Fresh starts and other tastes of grace

Noah will begin 8th grade in a week. He did really well last year in his middle school debut, except for his last marking period math grade. His effort reminded me of the last ember of a firework – it begins so bright and brilliantly, but fizzles and falls in its final moments.

Mom was on Noah – I mean, on him. Poor kid must have felt like I was literally riding on his back. I asked him everyday about his homework and test scores and study habits…and priorities and future and self-respect. Where did he think failing a math test was going to get him? Did he think Harvard wouldn’t be looking at 7th grade math tests? When he is thirty-five, and working as rat infested sewer inspector, this math test would haunt him each day as he trudged through the human waste wondering where his life went wrong - I reminded him gently.

O, how I love my kid.

Yesterday, Noah looked at me and smiled. “Ready for school to start?” he asked. I found his question particularly amusing since it is him, as opposed to me, who has to get back into study mode, but then I understood his meaning.

We are on this journey together, my son and I - grades, adolescence, misunderstandings, unnecessary freak outs and grade point pressure, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, sometimes really screwing up. Another mother told me this summer that she calls Noah “The Ambassador of Goodwill” on the baseball diamond. As he played first base, she watched him greet each batter from the other team with a handshake and a, “Good hit!” I didn’t tell her about the math test, or how sometimes his mother forgets how wonderful he is.

I think it’s the same way that God feels about me. Sometimes His chest is bursting with joy as He watches me love someone well and at other times He shakes His head as I fail the test.

But we’re on this journey together, my God and I.

O, how He loves His kid.

Sleepovers

I have been having downstairs sleepovers with my kids. Perhaps it’s because I am keenly aware that the end of summer is looming, but I have wanted to be near them nonstop.

Last night, during one such sleepover, a noise outside woke me. Actually, it startled me. It was the sound of a soda can hitting the bricks outside, and for a moment I was convinced that someone was lurking just beyond the window.

When I was in college, I would go with friends to scary movies. Back then, I enjoyed horrifying myself and could quickly forget the images I had seen. Even though I no longer find them entertaining, I have not forgotten how the main characters in these flicks always moved toward the disturbing sound or danger instead of choosing to FLEE the scene – which is what any normal and sane person would do, right?

Funny though, I jumped right up to investigate the errant can last night, turning on the outside flood lights and loudly warning the potential intruder of his/her pending capture at the hand of my well-developed martial arts skills. Later, after letting the can knocking cat back in the house, I pondered my bravery.

And there were my three children, the same ones I was having a Can’t Get Enough of You Sleepover with, and I knew I would face any midnight feline to protect them.

Then I watched the news and learned of the now 29 year old woman who had been abducted in 1991 (at 11 years old) and kept in a back shed by a sex offender for 18 years.

She, and her mother, have experienced a real life horror movie.

As a Christian, I should not quickly forget the images I see, and instead of flee, I must move toward the disturbing. Simply praying, “God, please meet that person’s needs,” when I hear of an illness or tragedy or horror is insufficient. Instead, perhaps, I should pray, “God, am I the answer to that person’s prayer?” and then get myself moving.

It’s kind of like martial arts love – wildly attacking injustice with crazy swinging Grace. No need to fear whatever is lurking just beyond, God is already there.

God Cogs: Sweating it out

Great emails yesterday. I do appreciate your ideas so much, and one particular person’s thoughts have been rattling around in my head since.

“Why would I choose to die?” she wrote. “Why would Jesus make following Him so hard?”

GREAT questions.

I’m not sure I can be completely coherent, because I’ve only thought about this for one day, but let’s give it a whirl, shall we?

I don’t think Jesus intended for it to be hard. It is hard, that I will agree with, but the real problem is that the WORLD is not what Jesus intended it to be. There was a plan in place, originally, that did not include all the crap that goes on – the selfishness, the violence, the competition – you know, all the stuff that makes for good TV.

Resisting the flow of the culture (i.e. dying to desires) is like swimming upstream or trying to master the Wipeout course (Weds 8/7c on ABC). Dying to what I impulsively or logically think is right makes space for God’s thoughts and God’s ideas to fill me up. The new, eventually, becomes the norm.

Ah, but here’s the rub. The CHURCH is also influenced by this wave, and so she has gotten a little off course. In many places, she has forgotten the central message of Grace, opting instead for a behavior modification program. YES, my behavior changed when I became a Christian, but the difference was the result of a heart change that occurred when I encountered Grace. I could never follow a code of conduct, but I can love someone in order to realize the peace that Jesus dreamt of. Out of love for Him, I am learning to love others.

I know lots of folks who grew up going to church but are no longer interested. I most often hear phrases like, “It really works for my parents, but it’s just not for me.” Or sometimes I hear, “The church is too concerned with things that I don’t think God is overly upset about.”

In many ways, I agree. But again, God intended something different for the church than she is. He longs for it to be a place where you really tell the truth about what you think and feel – a place of safety. Too often, well meaning parents dressed their children for church and told them it was a place to “behave” out of reverence for God. Never did you speak of what was really going on inside you, because church was like a place where you were on your best behavior. Some of us got so good at modifying our behavior that we survived adolescence at church, but we became so weary and so tired of it in adulthood, that we no longer can muster the energy to sit in a pew. Funny, but none of our resistance is really about whether God is real or not – it’s mostly about finding a real way to connect with Him.

Remember that Jesus gravitated toward bad behavior. He longed to redeem not just the circumstances, but the person that was drowning in them.

Choosing to die, then, is more about opening space up inside me than opting for a martyr complex. Sometimes people say that they became a Christian because of the promise of heaven. Ok, I think heaven will be cool, but I embraced Jesus because I wanted real life – life that starts here and now. Dying to ideas and behaviors that are contrary to His ideal simply makes room for real life.

Sweat

The other day I was considering how I have been in a two year grieving process. I have experienced so many endings, including the loss of my friend, and sometimes I have felt as though I must have used up all my beginnings.

I talked to God about it, and He brought to my mind all the things that have been born in me over these months – new things born in my heart and mind.

For instance, my time in the ministry ended, but my understanding of the Church could not be more fresh or honest. Some dear, dear friends have gone away, but my appreciation for real community is sharper and more clear since. Diana has died, but her generosity of spirit continues to remind me who it is I am made to be. All of these endings have made new spaces in my life – spaces that I have no doubt God has plans for.

Letting things die in order for the new to be born often takes blood, sweat and tears – but it is the way of Christ. Death and new life. Out with the old, in with the new. It’s narrow stuff.

I will consider today how dying is spacious and how intangible the new can be.

And how much, in the end, I am loved.

Where I've been

This is a picture of my kids with their new cousin, Levi Samuel. My sister gave birth last Saturday, and the week before I watched her other children so she could rest and prepare. We had lots of fun, but I was up to my eyeballs in stuff and couldn't seem to get to my blog. Here's a picture of the whole gang now:

Good lookin' bunch, huh?

Risky business

In Cooperstown last week, I saw this banner on the side of the Cooperstown airport. It amused me so much, that I took a picture of it the morning I was leaving town. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew it did more than make me laugh, it stirred something in me that I could not define.

Then I was listening to a sermon yesterday about Solomon. It was fairly interesting, but it was what the pastor said at the start of the service that kept my wheels spinning.

She talked about the risk involved with following Christ. I wondered if I, as an American Christian, have reduced my faith to such a degree that I have come to expect that it should make me safe.

There is no such guarantee with Christ. As a matter of fact, He declared that following Him required that we walk the narrow way – the road less traveled – and most of us long for the comfort and security of the wider path. Less obstacles, less pot holes, right? I guess that’s why Jesus followed up by saying that few would find it.

Perhaps a good question to ask ourselves is, “When was the last time I was really uncomfortable, inconvenienced and had to DARE to walk as Jesus walked?” If you can’t remember the last time that following Christ cost you something, you made need to reflect a little on what it is you are really following.

Recently, for me, it cost a little of my reputation. It really was hard, because I hate being rejected by anyone at anytime. I also am known for being pretty open and accepting amongst my non-believing friends. But this time, I just couldn’t agree when asked directly, and there have been whispers behind my back about my close-mindedness ever since.

The other thing to remember is that when risk is involved, failure often follows. I have grown to suspect that God overlooks some of my errors because He loves my passion. When Peter jumped out of the boat to walk on water, Jesus grabbed him when Peter started to sink, then later Jesus said that He would build His church on this same sinking Peter. God is interested in the heart, so don’t be afraid to try because you are afraid to fail. Real failure is never risking at all.

So, today I am lamenting 41 years of relatively safe following. I hope that the years ahead will be risky business.

Play ball!

My oldest son, Noah, is playing in a week long baseball tournament in Cooperstown, New York next week. I will have limited (if any) access to the Internet, so I may not talk with you next week.

I have been reading a book entitled, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, but more than that, it is one of the more life-changing and thinking-challenging books I have read in MANY moons.

I highly encourage you to pick it up and begin. I would like to discuss it in the weeks ahead.

No name nukes

So, two things have struck me so hard lately, and both are sort of related, so let me see if I can articulate what I’m thinking.

I know this guy named Richie. Well, know is a slight exaggeration, but I see him every week when he makes a delivery to the place where I work. He stays and talks for maybe 10 minutes every Wednesday, and those 10 minutes have proved pretty revealing.

Two weeks ago, we were discussing the 2 reporters who we being held in North Korea. “Bomb the whole country,” Richie said. “Just nuke them off the face of the planet, they’re so crazy.”

I paused (briefly) and asked about all the innocent people who lived in North Korea (I didn’t think it was the right time to tell him that I had tremendous feelings of mercy for the perpetrators too).

“I don’t give a s*** about innocent North Koreans. I am only interested in America and what keeps us safe.”

As I reviewed all the logical arguments I could have expressed, even simple ones like the fact that we live in a GLOBAL economy - so getting rid of everyone else means getting rid of ourselves – I soon realized that logic was playing no part in our discussion, so I dropped it.

Yesterday, I read THIS article in the Washington Post about the homecoming of the same two reporters. Besides criticizing Bill Clinton and never mentioning the names of the two women who were imprisoned, the writer John Bolton has a lot of opinions. We probably can’t pick each one apart, but like Richie he espouses this:

“Negotiating from a position of strength, where the benefits to American interests will exceed the costs, is one thing.”

Again with the strength thing. Again with the power thing. Again with us and them thinking.
Christians: We are not about power. As a matter of fact, we’re not even about self-interest! Our Jesus was not motivated by fear or self-preservation or by the need to have the upper hand.

He did what was right for us (there is no them), and He did it out of love.

Welcome home, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. He knows your names.

Agree or Disagree?

The fact that early Christians were completely unlike us in terms of world view and cultural context is an unsettling result, to be sure, for those accustomed to read these writings as sacred Scripture, and in particular for Protestants who traditionally emphasize that anyone at all can read and interpret that Bible. The truth of the matter, for those readers without knowledge of ancient languages, ancient cultures, and other such subjects, the meaning of the Bible is at times not all clear, while at other times it can seem to clearly mean things that it is unlikely to have meant in its original context. The possibility of misunderstanding a reader today in a Western cultural setting is at least as great as the chances that the same individual will experience a cultural or linguistic misunderstanding if traveling to a foreign culture. By emphasizing these points, I do not wish to discourage interested individuals from reading the Bible in English translation – far from it. it is important, however, for all readers to understand that they are having the Bible interpreted for them by those who have translated it into their native language and are then engaging in interpretation themselves through the act of reading. The books they are reading derive from a very different world, and therefore one should not cease reading but should utilize the multitude of books and other resources that scholars have made available, expressly with the aim of helping readers make sense of these ancient texts. Having done that, one should then go on to express one’s conclusions about what these writings mean with an appropriate humility and tentativeness, aware that what seems obvious to a reader today may not have been what seemed obvious to a first-century reader.

James McGrath in The Only True God (page 100)

Help stamp out dirt

When I was in the 9th grade, I played the part of Cinderella in a play entitled, “The Truth About Cinderella.” It was a spoof of the well-known tale, and Cinderella suffered from an OCD – compelled to clean and clean and clean – a trait she had inherited from her late mother.

I don’t remember all the lines or lyrics, but I do remember a few bars of one particular song that revealed the life lessons that Cinderella’s mom had taught her:

Scrub the windows and the doors
Wash the hearthstone and the grates
You could eat off Mamma’s floors
Which saved dirtying her plates
She reminded me as I clung to her skirt
To help stamp out dirt!

It’s funny, but I’m pretty far away from 9th grade, but I still have the tune and those lyrics run through my brain when I am tempted to over-achieve. It’s interesting, but as I have gotten older, and stopped trying to clean up my own messes, I make less of them.

It’s the same truth we always talk about. If we try to yank up or weed out the things in our life that are dirty, we often end up experiencing continued failure. Continued failure ultimately leads to a sense of defeat – the place where we stop trying altogether.

God offers us a different way. He does the cleaning, the changing, and we just cooperate. And, amazingly enough, the less I strive the more I thrive (catchy, huh?).

Cooperating with God does require that I point my feet in His direction, which is an act of my will, but the power to be different does not come from within me. Determination and perseverance are not nearly enough, as anyone who has tried long-term inner change will admit. But my small and weak will, partnered with His big and strong power, can help stamp out dirt.

Raising Killer Kids

All the facts remain uncollected, but at the funeral of pregnant Kenzie Marie Houk, it was widely believed that her fiancé’s 11-year-old son shot her to death with a hunting rifle he had gotten as a gift for Christmas. Police in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania have young Jordan Brown behind bars and have charged him with two counts of first degree murder in the February 20, 2009 deaths of Houk and her unborn baby. In Pennsylvania, like the vast majority of states, it is legal to charge a child over 10 years old as an adult and to seek a sentence of life without parole. If convicted, the child serves his time in with the adult male prison population.

The Lawrence County District Attorney has held televised press conferences. His theory is that jealousy over the new baby, and desire for his father’s attention, drove Jordan to commit this “callous, cold and calculating” crime. Members of Houk’s family claim that the boy, back in December, said he wanted to “pop” Houk in the head, which is exactly where she was shot. With Jordan as the reasonable suspect, he has been remanded to callous, cold and calculating adult prison.

There is scant precedent for raising children with rapists and murderers, but there is some. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, ten children in the U.S. between the ages of 9 and 12 were convicted of murder in 2007, compared with 542 teens aged 13 to 16, and 1,966 teens aged 17 to 19. A few states do not allow life sentences without parole for preteens, ten states have no minimum-age limits, and all the others fall somewhere in between. Currently, 3 convicted preteens (who are now teenagers) are serving out their sentences among the general prison population, one in New York and two in Florida.

Jordan’s situation gives Christian ethics a strenuous workout. Old Testament law would instruct an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Fortunately, Jordan is still waiting for his 12 year molars, so strict adherence may not prove too difficult. On the other hand, the temptation to forget the sanctity of Kenzie Marie Houk’s life, and the life of her unborn child, in favor of fiercely defending the childlike innocence and potential rehabilitation of Jordan Brown should give us pause as well. Her family’s pain is very real.

And then there are the questions. Who gives an obviously angry 11-year-old a hunting rifle for Christmas? Was the gun locked away safely? Was the father really neglecting the son in favor of the girlfriend, breeding jealousy and discontent inside his son? Was there abuse of any kind going on in the home? After Jordan made the shocking comments in December, did the adults involved intervene and seek help for the child? Does an 11-year-old boy truly understand the consequences of his actions and/or should parents be held responsible for the choices their children make? What should punishment look like? In addition to losing his freedom for the rest of his natural life, do the potential atrocities a young boy could experience at the hands of adult criminals constitute excessive penalty?

And the unavoidable query: How does a child become a killer?

In theory, Christians are interjectors of love and truth into a crazy world. We represent the Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, so merely shaking our heads in disbelief is not enough when presented with tragedy of this magnitude. But what is true and how do we rightly love?

Perhaps God’s command for us to “act justly and to love mercy” can help. JUSTICE and MERCY, two words that can seem incongruent in our culture, yet represent the very heart of our Savior. Advocating for revisions in the U.S. justice system that provide adequately for child offenders is entirely appropriate and necessary, because one thing in the midst of this unclear situation is perfectly clear: An 11-year-old boy does not, under any circumstances, belong in an adult prison among full grown male convicts. Regardless of whether Jordan is a good kid who made a terrible mistake, or a troubled one who will continue to make terrible mistakes, his pre-teen future in a maximum security prison must offend both our sense of mercy and justice.

Yes, we recognize the need to protect the community at large. Yes, we mourn the loss of Kenzie Marie Houk and her baby and fully comprehend the value of both their lives. But grace also insists that we shield Jordan Brown, and other children like him, from realities 11-year-olds shouldn’t even know exist.

The questions warrant ongoing discussion. Jordan warrants more.