to be inspired to grow as Christians and transform themselves to a world-changing faith. But somehow when our Bible study read this book, many of us did not feel inspired at all. What was the problem?

I’d like to illustrate the solution with what I consider the best lesson I’ve learned from marriage. My wife struggled with serious procrastination problems while in school, and it was beginning to impact her coursework. I wanted to help my wife grow as a person. At first I tried what seemed logical:  to show her why she should change, point out the disastrous consequences of the course she was heading, and hope that the fear of the consequences would make her realize she needed to change.

This didn’t go over too well. It was because I was going about it the wrong way. Rather than being driven by fear of consequences, she told me that she wanted me to inspire her. That would help her grow into a better person. She likes hearing stories of people who have accomplished the goals she wants to accomplish. For instance, we both want to get into better shape. For me, the secret for getting into better shape is finding something to distract me while I’m torturing my body with this concept of exercise. It’s why I listen to audiobooks while I run or play sports. However, she’s different. She likes the inspirational stories of people who worked themselves into shape, and that excites her to go exercise.

When we want others to grow as people, it’s easy to fall into the ‘fear’ trap. It’s natural for us to try to convince people to change their behavior by showing them the dangers of their behavior. The problem is that this doesn’t work. Making people afraid of the consequences of their bad behavior does not change how they behave. It just makes the problem worse.

Being a social psychologist, it was probably a bad thing for me to miss something that is so clearly shown by psychological research. Many studies show that fear appeals aren’t effective. People don’t change their behavior when they’re confronted with the dangers of their behavior. They change their behavior when shown more positive examples. For instance, ads showing the health risks of smoking don’t help reduce smoking (surprising, but true). Showing the good effects of not smoking turns out to be much more effective.

This is why Mr. Chan’s assertion that lukewarm Christians are not going to heaven does not seem to be the best approach. Focusing on fear appeals causes negative feelings in the audience. These negative feelings cause people to tend to respond to these fear appeals in two ways. They either internalize the guilt, saying that “I’m a bad person because I do X.” Or they attack the message and messenger. They find holes in the message or they find flaws in the messenger, accusing him or her of being a hypocrite.

Christians fall into this trap too. I’ve heard innumerable times where Christians appeal to others to follow Christ by focusing on the consequences of failing to follow God. They focus on hell and on judgment. No one I know has become a Christian because of someone telling them they will go to hell. Those I know who have come to believe in Christianity have come because of the positive attributes of God. God’s love and mercy draw us to him, not the fear of his judgment.

I believe this gets to the heart of Mr. Chan’s intention in this chapter of Crazy Love. He earnestly wants people to own their faith and to get out of the comfort zone of a complacent and wealthy church and actually change the world. This is a good goal! I want it too. But the best approach is not making threats of not making it to heaven, which cause harm and sow seeds to doubt among the Christian community. The better way is to inspire us to become greater Christians is by showing great examples of faith.

It’s interesting because the last part of Crazy Love gives a lot of great examples of people who are living dynamic lives transformed by their faith. They inspire me to be a better person. They make me want to do something great for God. It was just that it was hard to get to that part of the book after having to consider whether or not the author thought I was going to hell.

Are lukewarm Christians going to hell?

Francis Chan asserts this in Chapter 5 of Crazy Love. I’m always bothered when people talk about who is and isn’t going to hell. This is one of the great red herrings of Christian culture today. We obsess about hell.

But I want to ask you a few questions to consider. Did you become a Christian in order to avoid going to hell? Do we love God so that He won’t judge us?

If I think about my relationship with God like a marriage, I can live in at least two ways. I can live to love and delight my spouse, to glorify her and enjoy her. Or I could live to avoid making her angry, to make sure I do not upset her or incur her disapproval.

One of those ways leads to healthy relationship. The second leads to a relationship leads to resentment and feelings of guilt. The first relationship is based on love; the second is based on fear.

I think when we obsess about hell, talk at length about if people are going to hell, we fall into the trap of a relationship based on fear.  

But didn’t Jesus talk about hell at length? Yes, he talked about it and I think it is important to consider it. But love for God should overwhelm fear for hell. In the marriage I discuss above based on love, I still care about not making my spouse mad. If I truly want to love and delight her, I won’t make her mad. Thus it’s important to know what she doesn’t like, but it’s not what I dwell on. I dwell on what she does like and just remember what she doesn’t like. The joy of her love is at the front of my mind whereas fear of her disapproval is at the back of my mind.

If we love God, it’s inevitable to have a healthy fear for Him. But if we fear God first, it’s difficult to love him. If our main motivation is avoiding someone’s wrath, it is difficult to enjoy that person and truly delight in that person.

The church obsesses about hell. I’ve talked to many people, Christian and non-Christian, who have been hurt or turned off by people saying they are going to hell. I know no one who heard they are going to hell and decided to become Christian. In fact, those who came to believe in Jesus in the Gospels were touched by his love and followed him.

I found it frustrating that Crazy Love, a book about how the love of Christ transforms us, discusses at length about who is and isn’t going to hell. When I have to spend time thinking whether or not I am going to hell, that is not time spent in loving relationship with God.