Do you know me? Really?

 

My resume continues to grow.

It’s pretty impressive, if I say so myself. I have appeared in a number of Hollywood movies, including one of the most successful horror movie franchises of all time, “Saw.” Then there was “The Fifth Element,” a sci-fi film starring Bruce Willis, and another sci-fi series “Predator,” plus a few movies I won’t mention.

And then there was my stint playing for the Boston Celtics in the 1980s.

Of course, if you know me, you know that none of what I just wrote is true. But I continue to be mistaken for a movie actor – I won’t say “star” because I’m never confused with the handsome leading men – wherever I go. College students, valet drivers, a jewelry store security guard in the Grand Caymans, the lady who worked the cheese counter at the Western supermarket … it has happened so often in my life that my wife can see me talking to strangers in random places when we travel and will have a pretty good idea of what is going on.

We were in Antigua one time when a guy came up to us on our way to dinner and said, “I just want you to know I know who you are, and I really enjoy your work.” I told him I wasn’t whoever he thought I was, but he said, “No, I get you don’t want people to know you’re here and I won’t say anything. But I just want you to know I know, and I really enjoy your movies.”

Another time, in the Bluebird Café in Nashville, a guy came up and said, “You’re Brion James, aren’t you?” Brion James is the actor who played in “The Fifth Element” that indeed, I do look like (at least in that movie). I had to tell this “fan” that James died about 15 years ago.

A few days ago, my wife and I were flying to Baltimore and the stewardess said, “Are you Larry Bird? You look just like Larry Bird.” I wanted to say, “Yes, Larry Bird always flies in the middle seat of row 34 on American Airlines,’’ but instead I laughed and said, “Thanks. You just named one of the ugliest white guys in the NBA.” The lady in the seat next to me (my wife was on a different row) busted out laughing. As the flight was ending, the stewardess came back by and gave me a fist bump, saying, “Bye, Larry.”

And in the Atlanta airport, I was standing outside the women’s restroom waiting for my wife and these two workers wheeled their trash can over to me and said, “You’re an actor, aren’t you?” His English wasn’t very good, and he made like he was shooting a machine gun. His partner insisted on taking a picture with me, convinced I was in “Predator.”

Usually, when someone says, “You look just like an actor,” I say, “Brad Pitt, right?” And they always say, “No,” to which I act hurt and say, “Just once I’d like someone to say I look like Brad Pitt.” This happened in particular with this nice lady in the Western Supermarket I used to go to regularly, and from then on, every time I’d come in she’d call out, “Hey, Brad Pitt!” One time, walking in with my youngest son, she added, “And here’s Brad Pitt junior!”

Now, other people had to wonder what she was thinking. She acted like she really knew me, but they know good and well I wasn’t Brad Pitt. Often this lady and would stand and talk for a few minutes – we did get to be sort-of friends - but she always called me “Brad Pitt.”

Anyone listening would have reason to wonder if this lady really knew me.

Because when you know someone, you know things about them that are true. The better you get to know them, the more you learn about them, the more you can talk about them and describe them to someone else.

If I told you my wife, who I love more than anyone else in the world, was a 5-foot-10 blonde who was really gifted in technology, with multiple degrees from MIT, and that we met while she was working for NASA in Huntsville helping design rockets, you’d be rightfully impressed.

But if you met her, you’d see she’s 5-foot-4 with dark hair, and while she’s one of the smartest people I know, she doesn’t have multiple degrees and never attended MIT, nor did she ever work for NASA (we actually met at a mall).

If you got to know her, you’d still be impressed. I continue to be impressed by her.

But if you heard that first description of her then met her, you’d think to yourself, “Does he even know this person he’s calling his wife?” Based on my inability to describe her, you’d have every reason to wonder if I knew her at all, and every right to seriously question my profession of love for her.

Just like if you heard people talking about all the movies I was in, or of my playing for the Boston Celtics, you’d assume (correctly) that they didn’t really know me, that I was nothing like the person they were describing.

Sometimes it’s like that with God.

You hear people talking about God, about what He wants or does or expects and how He would want us to act in a given situation, and think, “How well does that person really know God?”

Knowing God should lead us to a deeper knowledge of Him, just like having known the woman who is my wife for over 40 years has given me a greater knowledge of her. I love her, and I am constantly learning more about her, and the more I know the deeper my love for her becomes. That’s how it should be with God; knowing Him means developing a relationship with Him, wanting to know all I can about Him. And if someone asks me about God, I want to be able to demonstrate that I know Him.

Paul says this in his letter to the Colossians, praying that the Christians in that church “may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him.”

We cannot be faithful followers of God if we don’t know him. Oh, we can say we are followers, that we’re Christians, but it’s kind of like my saying I was in all those horror and sci-fi movies: I may look like I was in the movie, and I might can fool you into believing it for a while, but it doesn’t take long to find out the truth.

Pastor Dr. Bruce Milne said, “Every Christian is a theologian.” What he means, I believe, is that theology is the science of God, or theology is the knowledge of God which emerges from an acquaintance with God, brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit and instructed by the pages of Holy Scripture. So, it is impossible to be a believer—to be a Christian—without being someone who has a knowledge of God and who recognizes that that knowledge of God is something which is to be deepening all the time.

Jesus taught that “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

The key to truly knowing God is found in what God has revealed about Himself in the Bible. He wants to be known. It says in Acts (17:27), “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”

It’s our responsibility to read God’s word, and not just rely on second-hand accounts or Sunday sermons. Romans 10:17 says faith comes from hearing. We can’t properly respond to God unless we know what God’s expectation is. Jesus says if you hold to my teaching, then you really are my disciples. But you have to know what Jesus taught.

J.I. Packer, in his classic book, Knowing God, said “We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”

Another great preacher, John Piper, said it this way: “Jesus said in the Gospel of John 18:37, ‘For this purpose … I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth.’ Then in John 14:6 he said, ‘I am … the truth …. No one comes to [God] except through me.’ Then in John 8:19 he said, ‘If you knew me, you would know [God].’ You’d know who he is. Why? Because he said in John 10:30, ‘I and the Father are one.’”

You can say anything you want about God, and maybe even believe that what you think is true - just like those poor mistaken people who are convinced I was in any number of movies, or I played in the NBA (I wish!).

There was a time when I read all the Carlos Castaneda books, which were big way back in the 1960s and ‘70s. These were not Christian books or even about God. But Castaneda wrote something I have never forgotten: “Knowledge is power? No! Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?”

If we want to know Jesus’ teaching with a goal of becoming disciples then we have to read. There is an element of intellectual pursuit to understand who Jesus is.

Knowing God is the most important pursuit of our lives.

Loving yourself

 Years ago, in my previous life as a sportswriter, I was listening to a university president talk about a coach that he’d decided not to fire despite the coach being caught in an extra-marital affair with a subordinate employee in the athletic office.

This was years ago, before the “Me Too” movement and the cancel culture. These days there wouldn’t be much hesitation in firing that coach, and justifiably so.

But back in those days, sometimes being successful – winning games – covered a multitude of sins.

The president’s resume listed him as being a Presbyterian minister. At one point, in a scrum with reporters, he said his reason for retaining this coach was, “I believe men are basically good.”

I said, “As a Presbyterian, I would think you’re a Calvinist. What about the total depravity of man?”

He ignored my question, perhaps rightfully so. This wasn’t the place for a theological discussion. But a couple of the reporters who were there with me later told me they thought it was a great comeback.

The “total depravity of man” is a solid theological concept, but I wonder if it’s not often misunderstood.

The idea, I think, is an acknowledgement that the Bible teaches that as a result of the fall of man (Genesis 3:6, the whole eating of the fruit thing) every part of man has been corrupted by sin, often referred to as our “sin nature.” This corrupts every area of our being, rendering living a sinless life impossible. Isaiah 64:6 says, in part, “…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” before a holy God.

Many years ago, there was a particular NFL quarterback who fell victim to multiple gambling issues, which plagued him for years. Eventually he wound up doing jail time. At some point, he was told he was medically diagnosed as having a gambling addiction, that it was a sickness. I remember an interview he did where, nearly in tears, he said something like, “Thank God! I’m sick. I have an addiction. All these years I thought I was just a screw-up!”

The bad news is, he is a screw-up. We all are. We all have an addiction – to ourselves. And it can be overcome, by God’s Grace. But we can’t blame it on being “sick;” it’s our sin nature.

Mother Teresa was a respected Catholic nun who dedicated most of her life to working with the “undesirables” of India, the poorest of the poor. She didn’t do that because they were the worst of the worst, lost more than anyone else. Mother Teresa once said she went to the poor because that was her calling, but that she saw the same loneliness, the same poverty, the same desperation in the rich. “The world is suffering much,’’ she said, “because of this terrible disease- not of leprosy, not of tuberculosis, not even of hunger – but of that feeling of wanting to be wanted, to be loved, to be somebody to somebody.”

Or, as Jesus said, “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” (Revelation 3:17)

I fully agree with fallen man having a sin nature. But I wonder if we forget we were not created to be evil, sinful people. Humans were created to be good. That was God’s original intent for our lives.

We need to remember that God created mankind in His Own Image. Adam and Eve were more like God than anything else He created. I believe that in the original plan, humans would live forever, just as God exists forever. He had a purpose for humans, and all the people that came after the originals were created for a purpose, too.

That’s important, because Jesus said the second greatest commandment is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, if you don’t see yourself as lovable – if you don’t see yourself the way God created you to be - it becomes incredibly difficult to love your neighbor.

I wonder if we only love others to the extent that we love ourselves. I read one commentator who said Jesus’ second greatest command might be better understood by adding “You will” to it: “You will love your neighbor as yourself.” The feelings you have toward yourself will inevitably be projected upon others.

Now, be careful here. You do not love yourself by telling yourself how great you are, by considering yourself better than other people. That is not what humans were created to do any more than they were created to sin. Pride is a sin.

Humans were created to be in a relationship with God, but ultimately God wants us to be like Jesus. And Paul tells us in Philippians that we should have the same mindset as Jesus “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8).

If that’s my example, how can I think highly of myself? It’s easy, as a man in particular, to think being a man gives me certain rights. The society we live in says it’s all about `me,’ look at `me,’ don’t disrespect `me.’ Instead, Jesus, though he was equal with God (think of what that means, to be equal with God!), did not see that equality as something to be grasped (held on to for dear life), but willingly gave it up to become a man (actually, a helpless baby) and took on the form of a servant (the most powerful force in the universe took the abuse of the beings he created in order to save them).

So how do we know if we love ourselves? We’ll live lives that are characterized by being happy and thankful, by seeking to serve other people; lives that are not consumed with “self,” seeking what we believe will make us happy.

We live lives of joy, of gratitude, rather than being stressed or insecure or angry or in denial. We learn that we are loved by God, created for His good pleasure. We are to be what most people are not: happy, and full of life. Jesus made it possible for us to have a “full measure of (His) joy” (John 17:13). We embrace that.

If we’re not filled with joy, then chances are we’re sapping it from those around us.

The tough part of the Christian life is we’re two people. The Apostle Paul speaks of the “old self” in Romans (6:6) and of the “new creation” in 2 Corinthians (5:17). In a sense, we are no longer “homo sapiens” but have become “homo fideus” – Latin for “men of good faith.”

Through Christ we are redeemed, washed, born again, made pure and holy. This is who we are. Through faith we are made holy. We choose to deliberately focus on the new creature rather than the old. And we choose to see the good in people, the image of God, because we have come to understand it in ourselves.

If I can learn to see myself as God sees me, with lovingkindness, then I will see everyone else the same way.

Let go and let dog

A blind man is standing on the corner with his dog. The dog hikes his leg and pees on the blind man’s leg. The blind man reaches into his pocket, pulls out a dog treat, and holds it out for the dog.

Another man, watching all this, says, “Wow. That dog just peed on your leg, and you’re petting him and giving him a treat. You must really love that dog!”

To which the blind man replied, “Actually, I’m just making sure which end is his head so I can kick him in the butt!’’

There’s another story of the blind man who walks into the department store with his seeing eye dog. He pulls the lease tight, then starts spinning the dog around and around in circles. A clerk in the store sees this and runs over to the blind man and says, “Can I help you with something?”

“No,’’ says the blind man. “I’m just looking around.”

An Irishman is out walking his wife’s poodle. He buddy comes up and says, “You need to get down to the pub, they’re giving away free pints of Guinness!” The man hurries down to the pub with the poodle, but the doorman says, “We don’t allow dogs in here.”

The man, thinking quickly, says, “I’m blind, and this is my seeing eye dog.”

The doorman says, “No. Seeing eye dogs are German Shepards or Golden Retrievers, big dogs.”

The man says, “Oh! What did they give me?”

***

You’ve heard the old joke about the dyslexic atheist who didn’t believe in dog?

I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said, “Let go and let God.” It occurred to me that, like a lot of similar bumper stickers, that sounds nice. I get what they’re saying. But “letting God” can be really difficult, particularly for people who have been raised to be self-sufficient and that we should never have to depend on anybody for anything.

And that brought me to a blind man with a seeing eye dog. I apologize for the jokes, but here is where I wanted to go:

What the blind man with a seeing eye dog is really doing is “letting go and letting dog.”

(See what I did there?)

I have no idea how hard it must be for a blind person to get a dog and learn to absolutely put their trust in an animal. I have watched folks working with blind people, training them on how to handle and trust their seeing eye dog, walking around downtown, across busy intersections and into restaurants and stores. I am amazed at how smart these dogs are. And I’m sure blind people who are getting seeing eye dogs are amazed as well.

But knowing how smart and well-trained these dogs are and actually putting your complete trust – your very life – in one of them takes a level of trust that is hard for me to imagine.

I have read that the hardest part of learning to trust a seeing eye dog is letting go of control and trusting the dog’s instincts. Seeing eye dogs are highly trained to work as a team, but they are also independent animals with their own sense of safety. Still, you have to be willing to follow the dog’s lead, no matter what you may hear or feel.

This means that even when you’ve learned the rules and commands, you must still be willing to let the dog take over. You can’t take away or second-guess the dog’s initiative. If the dog decides to stop or suddenly change direction, you have to trust that the dog knows what is best, that it’s protecting you. In particular, in a strange environment, the dog’s gut feeling about where to go and how to get there should certainly be more reliable than that of a blind person.

It occurs to me that learning to trust that seeing eye dog is, in some ways, like learning to “let go and let God.”

James 2:19 says, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” That verse has always given me pause. The suggestion is that believing there is a God is not enough. Satan himself knows there is a God.

The trick is to believe and then put your faith – trust your very life – in God. James also says, “Faith without works is dead.” I believe what James is saying is that it’s not enough just to believe there is a God; you have to put that belief into action in the real world, in the way you live your everyday life.

Sometimes we Christians can feel really pleased with ourselves because we believe in God. But do we believe enough to step out there – to go back to my blind man/seeing eye dog idea – when it sounds like we might be stepping in front of a bus? When you don’t know if that step is a four-inch curb or a 10-foot cliff? When you can feel the crowd of people around you going in one direction and your dog is taking you in another?

Faith tells us who we really are. Not just who we have faith in, but how we live out that faith. Sometimes our “rational” mind will tell us one thing, sorting through all the “facts,” the good and bad and possible outcomes of a given action, weighing this decision against that one, trying to figure out the right thing to do by deductive reasoning.

To use another “seeing” analogy, when I drive my car at night, I use my headlights. It’s still dark all around me. I can’t always see what’s on either side of the car or what might be behind me. Usually, I can’t really even see any further ahead than what my headlights expose. But there is enough illumination ahead for me to confidently go down the road I’m on – and usually at a high rate of speed.

The Apostle Paul says in his second letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 1:12), “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.”

Sometimes I think faith can only happen in complete humility. Sometimes if feels like I have to be willing to not ask questions and not expect answers, only have a willingness to go forward.

Jesus said, quoted in John 14:1, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”

Honestly, it takes time. At least for me it does. It has taken probably more time than it should have, more time than God would have liked, to get to the point where I can really “let go and let God.”

It feels like I have to make the decision almost daily to believe and not expect some big experience that justifies such faith, but to take the small daily steps of faith, the routine of everyday life, that lead to really “letting go and letting God.”

There is an old hymn we used to sing in the church I grew up in, “Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus.” The chorus goes:

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him,

How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er,

Jesus, Jesus, Precious Jesus!

O for grace to trust Him more.

Oh, for grace to trust Him more. Oh, to be able to fully and completely “let go and let God.”

When the blind man learns to trust his dog completely, how freeing that must be.

The Arc of History

 

I grew up in an era of political violence.

I was in second grade when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas and watched the coverage repeatedly on TV, because we only had three channels back then and it was a story that rightfully dominated every channel.

I remember Bobby Kennedy, the president’s brother who was running for president, being shot in 1968, the same year Martin Luther King was gunned down while in Memphis. And then there were the riots – the northern and west coast cities that were in flames, and the chants of “Burn, Baby, Burn.” There were the murders of Medgar Evers and Fred Hampton, and the three civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner – who were kidnapped and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. I watched images of police dogs on children marching in protest in Birmingham, of beatings and bus burnings and church bombings, and “Four Dead in Ohio,” when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine, during an anti-war protest. Huey Newton and Malcolm X and Che Guevara, Viet Nam war, and so much, much more.

During the Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots of a few years ago, a young lady I know said she didn’t think this country had ever been more divided. She hadn’t grown up in the period I did. And of course, there was the whole Civil War thing – a nation that was truly divided, a division that devolved into real, actual war.

I am sure that growing up in the 1960s affected me. I’m sure there are books and articles and scientific studies on the impact those events had on my generation. I don’t know what seeing those things did to me. But I know my parents lived through World War II and the Great Depression, and their parents through World War I, and their parents through the Civil War, and so on.

In writing this series called “God and Me,” I have intentionally tried to stay away from politics. And I’m not wanting to get to far into politics now.

Except to say, even with the political violence we’ve seen recently, the events in Minneapolis with ICE agents and assassination attempts on the life of President Trump and so many others, I know this country seems almost hopelessly divided.

Again.

But the point I want to make is this: as out of control as the world may seem, God remains in control.

I can’t see it. I don’t understand how it can be. I can’t really imagine how all of this is going to work to accomplish His will. But as Theodore Parker, a preacher from the 1850s, said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways… But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

You may be more familiar with that from Martin Luther King’s speech on the steps of the Alabama state capitol in 1965, shortened to just “The arc of moral justice is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Indeed, the arc of history is astounding. And if you believe, as I do, that God is the author of all history, then all events move toward accomplishing His end. And, as Joseph so famously said in Genesis 20, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

Sometimes it just becomes hard to understand how God could possibly get anything done with the people who are running this country – regardless of political party. It seems helplessly hopeless.

But then I go back to an Old Testament story, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem after the children of Israel had been captured and carried off to Babylon for 70 years. It’s an amazing story when you consider the political ramifications, and how different kings who did not believe in the God of the Israelites were used by God in a way that you’d have never believed if you didn’t see it – or, in this case, read about it.

The Israelites are captured in 586 BC by Nebuchadnezzar II, a Babylonian king, and dispersed throughout his empire. The Book of Daniel also tells the story of the eventual fall of the Babylonians, who are overrun by the Persians and Cyrus the Great in 539 BC.

In 538 Cyrus has this vision in the middle of the night to allow the Jews to return and build a temple for their God. There is no indication that Cyrus has converted and become a faithful follower of the God of Israel, but Ezra does record “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: 'The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah. Whoever among you belongs to His people, may his God be with him, and may he go to Jerusalem in Judah and build the house of the LORD, the God of Israel.'" So, there is some measure of respect for God by Cyrus, although the king doesn’t seem to identify himself as one of His followers.

Zerubbabel and Jeshua the high priest lead the first group of exiles back to Jerusalem around 538 BC to begin rebuilding the Temple. Cyrus dies, and we get the story of Nehemiah who is cupbearer to the new king, Artaxerxes, who allows a second wave of Israelites to return to begin rebuilding the city.

But the people who were already living in and around Jerusalem before these exiles return don’t like what they see happening, and they write a letter to Artaxerxes, saying this rebuilding is really to start a rebellion. Artaxerxes orders the building to be stopped. It looks like the plan to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem is dead.

The Jews decide to get back to building anyway, and the people who oppose them write yet another letter, this time to yet another king, Darius. This is the third king, and every step of the way back to Jerusalem has been start-stop, start-stop. This time there seems no way this return from exile can continue.

However, Darius (in Ezra 6) reads about this conflict going on in Jerusalem and tries to figure out where it all started. He goes back through the palace records, and discovers the original decree made by Cyrus authorizing the rebuilding of the temple. After reading what Cyrus said, Darius sends word to the enemies of the rebuilders and says “Let the work of this house of God alone. Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. Moreover, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of the house of the God. The cost is to be paid to these men in full without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from Beyond the River.” (Ezra 6).

Get this. The whole return from exile to Jerusalem started and stopped, and kept running into roadblocks with new kins over the Persian empire. The whole thing seemed like a pipe dream that just wasn’t in the cards, so to speak.

And yet here Darius not only gives his permission for the Jews to rebuild the temple, but actually PAYS for it! And it’s done in 516 BC, 70 years after the initial exile, exactly as Jeremiah predicted, based on what God told him.

None of these Persian kings seem to have become converts to Judaism, or followers of the God of Israel (Nebuchadnezzar II, who took the Jews into exile, was not Persian: the Persians under Cyrus overthrew the Babylonians).

It’s rather amazing, from a human perspective. You have these different leaders with different purposes with different beliefs, and yet in the end everything they do leads to the accomplishment of what God said would happen all along.

The point is that no matter who the king is, or in our case the president, God is still in control. The president – be it Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, pick a name – may not actually be followers of God, but they are doing exactly what God needs to have done to accomplish His purpose and plan.

I guess what I’m saying is that no matter how bad things can look, no matter how lost the world seems, no matter how corrupt you may think the leader of government is, God can use even those who don't fully know Him to accomplish His purposes.

There is one thing God tells his people to do when they find themselves in places where it seems they are not welcome. When the children of Israel were first captured and dispersed into exile, Jeremiah wrote “Pray for the peace, prosperity, and welfare of your city, for in its well-being your own well-being is connected.” (Jeremiah 29:7)

Paul, several times, tells us to pray for the leaders of government that rule over us, and remember he was talking about the emperors of the Roman Empire – not exactly nice guys.

That doesn’t mean we have to agree with everything our elected leaders do. We’re fortunate in this country to be able to protest, to vote, to be actively involved in changing government that we don’t like, as well as promoting what we feel is right. And we should do that.

But we don’t do it as people who are losing hope, or even basing our hope on the success of the government as we understand it. We do it knowing that God’s Will is being accomplished, even if we can’t possibly understand how.

Our response should harken back to another speech Dr. King gave, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the “I Have a Dream” speech.

He said, “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force….”

Regardless of how you feel about King’s politics or personal life, that part of his message, I believe, is Biblical.

As I said, I grew up in a period of violence in this country, a level of violence that rivals, if not surpasses, what we’re experiencing now.

I’m not saying who is right in this political divide, or who is wrong.

What I’m saying is, we need to remember that if you want to see God at work in this country, it starts with you. Not a political party, not the destruction of the other side, not by unflinching devotion to a leader, not the people who you disagree with.

You.

And me.

 

 

 

Glory Days

 

If I'm forgiven, I should refuse to remember. If only I could.

Glory Days.

I’m not a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. I appreciate his writing more than his music. He is one of those lyrical poets whose ideas express a commonality for many people. His words connect in a way that you hear and think, “That’s exactly how I feel.” That, to me, is the essence of good writing.

While his music doesn’t always connect with me, it’s hard not to like the song “Glory Days,” the story of some old friends who gather to reflect on the past. One guy remembers what it was like playing high school baseball; the next verse is the good-looking girl from high school who got married, had kids, separated, but loves remembering the “glory days.”

I have never been one to sit around talking about the old days, reminiscing about whatever “glory days” I may or may not have had.

That’s not to say I don’t reflect on earlier parts of my life, and the people and places and things I did. I find myself doing just that at the strangest times. The problem is, usually the memories are not very good.

I tend to dwell on the mistakes I made; the people I hurt or should have been better to. I get caught up thinking about situations I wish I had handled better, what I wish I had said.

The older I get, the more those failures are what haunts me. In the middle of the night, I’ll suddenly catch myself thinking about something I did or said years ago, something I can’t possibly change, something that suddenly haunts me – really haunts me. Suddenly my identity gets caught up in those things, and I think, “I’m a screw-up, a failure. I’ve messed up. I’ve damaged people.” There are things I just can’t fix. And in those moments, I really dislike myself.

Someone once asked, “If you could write a letter to your younger self, what would you say?” These days, I find myself thinking “I’d tell myself to take responsibility.” Not just for my actions, but for the actions of those around me that I could have influenced for the better, taken better responsibility for.

If all that sounds vague and yet vaguely ominous … well, I’m certainly not going to dwell on those things here.

Here’s why: I am learning about forgiveness.

Not just forgiving other people, although that’s important. But I have learned that after I recognize and confess what I did “back then,” I have to forgive myself, to let it go.

Now, “forgiving myself” has some theological implications. In reality, I can’t forgive myself. Only God can forgive me. All I can do is humble myself, confess my sin, and recognize that I am not the judge. To take on that role is to deny God.

So maybe what I’m really doing is not “forgiving” myself as much as I am “refusing to remember.” I can’t change the past. If I’ve acknowledged it - confessed it – and given it over to God, it’s no longer mine. As it says in Psalms 103:12, “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”

However, there are ramifications of my sins. It’s like a stone thrown into a pond. The stone disappears, but the ripples keep going. The aftermath may continue even through the original “transgression” is forgotten. And those ripples can stay with me.

That’s when I have to remind myself that I’ve confessed these things to God, that God has forgiven me. God surely gets tired of me asking forgiveness again for something He’s forgiven me for once and for all, way back when.

Paul kind of talks about this in Ephesians 4, when he tells the folks there who are struggling with who they used to be, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

I think Paul is saying, “Don’t go back. Your life has changed. Don’t get caught up in the past.”

What I’ve taken to doing when those out-of-nowhere, beat myself up moments come up, is say (and it might not be the best theology), “God, I gave this to you a long time ago. I don’t want this back. It’s on you.”

And maybe surprisingly, that works for me. Knowing I’ve given whatever I’ve done over to God, and if I really I believe He has dealt with it (I do), then I find myself able to change my thinking, clear my mind, and go on to something more - to use a Biblical phrase - “edifying.”

If we want to love like Jesus loved us, we have to forgive like Jesus forgave. I also think we have to be able to accept the forgiveness that Jesus offers.

Remember the story of David and Bathsheba? David sins, Bathsheba becomes pregnant, David arranges for Bathsheba’s husband to be killed in an attempt to hide his sin, the child is born and dies. There has to be a lot of regret there, a lot on David’s mind.

But David realizes that, ultimately, his sin was “against the Lord.” In says in 2 Samuel 12 that David confesses his sin against God, and the prophet Nathan – who earlier condemned David – responds, “The Lord also has put away your sin.”

And while that may seem too simple – “I confess!” “You’re forgiven!” – if you read Psalms 51 you realize David was indeed haunted by this sin. His repentance is heartfelt, serious. I don’t think he jotted down this Psalm in a few minutes and went on to the next thing. I have a feeling David struggled with this Psalm of Repentance.

True repentance is more complicated than I sometimes think. It’s a “grace of God.” True repentance means God is at work in my life, because by my nature I want to run from my sin, hide from it, blame it on someone else, cry “It’s not my fault.”

But back to the story in 2 Samuel. David says, “I have sinned.” Just three syllables. And Nathan says, “And God has put away your sin.”

How far? Micah 7:19 says, “You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.” As we have already read from Psalms 103, it is as far as the east is from the west. It’s gone.

Moses is another one. He killed a man, fled to the desert out of guilt. Then God calls him to go back, to free the Israelites. Moses gives a lot of excuses as to why he can’t do that, that he’d made mistakes in his past. And God says, essentially, “I know all about that and none of it matters any more. Your guilt is no longer the ultimate truth about you. You are what you are, but you are not yet what you will be. And I will be with you.”

Practically speaking, when it comes to those things I’ve done that haunt me, I have to remember I’ve confessed it, been forgiven, and commit to not doing it again. Those things no longer define me. (Oh, there is the part about, when possible, asking people for their forgiveness or even trying to make it right, but that’s another topic for another day).

From God’s perspective, it’s over. No reason for me to continue to beat myself up over it.

Which brings me back to Springsteen, and the last verse of “Glory Days.”

“… I hope when I get old, I don’t sit around thinking about it

But I probably will

Yeah, just sitting back

Trying to recapture a little of the glory

Well, the time slips away

Leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of

Glory days.”

Boring stories. That’s what these my past transgressions really are. And God has removed them, if I’ve truly repented.

Which makes every day that I realize I’m forgiven the real “glory days.”

By the way, I don’t think “The Boss” would mind my connecting his song to my faith journey. In his autobiography “Born to Run” Springsteen says, “As funny as it sounds, I have a “personal” relationship with Jesus. He remains one of my fathers, though as with my own father, I no longer believe in his godly power” and says about his music, “We all have our own ways of praying. I restricted my prayers to three minutes and a 45-rpm record…If you get it right, it has the power of prayer.”