The Advent of Perspective

I love optical illusions.

I particularly enjoy them when I'm not expecting them. I like that moment of wonder and surprise when you find that the thing you were looking at is actually something else entirely. The moment when you suddenly see something that was there all along, but you never saw it before. It's a question of perspective.

The birth of Jesus was nothing of consequence from the perspective of the Roman Empire. Another Jewish boy born far from Rome, in an inconsequential corner of an unimportant province. Neither his mother, nor his father were anyone important. Another Jewish boy born to Judean peasants who paid very little in taxes and who would never trouble the might of Rome. Little did Rome know that this baby boy would change everything.

The birth of Jesus was a political threat to Herod. He saw a potential rival for the throne. Someone whom his enemies could use to displace him. A rallying point for the rabble, always looking for a messiah to rally around, someone to lead them against him and his Roman allies. Little did Herod know that this little boy was no threat to his throne. He wasn't born to assume political power or lead a violent revolution. He was a revolutionary, but He was after men's souls not their thrones.

The birth of Jesus was announced in the stars to those who knew where to look. Astrologers from the East searching the stars for answers had seen something that caught their eye. They set out on a quest to see for themselves this thing they had traced on their charts. Having met the baby born in a stable, they fell down and worshipped this unlikely King. They recognized what others had missed. It's difficult to say how much they understood, but they laid their treasures at His feet. 

What do you see when you look at Jesus? Is he of no consequence, someone not even worthy of your notice or attention? Is He a threat to you, someone you fear? Or, is He your King, worthy of your love, adoration, and worship? 

The "Not Yet"

Recently, I was encouraged to spend some time talking with God about the "not yet" of the Kingdom. As a Christian, I experience this life as a state of perpetual "in between". God has revealed His rule and reign through Jesus Christ, and that reign is current and continuing, but is not yet fully realized. It is real, but not yet complete.

I live in this world, enjoying all that this world has to offer as I live under Him, but I also recognize that this world is not all that it could be, was, or will be. There is a present joyous reality of life with Christ that is interrupted and disturbed by the brokenness in and around me. This life is not all that it should be, it is not yet all that it will be. So I asked the Lord, what is your vision of us and for us?

As I prayed  I was immediately drawn to the theme of revival. As I silently discussed this with the Lord, I found myself asking, “Yes, revival Lord, but what would that look like?” Suddenly my mind was filled with images and ideas of people experiencing God personally, being ambushed by God and surprised by joy. Their joy and encouragement moved them to share their excitement and to become infectiously cheerful. As they were transformed by God’s Spirit they became more free to express what God had put in them and to use their gifts with greater freedom and power than they had previously experienced. They were hearing from God and walking with God day by day, experiencing and sharing.

As I prayerfully reflected on what could be, even in this bent world, I found myself pondering the obstacles.

Why is it that we do not live as free as we actually are? Why do we live discouraged? Why are we so easily distracted from the joy set before us? Why are we not joyously infecting the world with love, joy, and peace? Why is this vision not being more fully experienced and lived out?


The first word that came to mind was “discouragement.” People lack experience with God and this leads to a lack of trust in God, which leads to a lack of hope and boldness. If we really knew as Him as He is, if we knew God experientially, we would be more free and bold to follow Him wherever He might lead and follow Him with joy.

As I pondered why this might not be so, It came to me that that we are making it too complex. Our answers reveal that we have misunderstood the problem.

We tend to offer more information, education, and training; illustrating our belief that a lack of knowledge or technique is the problem. (Not that training is bad, but to the extent that is leads to placing our trust in methodology or technique rather than walking in a dependent and conversational relationship with God, it leads in the wrong direction.)

We (particularly those of us from the Global North and West) have a tendency to trust in our own abilities and strategies. We have been trained to value efficiency, productivity, and control. It seems to me that God is calling me (perhaps us) to a more relational and dependent understanding of Him.

Perhaps the answer is not money, education, power, or control. Perhaps the answer is "to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

May we not be afraid to be like little children. May we be willing to confess our dependence on Our Father and to walk with The Son under the Inspiration of The Holy Spirit. May we commit ourselves to learning to discern the voice of the Good Master rather than mastering methods and techniques. May we learn to walk humbly with Our God.

God's Terrible Inefficiency

I realized again today how much my perspective is shaped by who I am. I am driven by efficiency and productivity. I am always asking how to improve something or how to derive more from less, how to work smarter not harder. This drive is partially a result of my basic personality type, but has been continuously reinforced by my culture and education.

Today I was bemoaning a particular ineffeciency.  I was telling my wife that the return on my investment in a particular project was inadequate. I was arguing against doing something like it again. She listened to my rant patiently then gently asked a question, "Did you do what God asked you to do?"

"Yes!" I answered, "I did, but God is so terribly inefficient!" Suddenly I realized that Jesus had really mishandled his ministry, had botched his opportunity to make the kind of big impact that he could have made. First, there is a question of timing. He was born in a time and place where his voice could not be heard globally. Certainly, it would have made more sense for him to be born now with ubiquitous global media available to spread his message and broadcast his miracles. There was no recording equipment, no TV, no radio, no internet. He could reach more people in one day with a webpage and a twitter account than he could in 33 years of wandering around preaching to people in person back then. What was He thinking?!

Second, there is a question of social and economic clout. Even if we grant that it was a good idea to be born then, He should have picked a better situation for himself. He was born into a poor peasant family in a backwards province far from the centres of power. He made no effort to use the established systems of influence in government or religious circles. Instead, he recruited a bunch of misfit hicks to follow him around, and wasted his time blessing children and even going so far as to tell people NOT to tell others about what he had done for them. Certainly the lessons of guerilla marketing and viral marketing were lost on him. Again, I have to ask myself, What was He thinking?!

I could totally have done a better job. I could really have helped Jesus to be more efficient and productive. Jesus needed a strategic plan and a marketing team. (Perhaps even a glossy brochure.) He wasted so much of his time talking to people like the woman at the well, or the woman caught in adultery. He should have been focusing on those with more clout. He should have spent more time networking and developing contacts with the decision makers, the influential people. He could have really accomplished so much more! When he died, even the few followers he had were scattered. All power in heaven and earth had been entrusted to him! He used this power to wash feet?! What was He thinking?

As I allowed this train of thinking to flow from my unconscious to my conscious thoughts, it became so clear. God's economy is simply not mine. He chooses to work in ways that appear to be terribly inefficient, and I find that personally frustrating. Often, it seems like He is wasting my time and energy. I want to improve on His plan.

But there is a freedom that comes from seeking to know and do His will. If I choose to live in light of His actual presence and sovereignty, I can actually relax. When I release my imaginary brillance, the fiction of my control, I can find rest for my soul. Isn't this where Job ends up. He wrestles with God (and God commends Him for his honest arguing) but the answer was not what Job expected. God didn't answer the specifics of Job's questions, instead He offered Himself to Job. He reminded Job of His true nature and character. He showed Job His greatness and Job felt appropriately small before Him. Job repented and found rest for His soul.

I am after the peace that surpasses all understanding. It is interesting that prayer is the doorway to this peace. In prayer we acknowledge our smallness and dependency. We come to God and lay our requests before him with a heart of gratitude then the peace of Christ guards our hearts and our minds. We can find our rest in Him and let Him do what really is best. Only He knows what is really best, only He knows the end from the beginning. So, the terrible inefficiency serves a perfect purpose, but only He is capable of working it all together for the good, for my good and the good of His Kingdom. 

Information Junkie

I am an information junkie. I want to know things. I want to understand what is happening in the world around me. I want to understand the past. I want to track the present. I am almost constantly seeking out knowledge, researching something. It's not all bad, but I believe that part of what drives me in this is my desire for control. On some level I believe that it is up to me to make sure I don't miss the good, or that I will be responsible if something preventable and bad happens.

It may sound crazy, but I think that if I understand the past and the present that I will be able to predict the future; not in a mystical sort of way, but by connecting the dots and seeing the big picture, seeing the trajectory of events. I still don't completely understand where this started in my heart or why I am compelled in this way, but I feel it deep in my soul. I don't want to be caught unaware, or flat footed. I want to be able to see threats and opportunities. I want to be competent. I want to be "on top of things". I want to make good decisions.

I believe that some of this is from God, a part of the way that He made me; however I think that it can also be twisted. I think part of it is fear based. Fear that I (or those I love) will be hurt if I fail to be vigilant. I'm afraid that something will happen that I could have, should have, foreseen. I am afraid that if I let down my guard, I will be taken advantage of, or I will become a victim of something that "I should have seen coming". On some level I seek to be God, and fail to trust Him. Even as I write this, I remember.

I remember being victimized. I remember a leader, a friend, who took advantage of me as a boy and who wounded me deeply. He was a leader in the church. I remember kicking myself (not literally) and condemning myself and my failure to see it coming. I remember vowing that I wouldn't be taken in again. I wouldn't be fooled again. It started back then. The tendency to try to peer past the surface of things, try to discern what is going on at a deeper level so that I can protect myself. Is even this a gift from God?

God says that He is working all things together for good. Is my propensity for research and reflection a gift from God? I think it is, but it is also, at least in part, a result of the abuse I suffered as a boy. Because of what happened there is a wounded part of me. A part that fails to believe that He really is in control or that He really is going to take good care of me. I wonder what it would look like for me to really trust Him. How might my ability to take in and analyze data be used by Him rather than being a tool of my fears or desires. What would this gift from Him look like if fully redeemed and set free?

The Voice of God

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, but I can't help writing about it again. I am reading in the Gospel of John right now and am repeatedly struck by Jesus relationship with the Father, and with all the references to voice and speaking.

Jesus clearly demonstrated an intimacy with the Father that far surpasses that of my own. My early training assured me that this was because He is God and that I should not expect that I will have personal communication with the Father. Just recently I heard a report that a respected teacher at my church publicly reaffirmed the position, namely that God does not speak to us personally now because He has given us the Scriptures. According to this position, that I thought was historical rather than current, God speaks to us today exclusively through His written Word.

This was a very comfortable position for me because it normalized my personal experience, or rather the lack there of, with God. I felt fine about not personally hearing from or interacting with God other than through the intellectual pursuit of knowledge through the Bible. I was not challenged to break through to an interactive, conversational relationship with God. Instead I was warned about people who pursued this path as fanatics, dreamers, and potential heretics. I did not object because I found the teaching to be reasonable and I trusted the teachers.

While I still respect my teachers and value the solid Biblical grounding that underpins my faith, I have found that my journey has led me to radically different conclusions. The more time I spend in the Gospels, the more it seems to me that God intends to interact with each of His children very personally. Is not this what we mean when we say that "Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship"? I cannot tell you how many times I heard these words in the church growing up, but only now recognize the irony. We said the words, but denied the possiblity of any real relationship.

A relationship is a living and active thing. It is not enough to read about the interactions that God had with people to know Him personally. It is not enough to read the words He spoke to them, the ways that He interacted with them. I want to interact with Him. i want to hear His voice and do His will. I am pretty sure that is what Jesus promises to us.

What does it all mean?

Today, as I was reading in Luke, I was struck by a passage that my eyes have glazed over countless times. You may not believe it, but I was arrested by the genealogy of Jesus. Not by the names that we know like David, Jessie, Abraham, or Adam, but by all the other names. Names of men that we know nothing else about.

As I sat reflecting on the passage I was struck by the fact that these men lived entire lives about which we know absolutely nothing. They were born into families that we know nothing about. They went through formative experiences as they were growing up that we know nothing about. They fell in love with women that we know nothing about. They had weddings that we know nothing about. They had children that we know nothing about. They suffered diseases and hardships that we know nothing about, and they died in ways that we know nothing about. Their entire lives are lost to us, but we do know that they were an indispensable link in the chain of life that produced the Savior of the world.

These men had no idea about the real significance of their lives. They lived and died without an inkling of how their lives fit into the grand narrative of history. We too have no real idea of why we are here and what our lives mean. We seldom understand the past, only occasionally grasp the significance of the present, and have no capacity to predict, let alone understand, the future. We live all our lives like men shooting in the dark, barely comprehending what we are shooting at and rarely knowing if we even hit it.

The beauty of knowing God is that He knows the future. He knows why we are here, each of us individually. He knows the work that He has prepared for us to do. He knows the gifts He has given us. He knows what it all means, and He promises to be with us in the midst of it and work it all together for good. All this is just to rephrase something my father used to say: "I don't know the future, but I know the one who knows the future."

Knowledge

Knowledge is an odd thing. In most contexts we talk about things that we know and don't know with a degree of certainty that should make us blush.