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Monday, 29 January 2007

Frustration

I am convinced that the #1 inducement to completely blow off Christianity is the abysmal testimony of those who claim to be Christian. I also acknowledge fully that sometimes that includes me.
The Bible says that the world will be won to Christ, in part, by the love they see His followers show. Instead we all too often see lies and pretense covering shallow behavior and intense self-interest. It's easy to talk about our desire to "go to India one day and spend myself on the poor and marginalized." But when our actions every day here demonstrate arrogance and deception, what is it we hope to offer the poor?
A wise daughter of mine introduced me to two sayings that I have taken much to heart lately:
"To be rather than to appear..." and "Profess nothing that you would not live and die for."

Thursday, 11 January 2007

Peppermint Pogo Puppies

As I dismantled our Christmas tree this year, I began to ponder the plethora of peppermint pogo puppies.
Let me explain.
Having a Christmas tree at all has sort of been an uncomfortable compromise at our house. It is one of those well-intended, extra-Biblical pagan practices that becomes traditionally charming and culturally expected over time. When I first realized this and was challenged to dispense with it and simply honor Christ in my heart every day without all the holiday trappings, I could hardly stand the thought of not having a tree. I used to drag a pillow and blanket under the boughs as a kid so I could fall asleep dreaming under the twinkling lights. I knew it had nothing to do with Jesus, but I loved the ambience. So we arrived at a compromise: we would have the tree and the white twinkly lights, but we would use only ornaments that emphasized some aspect of the coming of Christ. We made very few exceptions for one or two discrete ornaments such as "Our First Christmas Together" or "Baby's First Christmas."
Enter the dilemna of relatives who consider themselves "Christian" but don't see the need to bother with extremes of faith (names withheld, obviously, since we really do love them and are praying that they will mature). With all the best intentions in the world, they began to collect for us and for our children many, MANY lines of ornaments from our alma mater, from the National Treasury, from Disney, and from that paragon of sentimentality Hallmark Cards. The latter is the producer of the peppermint pogo puppies that honor not only "Baby's First Christmas," but also his second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth...you get the picture.
Now though my alma mater is a fine educational establishment well known for their fierce pride, none of that has anything at ALL to do with the advent of the savior of the world. Ditto for the National Mint and Disney, Inc. So one would think that the solution would be to simply say, "Thank you" for the thought and stash the ornaments (which, technically, are not mine but belong to my children) and let them decide for themselves one day what they wish to do with them. The problem is that in the meantime this stash of secular decor for the "holy-day" has become a rather large storage problem that underscores a rather large spiritual problem which hit me like a ton of bricks as I have been trying to simplify our schmuk.
Since I was admonished to "Keep the box. They'll be more valuable collectors' items that way," I could not help but notice the price that was on the box. Multiply that by two children for twenty years and compound it by the number of collector sets in question (5?) and it begins to dawn on you that an obscene amount of money has been misguidedly invested in "that which satisfieth not" on behalf of someone who did not need or want it, all in the name of love. Okay, so I am admittedly a purist, but really...aren't there better ways to show love? To steward money? To honor the Christ whose mass we claim to observe?
And the bigger question may be: How much of what we call "the Christian experience" is basically the same--misguided and well-intentioned efforts to love God by means which do not please Him? Did He not say that He desires obedience and not sacrifice, broken hearts rather than burnt offerings?

Monday, 08 January 2007

Grieving...venting

Nearly seven years ago a speaker challenged me to ask God to show me how much He loves me and to ask Him to show me what it is that breaks His heart. He cautioned not to do it unless I was sincere. I thought I was sincere at the time, but really I was probably just self-righteous, because I said, "Sure, God. Do it!" without a second thought. And He has. And it hurts. And I wish He'd stop sometimes. I've asked Him to, but then realized that I requested this and I need to stay the course.
The first thing I experienced that makes God cry is that He loves us and would do anything--indeed has already done everything--to enable us to be restored to His love, but we do not want Him. He died of love for us, buying us with His blood, and we reject Him, preferring less worthy lovers. Jesus stood over Jerusalem and wept over that.
The second thing I experienced that deeply wounds and offends God is that He has loved us purely and yet we ascribe to Him the most vile motives. We grieve Him and then tell Him it's His fault for expecting too much. We not only doubt His love and goodness, we actually accuse Him of deliberately depriving us of good things--of not really caring (and "after all we've done for Him!"). Jesus wept at His friend's tomb about that.
So tonight I got yet another lesson in what grieves the heart of God, and it's this: He has created us in His image, for His purposes and His glory. To enable us to serve Him, He has dignified us with remarkable gifts and potential and set all the world before us to steward for His glory. And we take His gifts and (finding Him "boring", I suppose) we offer them to those lesser lovers. We take all that we might have been in Him and for Him and with Him and we use it to gain worldly praise and we have the audacity to strut and bask in their praise as if we had accomplished some great thing. We use His own gifts to steal praise away from Him, and in doing so we risk never actually realizing the remarkable potential He had planned, trading it instead for a cheap counterfeit. If you want a very graphic example of what this looks like and how God feels about it, read Ezekiel 16.
In all these things, we have first tasted the goodness of the Lord and then returned like a dog to lap up the vomit because we prefer it. It is testimony to our utter depravity!
When God showed me the first lesson, it was through the betrayal of a beloved friend. I thought my heart would break, and I asked God why He would allow such pain. He gently reminded me that I had asked Him to show me what broke His heart. How better to show me than to let me experience it so that I could never forget? The second lesson was again learned through a betrayal--this one even more painful that the first (though I did not believe it was possible). This time I was quick to assure the Lord that I could identify with His pain, but this time He said, "Not quite yet, for this betrayal is something you have done to Me yourself!" Now I was humbled and heartbroken. Surely now we could stop...but not quite yet. To learn this latest lesson, God has had me witness as a beloved friend (again a professing believer) reviewed the first two in betrayal of my child before thrusting home the third. You see, not only do we grieve God by rejecting and doubting and cuckolding Him, but we force Him to watch as we do the same things to His Son who died for love of us.
I really hope this is the last lesson. I am weary and grieved. I am tired of loving people who choose to waste their lives on lies, games and pretenses while hurting those who love them most selflessly. But God does not stop loving us. He does not stop hoping.
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick." When I was having one of our children, an unexpected trauma during the birth process caused the placenta to detatch only partially. It remained so for over three hours as I lost an incredible amount of blood. When a limb or organ is separated from the body cleanly, the vessels have a remarkable way of sealing and healing themselves. There's really not a lot of blood. But when something is partly gone but partly still there, the body bleeds and bleeds, trying to supply support to the damaged member. "Hope deferred" is like that. While there is any hope that the member might be restored, might be saved, might become fruitful again, we tend to pour out incredible amounts of emotion and prayer to support that hope. To extend to someone a nonexistent hope is NOT a kindness; it is asking them to bleed to death for you while you lie to them and to yourself.
So why do we bother with the lies? Maybe we lie when we don't like the sound of the truth.
We can't be "sorta" faithful. We can't be "sorta" committed. This half-on-half-off stuff is death! Enough of divided hearts! Love Him or don't, but at least be honest about it. "God is not mocked," and "the truth will find you out." The only one we fool with our pretense is ourselves, but God calls it "lukewarmness" and it grieves Him and it makes Him sick.

Saturday, 06 January 2007

Waterford and WalMart

I used to have a great-aunt who went a little "batty" in her later years. What I'm about to relate may or may not be related to any mental impairment brought on by age. ;)
Aunt Edna liked "stuff." She collected all sorts of things. Always did. And once something became hers, she never let go of it. Even if she didn't need or use it anymore, she never let go of anything. All things that became hers were held in reserve in case she ever wanted them again.
As far as I could ever tell, very few criterion determined what entered her collections. Pretty much anything that caught her interest or appealed to her fancy and was attainable was acquired. In later years there came to be one other motivation. She began to stockpile things in fear, though her fears never had much base in reality.
Aunt Edna had no husband and no children...no one to share her life or her things with. When she passed, the house was an astounding maze with mere footpaths winding through the stacks of belongings, a collection so overwhelming that for years nothing had been arranged or dusted nor, one must assume, enjoyed.
And on shelves where things had once been proudly displayed, under the layers of dust we discovered Royal Daulton next to everyday stoneware, Waterford crystal sharing space with cut glass from the local WalMart. Not that there's anything wrong with economical tableware, you understand, but it became obvious that Aunt Edna could not tell the difference in quality and did not care. She had no discernment. As scripture says, she could not tell "the difference between the holy and the profane" or "discern between the unclean and the clean."
There are things of utility in each of our lives, but what's on prominent display? There are many things that demand our time, but when we have special time, where do we choose to spend it? There are many uses for our money, but when we have discretionary funds, where do we apply them? We may have many acquaintances, but whom do we honor as chosen friends? When you get right down to it, we all pretty much do as we please, really, and what we choose to do springs from who we really are.
I learned a lot from Aunt Edna. Because she discerned no distinctions, she treasured nothing, really. And when she left us, all those things she had spent her life on pretty much went out to the curb. What an appalling waste.