Change is Coming (and I am not talking about politics)

"Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."
-    The Princess Bride

This line could have well been "Life is change." Pain is a part of life and a change agent. Whether I am working out, or reading and learning for work, or dealing with the personal loss of a friend I am dealing with pain.  The question is, does the pain lead to change? But the more important question might be, does the change lead to growth?

The textbook definition of acceleration is "a change in velocity." This reminds me of the term "change" in general. I have at times in life longed for "change" the way acceleration works: I just want something different.  But under a textbook definition of acceleration, we can be slowing or going faster.  If someone were to ask me, "What do you do at a red light?" the answer could be "accelerate (until you stop)" because you are changing the velocity of your vehicle from 45mph to 0mph! The trouble with change is that not all change is the same (as you can see in the example of velocity).

My sister Katy posed a question on facebook recently about not wanting to change into a version of her that our mother (who has passed away from this life) wouldn’t know. I think that is a very honest statement. I immediately imagined the above three perspectives of change: are we talking about somewhat inconsequential change (hair color, facial hair, the languages I speak or the kind of job I have?); change that could be considered regressive (drinking alone every night, moving into a cabin in the mountains and not talking to people anymore, embracing a non-Biblical world view… or even a world view not challenged by the actual Bible); or change that equals growth? These are real questions, potentially heavy questions.

I like to imagine that my mom expects me to change, and hopes in heaven that I am changing in a way that aligns with my faith in Jesus.

The trouble with humanity is that we are incredibly forgetful: we forget where we left our keys; we forget to call friends we promised a favor to; we forget why we do what we do, good or bad, helpful or hurtful. I recall back in 1998 I went through a faith struggle where I began to imagine that I simply did what I was told and not because it was the right thing let alone in the Bible or suggested by Jesus or anything. At the time I recall nearly tossing the baby out with the bathwater.  But then I felt the Holy Spirit challenge me: why not reject borrowed knowledge as you confront a real Biblical understanding for yourself? It felt like a reasonable trade: if I had been told for years that greed was wrong, but couldn’t find any Biblical scriptures to support that point of view (or better yet, find scriptures to the contrary to support a different point of view) then I would trade up my old view of greed for the understanding that I searched out. This felt safe to me.

I really truly believe in God and I really believe in Jesus.  Not any old version of Jesus will do (there are at least 2 people in the New Testament alone with that name, let alone modern heretical imagined perspectives of Jesus based on some fictional view and not on the Bible). At the time of the "great trade up" in 1998 I knew enough scripture to realize that God has opinions about living life and Jesus was trying to put the planet back on track in a good way. At this point I figured it would be a mistake to simply forget those two realities.  I didn’t feel it made sense to ignorantly toss our what I had been told about "the faith", but I was ready to toss it out if I discovered that what I had been told was wrong. Said another way, I didn’t want to offend God by simply trading in one borrowed ignorant point of view I had been taught, for no point of view at all.

The second part of the "great trade up" had to do with how I would investigate the truth for myself. I wasn’t up for borrowing a new persons point of view (i.e. rejecting my parents point of view only to subscribe to someone else’s I liked better and continue remaining ignorant). Like I said, I believe in God and Jesus and the Christian Bible is the source on those topics. So it was time to stop the voices and read the Bible for myself. I had lots of questions and I wanted to read until I had either replaced all of my borrowed point of view or confirmed it.  Either way, I was after the truth, regardless of how it matched my desire.

OK, here is where I double back a bit. 1998 is somewhere around 18 years after becoming a Christian as a kid.  I read the Bible only once over those 18 years and focused mostly on the New Testament for the majority of it. My only other significant contact with any other faith perspective were a number of situations I found myself in with a few orthodox Jews, a couple Arab friends during college and a few hindu friends after college.  I had read a few books on religions of the world but they were fairly textbook and not personal experiences. I knew enough to know that there were significant differences (despite what some of my friends imagined: all paths which often seem diametrically opposed just can’t lead to the same schizophrenic god, right?) and those differences were not equal (despite what my other friends imagined: all religions are equally nonsensical nor do they lead to war).

I can tell you that reading through the Bible with questions was the best thing I ever did. Not all of my questions were answered the way I hoped they would be (just the way that never happens in any other aspect of modern life) but I found myself confronted by a very real and personal understanding of Jesus of the Bible. I still have friends who like to judge/generalize about God and Jesus the way they generalize and stereotype a two-dimensional perspective of Hollywood actors or politicians in DC, imagining those generalizations to be more true than any available detailed first hand account. I would put far more faith in the potential frailty of humans writing down first-hand accounts (while doing all that they can to hope and trust and believe that God is helping them recall the details... remember that these folks weren't televangelists sitting on piles or money but they kept telling people about Jesus until they were were murdered by people who didn't want them around anymore) that the speculations of people who were no where near the situation. There is plenty of time for reading commentary by so-called experts, why not start by just turning off the voices and reading those accounts for yourself? That is what I was thinking at the time.  I will never regret that decision.

Here I am 13 years later and I have learned yet another mystery: humans continue to forget!  I still forget why I do what it is I do. I have to go back and read again and again to remind myself that there is purpose in the little things. This is actually a really encouraging reality. There was a time where I would have imagined life to be more encouraging if the little daily details didn’t really matter… to me or God. I would have rather hoped that someday I would find my life wrapped up in a larger more important “mission” and all of the daily details would suddenly fade away and only the big stuff would really matter. The trouble with that old point of view is that the big stuff may never show up, at least not in the way you were hoping or watching. In the mean time you are missing the little moments.  And this is where I am learning a lesson all over again!

I am reading through the New Testament again (about 1/3 through it... maybe more) and Jesus has a lot to say about what I once might have called the inconsequential stuff. For example, while I could generalize about how Jesus was all about love… the big picture stuff… I would be missing all of the specific ways he asked people to love in detail. Take for example, the end of the testimony of John when Jesus helps bring in a huge bunch of fish and has a feast with his friends and then challenges Peter to take care of the other Christian believers, if Peter loves him. I could imagine that loving Jesus means just talking good about him, but in the details Jesus wraps a dinner feast orchestrated by himself to explain how important it is for Peter to personally show he loves Jesus by paying attention to what Jesus cared about: his followers.

Another lesson I am struggling with is how Jesus version of love was able to both show compassion as well as bring a course correction.  In Luke 5 Jesus talks about how healthy people don’t need a doctor, but rather sick people do.  He goes on to explain that analogy by explaining that he was bringing repentance to sinner (his words, not mine).  He is basically believing that sin is like a sickness and he brings a message of repentance the way a doctor brings medicine to a sick person. Today, sin as a topic feels so judgmental. It’s got to be the way we address it that makes hating sin feel worse than being rid of sin? If we felt that sin was like a curable sickness and that something as simple as an opportunity for course correction was the cure, we might change our minds about discussing sin.

I think about the woman at the well as well as the woman caught in adultery (sorry for only writing about sin scenarios with women? They are popping into my frail human head at the moment). Jesus is offering healing and wholeness to the woman at the well and at the same time speaks directly to her sin of living in relationship with a man who is not her husband. As well, on a similar topic, the woman caught in adultery is basically caught having sex with a man who is not her husband. Jesus brings forgiveness to her for having gone a way that God doesn’t want her to go (there are those pesky opinions of God again, shard by Jesus) and immediately invites her into the course-correction cure again, telling her "go and stop sinning."

The miracle for me is that Jesus specifically addresses a lot of sin that either deals with the way people are letting things get in the way of their potential relationship with God or asking people to course-correct the way they relate to others (interesting how that parallels the two distinct sections of the ten commandments: the first 5 really seem to do with how we relate to God while the remaining five deal with how we relate to other people). Again, we could generalize those two issues and totally miss the detailed lessons the Bible has to offer. The trouble with generalizations is that we first simplify the details into generalized principles and then we reinvent the implementation of those humanly generalized principles. The miracle is that Jesus is providing grace and mercy to course-correct, which is crazy amazing. My one fear is that grace and mercy have been generalized with the same human frailty so as to forget that their purpose is to make room to course correct rather than a reinventing the purpose of grace and mercy to mean we don’t have to worry about what is damaging in our relationships with each other and with God.

This is a message of hope, not because saying the word hope makes me feel cheerful but because there is substance on the other end of that hope.

So, in conclusion, if you aren’t feeling much hope, are feeling weighed down by the world or sin or by carrying around a borrowed unexamined point of view in life which you are now doubting, then maybe it is time to not rush into throwing the baby out with the bathwater or reading another commentary.  Instead, double-down and ask the Holy Spirit to wake up the Bible for you and go investigate Jesus point of view on life as defined by relationship with God and relationship with others.