My favorite lyrics have always been the last verse which say:

Exposed beyond the shadows
You take the cup from me
Your dirt removes my blindness
Your pain becomes my peace

The song has always resonated with me because of it’s comfort with recognizing human frailty and failure. While I have loved and pursued God for most of my life, it rarely looks pretty and put together.

As I’ve been finishing some of my final edits to the book manuscript the past few weeks I’ve been camping a lot on the idea that God makes a masterpiece out of our mess. It’s my experience that the model Christian always has his or her life put together in an immaculate way. And my frustration with that is my life never seems to be match up. I tend to always feel inferior to the “Godly” people around me. They seem to have perfected this whole faith and life thing a lot better than me.

The model Christian often presented and placed on a pedestal never seems to have a messy closet. The dishes in their kitchen aren’t stacked up in the sink. They have don’t have huge piles of laundry beside their bed. Their hearts seem to rise and set with motivations to love and pursue Jesus. Their stories of struggle always end on a positive note.

It’s all disconnected from my life and my mess. I’m continually drawn toward the things of the flesh, or the sins that can easily entangle my life. I always find ways to remove Jesus and my love for him away from the center of my life to focus on empty and fleeting things.

I love what Mandy Steward says about our messes in her book Messy Canvas. Our lives are about “believing in a Master Artist who created redemption and loves us so much that He paints over our imperfection with His perfection. It is seeing the real, the mess, in light of the ideal, and so transfiguring it. It is accepting mess and then challenging it to become something more” (page 38).

We have a Savior “whose dirt removes our blindness.” He is for us. He loves us enough to not only see past our failures, our mess, our sin, but He loves us enough to transform us in the midst of it. He extends His hand to us in the darkest hours of our lives. Through the incarnation of His Son, Jesus, we see that God cared enough about us to enter into the mess of our lives.

The model Christian is not the perfectly tidy man or woman. The model Christian is one who continually seeks after Him in the midst of mess, wading through the murky and muddy waters of life scouting after the divine. It’s this process that makes something beautiful.

He’s making a masterpiece out of our mess.

When we’re at church, we become our good Christian self.

When we’re at school, we become our smart and intellectual self.

When it’s the weekend, we become our fun-loving, have a good time self.

And rarely do any of these personalities we’ve created ever cross paths.

Somehow we’ve bought the lie that if we are our good Christian self enough of the time, God will have mercy on us and take us to heaven. He does love us with an unending grace right?

So we choose to stay as little baby Christians who go to church to hear great music and be convicted by great teaching, and once we leave the church we’ll enter into another one of our personalities and leave everything from church at church to pick it all up again a week later. When our faith becomes nothing more than leaving our normal life to attend church to make sure we’re good with God and forgiven of our sins, we’ve completely misunderstood our calling.

We’ve bought into the idea that the total and complete Christian message is that we’re sinners and God, through his great love, saved us. Christianity then becomes just something we accept, nothing else.

It doesn’t take much of us to simply believe in Jesus. In fact, that doesn’t cost us anything.

But following Jesus, that’s another matter. There’s no greater cost than following Jesus.

The challenge for us is for all of who we are to be wrapped up in Jesus.

The challenge is for us to lay down our lives for him.

I wanted to posted about this last week but I didn’t want to bring more attention to something that was only taking away from where the focus should have been on the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, 2001.

A few weeks ago the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, announced that no clergy would be allowed to speak at the official New York City commemoration.

As you can guess, this has caused quite the uproar from people about how it is representative of everything that is wrong with our country. Many pastors, politicians, and various other religious leaders have petitioned to Bloomberg in the last few weeks to no avail. The same decision has been made by the city in all commemorations in years past. Here’s a few reactions from various people:

“This is America, and to have a memorial service where there’s no prayer, this appears to be insanity to me. I feel like America has lost its way.” -Rudy Washington, a former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani

“This is one of the pillars that carried us through (referring to religious leaders). They were the spiritual and emotional backbone, and when you have a situation where people are trying to find meaning, where something is bigger than them, when you have a crisis of this level, they often look to the clergy.” -Fernando Cabrera, New York city council member and pastor

I certainly understand the push-back because I am someone who sees life through my faith, but I will say I disagree with it.

To me, this issue is a part of a much larger one, where Christians view the United States as turning away from God and becoming evil. Whether it’s Obama not taking part in the National Day of Prayer, a crack in the Washington Monument as a sign from God (op-ed piece here), or Muslims desiring to build a mosque near Ground Zero, we get upset rather easily when something doesn’t go our way (here’s a great video from Fox News with a seminary President talking about this).

For too long, many American Christians have operated out of fear about their country turning away from God. What’s our motivation for making sure God and Christianity are at the forefront of public policy? Is it to make sure we’re still front and center, or for a great opportunity to show God’s love to all people?

We didn’t get upset when the freedoms of many people of Arabic decent were threatened after 9/11, even many Christians. Would we fight for the voice of Muslims to be given an opportunity to be heard, or just ours?

America was founded as a nation with pluralistic values. All people are created equal, and all viewpoints are allowed to be held.

People can still come to know the truth of who Jesus is without our government pushing our same values.

In fact, they might even come to see Him more easily.

(Photo: Zimbio)

I never realized how selfish I was until I got married. And it’s not like I’ve figured it out in the past 4.5 years either. I still don’t like to do a neighborhood walk with Rose if it isn’t my favorite route. I still hate to watch her favorite TV shows (they’re awful). I still hate it when she moves my stuff around. I do everything I can to fit her into my preferred life.

I do this with friends too. I imagine I’m not much different than many others.

And somehow we think if we do this with everyone around us, we’ll still submit to God. That’s almost laughable. We think we can put God on this fringe section of life, as if how we manage with the rest of our lives doesn’t change how we relate with God.

I don’t think we act selfishly on purpose very often. It’s something reinforced by our culture as normal. “What I want, I get.” So we act selfishly without consciously doing it, but clearly that doesn’t make it right. No one views selfishness as a quality characteristic to have.

Part of the reason the overall story of the Bible is intriguing to me is that it shows us a God who is willing to give us his most prized possession to be closer to us. He does this out of love. He does this out of selflessness. Much of why we view selfishness as a bad thing, despite our culture teaching us otherwise, is that we are drawn to this God who loved and lived selflessly.

In John 14:10 Jesus says,

“The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”

How do we break the selfish cycle we live in today? Drawer nearer to the Father.

We don’t associate selfish behavior with God, so in our acting for ourselves first we only prove to be distancing ourselves from Him.

As we draw near to Him, He begins to work in us.

And we begin to live selflessly.

I can’t remember exactly when, but somewhere in middle school or high school being innocent was no longer a “cool” thing. And not just at school, but also at church. As the buzzword of authenticity became a more popular goal for churches, the value of innocence continued to go down.

By the time I entered college, innocence was a bit of a social death sentence. People either want to take advantage of you or make fun of you.

Most people today walk around wearing their “lack of innocence badge” with immense pride. They’ve lived real life and they’re better for it. After all, what would life be if we lived with a bunch of regrets?

I am not a parent, but I know many who are and I sense there are two main camps when it comes to parenting. 1) Protect your child at all costs from experiencing horrific life events. In other words, help keep the child at least somewhat innocent. 2) Love and care for the child but don’t shield the world away from them. Nothing is off limits. In other words, losing innocence will help them mature more quickly.

I don’t see anything terribly wrong with either camp. In the end, how we view parenting is likely how we view our own lives. We either embrace the brutal nature of living in our culture today or we try to protect ourselves in strategic ways.

But I wonder if we haven’t considered the repercussions of our loss of innocence enough. By losing it, we are clearly giving something up. But what is it? I’ll take a stab at the answer…

The innocence lost through life begins to spill over in how we relate with God and we begin to approach God with an agenda and an expectation that he will let us down.

Jesus talked many times about the importance of a childlike faith:

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Mark 10:14-15).

Children don’t have all the baggage most adults carry with them when it comes to relationships. They pray to God, with an expectant joy that he will answer.

Those of us with an innocence lost “know” that God rarely answers our prayers on our time.

Authenticity and life experience are important values to pursue, but I hope the goal never becomes to lose our innocence despite how popular doing so might be.

Our innocence lost is pushing us away from the ultimate life experience through God.

Read some of the initial reactions from its debut at the Cannes Film Festival via Brett McCracken.

The movie is The Tree of Life. Here is the synopsis of the plotline:

The Tree of Life is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950′s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick’s signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.

Here is the trailer (and a separate clip from the movie here):

Make no mistake, this is not a Christian movie. But I like how one of the stars in the movie puts it:

“You see this movie and you can’t help but think about some kind of spiritual being” (read the whole article here).

This is an opportunity. Not an opportunity to shove beliefs down the throats of our culture, but an opportunity to join in a conversation surrounding faith, life, and God that will be taking place.

Don’t miss it.

I’ve been reading The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin the past few weeks. I really appreciated how he tackled this subject of election and how it should cause us to live and it is easily one of the best and most challenging things I’ve read in months:

“To be elect in Christ Jesus, and there is no other election, means to be incorporated into his mission to the world, to be the bearer of God’s saving purpose for his whole world, to be the sign and the agent and the firstfruit of his blessed kingdom which is for all.

It means therefore, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, to take our share in his suffering, to bear the scars of the passion. It means, as Paul says elsewhere, to bear in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of the risen Jesus may be manifest and made available for others.

It means that this particular body of people who bear the name of Jesus through history, this strange and often absurd company of people so feeble, so foolish, so often fatally compromised with the world, this body with all its contingency and particularity, is the body which has the responsibility of bearing the secret of God’s reign through world history.

It is the calling of the Church to bear through history to its end the secret of the lordship of the crucified.”

“Bearer of God’s saving purpose for his whole world”

Now that’s an election, whether we agree with the doctrine of it or not, we can all embrace!

Now and then I come across the negatives aspects social media can have on our culture. Often it gives people who have a bone to pick a voice. Or it gives people who should not open their mouth (keyboard) a voice. Or people say things they shouldn’t say out loud. Or they say things to other people over a screen they would never say face to face. None of these options are good ones. I’ve had my fair share of tweets, wall posts, and blog posts that I’ve deleted, so I’m as guilty as the next guy.

Yesterday Mark Driscoll, a well-known pastor from Seattle, said this on Facebook and Twitter:

“It’s a Jay-Z soundtrack kind of day. Watched his NY show this weekend – I know he says bowling words but man the guy is a genius.”

People went ballistic on him (read the post thread here, and check out all the stuff said on his FB wall as well, simply unbelievable). But this post isn’t about Mark Driscoll, as big as his platform may be, or even about the people who think its ridiculous that he listens to Jay-Z. This post is about living above reproach.

1st Timothy 3:1 lists as a requirement for pastors or elders the importance of living “above reproach.” Romans 13:13 says, “Because we belong to the day, we must live decent lives for all to see.

I have no problem with the idea that church leaders should be living above a certain standard. They are examples, people are watching, and I believe God desires a higher standard of living from his leaders. This isn’t to say that people who are not pastors can do as they please and God won’t care, just that God recognizes the pedestal leaders are often put on.

The problem I have in all this, in Mark’s statement and in the response from thousands of people, is: who gets to decide what that “standard” is?

Is a rated-R movie inappropriate for Christians to watch? For pastors? Only if it has nudity or gory murder scenes? Who says? Does listening to rap that has cussing bleeped out make you a bad pastor? What if you cuss and you’re a pastor, are you then disqualified from church ministry?

Even last week one of my favorite bloggers and musicians was called out by many for using the word “damn” on twitter. They thought he had crossed a line that was inappropriate for a Christian leader to cross.

Social media often gives a voice to the self righteous who desire to place their standard on others. God clearly outlines standards in the Bible and those are very clear. But God doesn’t say “thou shalt avoid listening to any Jay-Z song or thou hast sinned against thee.”

(I’d go as far as to say Jay-Z’s performance on SNL last spring was possibly the best live musical performance I’ve ever seen and I don’t even like rap or hip-hop much. The pastors who read Mark’s post and thought, “I don’t even know who that is” need some serious help in understanding today’s culture.)

The problem isn’t Jay-Z or Mark Driscoll or social media. The problem is us. We always feel the need to impose our standards on those around us while often failing to meet them ourselves. This is an extremely pointless thing to do when we have zero relationship with a person (as is the case with almost everyone in this example).

I’m curious though…

How do we determine what is acceptable for Christians or pastors?

And beyond that, how do we uphold that standard?

You ever notice how many Christians are quick to attack others when it means keeping their ideological opinions “right”?

And sadly, with social media I believe this problem has taken a whole new level. It doesn’t take a leadership position to be able to speak into a crowd of people with various opinions anymore, it only takes a following on social media.

Last week Glenn Beck said something I totally disagree with and the backlash towards him from many in the Christian community was great.

Just a few months ago Pat Robertson also said something I totally disagree with and the backlash towards him from many Christians was huge.

And I could name plenty more examples of Christians or non-Christians that have been burned at the stake of public opinion by Christians.

So I ask you…what is the point of standing up against opinions you disagree with?

Honestly, I’m sick of all this. It makes me want to ignore social media completely. We’ve abandoned “the truth in love” for “the truth hurts.”

I fear that too many are willing to crucify these men instead of engaging a conversation. Christians can become so completely unChristlike when someone offends them.

And I get it, because (especially within social media) it is a lot easier to gain a following by being condescending, negative, and overtly opinionated, than it is to be uplifting, positive, and gracious.

I think Jesus speaks directly to us when it comes to dealing with those who disagree with us or offend us:

“I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

Your thoughts?

You might be asking why…

I think this is something common in the younger generations who are unhappy with the way Christians have represented their faith in the past. So rather than being grouped with the “Christians” they’d rather keep the religion out of it in order to only follow Jesus.

Check out this great video on the subject (watch it here if you can’t see it):

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this practice of denying being a “Christian” in order to be a “Christ follower” is completely wrong. About the only positive I can see is the extra emphasis on following Jesus. There are many people who do not hold to any of the basic tenets of the Christian faith who are “following Jesus.”

Why is it wrong?

• It isolates. Meaning that part of being a Christ follower is being in relationship with fellow Christians, not just those who follow Jesus the way we do.
• It segregates. The Christian faith has enough division. There is no need for there to be a division in how we state what we are as believers.

What do you think about this trend?