Mathetes

I have at least three things in common with everyone I will meet, no matter what gender, race, sexual orientation, or political persuasion.   The first is that we're both created by God as His image-bearers and placed in this moment in human history.  The second is suffering.  This person before me either has suffered, is suffering, or will suffer.  The third is that we're both "sinners" -spiritually lost, dead, and bankrupt, in ourselves, in need of God's grace, forgiveness, and life found only in Jesus.

Below is an example of how the proper distinction between Law and Gospel is both practical and pastoral.   Chesterton's quote "We fear men so much because we fear God so little.  One fear cures another," is true, for all I understand.  I remember reading a whole book on this subject called "When People are Big and God is Small."  I was desperate to find a solution to what I was painfully experiencing, which some had diagnosed (and which I self-diagnosed from reading too many internet articles) as "fear of man."   I remember as I began reading the book, I was excited.  Many things written in the book resonated with me, and I had some hope.  But as I approached the end of the book, my countenance and hope had fallen.  Why?  In retrospect, I believe it's because though I had hoped for a solution, something I can do to change this, to free myself, and the truth is that the book was long on diagnosis and very short on a useful prescriptive for solving t

 John was by all appearances a good husband.  He always remembered their anniversary, and was diligent in doing things like helping his wife with the kids, buying her flowers, and being kind to her.  He read all the right books, was part of the latest fad movements in the Church that focused on man's responsibility, and he even led men's ministries to help teach other men how to do what he did. It was their tenth anniversary, and John was certainly not going to forget that.  He came home early from work with a bouquet of long stemmed roses.  His wife opened the door, and he handed her the roses.  "Oh, thank you, John! I love them!" she said.  Confidently, he replied, "Think nothing of it.  I'm just doing my duty like I always do!"  Upon these words, her countenance dropped.  The roses fell to the ground, and she turned and headed to the bedroom in tears. Bewildered, John’s first reaction was to become angry.  After all, as he played the reel in his head,

Being offended is the new pastime, but it doesn't have to be.  Long before it became cool on social media to be offended, I took up the sport of holding onto offense.  I've been a true pioneer in the art of brooding, a regular Tom Brady, a man ahead of his time, and I know I'm not alone in that.  But holding onto offense is like the worst kind of sport you can play.  The only ones involved in this game are you and those unwilling participants within the radius of the steam fuming out of your nostrils.  Any spectators who get close enough to watch are more like witnesses of a slow train-wreck.  Plus, there's no amazing come-back story where the score gets flipped in overtime and your team, the "good guys", win.  There are no wrongs righted in the making of this movie, and there's no happy ending to it. The only thing that happens, in our cosmic protest, is we hurt ourselves and those closest to us.   The offense game is  addictive, though -I'll give it

When I was younger, I took a trip to England.  During that short time, I was probably most fascinated by our stop in York.  Aside from the incredible Yorkminster cathedral we toured and the creepy "ghost tour" that we took, I was struck by how the city is surrounded by a stone wall.  The more I learn of medieval and ancient history, the more I understand how common this is because, for much of history, a wall around a large city was a critical component of the city's structure, strength, and security, providing a sense of safety to inhabitants and a deterrent to unwanted outsiders.  In a way, city walls also acted as physical container for group or cultural identity for all who "belonged" to that city. But a city that was broken into and had no walls was defenseless, weak, provided no security for its inhabitants, and was therefore easy pickings for outsiders looking to steal what they can.  Rather than having a place for refuge, the inhabitants would scatter at

I took this photo 8 years ago.  Though I remember being in a fairly good place that day, I frequently went to this bench tucked away on a path in the woods to read and pray.  I went there often during some pretty dark times.  I brought my restlessness, I brought my anguish, and I went to seek after God.  Most of the time, I did not leave there feeling any different.  In fact, during much of that season, what I experienced most of the time was silence.  The skies seemed empty. In the Psalms, there is a phrase that is repeated often.  "Why do You hide Your face from me?"  Consider Psalms 13, 27, 44, 88, and 102, to name a few.  I am thankful for these Psalms because, among other things, they normalize the experience of what we perceive as God's absence.  The idea of God "hiding His face" speaks of His presence turning away, His hand seemingly withdrawing from our lives.  These are hard places to be in, for we know one thing well:  Where else is there to go?  Nowhe

Fear is a thing, but there's a thing thing about fear.  It must be faced and dealt with it or it will deal with you.  It will do its work, seeping out like a poison, strangling you and choking those you love in ways you don't see because you're too focused on the hands around your own neck. When I was a kid, I had one of those big styrofoam airplane models, and we would launch it off the back porch.  It was a 747, maybe about 3 feet long, and it came in four big pieces that squeezed together.  During one launch, the foam bird took a hard turn and crashed into the earth, snapping a wing.  I tried to repair it with super glue, but I quickly learned that super glue dissolves styrofoam.  Not only was the plane not fixed well, it never flew the same and wound up in the trash.   Fear is like super-glue on styrofoam.  When fear dominates us, we try to hold our life together through control, but it dissolves and destroys what it touches. In a way, fear is natural.  The longer we li

 If God is God and I am not, and if God's Word is true, then what God says about me (and the rest of the human race) is also true, including where it says that my biggest problem is that, in my natural state, I want to "be like god."  I want to run my life my way, on my terms.  I want to justify myself, build my own meaning and identity and sense of righteousness.  And so in this sense, apart even from any idea of a God who judges, God is a threat to me.  His sheer mysterious existence is an unwelcome reminder that I am a creature, that I am not God.  I do not possess the answers to all the mysteries.  His eternal being as the One who holds all the answers, who rules over human history without explaining Himself to me, and to whom I owe my existence and allegiance, threatens my delusions of self-mastery and demand to be autonomous.  What will He do with me?  Rather than wanting to humbly bow my knee, in my flesh I want him out of my way.  This is why it is much easier for

In the mornings, I like to come downstairs to make coffee for April and me.  As I'm waiting for the water to heat up and the coffee to brew, I like to sit quietly for a few moments in my thoughts or to pray.  Usually, its nice and quiet, but some mornings it's hard to concentrate because our son's room is adjacent to the living room, and he likes to go to sleep watching shows on his TV.  Sometimes that TV is *loud*, and I have to find ways to drown out the voices.  I'll put a fan on, or I'll turn on the living room TV and crank some white noise.  Still, the voices bleed through. There's another voice that we like to drown out, too, but it is even more relentless in how it cuts through our attempts to drown it out.  It's not an audible voice, but it is no less real.  This voice haunts us with reminders of how we fall short of our humanity.  We try to cover it up with bravado.  We try to turn it into a motivational voice for self-improvement.  We go to therapi

 Martin Luther, the 16th century German reformer, is one of my heroes.  Among many things, Luther taught that there are two fundamental stories in this life:  the glory story and the story of the cross.  The glory story is the natural story of all of us, fueled by our desire to secure some kind of identity and security and significance for ourselves in the face of what we know is there: our finite limitations and, ultimately, our death.  The story of the cross, on the other hand, teaches us that the glory story is essentially a lie.  There is no path to self-glory, to self-security.  It's a myth, a closed circle that ends in death.  In fact, my addiction to my glory story is my real problem.  It chains me to myself, curves me inward selfishly.  But what the cross story offers us, in our union with Christ, is freedom through death to the glory story and resurrection to the new creation where we now belong to Someone and something bigger than ourselves, being rescued from the final,

Forgiveness is one of the most unnatural and difficult things anyone can do, and the difficulty is proportional to the real or imagined size of the offense.  I say that it is unnatural because the natural person lives as though there is no God, at least not functionally.  Unless God has done a work in a person's heart to reveal His grace to them (and their need for it), the most natural thing in the world is for a person to say, "No, I won't let it go.  I won't forgive that person.  They did something that is too awful and has made my life something I didn't want."  The natural person is all about this life.  They are all about their form of justice.  They do not believe that God will ever make things right.  They do not believe that God permitted it for a reason.  They only see that what they wanted that was taken or lost. It matters not how illogical unforgiveness is.  You can explain how unforgiveness doesn't truly restore anything that was lost.  You c

In the suffering and death of Christ on the cross, we have three loud voices spoken to our hurts.  First, we have a voice that understands what it is to suffer.  He was rejected unfairly.  He was the object of ridicule and whispers behind the back.  He was betrayed.  He suffered an agonizing death.  He identifies with our hurt, and, as those who belong to Him, we identify with His.  Some only want to stop at this, however, and therefore don't find what it takes to heal.  They want to be affirmed, validated (which, depending on the wound, can be understandable) but not to move on and change.   Second, there is a loud voice that proclaims from the cross, "This was required for YOU."  The cross of Christ is the public indictment of our sinfulness.  We see that we also *cause* hurts, even out of the hurts we've received.  We see that we also transgress against God and neighbor.  We need forgiveness, too.  In this way, the cross exposes our blindness, for a person who is f