CHRISTIANS AS COUNTER CULTURE

“I have strength for everything in the One who gives me power.”  This is how the Weymouth translation of Philippians 4:13 reads.  Pastor Scott Chamberlain spoke on this verse last weekend, and got me to thinking about “power.” It started as a thought but it soon became a question – on whom or what do I depend for power? A variety of answers flooded my thinking: Myself? Training?  Skills? Talents? Experience?  Charisma?  Savvy?  Personality? God? 

In our culture we glorify self-sufficiency.  Frank Sinatra’s song, “I Did It My Way,” is the unwritten but very real mantra of countless numbers of people.  Out of control egos have amazing ways to let it be known to others that it is “My way or the highway.”  Narcissism is everywhere.  Many people seem to really believe that the universe actually revolves around them.

On whom or what do we depend?  Truth is that in a very real way all of the above answers are correct at given times.  We are called to lose ourselves in the wonder that is God and to take to Him what is given us, and trust His faithfulness in everything.  In Christ we can trust ourselves, training, skills, talents, experience, charisma, savvy, and personality.  The question is whether or not we are in Christ, and just who controls who we are.   After all, God made us, and as Ethel Waters used to say, “God don’t make no junk.” 

Trouble arises when we begin to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (See Romans 12:3).  When we place ourselves at the center of the universe calling all the shots, directing the universe as to how to be present for us, or living with an exaggerated view of our self-importance, the road to ruin has been entered.  Slippery slopes are everywhere. 

Jesus brings a new and different way of us going about our lives, doing what we are called up on to do, and living lives that are beyond ourselves.  He calls us to pray and then to living out the implications of the prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9-10, NIV).  When people live in the ramifications of this prayer they testify, “I have strength for everything in the One who gives me power.” 

Having strength for everything.  What an interesting thought. It is a strength not founded on our own self-sufficiency but on another, Jesus, “the One who gives me power.”  As mentioned earlier our culture edifies self-sufficiency. Our heroes are those who started with nothing and made it big time.  We love underdog stories of those who shouldn’t have made it but did.  Sadly, this narrative seems to be the only narrative for some.  They don’t need God, they say.  God is for weak people.  God is for losers.  Winners have all it takes to make it big in the world, they say.  The mantra of those who would have nothing to do with God is, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul” (from “Invictus” by William Henley; 1849-1903). 

The ego of those who say they don’t need God is just another form of narcissism.  It is interesting to me that many people have a deep need to be head honcho.   If they aren’t given the appreciation they feel they deserve, they fume and fret.  They see themselves as the center around which everything revolves.  Periodically they find ways to let us all know that we need to adjust our lives to their ways and to tune our lives to the music of their lives.  It is a silly way to live but many people do find ways to live there.

In the ways and means of God an interesting reality unfolds.  While the human condition clamors to be like God, Jesus Christ

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 2:6-8, NIV)

While human beings want to be God, God becomes a man.  It is a complete role reversal.  We want to be God and we do all we can to make sure that the world gives us what we think we deserve.  God, on the other hand, steps out of His surroundings as God “made himself nothing…being made in human likeness…becoming obedient to death…on a cross.”

What kind of God would do that?  God’s don’t die on crosses.  People die on crosses.  God’s don’t die for others.  Others die for the gods.  Just what kind of God do we have in Jesus Christ?  We have a God, the One true God, who is raised up from the dead so powerfully and sovereignly and eternally that it is said, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”  Questions are asked, “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”  Proclamations are made, “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:54-56, NIV).

When Paul says of himself something he invites us to say, too, he says it on the basis of what he knows in Christ.  In a wonderful act of amazing grace we realize again that we are in the presence of God, God who loves us so fully and freely that His presence literally changes our lives.  “I have strength for everything in the One who gives me power.”  We realize there is only one God, and that we are not Him.  We realize that God invites us into His life where His power becomes the strength we need to live and move and have our being in this world. 

In his book, With God in The Crucible, Peter Storey who pastored for years in South Africa, during the days of apartheid, and who is now Professor Emeritus at Duke University has a wonderful message entitled, Let God Be God!  In this message Storey writes,

…the Church must be the Church.  Jesus brought into being an entirely new, radically different community, offering people a citizenship transcending the frontiers of nations and contrasting powerfully with the norms around it.  The Church is not simply another institution in society, nor is it an extension of the traditions of any one nation….

The Church must be different from, and often over against and in contradiction to, the ways of all nations.  That alternative identity must be cherished and guarded as the most important characteristic of the Church.  The richest gift the Church can give the world is to be different from it.  It must be a constant irritant that the world doesn’t want, but cannot do without.” (Abington Press: Nashville, 2002)

Storey then shares a personal word of experiences in South Africa.  He writes,

           

When we were cast out of the corridors of power and disowned and vilified by the state, at first we saw it as a loss of influence.  But in that loss we found our souls and rediscovered our identity.  We were set free from the false patriotism that worships the nation’s idols.  We found instead a higher patriotism that determined to hold the nation accountable to the Kingdom of God and God’s justice before everything else.   

           

I embrace what Storey says, and I believe that he is on to something rooted and grounded in Scripture, and offers us a way of being the salt and light of Jesus in the world, in a way that is uniquely of Jesus.   In this world we can live and truthfully say, “I have strength for everything in the One who gives me power.”  We can live in the life of God.  We can be an alternative community in a world whose citizens don’t have much room for God.  We can be the people who pray, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your Name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Then we can live our lives reflecting what it means to pray such a prayer and to live for our God whose name is hallowed. 

            As I walked away from worship last Sunday in my heart I kept repeating. “Don’t focus on “I.” Don’t focus on “strength.”  Don’t focus on “power.”  Focus on “the One.”  Focus on Jesus.  He is “the way and the truth and and the life” (John 14:6).  Trust Him.  Follow Him.  

May our mantra be, “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 15:54-56).  

NANU, NANU

The first wall I hit in being a pastor of a local church was brutal.  Some of the folks simply did not like me, or anything about me.  To them I was a pastor bent on scattering the sheep and destroying the church.  To them I was young and wrong.  I didn’t see church the way they saw church so I was received as the evil one.  One of the dear saints, at least all her friends thought she was a saint, told me one day, “Why don’t you go where people think like you think.”  She was a strong believer in holiness and she had clout, so when she and E. F. Hutton spoke people listened. She could rip a person to shreds on Tuesday and then testify on Wednesday night about how wonderful the love of God was.  She and her little band of holy ones, sought to eliminate me and retake the church for Jesus.

It was then that I began to battle depression. It was tough being told “you are of the devil…you are destroying the church…you don’t belong here…you need to leave.”  It was tough knowing that there were some folks who talked among themselves, and with anyone who would listen, who believed I was an annoyance that needed to be removed, that I had no good thing to offer, and that I needed to be removed not only from their church but from being a pastor in any church.  Tougher than all these things, however, was the fact that the attitudes accompanying their beliefs were of anger and hostility and wrath.  The God they said they represented began to repulse me, and the love they said that lived in their hearts in the spirit of holiness began to disgust me. 

In time it all began to wear on me and I could feel the life being drained from me.  Living in a place where no matter what I did, it would not please these folks, I took it all personally, took it deep within, and opened the channels of depression, a condition that is with me even today and one to which I must constantly pay close attention. 

Interestingly enough what saved me during those early days (this would change in time, but it was a gift from God to me at the time) was humor from the life of an alien among us, Mork from Ork, aka, Robin Williams.  A young couple in our church was the owners of one of the early television recording devices and every week they recorded “Mork and Mendy,” and put each recording back to back on Videotapes.  Vonnie and I would go over to their home and watch the show back to back, laughing so hard I could hardly catch my breath at times.  It was salvation to my hurting heart.  Laughter got me through.  I should say that laughter and prayer and fellowship got me through, but at the core of it all, and please don’t be offended if you are profoundly spiritual, it was Mork from Ork that let me breath out the pain growing in me and breath in healing and strength and renewal.

Now, the man who so long ago touched my life in ways he never knew has taken his own life because of a depression over which he could not gain victory.  My heart hurts for a man I didn’t even know.  My heart hurts for a man who touched millions of lives and didn’t even know their names.  My heart hurts for a man who gave himself to help others but in the end could not help himself.

My heart hurts because Robin Williams represents hundreds, if not thousands, of other people who attempted to end their lives on the same day as he ended his, some succeeding and others failing in their attempt.

           

Depression is a wicked enemy, and an equal opportunity destroyer.  Regardless of age, race, gender, socio-economic standing, political viewpoint or religious persuasion, depression sits in the mind and heart of people eating away at the very fiber of their being.

           

People of faith through the ages have struggled with depression, men and women who have profoundly impacted their world for Christ and His kingdom.  In the Scriptures we have Abraham, Jonah, Job, Elijah, and Jeremiah, just to name a few.  St. John of the Cross, Charles Spurgeon, William Cowper, and Ruth Bell Graham, come to mind, also. 

In His Lectures to My Student, Charles Spurgeon wrote

Knowing by most painful experience what deep depression of spirit means, being visited therewith at seasons by no means few or far between, I thought it might be consolatory to some of my brethren if I gave my thoughts thereon…It is not necessary by quotations from the biographies of eminent ministers to prove that seasons of fearful prostration have fallen to the lot of most, if not all of them.

In 1881 Spurgeon wrote these powerful words, words to which many Christians in the twenty-first century out to give attention,

“I know that wise brethren say, ‘You should not give way to feelings of depression.’ If those who blame quite so furiously could once know what depression is, they would think it cruel to scatter blame where comfort is needed. There are experiences of the children of God which are full of spiritual darkness; and I am almost persuaded that those of God’s servants who have been most highly favoured have, nevertheless, suffered more times of darkness than others. (Charles Haddon Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1881, vol. 27, p. 1595 

William Cowper’s story is intriguing.  He struggled with depression and doubt. One night he decided to commit suicide by drowning himself. He called a cab and told the driver to take him to the Thames River. That night, though, a thick fog came down and prevented them from finding the river.  After driving around lost for a while, the cabby finally stopped and let Cowper out. To Cowper’s surprise, he found himself on his own doorstep. For the rest of his life he spoke of how God had sent the fog to keep him from killing himself.

It was William Cowper who gave us the words of a great hymn,

God moves in a mysterious way


His wonders to perform;


He plants His footsteps in the sea


And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines


Of never failing skill
He treasures up

His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;


The clouds ye so much dread


Are big with mercy and shall break


In blessings on your head.

  

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,


But trust Him for His grace;


Behind a frowning providence


He hides a smiling face.

            All across the Internet, since Robin Williams took his life, people have taken to their pulpits and pontificated their understanding of depression.  Many of those people have been Christians.  Many of those Christians don’t know what they’re talking about.  In a moment when followers of Jesus should be “quick to listen [and] slow to speak” (James 1:19), some have chosen to disregard the words of the apostle Paul, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3 NASB).

            It is no time to point fingers or judge hearts and minds and conditions.  It is time to live out the meaning of Jesus’ words, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28, NASB).  It is time to embrace people who are hurting, people who may not understand God as we understand God in Jesus.  It is no time to pretend that Christians are somehow inoculated against the reality of living in a broken world.  It is time to live out the meaning of having been embraced by a love that will not let us go but who loves us so much that in Jesus “He emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race” (Charles Wesley, 1738).  It is time to live out the meaning that God has entered into human history, into the story of our lives, in fact, and brings His own story, a story of healing and restoration and hope. 

    

        At the time of my story shared earlier I was young.  Today, I am old, at the other end of ministry for Christ, knowing that I have more days behind me than I have before me.  What a great journey it has been.  When I was young and trying to sort out people and thinking and ideas, and faced the reality of depression, I hated it.  I hated what I was going through and I hated the awful sense of loneliness and aloneness and exile.  Today, I wouldn’t change my story at all. 

           God was, is, and will be in my story.  In the past, when I could not see Him, He was there.  Today when I cannot see Him, He is here.  Tomorrow, which I cannot yet fathom, He will be there.  What I have suffered has been baptized in God’s grace, and has enabled me to be present with people in ways I could never be present had I not suffered in my own life.  In learning how to come to Jesus, even though the learning took with it great pain and discomfort and bewilderment, I have learned that God is faithful.  When I thought the pain was wasted, God took it to His heart, redeemed it, and took my life, broken though it was, and shaped and formed it to be a witness of His amazing grace.  It is a broken and wounded witness, mind you, but it is a witness because Jesus has taken me to Himself, breathed His breath into me, and, by a grace I do not deserve, filled me with His Holy Spirit.

           I have not arrived and, as Robert Frost wrote, I have “miles to go before I sleep.” I face today and tomorrow because of an embraced pain that was my story.  It was pain embraced by God and, at the time, I didn’t know it.  It didn’t matter, though, because God knew it.  And, because of my story God has invited me to live for and in Him, as a friend to others.  My weakness is the place where God draws near and manifests the incarnational hope of mercy, grace, healing, and restoration.  My weakness, though with me everyday, is not Lord of my life.  Jesus is Lord, and in Him each moment is stamped by the One who so long ago said, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness” (Jeremiah 31:3, NASB)

    

        If you know someone who struggles with depression don’t write him or her off.  Draw near to them and be a model of hope.  Don’t judge and oppress them further by laying upon them guilt for daring not to have their lives together.  We live in a world marred by sin and brokenness of a thousand kinds.  Ours is not to play God in the brokenness but to be a fragrant aroma of Christ there.  Never let it be forgotten that Jesus “gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2, NASB). 

  

          Let it always be remembered, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:19).  In this light there ought to be very little condemning, if any, and a profound remembering that “God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:17).   

           If you are struggling with depression or know someone who is, don’t judge them.  Embrace them in a spirit of reconciliation.  Love them as Jesus has loved you.  Cut them slack as Jesus has cut you a lot of slack.  Show them they are loved, that they, too, are being drawn to life by God’s lovingkindness. 

           Today a man who helped me through a dark night of my soul could not help himself through a dark night of his own soul.  So, I grieve.  I grieve the passing of a man I didn’t even know.  I grieve that one so gifted could live in a deep pain from which he could not find deliverance.  I grieve that there is more room in our broken world for physical illness than there is for mental illness.  I grieve that we live in a world where it is easier to judge than to embrace.    

And, I pray. I pray that God’s grace is bigger than my ability to understand it all. I pray that God’s Church will “be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger” (James 1:19, NASB).  I pray that people who name the name of Jesus will hear and follow the words of Scripture, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.  Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).  

The great and well-known reformer, Martin Luther, struggled with depression, great depression.  We don’t know that he was ever delivered from the darkness but we do know that in the darkness He opened up his heart to God, and that God mightily used him to ignite the church into a new way of being.  It was Martin Luther who gave these words to the Church.  Make them your words.

“Feelings come and feelings go,


And feelings are deceiving;


My warrant is the Word of God--


Naught else is worth believing.



Though all my heart should feel condemned


For want of some sweet token,


There is One greater than my heart


Whose Word cannot be broken.



I'll trust in God's unchanging Word


Till soul and body sever,


For, though all things shall pass away,


HIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER!”

God bless you all, and “Nanu, Nanu.”

CARPE DIEM

Once upon a time there was a young guy who constantly said to himself, “One of these days when….” He had completed the sentence with so many thoughts over the years it was hard to remember them all.  Ironically, it didn’t really matter, though, because the ship seemed never to come in and the thoughts were left dangling.   

He’s wasn’t dead, mind you; just caught in a loop called, “One-of-these-days-when.”  It’s a vicious loop, really; an unending circle so rooted in “when,” that it is a fatiguing, ongoing, and never-ending cycle of unrealized hopes, frustrated plans, and aborted possibilities.

And then one day the future became the present and the young guy was old.  One-of-these-days became a footnote to a story that began with, “Once upon a time.”  He was young and then he was old and he wondered about what had actually happened in the in-between times.  Where did the time go?  How could it have passed so fast?  How did he get from there to here?  What was his story?  Did he, in fact, have a story? 

It was all such a blur now but he knew that the blur was actually comprised of very real moments and events and people and stories.  In the moments there was no blur, just very real life in a very real world.  What was now a blur was, in the moments, filled with laughter and tears and successes and failures and friends and enemies and learning and unlearning.  There was food and drink and appointments and tests and decisions and a thousand other things and places and encounters and ups and downs; there was life.  But, now it was a blur.  It was decades of life that now became known as “Once upon a time.” 

Once in a while, however, a few and very blessed, people come to themselves and see themselves as recipients of great grace.  Why it took so long to get there is a mystery.  But even mysteries can be celebrated. 

Some times when others might think a story is over and conclude that there never really was a story at all, one lone person gets a gift and sees that what once was, is only a prelude to a miracle of life so powerful that it actually shakes the foundation of a person’s soul, and they wake up.  They wake up – alive – hopeful – still breathing – still dreaming.  Only this time, because of the blur, they embrace new laughter and tears and successes and failures and friends and enemies and learning and unlearning and food and drink and appointments and tests and decisions and a thousand other things and places and encounters and ups and downs with a hallelujah.  It is a broken hallelujah, mind you, but it is a hallelujah. 

Once in a while someone caught in a loop breaks free and catapults out of the loop with such force that when they land they are bruised and broken and bleeding and fatigued.  They may even limp for the rest of their lives.  Yet, the breaking free was so powerful and creative that the bruising and brokenness and bleeding and fatigue become signs of the miracle, a miracle they would not exchange for anything.  They were dead and now they live.  They were pawns caught up in a vicious loop but now they are alive in a new story, a story that trumps the past and by which they enter into the future knowing there are still wonders to behold, stories to write, lives to love, people to embrace, mysteries to unravel.    

Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  The young guy who was now old knew it well.  Some times before we can know our story we must look backwards.  Some times when we are in the moment we forget to live the moment.  It is in looking backwards that we really see the moment and what it was or wasn’t about.  Some people seem never to look back and see.  Others take their stories, the good, the bad, the highs and lows, the victories and failures, and use them as prologue to the future.  More than this, though, they take their story and see it as a way to live into the future.  They become more intentional and thoughtful knowing that even this present moment if not embraced can simply become a “once-upon-a-time.” 

Awaken by grace, a thousand times the young guy who was now old said to himself, “Even at this late date my mantra shall be Carpe diem – Seize the day! Even at this late date it is Forward Still for me. Even at this late date I take what is given to me and I give it to God who has made this moment possible. Even at this late date, ‘My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever’ (Psalm 73:26). Even at this late date, ‘Give me Jesus. You can have all this world, but give me Jesus.’” (by Moses Hogan, published by Lyrics © Hal Leonard Corporation).

Once upon a time there was an old guy who crashed into God one day and the impact was so great that it shook the foundation of his life.  Stunned, he rose up, staggered unsteadily forward, only to recognize that behind him and beside him and before him and underneath him and over him and in him there was God.  Then he got a glimpse of something so powerful it steadied his stagger, balanced his steps, energized his life, and convinced him that grace was everywhere.  God whispered into his ear, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1, NIV).

           

The Most High was leading him, and that was enough.   It changed his way of thinking, of being, of acting, of living.  It swept him up into a story bigger than his story.  It swept him up out of the yesterdays and the “one-of-these-days-when” and into the infinite possibilities of God who is the Almighty.  The Almighty Most High was with him. 

Carpe diem!