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.

Freedom

Certain topics wind there way into your brain and have a way of camping out there. I was able to preach this past Sunday at my church, and given that the Fourth is this week, our theme for the day was freedom. I sat down to study freedom in both a biblical and cultural context, and came away with a some new perspective on the idea.

I want to share those thoughts with you today. To some this will be a screed, a pointed opinion piece that skews one direction or another. That’s true. But I hope, as always, that those who read it will consider not just the presentation, but the points. Thus, to make the blog a manageable read, I’ve focused solely on my comments as they apply to our cultural context.

Just last Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a 5-4 ruling affirming the PPACA, otherwise known as the Healthcare Reform act. Though the issued ruled ran 183 pages in length, the over-simplification is this: the Healthcare Reform that has caused no small amount of angst and discussion is legal.

Predictably, the ruling lead to immediate backlash. Posts on Facebook and Twitter were especially indignant, with many people comparing the ruling to a sudden shift towards communism. Or as one of my friends put it, “The U S of A is now the USSR.” Other folks were more pragmatic in their responses – “Let’s get out and vote and restore this country!” – while others were simply angry for anger’s sake.

Such is the state of the nation. But beneath all the rhetoric, beneath the hyperbole and anger and fear, lies something primeval. In fact, it’s so basic to human nature that it predates the rise of civilization. And it’s something that we have granted divine right here in the States, elevating it to the one thing we cherish above all others.

Freedom.

In a world where the mention of the word evokes images of a blue-faced Mel Gibson screaming in a Scottish accent, what does freedom really mean? Here in the US, we understand it to be an inalienable right, an ideal that is preserved and protected for every individual at all costs. We see it as the ability to live without restrictions, to achieve the unlimited potential of our imaginations. It gets expression in everything from the size of our bank account to the gender of the person we want to marry, and the current ethos of the culture says that no one, not God, not government, has the authority to curtail it.

That attitude is patently – and painfully – false.

Freedom has its limitations. There are boundaries that are not to be crossed in order for a free society to exist. Here in the United States we call it the Constitution, and while the intention and interpretation of that document may be the source of endless debate, what cannot be argued is that establishes a framework for the freedom we so cherish.

It establishes limits. To personal actions. To governmental actions. The Constitution of the United States of America says, in effect, these are the mutually agreed upon conditions of our society, intended to give the maximum number of people the maximum amount of freedom as a whole. It does not allow us carte blanche; it does not grant each individual the right to do as his or her heart may desire; it says that certain actions will be declared unlawful so the majority may be otherwise free.

Once upon a time, this was the ethos of our country. That we would willingly curtail the extent of our personal freedoms in order to secure freedom for the many. But that has changed. In a post-9/11 world, more and more people are resentful of the idea that any personal liberty should be sacrificed for the greater good. And our government has often stepped far beyond the historical boundaries of their power and done things that have been, at best, intrusive, all in the name of freedom.

But the cultural shift preceeded even that.

In fact, the shift away from acceptable limitations on freedom is reflected in a shift away from responsibility for freedom. The limits that our forefathers framed within the founding document were built upon the citizenry accepting their responsibility for maintaining those freedoms. Whether you read the Constitution narrow or wide, the language of mutual responsibility for the existence of our country is inescapable. And yet, we have a great many who would seek to shirk those responsibilities in the name of freedom.

Part of it comes back to the American dream; my entire life I was taught that the first third of my existence was intended for the accumulation of knowledge and experience; my second third was intended for applying that knowledge and experience in some sort of venture that would secure my financial future; and that the final third of my existence was intended for me to do whatever the heck I wanted to do.

No limits. No responsibilities. No one to tell me otherwise.

So if our life is meant to culminate with the ability to transcend rules or expectations or responsibilities, why wait? If the system is so broken, if politics and government and citizenship is so pointless, why participate? Why vote? Why care?

But the problem is that freedom requires someone to care, to work, to tend to the responsibilities that make the very notion of our country possible. Freedom requires that someone bear the cost; and we need to come face to face with the reality that while we are fighting for our right to do as we please, somewhere on this rock we call home a man or woman is standing guard in full-body armor and a 70-pound pack, carrying a AR-15 fighting for our right to exist as a nation.

Freedom has its consequences. It has its costs. Some are higher than others.

It’s a price that history has shown us is worth it.

I won’t make a grand pronouncement about our nation being at a crossroads, but we do find ourselves in a unique place where our understanding of what freedom really is will define how that freedom works. As we come to the 4th and celebrate our nation’s birth, let us reflect on its past and consider its future – and may we do so with all seriousness.

Tiny Human Failures

Since this is Gwinnett County’s Spring Break, my daughter and son are both free from their normal educational routines. And since freedom from the norm around our house is automatically translated to “Let’s go somewhere! Let’s spend your money!”, we naturally drifted out of the house this morning to buy Ella some new tennis shoes and take both kids to the park.

The shoe shopping was typical: Rachel and Ella moving slowly down the girls aisle, Rachel pointing to shoe after shoe with a hopeful look while Ella, her face puckered into a studious frown, repeatedly says, “No, not that one.” Meanwhile, I’m chasing Jon around the store as he laughs like a maniac. Suffice it to say that when we go shopping for just about anything, early morning is our best time; that way, we annoy fewer people.

With the shoes purchased, we decided the park was our next stop. Well, technically the house was our next stop because Ella decided she wanted to wear her new shoes at the playground, only she’d worn flip-flops out of the house and thus had no socks, which necessitated that we return home to get her a pair of socks so she could wear her new shoes and be stylish.

The child is a little spoiled.

Anyway, when we finally made it to the park, it was gorgeous. The sun shone, the breeze came through the trees at just the right speed and temperature, and there were some friends of ours from church whose kids were also playing. It was, to be frank, ideal.

Ella naturally sprinted off and Jon, as is his custom, wanted to swing. Rachel put him into the safety swing, gave him a shove, and there was nothing left but to enjoy ourselves.

Until the little girl showed up.

She must have been 7 or 8. Slightly taller than Ella, who is 6, this little girl had beautiful blond hair pulled back into a ponytail that was tied with turquoise and white ribbon. Her outfit was a turquoise skirt with a multi-colored top, and white sneakers with turquoise trimmed socks. She ran effortlessly around the playground for a moment before she decided to bolt for the swings.

And that’s when I noticed that she wasn’t “normal.”

She didn’t have Downs, but there was something particular about her pretty face that struck me as familiar; and then it hit me: she reminded me of a distant cousin of mine, Kathy, who was mentally challenged.

I remember Kathy strongly because whenever we got together for family reunions, she would move around the room, agitated, never really interacting with anyone other than her mother. And her mother, my great-aunt, would always patiently attend to Kathy’s needs, be they physical or emotional, with the utmost care and tenderness. In fact, the only other person that Kathy would remotely interact with was me. She didn’t do this very often, but there were occasions when Kathy would run up and give me the biggest hug; in her eyes would be an urgency that I couldn’t understand, couldn’t put into words, but it seemed enough for her that I would consent to being hugged and she would smile and then run away.

All of that came flooding back as this little girl came running to the swing next to Jon’s. She waited, dancing around in a circle, until her father came over.

“You want to swing?” he asked.

She waved her hands and shouted out something I couldn’t discern. Regardless, it was obvious that she very much wanted to swing.

Her father led her to the standard swings and tried to sit her down. She resisted and ran back to the safety swing.

“You’re too big for that one,” her dad said. He seemed tired. Nearby, a boy that was obviously her older brother hovered, restless. The little girl insisted on the safety swing.

Her father picked her up. “Watch your feet, now,” he said. She struggled to get her sneakers through the holes in the tiny blue bucket seat; as she tried her best, he held her, his arms shaking, his face tight but not angry. When she succeeded, he let her settle into the seat, making sure to tuck her skirt in behind her.

Then he gave her a push.

It wasn’t a huge push, not even close to the arc that my son was swinging on, but she reacted as if he’d just released her into a skydive free-fall. The smile on her face grew exponentially and she let out a squeal of delight.

I watched them, father and daughter, he looking happy but reserved, she full of joy in the moment. I watched them and all I could think about was the conversation happening on my local Patch website over Kris Parker’s blog post “Less Perfect. Less Valuable?”

And I wondered: does he regret having a child who will always be a child, even when her body is that of a grown woman? The lines on his face were drawn deeply, and I felt for him because, with every shift she made in her seat, every small movement that threatened her balance or safety, I could see the muted but present panic in his eyes. Would he trade her life for a day free from unending worry? And if he would, does that make him a bad person?

Then I looked at the little girl and wondered: what does it feel like, to be able to live each day with the knowledge that you are protected? Does she think of herself as disadvantaged? Does she know that the world looks at and thinks of her differently than she does?

These thoughts raced around in my mind until she turned her head and said something to her father. He gently reached out and grabbed the back of the swing and brought it to a gradual stop. Before her father was even in view, she raised her hands above her head so he could come up and lift her out of her seat. And when he did, she laughed as though he had tickled her.

Once her feet hit the ground, she was off running again, only this time her brother was her shadow. Dad took a moment to stand in the shade and breathe, but his eyes were never off his two kids racing around the playground. By that time, my own son was asking to do something else besides swing, so I reached down and pulled him up into my arms, and then I kissed his cheek. He wiped it off.

It wasn’t long after that I had to go into the office to do some work. I said goodbye to my crew and made my way toward my car, but not without one last look at the special family still at play. She was still running, still laughing, and the men in her life were still vigilantly watching after her. As their lives spilled out of the shade and into the sunlight, I ducked my head and got into my car.

People make choices everyday of their lives; some big, some small. Some over life, others over death. I don’t understand some of them, but then again, others may not understand mine. What I do know is that we can only do what we know to be right, even if some – or many – would judge our actions to be wrong.

In the instance of Kris’ post, there are some people who would advocate terminating an unborn child’s life as an act of kindness if severe genetic deficiencies become known and there are others who would argue that even the most imperfect life deserves to be born. Chances are, the two sides will never agree; each side seems, at times, more bent on pointing out the others failures in logic or compassion or respect for personal freedoms. As of now, it’s become a real slug fest.

Me, I’m just shaking my head.

Everyday, tiny human failures surround us. Which ones you see depends very much upon your perspective.

A Red, White and Blue Heart

This is more than a medal...it's piece of America's freedom and history.

I had a special guest speak to the students on Wednesday night. I won’t mention his name here because when I spoke well of him on Wednesday, he smiled, shook my hand, and whispered, “I’ll get you for that” – so this post probably won’t make him too happy either. I’m going to share one of the stories that he told the kids, and it’s a story of heroism, valor, and why you should thank any service man or woman you come into contact with today.

For clarity’s sake, I’ll call the man “Top.”

Top was drafted into the Army in 1962, just as Vietnam was about to get big. He bounced from heavy equipment duty to demolitions, and it was that specialty – the ability to disarm bombs (or build them) – that carried him over the Pacific in ’63 (I’m typing without my notes, so if I mess up a detail, please forgive me). After some bad luck on the seas, his unit – 172 strong – were disgorged onto the coastline of Vietnam and given the task of teaching the resistance how to strategically blow up bridges and other infrastructure crucial to the Viet Cong regime.

It wasn’t too long, however, before Top and his crew found themselves cleaning up messes – like mines, US ordinance that hadn’t detonated, and even the heinous task of tunnel ratting: going down into a VC tunnel with a .45 and a knife and checking to see if it was occupied. Assignments like those took Top’s unit from 172 men down to 41 over the course of their stay in country.

Top was a sergeant, which meant that he was the middle man in Vietnam. He would go between the commanding officers and the men in the fields, doing his best to solve problems coming from both directions. As he told the kids, it made him tough; made him realize that the difference between office and leadership was found within the character of the man. Top quickly became a leader, and brought home the wounds and medals to prove it.

His first Purple Heart was given to him when he was shot in the leg while carrying a wounded soldier to MEDEVAC. The bullet caught him in the calf. They sewed him up and sent him back out.

His second Purple Heart came when a sniper shot him in the left shoulder one day during a duty run. “They say you can hear the sound of the weapon that ends your life,” he told the kids on Wednesday. “Well, I certainly heard this one. The bullet came and caught me in my shoulder, and sent me flying five feet forward through the air. They pulled me aside, checked out my shoulder, and put a butterfly dressing on it. I went back into the field that afternoon.”

But his third Purple Heart came during an action for which he also won a Bronze Star with Valor. Top and some of his men were in a rice paddy, pinned down by gunfire coming from a farmhouse not too far away. Six Viet Cong troops were positioned in the house, and the only viable front for attack was assault from Top’s position. Between the house and the trench where Top and his men were located was nothing but rice paddy, a murky, watery expanse that offered no cover whatsoever. So Top and his men were waiting for reinforcements– “We were waiting for the tanks to come and, pardon my French, blow the hell out of that farmhouse.”

The story gets better, but it’s not Top’s to tell. “I can’t honestly tell you what happened, because I don’t remember any of it. Alls I know is one of my men came to me and said, ‘Sarge, can I have a cigarette?’ And the next thing I can remember, I was holding that man’s face in my hands and my back was hamburger.”

According to the paperwork filed for his Bronze Star, Top and eight other men charged that farmhouse. Why they chose to do so is not made clear, but nine brave soldiers took the fight across a watery graveyard and were successful. They made it to the house and secured it, putting down all six of the Viet Cong guerillas inside. According to the report, the suicide mission saved 32 lives that day.

If this were a Hollywood story, the camera would pan across the brave soldiers’ faces and they would smile and have a smoke as their helicopter lifted off and circled around the captured farmhouse. We would catch a glint of the setting sun on the paddy waters and the camera would fade to black.

But this isn’t a Hollywood story.

After Top and his men had rushed the house and seemingly secured it, one of the VC soldiers was able to pull the pin on a grenade and send it rolling between Top and his men. Top took most of the shrapnel – he spent six months in a hospital receiving skin grafts and sleeping on his stomach; to this day, three pieces of the shrapnel from that grenade still reside in his back, too dangerous to remove. The only fragment of memory he has is of lying on the Vietnamese soil, in agony, holding the face of that soldier who’d asked for what turned out to be his last smoke.

Top was able to recover, and retired from the Army after 27 years of honorable service. Like many Vietnam veterans, he returned home to a life that had moved on without him – a nation that wasn’t proud of his service, and a wife who’d been unwilling to wait on him. Alone and hurting, he found it difficult to cope.

“I wouldn’t talk about what happened,” he told the kids. “I bottled it up inside, and then tried to forget about it by emptying the wrong kind of bottle.”

He ended up getting help and was encouraged by a doctor to talk about his experiences, to get the emotions and the images out and into the air as a way of healing his soul. The doctor also encouraged him to go to church, and in doing so, Top found peace and forgiveness and the permission to move forward with his life. He was able to remarry. He was able to live.

Top shared more of his story than this, and he shared it with such humble honesty that I can say for certain not one of the students moved while he spoke. They listened, rapt, as Top shared from his heart a story that, if he didn’t tell it, would simply fade into oblivion in a government file cabinet somewhere. By telling the kids, he gave life to not only his story, but the story of every soldier.

It’s one thing for us to celebrate Veteran’s Day – it’s right and good that we do so, because we demand so much from those men and women who volunteer to put on the uniform and charge into whatever mess we the people (or at least our government) deem worthy of our might. But celebrating a day with nice Facebook updates or patriotic flag waving doesn’t do justice to the soldiers themselves; I don’t presume to speak for them, so please don’t take these words as their own, but to me, it is a little hollow to speak of Veterans in some vague, collective sense.

Instead, do yourself the honor of meeting one of these men and women up close. Personal. Ask them about their story. Ask them about the price they paid to give you freedom. And then shake their hand and tell them, from the bottom of a broken and grateful heart, that you thank them for your freedom.

I think about Top today – along with Mark Allen, Karl Johnson, Brannen Murphy, David Brown, David Evans and other good men and women I know who wear the uniform of our military services with pride and honor, never asking for anything in return. Never demanding their rights or freedoms. Never protesting the places or people we ask them to fight on our behalf. They take the risk of their own life and the lives of people who are near and dear to them through the brotherhood of service and do so because they hold the ideals and hopes of this nation as more worthy than those of their own.

Today, I am grateful to tears for each of your service. Little or small, past or present, you have given me – our nation – so much. Today, if you read these 1400 words, I hope you only continually hear these two:

Thank you.

And God bless.

Stump the Chump: Would God Be Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?

It's time to Stump the Chump...come on down!

I was a little frustrated when I woke up this morning–I didn’t have a single thought for a post. As a writer, I hate when that happens, because I never know if it’s just a temporary thing or the beginning of a hideous writer’s block. I even took to Facebook to solicit ideas for blog posts (and thanks to those who responded). But, as fate would have it, the first official question came in through my Stump the Chump page, and it’s a doozy. I mean, a good old-fashioned, holy-cow-how-do-I-answer-this-one query from out of left field.

And suddenly, I’m reminded of something that Rick Reilly wrote in his book, Where’s Your Caddy? – just because someone has a good idea, it doesn’t mean they should necessarily do it.

But I’m committed to the idea that allowing people the freedom to ask questions is the best way to teach them, so here we go:

Question: Do you think God would be pro-life or pro-choice?

Now, as you can see, this question has the three magic words: God, pro-life, and pro-choice. In other words, this is a veritable time-bomb. It’s unstable uranium. It’s Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. Or President Obama’s first term.

But, there is an answer. And at the risk of being misunderstood by those who will just skim, here it is: He’s both.

Now, that may either sound like a cop-out or heresy, but really, Scripture makes it clear that when it comes down to the actions of human beings God is both pro-life and pro-choice–just not in the same way we are.

Pro-life is much easier to explain. While we could take a ton of verses as supportive texts, we need only look so far as Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments) and Matthew 22:36-40.

In the Ten Commandments, God establishes a basic system of moral governance for human action. One of the specific laws is “You shall not murder.” The context of the word murder means, “take another person’s life” and no matter how you want to parse the definition of human life, an embryo/fetus/baby/infant is a human life. If there were the possibility of the sperm and egg to create a dog or a platypus, it would change the game, but the end result of human reproductive material combining together will always be a human being. And human life is held sacred under the Ten Commandments.

But, there are some folks who would say, “Bah–that’s Old Testament law, and since Jesus came, it’s a whole new ballgame.” (There are also those who say, “There’s no God whatsoever”, but the question posed is framed inside of a worldview in which God exists, so I’m approaching it from that worldview.) But as Jesus said himself, he came to fulfill the law, not abolish it, and in Matthew 22 he gives us an even simpler, perhaps more elegant rendering of the Ten Commandments (what many Bible scholars call the Great Commandment): Love God above all else, love people as yourself.

In other words: if you wouldn’t kill yourself, don’t kill someone else. And if you wouldn’t kill someone else, don’t kill yourself (but that’s another post altogether).

In short, we find in both summations of the divine moral code – which comes from the mouth of God Himself – the prohibition against taking a human life. Thus God is pro-life, and not just in the narrow sense of the issue of abortion. God wants all human life, regardless of its development stage, to be seen as something sacred and valuable.

The fallen nature of humanity makes this impossible, however, and thus we come to the second piece of this tricky puzzle: God is pro-choice.

By this I mean that God has given free will to each human being, and we are allowed to exercise that free will as we see fit. While God has invested countless pages, prophets and His Own Son to show us the way that is best for us, we are still free to choose whichever way we wish. He will not force us to do something. Whether it’s abortion, murder, or any other moral choice before us, we are free to make our own decisions – and then deal with the consequences of those actions.

I do not believe, for a single second, that God is indifferent to the abortion of unborn children. I believe it grieves Him that we hold life so cheap as to be, in some cases, a matter of personal convenience and nothing more. That said, He also gives women the right to choose, and to navigate the consequences of those choices.

Please understand that I am not being cavalier on this issue: I hate the fact that abortion is viewed as a cosmetic procedure. You may disagree with that statement, but in my view, that’s how it is. I understand that there are cases of incest and rape (indeed, those cases become the norm whenever abortion is discussed) and that the waters become much darker in those cases. But for many people, the issue of abortion boils down to the issue of personal convenience, and in that regard, it becomes a cosmetic procedure, one that doesn’t have to be done but is elected by the patient.

It bothers me, as one who has lost a child, that someone could elect to kill theirs. But that’s the world we live in, and God allows it to be thus. Now, He told us His thoughts on the issue of life by sending His Son to die in our place that we “may have life and have it to the full.” Obviously, for God, the sacredness of human life is something He values to the utmost. But His Son died so that “whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” – so that all who choose eternal life might have it.

Pro-life and pro-choice.

Let the bashing of me begin.