intent and action

What is the relationship between action and intention? Which counts more?

What do I honestly feel about people I think are “missing the mark” in honest, well-intentioned, sincere ways?

How far do sincerity and good intent really go?

I think that question is really central in many ways to a traditional legalistic view of Christianity, but I think it has profound consequences in any new way of thinking as well. Previously we have said through our attitudes, though perhaps not through our words, that action was the only thing that mattered – well intended acts done for God that were done incorrectly were worse than no act at all. More recently we’ve transitioned into a feeling closer to our legal system – actions are most important, but intent matters also. Murder, we feel, is worse than accidental manslaughter, even though the result is the same. In those two cases, the only difference is the intent, but we feel murder deserves a harsher punishment than does manslaughter. Even still, intent only gives you partial credit – in the previous example, you still do time, even though you had no ill intent.

But I wonder what God thinks.

“Anyone who wants to come to him [God] must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.”

I believe God places intent above action. It’s not something I am necessarily comfortable with, as it seems to challenge so many of the legalities of the system I’ve built and grown up with. It does not declare action to be irrelevant, but rather makes us reexamine both our actions and intentions to evaluate their sincerity and authenticity. It doesn’t allow us to do whatever we want so long as our intentions are good, since our sincere seeking of God doesn’t involve what we want, but what He wants. Furthermore, just as in the legal system, where our intent only gets us partial credit, our actions go only so far in truly pleasing God. It is not enough to only do the right things, our hearts must be clean and pure before God as well. To paraphrase an old debate, if you have people who always do right, but hate the fact they’re doing it, have you really created moral people, or only the appearance of moral people.

In placing our intent above action, we are forced to abandon result-orientations and look instead to intent-orientations. One of our biggest obstacles to being compassionate is that we cannot externally judge the internal motivations of others. If we judged others based on their intentions, like we often judge ourselves, instead of on the consequences of their actions, how much more forgiving and understanding would we be? If we were to believe that people who acted differently than we do were honestly trying to do the best they could, how would that chance our outlook on others?

Whatever the balance between intent and action, the reality for each of us remains the same – we are all called to honor God not only with what we do, but in the internal depths of our heart and soul.

a safe place

As my small group discussed tonight, one of the questions asked us to talk about a time in our lives when Christ had “restored our soul”.

For me it wasn’t hard to think of the time. I’d just returned from Africa for the first time. The trip had been challenging in so many ways – encountering unimaginable poverty, stretching my comfort zones in ministry, learning to deal with people who I didn’t get along with – so many lessons in such a short time.

As I returned to American culture, I was filled with doubt and confusion and anger. The church I was attending was going through a campaign to raise money to build a new building, and I felt tremendous conflict within my heart as I thought back to worshiping in a burned out truck in the slums of Eastleigh. For a while, I physically couldn’t deal with going to church on Sunday mornings. I couldn’t deal with the masses of people who just didn’t seem to understand the realities of the world as I’d seen it, and who seemed more concerned with their comfortable lifestyles than with helping others. I raged inside when people talked about how God “provides everything everyone needs” – trying to reconcile that with the visions burned in my mind. I wanted those people to go sit in trash piles with starving children and tell them that God was providing everything they needed, or that they should just “have faith”. It seemed to me hypocrisy on a grand scale.

At the same time, I underwent profound spiritual changes. I began to question many of the ideas and beliefs I’d grown up with, and began to wonder about their consistency. I had difficulties reconciling the things I’d grown up with to the things I’d encountered, and didn’t know what to make of any of it. Each answer left me with dozens of new questions, and I began to seriously doubt whether any of it was worth the effort.

It seemed to me that church was about the last place I was going to find the answers I wanted. When I did go, week after week there were sermons that seemed to do nothing but give the same formulaic answers I’d heard for 20 years, never really acknowledging that there was something going on in my head that seemed vastly different from everyone else. Whenever I did talk to people about how I felt, they generally tried to “fix me” by giving me some set of Bible verses I could go read to understand why I was wrong and tell me how I could return to the straight and narrow.

I don’t know how close I was, really, to packing it all up and deciding that it wasn’t worth it. I never reached a point where I decided it was “the last time…”, but I did spend several weeks away, not really certain if I would come back.

As I look back, I’m fairly certain the thing that kept me going was three people – Traci, James, and Kelly – who provided a safe place for me to talk, complain, question, and doubt without fear of judgment or retaliation. Their desire to listen and journey alongside me instead of trying to “fix me” right away proved to be exactly what I needed. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t had that, but I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be writing this right now.

As we explore what it means to have a relational dynamic within our churches, I think it’s important that we remember to create such safe places. I’m not sure that it’s possible to do that on any kind of large group level, but I hope we can brainstorm effective ways to create a culture that fosters such relationships between people.

what we bring to the table

On Monday night, we discussed the assumptions we often make in attempting to explain Christ to others. Often, our hidden assumption in how we talk and explain things is that the person we’re talking to really wants to be a Christian, but doesn’t have enough information in order to know how to do that, or to make that decision. As a result, our explanations often boil down to feeding people information about what it takes to become a Christian, while more and more people we talk to don’t really have a good feel for what being a Christian actually means. (And, as a side note, it could be said that the more I reflect and talk and discuss, the less confident I am of what being a Christian actually means at times.)

One of the key points that James brought up was that often we go from proposition 1 – “You’re a sinner”, to proposition 2 – “You need Jesus” – without any real justification or explanation of that huge jump. One of the main reasons for that, I believe, is that we’ve grown up around our religious framework so much that we don’t see this as a big jump at all, where as people looking from the outside find it hard to comprehend how A leads to B.

Put another way – suppose that I’m someone who has never really heard of God. Suppose I also accept the fact that God exists, and I am a “sinner”. What does that mean? When we jump to the next step in our line, “You need Jesus,” I think most people scratch their heads and say, “Huh? Why’s that?”

I think the fundamental message here to me was this: when we speak to non-believers, each of us must try as best we can to identify all the assumptions we bring to the table and be aware of them when we’re talking to others who may not have the same background we do. As we attempt to bring Christ to others, we need to recognize that there is a difference between trying bring Christ to others, and trying to bring others to Christ. My hope and prayer is that as we consider that picture, each of us would seek to meet people where they are and bring Christ to a broken and hurting world, instead of trying to bring others along without first addressing the needs, concerns, positions, and beliefs that place them where they are. My prayer is that just as Christ started with people where they were but didn’t leave them there, so we too would be willing to go the extra mile in order to model Christ in their lives in all aspects – including the ways we minister to them.

hawking

“I have learned not to look too far ahead, but to concentrate on the present.
I am not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die.
I have so much more I want to do.”

Stephen Hawking, in a recent BBC interview.

if a man die…

If a man die, shall he live again?
Job 14:14, KJV

Funerals are always interesting to me. Almost a week ago, one of our family friends, age 31, died unexpectedly. The day I got back from Africa, we drove to Little Rock for their wedding – my father officiated, and I was in it. Yesterday at the funeral, they played footage from that day just over six years ago.

It is a somewhat eerie feeling to see yourself in video footage at someone else’s funeral.

“Can the dead live again?” Job asks. “If so, this would give me hope through all my years of struggle, and I would eagerly await the release of death.”

I am the resurrection and the life,
says the Lord.

He who believes in me,
even though he dies,
he will live again;

and whoever
lives and believes in me
shall never die.

None of us live to ourselves
and none of us die to ourselves.
If we live,
we live to the Lord.
And if we die,
we die to the Lord.
Whether we live, therefore
or die,
we are the Lord’s.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,
for they rest from their labors.

mashburn: my secret life of discipleship

I received this post by brian mashburn from a friend. I would highly recommend it.

An excerpt (er… most of it):

We live and move and act within Churches of Christ, and hold dear the idea of becoming more like Christ together, to become a church that is, in actuality, ‘of Christ’.

We are not interested in change. We are interested in Christ, and whatever we must change in order love Him more truly, we are glad and anxious to do so.

We are immovably committed to the Bible. But only inasmuch as it teaches us about and moves us closer to Christ…and we believe it to be the perfect tool for doing so, a gift from God, the written Word that was preserved to lead us to the Living Word. We suffer from a growing intolerance for people who use the Bible merely to defend and maintain strict adherence to certain sets of worship practices, beliefs, or political positions. And most of us are long past satisfying our spiritual zeal by fighting with other attempting Bible-followers about who is right.

We are bright and honest and dedicated, but only some of us are educated. And those of us who are rarely point it out, and more often hide from talking about it. That’s because we put very little stock in the educated merely because they are educated. We have met people who are much more devoted to the Divine Master than some who have a Masters of Divinity, and have found them more useful in our own becoming more like Christ. We are not anti-intellectual, mind you. We love smart people. But we have the innate ability to spot unspiritual smart people, and we would define them as those who run after smarts rather than Christ, and mistakenly confuse the two. We want and need smart, educated people. But educated people who expose a lack of self-awareness and humility by expecting deference from others because they know so much, we just leave them to their ivory kingdoms and sorrowfully attempt to pursue Christ’s without them.

We are indignant sometimes, and defensive and rude on occasion, and every now and then, we are angry. For the younger among us, it’s because we feel like we’re being bargained with…asked to ‘please stay in a movement that doesn’t work’ in exchange for job security, or hero status, or at the very least, tons and tons of gratitude and affirmation…and we sense that the strings attached are too costly. For those of us who are old enough, it stems from feeling duped in our younger years, agreeing with things that sapped us, our friends, our parents, our children, and those we tried to evangelize of the very life we said submission to our system offered. Some of us are the ones that faithfully did everything our churches asked of us, and if it asked for more we would’ve done that, but we ended up not looking like Jesus. Maybe it is too much to ask, but we must: Forgive us our inappropriate, un-Christlike reactions to our wounds…we don’t mean to claim perfection of any sort, we only abhor those who seem to claim it themselves. And we are scared to death of becoming like that…and are angry at ourselves for ever being like that.

If you watch us closely, you’ll see that we have stopped complaining about the Church of Christ that we see (for the most part), and have turned our energies to becoming the Church of Christ that we dream of. When we are at our best, we are ushering in a new world, not just yelling at the old one. We are envisioning a new society in the wake of the old, not one that puts a period on the end of the sentence and starts a brand new unrelated one, but puts a “dot, dot, dot”, pausing long enough to look around at all of us, and wake up that it is already new, if we would just engage each other and the world we live in with true spiritual friendship.

That term, ‘true spiritual friendship’ really means something to us. It involves confession, transparency, and vulnerability. It involves mutual introspection for the purpose of personal and each others transformation. The word ‘and’ really means something to us, too. We distrust those who only want to transform us or others who lack the capacity to show that they too are in need of continued transformation. And mere intellectual agreement with the idea that “we all sin and fall short of the glory of God” doesn’t show us anymore. We need to hear confession.

We give extravagantly to and through the Churches of Christ we attend, hoping desperately to play a role in redeeming them and ourselves. We figure that if the mission of Christ is to people, then bringing Christ to the Church of Christ people is as good a target as any. We constantly flirt with taking a few like-minded people and planting new churches, but keep faithful to our Churches of Christ either out of fear of new things, family love and loyalty, or a deep sense of calling, or all three.

We’re taking full and total responsibility for our children, completely done with expecting from or blaming the church institution for their spiritual outcomes. We welcome anything it does to help, but we are picking and choosing and investing in relationships with the people that we want influencing our kids, and outright asking them to do so, thinking of anything positive that comes out of our churches children’s and youth programs as only being supplemental, and hopefully useful. We are watching closely, however, for any residual teaching that resembles anything legalistic whatsoever and are preparing to help our kids unlearn it, explaining our love for the church that taught it, showing openly where that teaching comes from, but correcting them as to what discipleship really looks like. If a Church of Christ wants to run us off quickly, which it may want to do because our convictions can be hard to deal with, or hard to argue against, then all it must do is start teaching our kids to be legalistic rule followers instead of passionate Christ followers. We’ll leave. We are already worried enough about what we are doing to them by trying to teach them discipleship at home while their church is trying to teach them why we don’t have instruments in worship.

Our commitment to Churches of Christ remains as long as we can be totally honest (as opposed to being totally right) among them.

Indeed, we have much in common with the Churches we exist within, and yet co-exist with dramatic differences. We are both committed to the Bible, but our approaches to finding its riches stand at odds. We are both committed to the truth, but our definition of truth stands at odds. We are both in love with the church, but our view of who make it up and what it exists for are at odds. We both want to live in the Kingdom of Heaven, but our views of what that means and when that is to take place are at odds. We both want to see ourselves as primarily spiritual, but our comfort with embracing mystery are at odds. We both want to worship God, but our convictions on what the non-negotiables are, are at odds. We wonder if we can really co-exist. We wonder if we are going to have to wait for some funerals to expose ourselves and our thoughts openly in the Church of Christ. We wonder, sometimes, if we can really co-exist at all, feeling sometimes like we are tolerated by our churches only because we walk on eggshells concerning how we talk about what is going on inside of us.

But we sense there is one means of hope that exalts what we have in common, and minimizes where we are different. A focus that allows us both, different as we are, to continue becoming Christians in a way that does not condemn our historical Church of Christ roots, nor restrain or condemn those of us who want to grow beyond it’s limiting beliefs. The means of hope is for all of us to focus seriously on following Jesus.

The Bible’s overarching call is to follow God. Jesus’ overarching call is to discipleship. Our hope is in our mutual agreement to pursue the Restoration of Discipleship. Once again, and all over again, and in a brand new way…following Jesus can be our salvation.

We will baptize our children with water, fully immersing them in it as one of the many Biblical steps of coming into the life of Christ, but we will not have an obsessive, myopic focus on it ever again. We will no longer claim to believe in the “priesthood of all believers” when we actually mean the “priesthood of all male believers”. We will not ever again treat other Bible believing, Jesus following fellowships as lost people…and not because we don’t disagree with them on certain significant points…but because we have been humbled by our own disagreement with our past selves, and we hope people who died thinking like we used to were saved by grace, too. We will not write whole books explaining away the Greek word “psallos” to convince everyone instrumental music in unscriptural, we will not write articles and preach sermons focused on the churches down the street and what they are doing wrong, we will not draw lines of fellowship based on whether we should have Bible classes, kitchens, basketball goals, or multiple communion cups. The mere mention of such feuds embarrasses the fool out of us, and we swallow hard and remember our love when we have to be associated with those related to us who have or are.

We wonder if we’ll get to stay in the Church of Christ. Our intolerance for our own personal past and our churches intolerance of us may foil what we feel inclined and called to do, but day by day we pursue Christ sincerely, with all of our hearts. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to encourage us. Any step towards Jesus by any person at all fuels us to take our next one and we are anxious to use both as evidence that we are in the right place.

We want the Church of Christ to be a church that is actually “of Christ”.

not only to be thankful…

As we take time today to reflect on our blessings, my hope is that we would go beyond that. Often when we consider all the ways we’ve been blessed, we forget that so many around us haven’t enjoyed the same blessings we do.

Last year, I posted links contrasting our lives with the lives of many in America Statistics regarding poverty are always humbling to me, but I often forget that wealth is not the only area in which many people around us are impoverished.

There are dozens of statistics available regarding the state of mental health in America, but I don’t think too many of us would find it surprising that people we know suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and feelings of hopelessness. On Monday we talked about people who we see on a daily basis who say, “I’m fine,” who we know aren’t. We each know people who feel lost, and in a very real way we each know what it feels like to be that person.

My prayer for each of us is that we would not only be thankful, but allow that thankfulness to be transformed into compassion, not only for those in physical need this holiday season, but for those whose daily struggle is internal, who are struggling valiantly to “hold it together”, but who aren’t always sure they can make it through the day. I hope and pray that we would seek these people out and attempt to provide a safe place – a place where they are able to be honest and share their concerns without judgment or fear, a place where they are welcomed and cared for.

May we remember that this time of year, which seems as though it should be the happiest, is for many people the most lonely and hopeless of times. As we interact with others, may we each give not only of our possessions, but of ourselves – thankful for what we have, but caring and compassionate toward those who do not.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

I mentioned this passage yesterday, and sort of left the question open of how we live it out. I’d like us to also consider a second passage:

John the Baptist, who was in prison, heard about all the things the Messiah was doing. So he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for someone else?”

Jesus told them, “Go back to John and tell him what you have heard and seen— the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.”

When Jesus begins his ministry in his home town, the things he mentions are striking: captives will be freed, the blind see, and the downtrodden will be freed. I think even more striking than that, however, is his response to John’s disciples. When they ask if he’s the Messiah, his answer is very pointed: “Go back and tell John what you see…” I think Jesus’ words have some critical implications for us today – if we claim to be followers of Christ, our actions will attest, or not, to that label. Jesus doesn’t answer with a theological statement, or a scriptural exegesis of why he is the Messiah – rather he answers simply to observe what is going on around him – the blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.

As we walk through life, I think it’s important for us to hear the description of Jesus’ ministry that he gives in the synagogue that morning. It is important for us to be concerned with the poor, and not just in a trickle-down economics sense. Jesus, importantly, doesn’t tell us to “fix” the poor – but rather to preach the Good News. “Fixing” someone or “helping” them in our context generally means that we give money to some organization or church which then sends others to help the poor, effectively outsourcing our need to do anything. I think Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to personal contact.

Before we are able to do that, however, I think it’s important that we actually have Good News to preach. I think it’s essential that we formulate a message that doesn’t simply promise a good life after you die, but a valuable, significant life in the present.

Paul writes:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

It’s interesting to note what how the word “saved” is used here. In the past, I’ve tended to read this on the plane of “Jesus came so I could go to heaven”, but I don’t think that’s what Paul has in mind here. Once we were foolish, we lived in malice and envy – but then God’s love and kindness saved us. He saved us out of that life and brought us into a better one where we don’t have to spend our days hating everyone and being envious of everything.

When we look again at Jesus’ call, I think it’s easy to see that in a very real sense, each of the things he says applies to me – I was captive to my hollow ways of thinking, blinded to the truth of God, and oppressed by a system that I’ve been born into that constantly tells me, essentially, that I’m not good enough.

But into that world comes Jesus, proclaiming that the time of the Lord’s favor has come – now. “Today,” Jesus says, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

my journey – part 40

Why are we here?
What’s the meaning to all of this?

A lot of people look for things to give their lives meaning. They search high and low and in all sorts of funny places, looking for something that can give some reason and order and meaning to their lives.

Some search for meaning through success. They work and work. They struggle and claw their way to the top, thinking that if they can finally be the best at something, maybe their life will be fulfilled.

Some search for meaning through knowledge. They learn and learn. They embrace the ideals of the student, always seeking and questioning, turning over every hidden stone, hoping that in their studies, maybe their life will be fulfilled.

Some search for meaning through clubs and positions. They meet and meet. They go to great lengths to meet people and greet people and make sure that they know the right people hoping that through their titles and connections, maybe their life will be fulfilled.

Paul writes

“Christ’s love compels us . . .

he died for all,
that those who live
should no longer live for themselves
but for him who died for them
and was raised again.”

It’s somewhat ironic this particular entry came up right now, so I’ve decided to go ahead and comment on it.

Tomorrow night, our group is going to discuss our purpose and goals for ourselves and the church. While I’ve thought about it some this week, I think what the answer really comes down to is that our purpose is to be about our Master’s business. In other words, though “What Would Jesus Do?” is a phrase that became a buzzword for the evangelical-youth-group culture of the late 90’s, it really does, I think, encompass what we’re called to. Our disagreements, primarily, are about what Jesus would do, as opposed to whether or not we should follow Him.

As a quick note, I think this way of taking things is strikingly different from someone who would say that our mission is to “Go unto all the world…” First, I would submit that there are very few people who actually do “Go unto all the world…” on a regular basis – in other words our purpose and mission can’t be simply about the ideals we set up for ourselves, but rather what we actually do. It would be nice if each of us really embodied “The Great Commission”, but in reality I don’t think most of us could say with any degree of honesty that we’re about that idea in our daily lives. Second, however, and more importantly, I think “Go unto all the world…” really falls short of speaking to the vast majority of situations in our lives. “Preaching the Good News and teaching others to obey all I’ve commanded you” is something that can be done with a microphone and a clever marketing campaign – it doesn’t necessarily require anything of us in our daily lives. It doesn’t say how we treat people we don’t like, or how we interact with others – it only deals with us preaching and teaching others. It doesn’t specify how to do that, and frankly doesn’t rule out force, bribes, or any other method. I think, perhaps, the “Go unto all the world…” way of looking at things is the root of our fascination with legislating our morality on others – after all, if we can just make them do the right things … Unfortunately, I don’t think that from the world the message we offer in this manner is really all that “good” – I’ve very rarely met non-believers who feel like mainstream Christianity has any “good news” to offer at all – much less *the* Good News.

I think Jesus speaks well to what his mission is as he speaks for the first time in his home town:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

How we live that is an open question, but I feel if we truly live like Jesus, the Great Commission will follow.

my journey – part 39

i decided to pick these up again… at least for now

Does the way we sit in church say anything about us?

We come in to every meeting and face up toward the front.
We turn neither to the right or the left to see those around us.
We sing to the walls and the back of people’s heads.

We do so much in the name of “order.”

I don’t see Jesus as being so fixed forward that he couldn’t see the cares of those around him.
I don’t see Jesus as being so ordered that he missed the opportunity to meet with God and express freely his thoughts.

I see Jesus as being someone who did whatever it took to get close to God, and Close to other people.
I see Jesus as someone who challenged the order of the rules that men had set up – the religion that people had made for themselves.

I see the Jesus who overturned the tables.
I see the Jesus who told the Pharisees their righteousness didn’t quite cut it.

I see the Jesus who looked at people whose lives were mired
in sin
and death
and pain –
the people who sat outside the rows of Church-Goers
and said
“They won’t let me in…”

I see that Jesus come up to them,
and almost with a sad sort of smile say,

“It’s ok. They won’t let me in either.”

I meet with a group of guys on Monday nights, and a couple of weeks ago our topic centered on the things that bring us close to God. There were tons of answers – fishing, playing the guitar, singing – but out of 6 of us, none of us said church.

It wasn’t an angry response or one that says we want to throw the whole thing out, but I think in many ways it was an honest evaluation. I believe there are many reasons why the six of us don’t really feel spiritually connected during church, and I would be lying to say that none of them involve us and our personalities.

But in a larger sense, I think we need to begin to ask ourselves some real questions about how many people really do connect to God in our services. I’m not suggesting purely a change in methodology – I think that’s much more a change in marketing than it is in product substance – but rather a shift in purpose and intent. What is the purpose we have for our church, and for ourselves?