Prodigal Medic....

Don’t be fooled by me. Don’t be fooled by the face I wear for I wear a mask, a thousand masks, masks that I’m afraid to take off, and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that’s second nature with me, but don’t be fooled, for God’s sake don’t be fooled. I give you the impression that I’m secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water’s calm and I’m in command and that I need no one, but don’t believe me. My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever-concealing. Beneath lies no complacence. Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness. But I hide this. I don’t want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed. That’s why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope, and I know it. That is, if it’s followed by acceptance, if it’s followed by love. It’s the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self-built prison walls, from the barriers I so painstakingly erect. It’s the only thing that will assure me of what I can’t assure myself, that I’m really worth something. But I don’t tell you this. I don’t dare to, I’m afraid to. I’m afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be followed by love. I’m afraid you’ll think less of me, that you’ll laugh, and your laugh would kill me. I’m afraid that deep-down I’m nothing and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game, with a facade of assurance without and a trembling child within. So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks, and my life becomes a front. I tell you everything that’s really nothing, and nothing of what’s everything, of what’s crying within me. So when I’m going through my routine do not be fooled by what I’m saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I’m not saying, what I’d like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but what I can’t say.

I don’t like hiding. I don’t like playing superficial phony games. I want to stop playing them. I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me but you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to hold out your hand even when that’s the last thing I seem to want. Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead. Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you’re kind, and gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings–
very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that. I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator–an honest-to-God creator–
of the person that is me if you choose to. You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask, you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic, from my lonely prison, if you choose to. Please choose to.

Do not pass me by. It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach to me the blinder I may strike back. It’s irrational, but despite what the books say about man often I am irrational. I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls and in this lies my hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands but with gentle hands for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet.

~ Charles C. Finn

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I was reading a major Christian magazine the other day. They always have a great section about all the great books out there, classics and new selections that are of spiritual relevance. This is always the section that I flip to first. I was excited to see a good friend’s book in there a couple of issues ago. He was the first person to use the word “emergent” in a book title, in reference to the loose-knit group of people that The funny thing is (and I don’t remember the exact dates of it all), there was also a cover article about John Calvin. One of the things that I’ve been quite aware of is the flap/kafuffle/conflict over this emergent thing. The purpose of writing this is not to involve myself in said kafuffle. Just the other day, I also read something on a stranger’s website, about how they “didn’t want anything to do with anything emergent-ish… give me some good ol’ Calvinist reformed theology… some Macarthur, Piper, or Driscoll.”

These groups are pretty diametrically opposed to each other, at least on paper. Ideas on faith, grace, works, pre-destination, church structure, accountability of the church, how to teach, what to teach… The list is long enough to choke on. And I do. I look at it though and think of my friend’s job writing books about this, and about all the books and Celebri-pastors that are finding their way on to Larry King Live and in sound bytes all over the place talking about their way or how wrong the other way might be.

About a month and a half ago, my family hosted a couple from Houston. This couple whom we came to love dearly taught me a lot. About seven years ago, this guy had a tree fall across his yard. His friend said he knew a guy with a jeep who might be able to help him clear the tree. And this is how he met my Uncle Mike, the friend with the jeep. What an unlikely pair. An African-American lay pastor who works as a handyman to support his backyard tent ministry and yearly trips to Georgia to hold revival meetings. A white-looking Mexican biker with a short-man’s complex and enough demons to fill his own level of hell. Fast friends they became. It started with the tree. Then Fred would call Mike when he needed help on a job. And after each job, he’d call his wife, and they’d invite Mike to eat at their house. Uncle Mike was passionately anti-God. He’d seen too much. Been a part of too much. A life of violence, addiction and lawlessness had firmly set his heart against God. And yet Fred and Faye would always ask him to dinner, welcome him. Faye started making Saturday breakfasts for Mike. He’d show up faithfully and let these people slowly start melting his heart. They would offer encouragement, a place to sleep if he needed it, and always a warm smile and meal. Years passed. Nothing changed. Mike was arrested and in prison. Fred and Faye were the family he called when he got picked up, and when he got out.

Something changed. He got out and started going to the church meetings that Fred and Faye would hold in their backyard tent. Then he started serving meals to homeless people. He would get there early on Saturdays to set up chairs. After the meals he’d eat with the family, he’d sit in an easy chair in their living room and quietly read one of their Bibles. And one day, Faye asked him about his savior, and Mike knew that Jesus had redeemed him and that he knew in his heart that he was “saved.” (Again, don’t get hung up on the terminology or theology.)

The thing that Fred and Faye taught me was that a life of loving the people around you has powerful consequences. These lofty ideas that those of us that have the luxury to argue over rarely trickle down to the life of the broken-down biker gang type, like my Uncle Mike. And thank God for that. If he knew what we Christians were really like, he might have just ridden off into the sunset. Instead, when he died recently at a fairly early age, he set and example for the rest of my family of faith, a family that like him has rejected any and all forms of organized religion for years. What Mike related to, according to these people that knew him best, wasn’t these theological arguments. It was a homeless rabbi who loved him, who pissed off the teachers who “knew” their idea was right and rejected all things on the other side of the aisle, teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven was here and now and available and brought great peace. Maybe this is where we should be spending our time and energy and money.

I heard that “introspection is a luxury afforded to the wealthy.” I also heard from a friend that a pastor told his congregation last week that “if the kinds of people that Jesus was passionate about showed up here, most of you would leave.”

I think its time that we became more poor, the hurting, the needing and the lonely, thinking less about the “other team” and how wrong they are. Look at the person in class next to you. Look at the person sitting across the nurse’s station, making your coffee in the morning or bagging your groceries. Lets start leaving behind our luxury of arguing over such minutiae and start actually loving the people around us in tangible ways.

I know that I’ve met plenty of people that have been loved into heaven, and no one that has been argued there.

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I’ve had this thought rattling around in all the empty space inside my head for a while. (And trust me, there’s a lot of empty space in there!) I’ve been talking to friends recently about relationships. There are two of them that are in similar situations. For the sake of ease of writing, the summation/merging/anonymity of these two situations is this: Both have recently entered into new romantic relationships with guys that they both are significantly different from. Both of my friends are Jesus-followers. They both seek to make their relationship with God the driving force of their lives. Both of the guys that they are with are either not Jesus-followers, nominally spiritual at best, although both are open to the idea of Jesus as a philosophy or way to live. And the reason that this resonates so strongly with me is that I was in a similar situation years ago, although in the not to distant past. And because of the breakdown and discrepancy in faith and motivation of the heart, it was the most miserable and destructive relationship I’ve ever been in! I wish there was a way to share how “perfect” it was at the beginning, and how within a few months, I was happily wandering far from my Jesus and into the mouth of a personal hell that I’m still recovering from.

This all came out again in my head when I found some old Nooma videos. Nooma is a series by Rob Bell, a pastor from Michigan. They are somewhat cheesy little sermon-ettes, although his teaching is always amazing. In the second one he did, entitled “Flame” Rob talks about the differences in the Hebrew words for love. He talks about how there are three distinctly different words used to describe the love between man and woman. There is “raya” which translates best into “friend” or “companion.” There is “ahava” which is a love of the will, something deeper and far more significant than romantic love; it’s the love wanting to join your life to that of another. And there is “dode” or the explicit and sexual love.

Rob says something at the end of his video that struck me as so against the way we often view relationships. He says:

True sexuality is vast. It involves all of you. You have a body. But you also have soul and a spirit. And love is two people coming together and giving all of themselves to each other, forever.

I’ve heard from my friend how she was making out with this new guy, and she really didn’t want to and hated the experience. I’ve heard from my friend how instead of giving her butterflies (Should that even be something that we are really looking for? Are our hormones an accurate barometer for a potential partner?) the guy gave her anxiety attacks. This makes me so sad.

As more “dode” and more “raya” are expressed, they almost seem to have masked the need for “ahava.” This is the same pattern in both these relationships. And as I listened to the quote from Rob I just listed, I have to wonder: Can you really share all of you with someone who just doesn’t even know who or what all of you is? Can you expect that person to give all of themselves to you (I believe that if that person loves you, he/she will do that) without feeling like you’re actually left incomplete because their all will never match your all because of this huge Jesus that lives large in your heart? I believe this will create an unmatched and unfulfilled hole in this relationship that would leave any person wanting and desiring more.

I’ve thought about this issue of compatibility before, after my break-up and the reflection period that followed. There was such a deep sense of loss, and self-betrayal. I’ve heard so often in my life about the need to be “equally-yoked” and there is good reason for that, as I learned so painfully.

[A side note about being yoked: this has nothing to do with being well muscled. The term “yoke” also refers to an ancient Jewish concept about being under the teaching of a certain Rabbi. It means accepting that Rabbi’s teaching as your own and doing everything in your power to take the “yoke” of your Rabbi, to be like him. How can we ask this of someone who doesn’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God, resurrected? Is it fair to ask them to accept our yoke when it is so different than the yoke of one who has no Rabbi?]

Not surprisingly (and I don’t blame her for this either because she was being true to herself), the woman in my relationship grew less spiritual and less interested in Jesus as our relationship became more comfortable. It was her reverting to her baseline once the comfort level was present. It was easier for me to meet her at her level than it was for her to go through the work to open herself to the possibility that Jesus loved her and exploring that intellectually and emotionally. I just don’t think that the flames of ahava, raya and dode burn apart from each other and I realize that in disproportionate amounts, its easy to lose sight of what is most important: Jesus. I think this is just because we find ourselves getting a lot of “love” (or at least affection).

Rob was right. I’ll never be able to share all of me with someone who doesn’t love Jesus with all her heart, mind and strength. And I don’t care how intelligent, cute, sexy, gorgeous (or any other adjective you are), I’ll never chose to be attracted to you romantically or chose to love you romantically unless there is a love for my Savior deep in your heart as well. This has nothing to do with loving the world around me. This has nothing to do with being deeply invested with whoever God puts in my path, man or woman, and being as open and inviting to them as humanly possible, showing them as much grace and love as I’ve been shown. This has only to do with the foundations of the most sacred of relationships that we might be working towards entering: marriage. Maybe I’m just too old and have been around the block too many times to experiment any more, or maybe I’ve just learned what I’ve needed to. The sum of the lesson: I’d rather die alone than compromise on entering into a romantic relationship without both my significant other and I being able to go to church together, read the Bible, pray, read books, listen to sermons, love and serve the world around us and grow forever in faith and love for Jesus together.

I hope that these relationships go better than mine did. My only prayer is that they would not be led away from their Jesus like I was, and that maybe, these people will see Jesus in them and want that for themselves, and not just to impress these incredible women. I don’t normally share about my own life or failures either, and I just pray that my mistakes will offer inspiration to someone else to chose the one’s that they will love carefully and realize their own power in the situation.

I’ll close with Rob’s benediction from “Flame”:

May you honor the way that God created you.

May you have a profound sense of respect for the fact that you are a deeply spiritual and mysterious being, and love is ultimately a profoundly spiritual thing.

May you realize that the three flames are meant to burn together.

And may you discover the big flame.

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There is so much pressure right now. Pressure to succeed, pressure to heal, pressure to be someone that I am not always. I am struggling to find my own voice. My tendency is to compartmentalize, internalize and then file whatever is bothering me away in some distant vault in my head, leaving the memories there to explode at a later date, on some poor someone who triggers the same emotion. I have to fight this. I have to understand and realize and give myself permission to be myself, to be social when I want, to withdraw when I want and to not to feel guilty for any of it. I hope that the people around me understand this. I’m not sure that they will. I have this sneaking suspicion that they instead will manufacture all manner of reasons in their heads that I will be found guilty of “friendship treason” aka not sharing what I’m thinking, not giving proper reason or notice, or providing enough details. I was reading in a book the other day by Don Miller about how his friend described being in love. He was talking about how as close as he was to his wife, there was a place that she would never know. I think that in our current churchy/Christian culture, there is a tendency to want to know everything about another person. Sometimes though, the hiding place of a person’s heart and the relationship of working the inner workings of that heart in relation to God needs to be worked out, alone (not lonely), in quiet (not conversation) and in peace (not busyness).

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I was talking to a friend the other day about a broken relationship in their life. As I thought more and more about this, one thing they said really stuck in my mind. It was the thought that in so many ways, we are so afraid of disappointing those around us that hope for something in our lives that they would see as best for us. This might be in romantic relationships, parental expectations of their children, our own thoughts of career or educational goals and dreams. There are a myriad of what these expectations might be. Lord knows I have enough of them myself about myself and in doing so, have found myself highly disappointed or questioning my ability to hear God “speak.”

I wonder when it became en vogue to hear “God speak.” (By speak, I mean those that hear the tangible words spoken to them. I wonder if this is one of the trends of the church, such as how we express our relationships to Jesus. Is it “being moved by the Power of a Great Affliction”? Is it “having a personal relationship with Jesus”? Is it some other generational expression that in 100 years, fellow believers will look and laugh at our “outdated” expression of faith?) I understand that Jesus told us that we’d never be alone and that the Spirit of God came to be with us at Pentecost, but really, where does it say that God will answer us with direct guidance in any tangible way? I can only think of the verse:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in all things, with prayer and petition, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Does this really mean that God will speak to us and tell us what we want to hear or need to hear or how to dress for the day or what to think of to read or how to speak or anything like that??? I think that too often it would be easy to manipulate or create self-serving prophecy. At the same time, I can think in my life where I felt led to talk to a stranger, to share a meal with someone, or to sit with them and help them ease their pain.

I felt a similar sense to what my friend was sharing though in two distinct ways. I’ve felt for a long time that those that claim to hear God speak so directly and who are so vocal about how they have this connection with God have made me feel over and over (and I completely understand how unintentional it has been) that for some reason, I might be “less than” in my faith. There is a certain sense of pride that exists with this type of language. There was also the similar feeling of how some people cant seem to do much of anything if they don’t hear from God. Some seem to wait and wait, and I just feel that for me, there is a time and place to just trust that God might even trust me enough to allow me to make decisions or wear certain clothes or even fail on my own, because that is what is necessary for me to grow as an individual.

As I said before, I have been led to certain things by a silent urging in my heart to do something. I don’t hear words. I don’t see writing in the clouds. I know God spoke through a burning bush, through prophets, his Son, and even an ass. Maybe the way I’m wired, I hear less from the buring bush or the cloud of fire than I do from the asses in the world. Asses are my kind of people anyways… broken, beaten-down, lopsided.

My greatest fear is that in this expectation of hearing God speak is that these expectations of things working out in a certain way that there develops this weird type of god-inspired/christian dysfunctionality. What if instead of expecting things for people (relationships, living situations, education, profession, etc) we just let people live. My friend is legitimately worried to share how things are in their life right now with friends and family for fear of disappointing them. How understandable. I’ve been there. How sad, too.

I pray for my friend and I that we can both find the freedom to be honest, and that our friends will show us the grace we need by not placing expectations on us, but letting us work things out in our own lives. I’m not saying at all that I don’t value the advice of my friends. I know full-well that if I were left to my own devices just how destructive that would be. I just hope that their guidance or expression of how they each uniquely hear God leading them comes in gentleness and encouragement, and not fragile, detrimental and broken expectation or pride.

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I am constantly amazed at how God uses our brokenness to heal others. there is validation and redemption in this process. This summer, I listened intently to the “Life Signs” part of a week at Woodleaf. Typically, I avoid this. However, this last month, a dear and precious friend of mine was sharing her story. Listening to her as she shared her life as she was in high school, and in speaking more with her, I heard the brokenness and pain inflicted on her as she was growing up. For once, the story penetrated my heart. I’ve had friends share in this way before, but it has never touched me like this. At the same time, I heard other people, some that I’ve known for years, and others that I’ve just met share similar stories of pain, heartache and all the ways they tried to hide this darkness in their hearts. In fact, one of the stories very much paralleled my own. What I saw on the other side of this was the redemption of all of this pain that took place. It was always unlikely, always surprising. It always seemed unreal who would connect with which of the four speakers, and how God’s appointments to speak to high school kids was always fulfilled. As I spoke with my friend, I heard story after story of people seeing God in the lives of those who shared, and in many cases, the lives of everyone who served this summer at Woodleaf, and I’m sure who chose to live lives that demonstrate Jesus to the world through acts of love and service and meeting people in their own context and culture. I pray for more opportunities like this in my life, to deepen the relationships that I have with people who don’t believe in Jesus, and who are outside of the walls of our religious ghettos. I don’t want to miss these rich opportunities and in the in between time, I hope to always share stores with those that are living this in their own day to day lives and being deeply encouraged by them. I’m so thankful for friends that are willing to share these success stories, no matter how intense and in doing so, continue to allow me to work out my own salvation with wonder and amazement.

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One of the hardest things for me is the feeling of replacement… Like Woody in “Toy Story” there are times when I have felt that I have invested a lot into people. Given time, energy, heart and soul. There has often been a time to share these friendships with other people. This has actually always been a source of pride for me, that my friends and friendships would be compatible. I’ve thought that if I had all my friends gathered on an island together for a long period of time, we’d have a mind-blowing party, celebrating our lives and time together. There are also times though, when I fear that while everyone else would be partying and enjoying each other’s company, I would be the forgotten one in the corner, wishing that people remembered me. Is it that I am an outdated friend? I don’t think so. The failed, broken and insecure part of me feels that the bigger issue is more that I don’t have the qualities that make one person more attractive to another… whether it is intangible qualities like humor, mystery or conversational skill, or physical traits or characteristics or just that general vibe that someone else is worth spending more time with than me. Its something I’ve struggled with for a long time. I probably will for a while longer. I just pray that the lies are quieted through the right kind of spontaneous affirmation from friends who really care. Jesus, let me see me as you do. Amen.

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