Choosing our Battles

The most sobering statement I’ve heard in a long time:

“It is obscene to complain about a ‘war on Christmas’ in the United States when there are Syrian cities without Christians to commemorate their holy days at all for the first time in some 1,900 years. That’s an authentic war on Christmas.” 

(“On the Edge of Extinction,” Christianity Today, November 2014)

What if every time we hear the words “Happy Holidays” this season, instead of getting our Christian noses out of joint, we use it as a reminder to pray for our Syrian and Iraqi brothers and sisters who are huddled in refugee camps this Christmas? 

A Wind We Need to Know About

My book list will be ready in a month and a half, but here’s one that can’t wait: A Wind in the House of Islam by David Garrison. 

If you’re not concerned about what’s happening in Syria and Iraq right now—not to mention schoolgirls being kidnapped in Nigeria—don’t bother with this book. But if you think of it, well, dozens of times each day, if you’re wondering what in the world is going on and where God is in all of this, then this is the book for you.

Evil appears to be running amok. I want all the news I can get, and yet I can barely watch. A worldwide showdown between Christianity and Islam seems inevitable. God-loving, God-fearing people talk seriously about just nuking the world’s Muslims and calling it a day.

Where is the hope in this situation? Where is God?

He’s on the move. And, oh, did I need to hear about it. I need to know that unprecedented numbers of Muslims are coming to faith in Jesus. I need to know that He uses jaw-dropping miracles and amazing visions to reach them, but the most common way is the tried-and-true way: one person living out a changed life in front of others. I need to know because this helps me sleep at night. The world is not spinning out of control. The King is still on the throne, He’s aware, He’s involved, and our struggles are not against flesh and blood, but the evil spiritual forces in this world that He is more than capable of fending off.

Garrison’s book is a mix of history, sociology, and scientific method. So tedious are the details of the methodology that it’s almost sterile at times. But when you actually picture the methodology and what it took to make it happen, the yawns turn into goose bumps. In hidden rooms throughout nine regions of the world, Christian interviewers met with Muslims. The rooms were hidden because these weren’t just any Muslims. They are Christ-following Muslims. (And don’t even think of calling them Christians.) They shared the stories of their conversions, the suffering they experienced as a result, and their views on Jesus and Muhammad. Some traveled a hundred miles and risked their lives to tell their stories. One woman hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Interviewers, translators, and the storytellers themselves put everything on the line to tell us how God is drawing Muslims to Himself.

There will be Christians who aren’t comfortable calling these people brothers and sisters. They’re not exactly like us. They call God Allah. Many still attend mosque and read the Quran, at least for a while. They don’t even like the word Christianity. But Jesus? They love Him. In Him they’ve found the answers their own religion lacked. They’ve found grace they’ve never known. They’ve found a savior who guarantees their way to heaven. In all the ways that matter, they are very much like us. Heaven is going to be filled with them, and I can’t wait to meet them. Until then, I will make myself keep watching the news, which keeps me praying.

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” –2 Peter 3:9

Failing Well

My son has discovered something he loves. He loves it because he’s good at it. He has the potential to be very good at it. It’s high school speech and debate. Where else can you turn your flair for the dramatic and your incessant need to argue into a competition? One that wins you awards and possibly a college scholarship?

There may be no greater joy known on earth than a parent watching their child succeed. Childhood success is a big deal. It’s an industry, in fact. Surely the medal-printing business has gone up a hundredfold since I was a kid and only one person—the MVP—got an award. Now everyone does. The Navigators’ youth camp used to have the motto: “Something for every kid so every kid succeeds.” Who wouldn’t want their kid at that camp? No one sends their child off to camp or puts them on any team hoping they’ll fail. This is America, land of winners and overachievers. And with so many different options for kids today—fencing, calf-roping, Irish dancing, online gaming, the oboe—there really is a place for every kid to experience success. My own daughter won a salad contest, of all things, and no one was more excited about it than me.

But what about teaching our kids to fail, or at least not win, graciously? To be second best or dead last at something, and to do it well? To let someone else succeed, to celebrate that person’s victory (no matter how hard that might be), and to rise above their feelings and choose to do the right thing? Isn’t that one of the greatest skills we could teach them? So why do we try so hard to protect them from failure and disappointment? (I am preaching to myself as much as anyone.)

Our kids need things that build their self-esteem. But they also need things that build their character, and more often than not, those are going to be two different things. It is not any fun for me to watch my daughter struggle socially, but then I remember how good she is at school, art, music, and sports. I’m thankful that everything’s not easy for her, even if it’s something as essential as making friends. I’ve seen her grow so much more through the hard stuff than the easy stuff.

My son can talk circles around people and is everyone’s first choice when teams are forming for a good trivia game, but he’s nervous and awkward with a ball in his hands. He knows what it’s like to work hard and not necessarily get to play, to have to give others the limelight while he sits on the bench, to endure something that’s clearly not “his thing.” And I am thankful—not in the hard, uncomfortable moment—but in the big picture of who he is and who he’s becoming. 

Contrary to what we may believe about some people, no one is good at everything. No one gets to win all the time. Failure is inevitable. Let’s teach our kids not to fear it, and to do it well when it comes. Let’s believe that they’ll be shaped as much by their disappointments as their victories. We can believe that for ourselves, too. 

The Blessings of Age

In recognition of the fact that I’m a year older, here’s a look at the bright side of aging:

1.      Age has a way of tearing away at your vanity and self-consciousness. When I was in high school, I couldn’t go to the mailbox without wearing makeup. Now I spend whole days without it, and without giving it a thought. I recently completed two-and-a-half hours of parent-teacher conferences, only to meet up with a friend, on my way out the door, who kindly told me I had a booger dangling from my nose. (Thank you, kind friend; you know who you are!) At 24, I would have been horrified. At 44, I blew it off, literally and figuratively.

2.      Age has given me the ability to just say no. I know who I am. I know what I do and don’t do. I know I don’t go to home-based-sales parties. I know what I spend money on and what I don’t. I know when it’s good to be stretched and try something new and when it’s not. I’m not nearly so concerned with being left out as I used to be, so “no” comes quicker, easier, and without a made-up excuse. Very few things are as liberating as the ability to say no.

3.      The older I get, the older my kids get, and older kids rock! Ten years ago, driving in the car was an act of survival. Armed with car seats, pacifiers, Cheerios, sippy cups, picture books, hard animals, melted crayons, and “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho” CDs, getting down the road often felt like an epic battle. Now that we’re all older, we have lively car discussions over what constitutes historical fiction and why being the President is the hardest job in the world. My car is still a mess and fights still break out, but I savor the driving moments more than dreading them. There are very few minutes I don’t enjoy with older kids.

4.      The things of earth really do draw strangely dim the older I get. (And not just because the eyesight’s going.) Compared to my twenties and thirties, I care so much more about the things of God and so much less about the things of this world. At 20, I wanted to be famous. At 44, I want to love others well. I used to want to be where the action was. Now I just want to be where God is. I used to say, “I sure hope Jesus doesn’t come back until I’ve done all the things I want to do. Now I say, “Oh, Jesus, come! Come now!” This world is losing its allure by the day, and heaven seems less scary, less unknown, less “out there” than ever before.

5.      And if none of these things is enough, at least I’m one step closer to the senior menu at Denny’s and discounted lift tickets. 

Who's the Dangerous One?

I have had it up to here with terrorists. I have had it with their threats, their videos, and their shock value. Most of all, I have had it with their recruiting strategies. Did you see the video several weeks ago of the young man with the American accent, sitting in the desert with machine gun in hand, trying to tell other Western kids that “this” is the real Disneyland? (This, apparently, being the brutal, senseless mass murders of women and children.)

Here’s the truth, people. If you’re looking for more adventure, more excitement, more passion and purpose in your life, you don’t have to pick up a weapon and pretend to be scary and powerful. All you have to do is align yourself with the One who is all powerful. And if you’re not on His side, there’s no one more scary in the universe. He has leveled cities. He has wiped out the entire population of the earth. All the wealth and resources in the world are His, and He never sleeps.

“We may fear a dangerous, transcendent God,” writes Drew Dyck in Yawning at Tigers, “but we need him. Desperately. Other deities may suffice for a season. As long as things are going well, smaller and safer gods may keep us happy by promising never to rock the boat. But the moment we encounter evil, when our lives are overturned by injustice, that’s when we need the dangerous God. The one who judges sin and hates evil.”

Evil is making big headlines right now. It’s in our faces all day long, and it threatens to haunt us in our sleep. I don’t know about you, but right now, I don’t want a puny, manageable god. I don’t want one I can figure out and who I require to make sense to me. I want a fierce, untamed lion of a God who always, always, ALWAYS triumphs over evil. I want a God who makes the earth quake and the mountains melt like wax. A God who controls a leader’s heart like a stream of water (Proverbs 21:1), and a God who sets up “kings” and removes them (Daniel 2:21). This is exactly who He is, and so much more.

 Here’s the most amazing thing of all. I can barely begin to wrap my brain around it: That power—God’s power—lives in me. The very power that raised a dead man to life lives in little me (Romans 8:11)! I hope He’s taken up residence in your life, too, because if He has, think of what it means. Back to the Yawning book:

  

 “How much different would it be if Christians saw themselves as the dangerous ones? We are bearers of the most wild, dangerous, untamed force for good in the world!”

Don’t be fooled by those old ladies in flowered dresses and 8-year-olds carrying pink Bibles. They are dangerous. You are dangerous, and so am I. We are dangerous in the face of evil and injustice. We are on the side of good, of truth, of love, and light. And we win. We know how this story ends, and we know that God and His Son Jesus Christ win. That assurance alone gives us great power in these dark days.

If we Christians are doing our job well—truly living the way God intends for us—no “disenfranchised youth” should have to board a plane and pick up a weapon to find the thrill of a lifetime. They should see it in us.  There is no greater adventure, no more fulfillment to be found, than walking every day with the most holy, powerful, awesome, dangerous Force in the universe.

Do I fear terrorists? No, I fear only God. 

Asking for Glory

Here’s one big thing a healthy fear of the Lord does for you: It makes you careful what you ask for. Since I’ve started picturing Him more like holy plutonium and less like a doting grandpa, I’m more aware of the words I say to Him. For years I’ve sat in church idly mouthing the words, “I want to see your glory” all the while preoccupied with the week’s logistical challenges or the cute haircut on the lady in front of me. I could have been singing, “I want to see a tuna fish sandwich.” And I don’t even really like tuna fish.

Writer Annie Dillard calls out all of us regular church-goers on this: “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”

How powerful is the God we serve, the One whose glory we flippantly ask to see. Do we forget the Bible stories of God’s encounters with people? The most memorable is Isaiah, who actually saw God on His throne. I would imagine his first response would be awe, and then he would follow some sort of protocol—bowing, kneeling, or even falling on his face. But Isaiah had no thoughts of protocol. He could only utter the words he thought would be his last: “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man.” Clearly he wasn’t thinking about how cool it was to see the glory of God. He could only realize how unworthy he was and how surely this encounter would kill him. Isaiah was familiar with God’s words to Moses, written in the book of Exodus: “Man shall not see me and live.” When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God gave him what he asked for, but only after hiding him away in a rock and covering his eyes.

And it wasn’t just God who had this effect on people. The standard angel script began with the line, “Do not be afraid.” Our earthly bodies were not made to withstand such holiness, at least not without some serious terror. In Yawning at Tigers, Drew Dyck explains, “Divine encounters were terrifying, leaving even the most stout and spiritual vibrating with fear—or lying facedown, unconscious.”

And yet we ask so casually. Then we get frustrated when He seems distant and removed. Dyck argues that God’s hiddenness may be a blessing—“an act of mercy from a God who shelters our fragile bodies from the full weight of his glory.”

So does fearing God mean we shouldn’t ask to see Him at all? I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s to realize what we’re asking for. To try to stretch our minds enough to begin to understand how big is that ask, how big God is, and to quake in our shoes at the very thought of His revealed glory. 

Fear of the Lord makes me mindful of my words. It makes me aware of true worship versus just going through the motions. (And honestly, I go through the motions the majority of the time.) It reminds me of the greatness of the Name I use so casually and calls me to account on how I use it. I don’t want a God who can be worshiped while I’m making my grocery list. I want one who demands my full attention, who takes my breath away. And that’s exactly the God I have. 

Healthy Fear

Late last spring, I was working on a Bible study lesson about the flood. THE flood. We think of it as Noah’s flood, though it was actually God’s. We picture pairs of cartoon-character animals scooting their way up a ramp, welcomed by a jolly Noah. As the raindrops fall, the sweet little boat bobbles along on the water with a giraffe’s head popping out the top. It’s the stuff we decorate our baby nurseries with. But as I read and studied the account in Genesis 6 and 7, that image was quickly replaced by one of horror. 

God, my God—the God I think I know so well—destroyed the entire earth. He killed every living thing except for those He spared on the ark. Suddenly the image in my head is no longer of cute animals but of drowning children. Of desperate mothers trying to throw their babies onto the ark in hope they would be saved. But they weren’t. They were “blotted out,” along with every other living thing on the face of the earth. When I got beyond my storybook images and let myself go there, I could barely speak the name of God. Who was this? Is this the same God I talk with every day, that I sing to, that I’ve entrusted my life to? How could it be?

A strange feeling crept into my stomach and settled in. I couldn’t identity it, but I knew it was something I hadn’t felt before. As I thought about other Bible stories—particularly Uzzah, the guy who was struck dead on the spot for simply trying to steady the Ark of the Covenant as David brought it home to Jerusalem—the feeling became more intense but no more identifiable. I could sort of shake it, bring it under control, at times. I didn’t notice it when I ran through my daily prayer requests or bebopped through the house singing Chris Tomlin. I didn’t notice it at church. But it hit me hard every time I returned to the flood story, and it also snuck up on me at odd times—like when I was deep in thought doing the dishes. I’m no fan of mysteries or vague, unnamed feelings. I wanted God to show me what this was, and more importantly, I wanted it to go away.

One day I was reading one of my favorite things, the book-reviews section in Christianity Today. I saw this little snippet, so small that had I blinked, I would have missed it. God ensured I didn’t blink. It said, “[God’s] presence is like radiation, more dangerous than plutonium. Nothing can live when God comes near.” And just like that, my nameless feeling had a name. It was the fear of God.

Could it be that I have followed God nearly my whole life, immersed myself in His Word and taught others to do the same, and yet had never grasped for myself the fear of God? I could have written you a helpful, concise definition of it, but I couldn’t have told you what it looked like in practice. But that feeling in my stomach told me I was beginning to know.

Of course I wanted to hear more about how God is like radiation, and I bought the book immediately. The author is Drew Dyck, and the book is Yawning at Tigers. I figured he earned my ten bucks with the name alone. Dyck’s thesis is that our modern Christian world has done such a great job telling us how much God loves us that we’ve lost sight of His holiness. Without understanding God’s holiness, we can never fully grasp His love and mercy.

When you think about the sermons we hear, the songs we sing, the prayers we pray, it’s easy to see how our perception’s gotten skewed. How easy it is to picture God as an adoring grandfather who wants nothing more than to shower affection, forgiveness, and sweet treats on us and, when necessary, keep us from falling down the stairs. It’s true that God is love, and “every good and perfect gift” comes from Him. But He is also holy, just, and untame. We don’t like to think about it, but what He is as much as anything else is dangerous. No matter what we do to try to minimize Him, manage Him, control Him, or even understand Him, we fail. We only deceive ourselves. If you ever hear anyone say they’ve got God all figured out, your most biblical response may be to duck and cover.

 Why do we try to tame God? Why do we prefer thinking of Him as our buddy instead of as the Creator and Ruler of the universe? Why do we focus on His love over His holiness? Maybe to think of Him rightly is just too much for our minds. God is completely “other,” completely unknowable by us—Drew Dyck compares us to ants running across an iPad with no concept of its power and ability—and yet He desires relationship with us, the ants. He desires it so much that He revealed Himself, in ways we can sort of understand, through the Scriptures. He desires it so much that He sent His son to become one of us, and to die for us. How wild is that? How can we begin to grasp it?

Drew Dyck writes: “We might assume knowing God simply includes getting all our facts about him straight. But maybe the first step is vertigo, a holy disorientation. Perhaps only once we’ve been shocked out of our normal way of processing reality—categorizing it, mastering it—can we hope to gain even a glimpse of God’s awesome power and beauty.”

Vertigo. Holy disorientation. Fear of the Lord. Whatever it is, I’ve been experiencing it this summer, and I hope to share some of it with you in my next couple of entries. Stay tuned.