Good Fortunes and Answered Prayer

10/26/14

I was in Omaha for a couple of Saturday soccer games for my son’s U16 boys team.  It’s a long way to go from Dubuque, especially to watch them lose two games by a combined 8-1!!   In between games, we went out for lunch at HyVee, our regional grocery store chain which has a predictable and dependable cafeteria.  Surprises aren’t the best in between soccer games.  I decided to have the Chinese Buffet, because I was not going to be playing soccer later.  Of course, I received the fortune cookie that in all likelihood has nothing whatsoever to do with China, but is expected by those of us who eat Chinese food at a grocery store.

I opened mine up and this was the fortune:

You will be successful in whatever you do.

This is good fortune!  My first thought was to go join my son’s soccer team for the second game.  After all, I would love to play at the U16 level and after the 5-1 drubbing they just took, they could use my guaranteed success!!  Unfortunately, there is an age limit on this team and they don’t take 3.5X that age.  I began to doubt that my fortune was all that true.

Resigned to not playing soccer, I went into the store to pick up some nibbles for the trip home.  A few sunflower seeds are good for keeping ones wits about them and eyes open on a five hour trip.   I had to pick up a couple of other things and when I went through the check-out line, my total was:

$6.66

I looked at the cashier and she looked at me.  What a bad fortune!!  I thought that perhaps I should buy something else to avoid the obvious concern raised by the three successive sixes.  But I was able to pay with 7 one dollar bills.  Seven is a nice, biblical number, so I figured I was safe.

These two experiences, back to back as they were, got me thinking about how desperate we as humans are for signs we can depend on.  We have lucky rocks,  lucky charms, lucky socks, lucky numbers, lucky you-name-its.  We read the horoscopes and laugh at their silliness and wonder about their message.  We try Oiuja boards and tarot cards and palm readers and fortune tellers.   We string together circumstances into coincidences that obviously are directing us (e.g., I saw five blue Priuses and I have been thinking of getting a Prius.  It must be a sign!).  We want so much to KNOW what is coming; what lies in our path; what the future holds.

Followers of Jesus will immediately see that these various versions of “witchcraft” are of little value in God’s reality and even lead people toward following false gods.  But it seems to me that far too often, Christians create their own signs out of the same desire to feel secure about themselves and their futures.  On the same morning that these odd incidents happened, I was watching the little television that they mount to the treadmill at the hotel and I saw a preacher right there on TV promise me “a real estate miracle” if I would plant a seed of $1000 in his ministry (I wish I was making this up).  “I don’t know where, but God is going to give you a real estate miracle.”

This “fortune” is, of course, the most crass example of the kind of thing that I am writing about here.  But I hear Christians doing this in a variety of subtle ways.  I hear people claim well-known and obscure bible verses alike in reference to a specific situation in their lives.   The message is that God promised such and such and therefore my situation is going to turn out thus and thus.  We pray “in Jesus’ name.”  We light candles.  We negotiate with God.

Sometimes it works and situations resolve as we want them to.  Sometimes I am “successful in whatever I do.”   When circumstances turn out the way we desire it can reinforce our faith and there certainly are times that God does come through for us just the way we want him to.  I heard a person recently who had survived the ebola infection say, “I want to say that I serve a God who answers prayer.”  This is a great testimony.  Except as the ebola death toll passes 4000 with little likelihood of the death toll ending soon, Christian relatives of those who have not survived are left wondering if God only answers some people’s prayers.  Did I not pray hard enough?  Do my prayers not work?  Does God only answer some prayers?  Maybe nobody was praying for those 4000 who have not survived.

I find the traditional answer to this obvious dilemma a bit unsatisfying.  It goes like this: God answers all prayers.  Sometimes he says, ‘Yes’, sometimes he says ‘No’ and sometimes he says ‘Wait’ or ‘Not now.’  I get this but it also leaves me wondering.  If God is constant and never changes, shouldn’t answers to prayer be more predictable?  If not, prayer becomes a bit of a silly exercise since there is no real way to know what God is going to say.  But if answers to prayer are predictable, then clearly we are missing it.  Many, many people, passionate followers of Jesus and hospital foxhole Christians are very frustrated with the way we as humans have assessed the effectiveness of prayer.  We want answers we can predict and even control.  But people still die. 

I would like to suggest that there is a dependable answer to every prayer and that it is the only answer we can depend on; more than that, it is the only answer we need.  I believe that the only and same answer that is given to every prayer is this:

“I AM”

The first and only guaranteed answer is God promising that He was, and is and is to come.   It is the promise that God will be present.  It is the assurance that however the current situation turns out in time, God’s eternal purpose is fulfilled in Jesus.  With the presence of Jesus, we can do everything (according to Philippians 3:14) including persevere through whatever difficulties we are facing and regardless of how they turn out.   

This really is the best answer of all.  We will never be able to discern the outcomes of various challenges we will encounter in life.  There are no signs or fortune cookies and favorite Bible verses that will assure us that the cancer will go away and health will be restored.  But if our prayers lead us to a deeper sense of God’s presence; to a more intimate relationship with the I AM who hears all our prayers and holds our ultimate, glorious future in His hands, then we will have achieved a greater fortune than all the fortune cookies or real estate miracles the world will ever offer!

We Are All Responsible

9.1.14

I was driving out of Chicago the other day.  We had been in town for a White Sox game (in my case, for a Tigers game just in case anyone thinks I am a Sox fan!).  Now driving in Chicago can involve a bit of traffic and sometimes a person needs something to do.  A nice Prius went by me with a back end that was fairly covered with bumper stickers.  A lot of them had fairly small print so I wasn’t able to read them all.  I decided to get behind the car when I had the opportunity so that I could occupy a few minutes with some novel reading material.

You can usually judge a person’s politics and world view based on bumper stickers and the more there are, the better guess you can take.  In this case, it was evident that person was likely from a liberal mindset politically for sure and probably spiritually as well.  There were the usual COEXIST and can’t we all just be nice get along kinds of stickers.  But there was one that I had never seen before which got me thinking.  No design, just two lines of script:

Blaming human nature and sin is not

helpful – We are all responsible.

This is one of those surface level philosophies that sounds good on first read, but any reflection results in serious questions about the foundation on which it is based.  First, I am operating from as assumption that the statement is intended as a comment against religion/faith in general.  Partly, the other stickers on the car seemed to bend in that direction.  But also, the statement has that “We have evolved so far beyond this sort of thing” that seems common in a lot of post religious thought. 

However, religious people and non-religious alike will probably agree that using human weakness as an excuse for bad behavior is hardly a good place to begin genuine problem solving at any level from the individual to the family to the community.   The result can be a somewhat fatalistic attitude along the lines of “Not much we can do about it; that’s just the way people are” and “What do you expect from someone like that?”

But it’s not the first part that was interesting to me.  It was the second half of the sticker, “We are all responsible.”  Again, most people religious or otherwise would agree that responsibility is a good thing.  But it is responsibility itself that is the issue.  Because while we can agree on the surface that responsibility is a good thing, it is a very surface level discussion until we can talk about the deeper issue of “responsible to what?” 

If we all live in a similar culture, say Midwestern middle class (like me), we may have some general agreement about responsible-to-what without really talking about it.  But even if it is not discussed aloud, the concept of responsibility invokes the reality of a standard to which all people are held accountable.  Without such a standard each person can pretty much be responsible to whatever he or she wants and no one really has the right to tell them that they are wrong. 

An obvious example of this to many in the US right now are the Islamic militants who kill anyone who does not submit to their version of religious truth.  Because that belief system is so foreign to many Americans, it is easy for people to view militants of this nature as (to put it kindly) irresponsible without ever thinking about the underlying assumption that there is a standard of responsibility to which all are accountable.  But we can be as sure of this as of anything: Islamic militants are VERY responsible to what they believe they should be responsible to.   In fact, they may be some of the most responsible people on earth!  Responsibility isn’t the problem – the standard is.

This takes us back to the first part of the bumper sticker.  While we can agree that using human nature and sin as an excuse is not helpful, it really is the only starting point for understanding the mess we have made of the world.  Of course, sin itself requires the presence of a standard.  There really is nothing like sin if everyone is truly free to make up his or her own mind about right and wrong.  It’s the same for human nature which is usually just code for “sin” in the post religious world.  Identified faults (sins) such as selfishness, exploitation, racism, violence as a means of control, judgment and so on are really only faults if there is some standard by which to measure them.  Otherwise, they are nothing more than opinions and lifestyle choices.  Sadly, too many people in the post religious world are having meaningless discussions about responsibility because they never get to this level .  And they often converse from a perspective that faith is either beneath them, irrelevant, or in some cases the cause of the whole problem.  They reject the very concept that is necessary for responsibility to mean anything in the first place.

The Christian world view agrees: we ARE all responsible.  We are all responsible to a standard that none of us is able to meet.  Sin (human nature) is real precisely because there is a standard to which we are all accountable.  I have yet to meet a person who does not know somewhere deep inside that there is something wrong with him (or her); that he doesn’t quite measure up.   Platitudes like “everyone makes mistakes” are not sufficient to take away the nagging sense that something is just not right.    Freedom is found both in accepting the reality and responsibility for our human nature and accepting that in Jesus Christ, the requirements of the standard have been met once for all.  This does not give people freedom to blame human nature and sin.  It does give people the power, knowledge and confidence to make a positive difference in the world in spite of the consistent irresponsibility we find in ourselves and others.  It’s a great adventure!  Feel free to join in.  

Jim

PS - If you are within driving distance, consider joining us for Shall We Gather at the River - 2014.  This is a Christian Leadership Conference we are hosting in Dubuque October 23&24 and which will focus on racial realities and reconciliation in the church.  One of the featured speakers is my friend Seth Naicker from South Africa and of Team iThemba fame!  Here's the link:

Shall We Gather at the River - 2014

Picking Creeping Charlie with the Mormons

August 18, 2014

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were in the front yard picking Creeping Charlie (also known as Ground Ivy) out of the yard piece by piece.  I have a love/hate relationship with Charlie.  He’s everywhere and I hate the way he looks and takes over portions of the yard.  On the other hand, I love how reinforcing it is to get into a nice long piece and have it keep on coming as I pull it out.  And I love the concrete results of weeding a portion of the lawn.  Before: lots of Creeping Charlie.  After: no Creeping Charlie.  And I did it!

The key to pulling Charlie and limiting his inevitable return is to pull not only the leaves and portions of the vine, but to get down at the ground level so that you get as much of the roots as possible.   It’s possible to pull up lots of Charlie and have lots more Charlie back in just a week or two if you don’t get down to the roots.

At one point, my wife went into the house or to another part of the yard.  Suddenly, or what seemed like suddenly in my intense concentration on the battle, there were two charming young ladies standing on my sidewalk and initiating a conversation along the lines of “What are you doing?”  It doesn’t take long to realize who you are talking with when the Mormon missionaries come by.  The name tags and similar first names give them away.  On the odd occasion that some come by our house, I usually move directly to a statement of faith; recognize that there are some differences in our theology that we are not likely to reconcile, and come to a gentle parting of ways.  But after we had talked for a bit, the nice young ladies said that part of their missionary work was doing service work and that they would be happy to come back and help pick Creeping Charlie. 

We have a lot of Creeping Charlie.

So we set up a time that was open for them to come back for an hour of picking Creeping Charlie and talking theology.  They came and they picked as best they could with the instructions and practice we gave them.  And as they picked, they used  traditional missionary lines that you will be familiar with if you have met with them in the past.  “Do you have a favorite Bible verse?”  That sort of thing.  I had crammed a bit with some background reading of my own and had a few questions to raise with them.  It was all friendly enough.  And we kept picking.  We established that we could not both be right.  They were quick to point out that they were not trying to convince anyone to believe what they believe.  They just wanted to talk.  This seemed a bit disingenuous to me because what else do missionaries do but work toward conversion to a way of thinking?  And we picked.

Here is what my wife noticed and pointed out after our missionary friends had left.  People, in this case our Mormon missionary friends, like to stay on the surface of theology and find points of agreement.  When you press people to go deeper, they often change the subject to something a bit easier.  They don’t like to get to the roots.  But it’s at the roots that we discover that two people can talk about Jesus and be talking about different characters named Jesus.  Two people can talk about a heavenly Father, but it’s not the same Father.  Two people can talk about eternal life and heaven and angels and devils and the definitions (the roots) are so different that the conversation is really about two different things.  

But if we get into the roots, it can get really uncomfortable.  Many Christians are not comfortable at the roots because they aren’t really sure how to define and defend their faith themselves.  The nice girls made note of the fact that we clearly knew a lot more about the Bible and our faith than most people they talked to.  I believe it.  So many who attend church regularly know so little about the roots of what they believe.  It’s hard to have root level conversations with similarly minded Christians, much less with missionaries from an alternative view who seem so confident of what they believe. (One of my favorite moments of the time with the Mormons was when the nice 21 year old told my wife and me that she could tell that we really believed in our faith and in Jesus.  It was so adorably patronizing for this very confident young missionary to feel the need and authority to affirm our faith for us!  And we kept on picking.) 

The problem with roots is that roots determine what comes out on the surface.  You can clear away the surface so that it looks like the lawn is weed free.  But if you don’t get the roots, Charlie is right back there before you can say – “Creeping Charlie.”   When the Pharisees were messing with Jesus about some Sabbath healing, he told them, “Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment.” (John 7:24).   Dig deeper to the foundations; the roots of what you believe.

“Always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1Peter 3:15).  This doesn’t mean you have to be a university level Bible scholar.  But followers of Jesus should be able to at least give a basic understanding of what and why they believe what they believe and have some understanding of how what Christians believe is different at the roots than others who may talk about Jesus, but define him differently.

I certainly don’t fault the nice Mormon missionary ladies.  They were kind in their confidence and simply working hard at what they believe they have been called to do.  And in doing so, they were working to advance their belief system with an enthusiasm that many will never approach for any cause, faith based or otherwise.  But I do believe that the roots of what they believe will produce a sort of Creeping Charlie in the lawn of Truth.  Jesus said, “Every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.” (Matthew 15:13).  Work hard to know the roots of what you believe so that you may not be pulled up.  Work hard to help your kids (if you have them) and others pull out the roots of theological Creeping Charlie of which this world is producing more and more.  Just like picking Creeping Charlie, the exercise of pulling up the roots of belief can be both frustrating and satisfying.  But in both the literal and figurative sense, a weed free lawn that stays weed free is worth the effort!

Jim

PS The nice missionary ladies worked hard at pulling Charlie from our yard, too.  But sure enough, a week later, the places where they had worked were sprouting new little Charlies!  I hope someday they are able to get at the roots.

World Cup - Final

World Cup Final – Death

July 23, 2014

Okay, so maybe it’s a stretch to combine the end of the World Cup with death, but it seemed good to have three essays in a group about the World Cup, so go with me for a minute or two and I will get there!

My family and I are heading to Michigan next week for our annual pilgrimage to visit my parents, siblings and their children.  It is a trip we have made many times over the past 30 years that my wife and I have lived in Dubuque.  It has consistently been one of the highlights of my children’s lives.  But this year, the trip has a slightly different color to it.

Last January, my father’s mother – my grandmother – passed away.  She was 99 and thanks to the care of her daughter and son-in-law, she had been able to live in her two homes, one in Michigan and one in Florida up to her passing.  As many family members are either still in Michigan or often travel there during the summer, the decision was made to have a memorial service in Michigan in July rather than trying to get everyone down to Florida in January.  Saturday will be my grandmother’s memorial service.  As I told people about our upcoming trip and the fact that it would end with the memorial, people would naturally say, “Oh, I’m sorry about your grandmother.”  To which I would typically reply, “Thanks, but she was 99.  At least no one will be saying, ‘It’s such a shame she died so young.’” 

Of course, I was just trying to diffuse any tension – no one likes to talk about death.  But the truth is death is never right.  As people, we are never comfortable with death and even when our 99 year old grandparents pass, we wish that they could be with us just a little longer.  We want things to stay the same.

At the other end of the spectrum, my daughter, who teaches violin lessons, had one of her young students not show up for a lesson last week.  The family had recently gotten a puppy which was only four months old.  It was discovered that the puppy had an untreatable internal organ condition and they had to put it down.  They had only had the puppy for a couple weeks, not 99 years.  And anyone can tell you that there are lots of dogs that need homes, so they can easily get another.   Anyone can tell me that my grandmother was 99 years old and had lived a great life.  But death is never right.  We want things to stay the same.

But things don’t stay the same.  And when circumstances change, we are faced with the reality that no matter how much we want to be in control or think that we are in control or work to be in control – we are not in control.  The ultimate evidence of this is death.  But we face all kinds of “death” experiences, when our hopes and expectations are changed by circumstances outside our control.

The entire nation of Brazil had a “death” experience in the semi-finals of the recently completed World Cup (I told you I would get back to the Cup!).  The host nation with a glorious soccer history losing in embarrassing fashion to Germany.  Brazil’s worst defeat ever at the worst possible time.  Those who follow this event could almost hear the collective voice of the stunned Brazilians crying, “It’s not supposed to be this way!”  But the scene of weeping children, and not a few adults, in their beloved national team’s jersey was repeated just a few days later except this time the children were wearing Argentine jerseys.  In the World Cup, only one team doesn’t “die.”  Spain and England had their death experience early.  Brazil and Argentina had theirs late.  Only Germany didn’t – this time.

And we have these death experiences in so many ways.  I have a friend whose wife was diagnosed with cancer.   While the battle continues, he has struggles with all kinds of issues related to this situation which he can’t control.  He told me one story of a young relative of his who was trying to comfort him and said to him, “She’s going to be okay.”  These are fairly common words in situations like this.  I think they reveal what our real hopes are.  Translated, I think these word mean, “Everything is going to go back to being the way it was before.”  We so much want things to stay the same. 

My Christian world view is not surprised by this.  We were created to be eternal as was the world.  There was this really nice garden with everything that people needed to be content and satisfied.  Everything was meant to be the same forever.  Death and all its related complications were the consequence of people rebelling against the perfect order that God had created for us to enjoy. 

Some people ridicule this idea by taking it too literally and saying things like, “I would have gotten bored living in a place like that.”  And “People can’t be content in a place with no challenges like that.”  They imagine gardens that they know and the whole idea doesn’t make sense to them.  I understand that but the promise of the garden isn’t about the physical garden.  The promise of the garden is that things never changed.  It wasn’t just about food and drink and peace and being naked without shame – although those are all good things that most people want.  It was about a much deeper need that people have.  A need for things to be in control, predictable - for there to be no death.  We can’t imagine it.  We can only know that we know that death is never right.  We know it isn’t right because even when our 99 year old grandmother’s pass after living relatively healthy lives in their own homes.  We wish things could go back to the way they were before.

I mentioned the promise of the garden because I believe it to be a promise of restoration which God has given to all people.  As I go to my grandmother’s memorial, I will be more thankful than usual for scriptures such as:

“I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25)

“God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.  This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus who has destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” (2Tim 1:9,10)

Death in little forms and in the ultimate form is a billions times proven reality for all people.  I am grateful to be aware of one who has destroyed death and given me the promise of the restored garden where there will be no more death.  There is no other solution to this problem.