jaded

“this be the realest thing I ever wrote for sure, after this a lot of folks wont like me no more…” - lyfe jennings

the dictionary defines ‘jaded’ as “tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm; typically after having too much of something”.

yep… i’m jaded, alright. this is going to be a mind dump, so bear with me…

“i wonder if the gospel of love has become the gospel of being right” … dan merchant (author/writer/director of ‘lord, save us from your followers’)

i grew up in a horribly dogmatic and legalistic abomination, i mean denomination. =) i spent the first 25 years of my life surrounded by people who had a warped view of the salvation experience and who were quick to send a lot of people to hell if a strict religious code was not adhered to. they were so concerned with being convinced they were “right”, that in the process they weren’t really loving anybody. i left that church a little over 8 years ago, but in a lot of ways, and for a lot of reasons, i am still coming to terms with various aspects of that whole experience and continue to try to reconcile it with where i am in my life today. religion sucks.

before i go any further, i want to say that i am not angry, and i am not bitter… but if you will indulge me being totally honest here on my blog… i am tired.

i love Jesus and i want my life to reflect the character of Christ to those around me. i want to be an instrument of the grace that I so desperately need every day of my life. the ‘body of Christ’ is beautiful, man! i have been blessed to travel extensively and have met some of the most amazing and beautiful disciples of Christ all over this country and all over the world. so don’t get it twisted… i love the church… but “church”? yeeeeeaaaah… i’m pretty much not feeling it at the moment.

i’m not the only one. i often have these conversations with a few close friends of mine who are also on the same page. “church” isn’t cutting it for our generation. we desire to be a part of a thriving faith community that is making a difference in the lives of those in our respective spheres of influence.

to be fair, i do know that there are churches out there who are doing it… they are doing exactly what I am talking about… they are the hands of feet of Christ, love and justice in action that is the heartbeat of Jesus. but sadly enough they are few and far between.

i believe that the heart of God is for real live faith, love and community in action. however, in my life, i have seen a lot of people whose lives revolve around the sunday morning experience as if it were the apex of what it means to be a christian in america… who are satisfied to be “church people”… but outside of their sunday morning gloriously euphoric spiritual expression, they are having zero effect on the world around them once they walk out the doors.

the great christian paradox seems to be this… that we are quick to go to great lengths to profess our christianity, but yet do so little or nothing to act on that profession. i must wonder, when did we trade in being disciples of Christ for being “christians”? when did we trade in talking with people for talking at them? when did we trade being the church for doing church?

i am not a pastor, a priest or a theologian. i am simply someone who loves Jesus and who legitimately struggles with whether or not my life is a consistent enough reflection of the new life that i have been freely given. i don’t have all the answers. in fact, by comparison i probably have very few of them. i’m just saying something’s missing… i love Jesus, i’m just not sold on all the stuff that we’ve put in between him and us… so yeah… jaded.

i just finished watching an advance copy of “lord, save us from your followers”, a documentary by dan merchant and it got me on this page tonight. it releases june 13, and i am sure you will be hearing a lot more about it very soon. i watched the last 30-40 minutes of the film through tears, thinking “my God, people are hurting, and we’re… in church…”

you can stream the entire film online for $6.99 now. if you are a pastor, show it to your congregation. if you are a parent, show it to your children. challenge those around you… get the dialogue going where you live. be the catalyst to get the people around you off their ass and into the real world… living, loving and looking like Jesus. part of me was a little afraid to post this, but you know what?  i’m tired of acting like i don’t really feel this way… tired of acting like i’m not tired.  so, let the discussion begin…

he knows what hurts within us

“what made Jesus of nazereth the greatest lover in history is that he really knew then and he really knows now what hurts people… the loves and hates, hopes and fears, the joys and sadnesses of each of us…Jesus knows what hurts us. not only knows but, knowing, seeks us out – whatever our kind of poverty or pain, however we weep, wherever we feel unloved.

if you read the gospels carefully, you find how fine-tuned Jesus is to our loneliness, our frustration, our emptiness, our cynicism, as well he is to our joys and to our consolations; that he really know what hurts the human heart.

it shows up all throughout his public ministry on earth: with a sinful woman, the home of simon the pharisee, the woman who washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, with the adulterous woman in danger of stoning, with the thrice-denying peter, with the 23 year-old john in the upper room, with the widow weeping on the road to calvary, … it shows up in all those passages which describe Jesus as ‘having compassion’.

the greek verb ‘splagxniðzomai’ is used 12 times in the 4 gospels and is usually translated into english as ‘he was moved with compassion’. however, because of the poverty of our english vocabulary we really don’t capture the etymological meaning of splagxniðzomai, and depending on which translation of the bible you may use, it may say ‘he was moved with pity’, ‘he felt sorry for them’, or ‘his heart went out for them’, but they all miss the deep emotional flavor of this greek verb, … which is derived from another greek term meaning ‘bowels’, ‘intreals’ and ‘intestines’… the deepest parts of a person from which the strongest emotions such as love and hatred arise.

when you read in the gospels that Jesus was moved with compassion, it was saying that his gut was wrenched, his heart torn open, and the most vulnerable part of his being laid bare. and Jesus says to us, don’t ever be so foolish as to measure my compassion for you in terms of your compassion for one another.

when we speak of Jesus, as Emmanuel, as God with us, we are saying the greatest lover in history really knows what hurts us. There is absolutely nothing that Jesus does not understand about the pain that hangs like a darkening cloud over our lives.

if you are crying out and longing for a hand to touch you, an arm to embrace you, lips to kiss you… longing for someone who is not afraid of your cynicism, your skepticism, your indifference, your shallow faith, your inconsistent discipleship, … there comes a sacred man who says, ‘it’s ok. i understand, i am here, i am with you, i am for you, and your pain reverberates in the depth of my own being.”

—– brennan manning (excerpt from “he knows what hurts within us”)

the sorrow of God

one night a friend asked his handicapped son, “daniel, when you see Jesus looking at you, what do you see in his eyes?”

after a pause, the boy replied, “his eyes are filled with tears, dad.”

“why, dan?”

an even longer pause. “because he is sad.”

“and why is he sad?”

daniel stared at the floor. when at last he looked up, his eyes glistened with tears. “because I’m afraid.”
the sorrow of God lies in our fear of him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. he anguishes over our self-absorbtion and self-sufficiency. richard foster wrote, “today, the heart of God is an open wound of love. he aches over our distance and preoccupation. he mourns that we do not draw near to him. he grieves that we have forgotten him. he weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. he longs for our presence.”

God’s sorrow lies in our refusal to approach him when we have sinned and failed. a “slip” for an alchoholic is a terrifying experience. the obsession of the mind and body with booze returns with the wild fury of a sudden storm in springtime. when the person sobers up, he or she is devastated. when I relapsed, i had two options: yield once again to guilt, fear and depression; or rush into the arms of my heavenly father — choose to live as a victim of my disease; or choose to trust in abba’s immutable love.”

…. excerpt from “abba’s child” by brennan manning

that’s my king

// becoming… the righteousness of God \\
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (The Message translation)

14-15 Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.

16-20 Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

21 How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

the accuser

// becoming… what we already are, the righteousness of God \\

my friend jay has has the most amazing post about “the accuser” on his blog. you need to read it, jump in the river of God’s grace, then tell someone else about it and pull them in with you…