True Piety

So yesterday, I asked for some folks to submit questions or topics for the blog. I got a good response (exactly three!) and wanted to tackle one today. The question was simple:

Is the pious pious because God loves it, or does God love the pious because it’s pious?

I’m not entirely certain what the question is referring to (whether an individual or an action or some notion of piety), but my best guess is that the inquiring party is curious to know if something is holy because God loves it, or if God loves something because it’s holy. I’m assuming it’s a question of intrinsic/extrinsic worth – whether something is valuable in and of itself, or whether it’s value is derived from an outside source.

I could be completely wrong on this, but I’m going with the answer of A: something is holy/pious because God loves it, which would be extrinsic value. It is because God says so. This applies across the board, which will be a point of contention for some people.

See, many folks believe that humans have intrinsic worth – that is, by virtue of being human, they are valuable. This is a notion that has long been affirmed from the pulpit: how many times have you heard a preacher say that humanity is “God’s special creation”? Heck, I’ve said it (and typed it) because it’s something I think most of us want to be true. That we are somehow different from everything else in the world, because God made us special.

But stop for a moment and take a look at the very definition of what we call “intrinsic” value: we are special because God made us that way.

We’re not special just because. We’re special because that’s how God made us. He gives us our value; it’s His mark within us that makes us special, so in a sense it’s understandable that we would consider that intrinsic value; but it’s still extrinsic because the value is only there if God puts it there. Take him out of the equation and what are we?

Perhaps there’s no better example of this than Jesus’ relationship with the Pharisees and scribes in the New Testament. Over and over again, they sought to have their righteousness upheld before Jesus, to have their personal holiness labeled as “worthy”. And yet time and again Jesus told them that they had missed the point:.

Take this passage from Luke 11 for example:

³⁷ When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. ³⁸ But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.

³⁹ Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰ You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? ⁴¹ But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

⁴² “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.

⁴³ “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.

⁴⁴ “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.”

⁴⁵ One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”

⁴⁶ Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.

⁴⁷ “Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. ⁴⁸ So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹ Because of this, God in his wisdomsaid, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ ⁵⁰ Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, ⁵¹ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.

⁵² “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”

⁵³ When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, ⁵⁴ waiting to catch him in something he might say.

The Pharisees thought that their piety was worthy of being loved by God, but Jesus pointed out just how woefully unlovable their pious deeds were. He pointed them to a higher standard than their understanding and execution of God’s Law. He pointed them to a life that was found worthy because God loved it, not because it was earned. Piety without grace is impossible; it takes the grace of God to make us capable of any kind of pious living. The moment we forget that – the moment we assume that we hold the keys to godliness within ourselves – that’s the moment we become well and truly foolish.

In Scripture, anything that was considered holy was only considered such because God said it was so. It begins with the acts of creation – “God saw that it was good” – and continues: Abel’s sacrifice, Noah’s character, Abram’s faith, Moses’ obedience. On and on and on. Those things were holy/pious because God blessed them, not the other way around. And the same is true today. We are not made right with God because we are righteous, we are made right with God because we receive His righteousness as our gift. Or as Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9:

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast.

Yes, it’s true that God died for you, but He didn’t die for you because you were special. He died for you because He was merciful, forgiving, compassionate, good, gracious. We are who we are only because He Is Who He Is.

And we should never forget that.

We, Icarus

I assigned Ecclesiastes 1 to my Christian Learning Center class for homework. We’re discussing the four fundamental questions that every worldview must answer (Origin, Meaning, Morality, Destiny – thank you, Ravi Zacharias), and I thought Ecclesiastes would be a great place for us to begin on the Meaning question. They read it, and as we discussed it this morning, one of my students pointed out the last verse:

For with wisdom is much sorrow;
as knowledge increases, grief increases.

The student pointed out that when we’re young, we get to see the world through a limited lens, and thus we’re shielded from some of the great tragedy this is human existence. To wit, she pointed out that when her grandmother died, she didn’t know enough about death to really be sad; so when her family made a trip up to Canada for the funeral, she was super excited about getting to travel and see her cousins. That sounds crude, but from a kid’s perspective, it makes perfect sense: when you don’t know what you don’t know, not knowing it doesn’t bother you.

But once you know…it changes everything.

I think Solomon’s point with the statement wasn’t so much an appeal to ignorance (which would’ve been ironic) but an understanding of the burden of knowledge. The more you know, the more you realize that knowledge alone doesn’t solve anything; it’s what you do with that knowledge that really matters. Knowledge = Responsibility. But in our modern world, we can see that even those actions aren’t enough – we know what causes many of our societies gravest ills, and yet we still fall into them time and time again. Education helps to a degree, but education isn’t enough. Behavioral modification works to a degree, but as anyone who’s studied the recidivism rates amongst addicts and certain classes of criminals can tell you, changing behavior isn’t always enough. Brilliant minds have suggested countless improvements to the human species, but the one thing they’ve never been able to change is the depravity of the human heart. Knowledge, action, human effort never has and never will release us from the sin that saturates our souls.

We’re sort of doomed to being Icarus.

That is, we would be if not for something else, something beyond knowledge to which we can appeal. Or, more accurately, to Whom we can appeal. Solomon knew this. Being the wisest man in the world does proffer some benefit. At the end of Ecclesiastes, after taking his reader on a walk through the sheer insufficiency of human effort to satisfy the human soul, Solomon comes back to the One that gives this life its meaning, the One through whom we “all live and move and have our being.”

In the end, Solomon says:

When all has been heard, my son, be warned: there is no end to the making of many books, and much study wearies the body. When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is: fear God and keep His commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.

We cannot save ourselves. Our brightest minds, our grandest notions, our best ideas are limited in their power to affect the change needed within the human heart. It’s why we see people running from one fad to the next, from one fix to the next – nothing we can do in and of ourselves will ever release us from our condition. And if anyone was in position to know the exhaustive nature of human gifts, it was Solomon. Having seen and thought and tasted it all, he came back to the truth of his childhood:

Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.

Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Only God gives this life meaning. Not money, not power, not sex, not success, not any of the numerous vanities that Solomon and our human race have tried and found wanting. Only in God, only in His Son, Jesus Christ, do we find the fulfillment of our hearts.

The Power of Peek-A-Boo

One of the first things I did with my kids was peek-a-boo. Sounds stupid, I know, but there was something magical about the notion that simply hiding my face behind my hands and then revealing it could elicit peals of laughter from my kids. Add in the ubiquitous adult-to-child voice inflection (you know, that creepy, high-pitched sing-song that we all do) and you have the recipe for some serious crazy.

It’s human nature, I suppose, to want to make your kids laugh. But the game also teaches them something important. Something that seems small, but is really huge.

It teaches them to see people. And that people see them.

So often, we go through life thinking that we’re invisible. Or that who we are doesn’t amount to much. Doesn’t matter how high we ascend in the world, there is a part of everyone that secretly wonders if anyone really notices us. Not what we do. Not what we say. But us. We crave validation, and when we don’t have it, we feel deprived. Poor.

We’re all beggars in that way. Some folks are a lot more public about their need, but we all have it. We all feel it. We sit, ostensibly on the periphery of life, and we watch the world pass by, wondering if anyone sees.

How wonderful it is, then, when someone does stop and take notice. Not because we made a mistake or did something wonderful to draw attention, but simply because we’re there. Like my children playing peek-a-boo, our faces light up when someone shows us their face, simultaneously seeing us and revealing themselves.

Take even a cursory stroll through the Gospels, and you discover that Jesus was a master at this. Blind people, lame people, even people lost in a sea of other needy people, He never failed to see the people who not just wanted to be seen, but needed to be seen. He saw them. He talked with them. He touched them. He healed them.

And in doing so, He changed them.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says that we would do even greater works than He did. So often we feel like this is either A) an unfair standard we cannot possibly live by, or B) a gross overestimation of our potential. We think that way because we see the miracles Jesus did without seeing the miracles Jesus did. We get too caught up in the healing of blindness and lameness and deafness that we miss the greater miracle: that He saw them to begin with.

I mean, if you’ve seen Bruce Almighty you know how cluttered God’s inbox can be.

So the fact that the God-Man Jesus saw this particular blind man, and that particular lame man, and – wait a minute – someone in this crowd of hundreds touched me and power left my body, it was you, go because your faith has made you whole…well, it’s pretty astounding.

But even more so, because Jesus saw them, they saw Him. They saw God. And lived.

We can do that, show people the face of God, everyday of our lives if we’re willing to see the people around us. I happen to be blessed with co-workers who see me – and reveal themselves – on a regular basis. It’s a wonderful blessing. Borders on a miracle, actually.

Because in a world that’s so full of noise and turmoil, in a country and a culture that tells us we are better off tending to ourselves and leaving everyone else alone, there’s something profound when a person stops and says, “I see you. Can you see me?”

So let’s share a few miracles today. What do you think?

A Few Unconnected Thoughts

Sometimes, you just have too much going on in your head, and you need a reliable place to get it all out. Today is one of those days.

This may or may not make a lick of sense for where you are in your life right now, but if I’ve learned anything lately, it’s that we gain far more by sharing our lives with others than we do by keeping ourselves cloistered away. We’re socially awkward, and it’s costing us big time.

As Francis Chan said in an interview I read earlier today, “I think the biggest problem in the church is this awkwardness. We just don’t know how to converse with people. We’re scared to do it, so we don’t do it.”

So here’s my part to contribute to a more social church:

- I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about life. How to live a good one. How to share it with others. How to just not suck at it so much. And in all of my many varied thoughts, I keep coming back to the notion that the point of our existence, the thing that each of us is supposed to do, is simply become.

Follow me on this one, okay?

This is a gross generalization, but almost every system of thought teaches us that the point of our existence is to become something. For the Christian, we’re to become like Christ. For the Muslim, to become a faithful servant of Allah. For the Buddhist, to become enlightened. Even the materialist, who has no transcendant push towards anything is still compelled by the forces of evolution to become a better, stronger version of themselves in order to survive. So, no matter where we turn, part and parcel of being a human being is the intrinsic need to become.

I want to become a good father. A good husband. A professional writer. A published author. A million different little things, things that — in order for me to attain them — require me to change.

- I know a lot of people who are unhappy with their lives right now. They are stuck in places that they want to be rid of, or they work jobs that do nothing but suck the soul out of their body, or they’re in a toxic relationship, or financial straits, or have medical issues, or a lot of things. And these people all seem to experience some sense of restlessness, a sense that things are either in need or in process of changing. This restlessness, often, feels like something wrong is happening. People think that if they were completely fulfilled, they would be at peace.

Honestly, though: without a sense of restlessness, who would ever move? Who would dare to do something different? If we’re feeling restless, perhaps it’s because we’re either in need of changing or on the verge of changing; either way, we’re being awakened to our need to become something other than we are. Maybe it means changing jobs; maybe it means finishing that novel you started; maybe it just means that you need to quit focusing on your personal bubble and start looking after the bubbles of others.

I don’t know.

But I don’t think of that sense of restlessness is bad. I think that the restlessness is a sign that we are in prime position to do something great.

- As Tom Petty sang, “the waiting is the hardest part.” I’ve got a couple of things in the wind right now that, if they come through, could mean some doors open for me. Not necessarily life altering stuff; mostly just writing opportunities that I would really like to pursue.

Even if none of the opportunities materialize, the mere effort required to chase after them has given me the energy to step out a little farther on the writing ledge. There’s particular blog that I love reading (you can find it here) and if I can ever recover my sense of humor, I’m going to try and get a guest blog gig with them. Again, it’s not like I’m cranking out War and Peace here, but I’m pushing myself to explore a very particular skill set and aspect of who I am in the effort to find out who God wants me to be.

- Lastly, I tweeted earlier today that I wish I could be like Kwai Chang Kane, and just travel the earth helping people. That’s actually a pretty fair summary of how I feel lately. I get energy out of being able to meet with people (in person, online, doesn’t matter) and give them a listening ear, and just get involved in their lives for a time as someone who can encourage them.

I get to do that a lot in my role as youth pastor, and the more I embrace it, the more I find I enjoy it. I’m not necessarily talking about long, extensive counseling sessions (they have professionals for that sort of thing, and I’m perfectly happy to let them have the work) but more along the lines of regular personal chats to see where people are and where they want to be. To talk with them about the things that hang them up, or to listen as they tell me stories of recent victories.

I’m going to steal my friend KJ’s line here, but I think what I’m discovering is that I really, really enjoy discipleship. Walking with people to help them learn how to become more like Christ, and letting them help me do the same.

You’d think a youth pastor would’ve understood all this by now, but hey — nobody said I was quick on the uptake.

So there are the freshest thoughts rolling around in my head. I’ll leave you with a verse that may or may not make sense with the rest of this post, but fits perfectly to me:

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” – Hebrews 4:16

Human Too

I’ve written a lot about what it means to be human. It’s one of my favorite subjects, because it’s endlessly fascinating; the idea that we, the human race, so varied and multifaceted in our makeup, still share so much in common – well, it’s a writer’s dream. Usually, my observations come from reading things people write – magazine articles, books, blogs, comments on blogs - but this past Saturday, I took a group of people into Atlanta to work with Seven Bridges to Recovery, a Christian group that works with the homeless.

We went all over the city, into places that the average person would never dare go, not for any reason. Under bridges. Into abandoned apartment complexes. Down streets with nothing but abandoned houses. Everywhere we went, the result was the same: people, beaten down by life, coming out of the woodwork for a simple grocery sack and a hug.

The cynic might read this and say, “Well, they are where they are because of the choices they’ve made.”

The cynic is right. Several of the people we met on Saturday have made excruciatingly bad choices. In some instances, appallingly bad choices. Some even confessed to their dysfunctional lives with candor.

Said one man, formerly a professional boxer, “This isn’t what I wanted for my life. But I didn’t choose very well. It’s all on me.”

But the cynic also needs to stand, shoulder to shoulder, with them and know that not everyone gets the same kind of choices. The cynic needs to hug someone who has HIV, and hear that person say, “You’re the first person without gloves on to touch me in three years.” The cynic needs to look into the eyes of a young woman who, along with her 18 month old daughter, takes a meager sack of food with great shame, not because she’s made bad choices but because she doesn’t feel like she’s worthy of making good ones. The cynic needs to see a book, well-worn and marked with notes, lying beside a flimsy cardboard bed, held open by a pair of discarded women’s reading glasses, reminding anyone with eyes enough to see that even the most destitute still have minds and souls that need nourishment.

The cynic, as is often the case, needs to get out more.

I stood underneath bridges and smelled the overwhelming stench of human desperation. I watched as men, drunk by midday, sheepishly took a bag with a juice bottle, bag of Funyuns, and a tiny sandwich as if it were a five-star meal. I prayed over a woman named Missy who was so high on crack that she couldn’t speak a coherent sentence; whose body was so ravaged by her addictions that she only had half her top teeth and half her bottom teeth, neither on the same side. Her face was contorted hideously just to line up one top and one bottom tooth in order to take a bite.

What we did was stare into the face of a problem that we can’t possibly begin to fix. Some people can’t be saved – I know that. But some people can be. And if handing out sack lunches, hugs, and a reminder that the homeless are human, too, might bring one person off the streets, then it’s well worth it.

It was for our guide on Saturday, a young man named Jay who’d previously been homeless for over a decade. He was once an addict too. He’s been clean, sober, and off the streets for almost six months, thanks to Seven Bridges. He told the group on Saturday, “Today is my 170th day off them streets, tomorrow is 180, and that’s huge.”

He also told us, “Them people, they need love too, y’all. A little love can do a lot, if you’ll show it.”

He was right – a little love goes a long way.

We’ll go back in October, and on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, re-issuing humanity one sack lunch and hug at a time. We meet on the last Saturday of the month at 10:30 at my church, if you’d be interested in going.

It’s amazing, but true: in making other people feel human, you feel human, too.