The Lure of Small Gods

“When your god is small, you can still be the biggest thing in your world.”

I heard that on Sunday. It’s been in the back of my mind ever since. Small god. Small God. It’s a fascinating thought.

I can’t get it out of my head.

See, I know people who worship the small God, the God that is more concerned about rules and uniformity than about redemption and transformation. The small God doesn’t change you; he gives you rules and demands that you change. The small God doesn’t disciple you; he disciplines you for committing errors you didn’t know you’d committed. The small God doesn’t love you; he demands you love him.

The small God is not the true God.

Even now, there are people who are reading this and going ballistic. They hear words like love, redemption, transformation, rules, discipline, and they hear something very different from me. I am teetering on the edge of heresy by suggesting that God is not concerned primarily with rules and discipline and order and obedience. I’m leading people down a wrong path, a path of easy-believism.

The reality is the opposite. Easy-believism is when you tell people that if they’ll live their lives a certain way, according to to certain code, then God will make everything work out, and if it doesn’t, then it’s their fault for not living right. Easy-believism says that everyone else is wrong and you’re right, so there’s no need to have a conversation. Easy-believism says that only people who live by certain rules truly get God.

True belief is hard. It’s challenging. There are black and white areas to be sure, but there’s also a lot of gray. And it’s in that gray that a person is forced to lean into God, to dig into the word, to search Him out for answers. It’s in that gray that a person finds themselves being transformed. It’s in that gray that a person discovers that the small God is pathetic and mean and not to much different than a petty human being; that if God exists, He must by definition be something more than we can create on our own.

And that’s why the quote above resonated with me so much: people who worship the small God want to be bigger themselves. They want to be able to say that they are special, they are unique, they are gifted or holy or any other adjective that places emphasis on them and their ability to be blessed by the small God.

Maybe that’s the tell: if your God exalts you for following him, you’re worshiping the small God.

Because the big God, the real God, the God revealed in the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ, isn’t concerned about you being exalted through Him. He wants to be exalted through you. And He does that not by piling the rules on you to the point of suffocation, but by freeing you up to be who He created you to be. He is exalted most when you live a life fully free in Him.

I get scared writing stuff like this. I get scared pushing against the small Gods out there, the gods of abusers and bullies who use religion as a weapon to secure their own power. I get scared because I know those types of people don’t like being called out, don’t abide people who stand up to their scare tactics. I get scared because I know people who live that way, and I don’t wish them any harm or want to hurt them. I get scared because I don’t want to become like that myself.

More and more, though, I find that this is something I want to write. That I feel driven to write on. More and more I feel like I need to say something that presses back against the small Gods so the people who wonder if there’s something more can know the truth: there is.

And He’s so much more than you’ve been lead to believe. Or dared to dream.

Don’t settle for a small God. Don’t settle for a world where, by simply following rules you become the biggest thing. Don’t settle for anything other than the one true God.

Being Yourself

I had breakfast with an old friend this morning, and while the subject of our conversation was mostly about our lives and what God has done in each, there was a moment when he said something that’s stuck with me all day. Maybe it will stick with you too.

“My goal,” he said, during a conversation about work and environment, “is that the same guy who lives at my house is the same guy who goes into the office. I don’t want to have a ‘home self’ and a ‘work self.’ I want to be me in both places.”

Isn’t that awesome? It’s got to be one of the top five or six things I’ve heard/read/seen lately, and I’ve been hearing/reading/seeing a lot.

I want to be me, wherever I’m at.

For some people, that statement’s pretty stupid. Or at the least, self-evident. After all, who else would you be? Cher? But for some of us, who’ve been conditioned that the bifurcation of ourselves is not only permissible, it’s necessary, the idea of being able to fully ourselves regardless of environment is beyond belief.

We may call it compartmentalization, we may call it professionalism, we may call it a thousand different things, but the bottom line is that a great many of us are used to being limited in some way, shape or form in some areas of our lives. For some us, it’s the decorum of our workplace; our sense of humor, our religious beliefs, our personal lives, might not be welcome conversation topics. And while you certainly don’t want to sit down with your company CEO and make fart jokes, if your company doesn’t respect all of you, then they don’t respect you, period.

For some folks, this is best seen at church. The Sunday Face that so many people put on so people won’t decode the pain they hide, or the differences between their Monday-Saturday life. While I’m not saying that a life of sin is permissible for a Christian, there are some things that some Christians make into MAJOR sins, while conveniently minimizing others.

(In some churches, sin – like beauty – is in the eye of the beholder. Just saying.)

So to avoid issues, some people pretend to be something they’re not. This defeats the purpose of the church, to be a community where people come and grow with Christ and each other. With so many people hiding struggles and problems, just to fit into the expected decorum, there’s nothing to talk about. Everyone just pretends like things are good with them, thanks, and isn’t that painting of Jesus just lovely over the antique table in the hall?

Authenticity. It’s so crucial.

I want to be me. I have a strange sense of humor. I make the occasional statement that people take issue with. I like nerd stuff, I prefer tennis shoes over going barefoot, and I would rather drink a gallon of gasoline than eat a cobb salad. And at 37 years old, I’m tired of having to be HomeJason and WorkJason.

I just want to be Jason. Take it or leave it.

Being yourself shouldn’t be as hard as it is, but courage can change that. Of course, some of us find courage easier than others. Some of us don’t have a choice. Here’s hoping you find the courage you need to be yourself, wherever you are.

In the Passenger’s Seat

Yesterday was a great day for my family. My brother invited us to an Atlanta Braves baseball game as part of my nephew’s birthday celebration (happy 6th birthday, Joey!), and the game started at 1:30. But before that, we were to meet at the world famous Varsity Drive-In for lunch at eleven. As it’s summer and we love my brother and his family, we agreed to both; plus, we were excited to take Ella and Jon to their first baseball game. However, it presented us with a dilemma.

What about church?

Even though I’m no longer working at a church, it doesn’t mean that the church isn’t important to me. It is, and vitally so. Not to sound all judgy on you, but I think that physical community with fellow Christ-followers is one of the key components of spiritual formation. Which means my family must seek it out intentionally now that I’m no longer employed by a church. It has become much more of a priority for us, instead of an assumed thing.

(I realize that sounds bad, but when you’re on staff at a church, you take for granted that you are part of a community. You get too focused on the responsibilities of leading it.)

Anyway, all this to say that Rachel and I sat down and discussed what to do.

“Well, we could go to an early service somewhere,” she said. “I mean, I suppose we don’t have to…”

“No,” I said. “I’m with you. Let’s go somewhere with a nine o’clock service. We can just head straight downtown after that.”

So we sat down and considered the different churches in our area that offered an early service. Actually, we both knew exactly which church we wanted to attend; it took all of nine seconds for us to simultaneously declare it. I won’t tell you the name, but it’s a local church with a reputation for excellence, and one we’ve both wanted to visit for a while.

Now that we can, we were excited for the possibility.

It didn’t disappoint. I won’t go into a church review, in part because it’d be boring to read, but also because I actively worked to NOT see things that way yesterday. When you spend time working behind the scenes in a church, the tendency when you go to another church is to peek behind the curtain; to get an idea of how the other guy does things, and see if there is any inspiration for your congregation. This tendency gets in the way of you actually worshipping, and so it is that some pastors forget what it means to sit back, relax, and focus on God from the pew (or in this case, theater chair). So I went into yesterday morning with my analyzing mode set to Off.

It was amazing. I didn’t stress about a single thing. We got the kids checked into the church’s registration system, sent Ella off the elementary age kids area and took Jon to the preschool area. I was worried about this part because Jon has attachment issues to me, and those issues flared up every Sunday just before he went to his Sunday school class and I went to mine. So I expected tears. I expected screaming. Instead, I watched my son stroll into a completely foreign environment, pick up a truck, and immediately start playing.

He never even looked back.

I figured if he could do it, then so could I. I walked back out to the lobby area, grabbed a free cup of coffee, found Rachel, and together we strolled into an entirely different world. And for an hour, I forgot I was a pastor. I forgot what it felt like to worry over the service.

I remembered what it was like to simply let go of myself, and enter into the presence of the holy, righteous, and awesome God of All.

Now I’m not saying you don’t worship as a pastor. You do. It’s just different. You’re so involved with the mechanics of the service that you’re a bit more aware of what’s going on than most people. You know what needs to go on in the Audio/Visual booth; you know when the men need to take up the offering; you’re subconsciously listening to the ticking of the clock in your head; reading the body language of the people; judging the ambient temperature in the room, watching the faces during singing, worrying about the lighting, revisiting your sermons notes in your head, thinking about how you might want to change an illustration or the close. In many modern churches, you’re the one responsible for making sure that the people have done their part to make the service worshipful.

And I worried about that more than I should have. I did theater in high school and happent to be a bit of a nerd, so the ins and outs of production not only fascinate me, they present an area for excellence to be achieved. Which means that I spent more time worrying about that stuff than necessary, which meant that I allowed my worship to sometimes be more of a battle than it needed to be.

Which made sitting in the passenger seat yesterday all the more restful.

It was also instructive for my spiritual life. I cannot always be in control. I cannot always be worried about making sure that every I is dotted and every T is crossed. To be that consumed with attaining perfection is to deny what Christ’s death and resurrection proclaims as true: that I am broken, and cannot fix myself, even after He’s put me back together again. I must rest in Him and let Him transform me.

To be sure, we can’t, as Dallas Willard famously wrote, be Vampire Christians – “I’ll just take your blood, Jesus, and go on with my life, thank you very much.” But neither can we go to the opposite extreme, where we don’t even need the blood of Jesus because we’ve figured out the magic formula. There’s a reason Jesus spent so much time chiding the Pharisees; when we feel like we have God mastered, then we’ve missed the point because we’ve missed the Person.

Writing all of this is taboo in some people’s minds because I’m admitting to something that some Christians want to deny: that I’m still being conformed to Christ. As a pastor, I often felt the sadness in people when they would ask me for an answer and the only one I could give them was “I don’t know.” Others were liberated by my honesty, but there were some who seemed defeated by the truth. Looking back on it, I think it was because they felt if I didn’t have all my stuff together, how could they possibly hope to?

Here’s how: by surrendering to Christ. Reading His word, not as a rule book, but as a conversation. Considering His Spirit in us not as a power to be mastered, but as a gift to be enjoyed. Putting ourselves into His hands and trusting that He will shape and grow us in the ways that matter, the ways we need, and that He’ll do the same for others.

Yesterday, I was reminded of that. It was powerful. It was awesome. And it awakened a hunger for more.

It was a good day.

To Those Who Wish To Go Away

It’s a Saturday, so I’m safe writing this. Here in Georgia, the sun is shining and people are busying themselves by the pool. In the midwest, they’re trying to recover from yesterday’s terrible storms. In California, they’re…well, they’re doing whatever people in California do. Bottom line: nobody reads blogs on a Saturday. There’s too much else to do.

Which is why I’m safe writing this post. Lately, my heart has been breaking as I read stories of people who have been abused by religion. Shamed. Made to feel unacceptable. People who, in coming to a system of belief that is supposed to be about God’s great love for us, discovered that in some places that love comes at a high price. And that there are guardians at the gate that will exact that price from you, regardless of whether or not you want to pay.

Take this blog post for instance. Does it not break your heart? It does mine. It makes me shudder at the times that I made young women in my youth group wear one-piece bathing suits because I didn’t want them to “cause the boys to think wrong thoughts.” Never mind that teenage boys can think wrong thoughts about a woman in a burka. I read that blog and my heart broke for the times that I made someone feel shame in the name of holiness.

I didn’t know that’s what I was doing. I won’t excuse it now, but I thought I was doing what was right. I thought I was being a good minister. I thought I was teaching the kids a valuable lesson, about self and life and other stuff. What I was really doing was putting them in bondage to other people; I was telling them that their appearance, their very being, is either a blessing to others or it’s a curse. I put shackles on those girls and boys by objectifying all of them, reducing them to base creatures on opposite poles: girls, as things to be desired, and boys, as creatures incapable of anything but desire.

But it’s not just sexual identity where shame pops up. It’s other things too. I grew up among people who didn’t think college was necessary. In fact, some found it to be pretentious, a showing off that was unseemly. Wanting to go to school (or, in my case, being told by my father that I would go to college, end of story) was seen as something prideful, and pride was a sin to be avoided. Even though recovery is something many churches offer to help with nowadays, there’s still shame in being a former addict; there’s shame in being a single parent; there’s shame in voting for a particular candidate or party; there’s shame in liking certain music, or watching certain shows, or thinking certain thoughts.

Heck. Read this, by Dale Fincher. It covers it so much better than I’ll ever be able to.

So what’s the point of this post? My heart goes out to those who don’t feel like they belong in the church. My heart aches for those who wish they could just go away, disappear, not be a target for once in their lives. I hear and read story after story of people who turned away from church and God because they didn’t fit a certain mold, didn’t look a certain way, and I just want to grab them in my arms and say, “It’s okay. God still loves you. He’s still Truth. He still wants to know you and heal you and walk with you everyday.”

Is it hippie sounding? Bet your sweet butt. Yet I am constantly meeting people who want to know that very truth. People who wouldn’t set foot inside a church on Sunday but would sit down with me for coffee, or chat with me online, or read this blog post and respond in an email. People who, for lack of a better word, want the Gospel to be true, but want to know that truth in something more than just words.

Once upon a time, someone would call this kind of concern evangelistic. But lately, that word has taken on another meaning entirely. I’ll just roll with this: I want people to know that God loves them, that Christ loves them, that there is a power found in faith that can transform any life – especially in ways that aren’t expected. And I’m willing to carry that message to people who need to hear it most, even if it means being shamed by those who would disagree.

If you’ve made it this far and you’re one of those people – if you’ve been shamed by me, or anyone else, and you’re wondering if God could possibly love you – then let me first say, I am sorry. I was wrong. You are created in the image of God. You have fallen. But you are not beyond repair. You are not who you’ve been made to believe. You are His. He is yours. There is healing to be found.

To those who wish to go away, Christ stands, arms open, inviting you to Himself.

Beyond The Walls

Yesterday afternoon I found myself balancing on two rocks, trying desperately not to fall into the Chattahoochee River. I was also trying hard not to drop the young man in my arms.

Before you freak out, let me explain: I was baptizing him.

See, once upon a time, the young man came to my youth group. He was a small kid, loved baseball, very energetic (from what I can remember). Now, he’s a buffed out Naval weapons instructor who’s on leave for a few days. He came to Christ while serving in Kuwait, and when he decided he wanted to be baptized like Jesus, he had only two conditions: 1- it should be in a river, and 2- he wanted me to do the dunking.

He talked it over with his mother, and she decided that was acceptable – as long as she could be baptized with him. They called a mutual friend, who contacted me because, as we determined yesterday, I was “the only preacher crazy enough to do this.”

Naturally, I agreed.

So after some searching, we found Abbotts Bridge Park, which isn’t as much of a park as it is a boat ramp with a gravel parking lot and a bathroom. Turns out they load in tubers by the busload at the park, so we had to wait until about 35 bathing suited rednecks lashed their beer coolers and their tubes together and launched a massive flotilla of whooping shenanigans down the river. Once they were safely out of range, we tiptoed down the ramp, through the mud and into the frigid water.

Which is where we began: me, balancing on two rocks, holding the young man while I said, “Because of your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it is my privilege to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

And with that, I dunked him. I also lost my balance for a split second and had to fight to keep him from falling. Once he came out of the water, he was all smiles, and he hugged me.

“Thank you,” he said.

His mother was next, and when she stepped into the water she let out a small yelp. I’m telling you – it was cold. But she went under with the same pronouncement, and when she came up, she shouted. Then she hugged me. And then her joy in the moment just bubbled over and infected our audience on the shore: her husband, her son, his wife, our mutual friend and her husband, and my wife Rachel and our two kids, Ella and Jon. Someone started singing “He Is Lord.”

It was cool.

Afterward, as we stood on the boat ramp chatting, I overheard Rachel tell the mother, “Well, he left the church because he knew God had something more. He still loves the church – but he wants to take it beyond the walls.” I thought about that for a second; it made me think of something that a friend told me a few weeks ago, a friend who doesn’t like church because of negative associations but likes getting together with me to talk about God: “Don’t give up what you’re doing – there aren’t enough people like you willing to talk to people like me.”

I don’t know how much things like that shape direction and purpose, but I’ll say this much: I love taking the church into unexpected places. I love the fact that when some men wanted to pull their boat from the river they got to see the mother’s baptism. One even asked, “Aren’t you supposed to do that in a church?”

“Anywhere is the church,” someone else said.

I like that. “Anywhere is the church” as long as the people who are Christ’s body will make it so. A coffee shop, a riverside, a baseball field – we can find moments of the holy wherever and whenever we’re willing to seek them.

We just have to be willing.