Ob-stack-uhls

What are the major obstacles to your spiritual growth? Have you ever thought about that question? Have you ever tried to name those obstacles in very specific terms? It's important to know what, exactly, is keeping you from reaching the next level of character and maturity. Naming your obstacles is the most important step in overcoming them.

I tried this exercise the other night. I wanted to brutally honest with myself because I'm tired of not advancing to the next level. I'm tired of dealing with the same crap every day. And I know that if I don't define those obstacles in crystal clear terms--if I don't see them with clear eyes then they'll continue to impede my path. These are some of the major obstacles in my spiritual growth:

• I want everything handed to me. I want to be given a trust and then prove that I'm trustworthy. I want someone to take a chance on me but I'm unwilling to take risks myself.
• I'm afraid of not having the answer, of failing, of looking stupid, of not living up to my name, of not being able to provide for my family. I'm afraid that I don't have what it takes.
• I don't have the endurance or strength to persevere through difficult trials with a godly attitude.
• I rely too much on my gifts for success and don't put in the appropriate amount of effort.
• I hesitate to initiate and engage with others.

I came up with 12, and I'll spare you the self-flaggelation. But it's really not an exercise in defeatism or self-deprecation. It's an exercise in truth-telling. If you don't know the truth about yourself then you can never be the person God has created you to be. 

Moving to the next level is not simply about identifying obstacles. It's also about identifying the way forward. It's about naming those character qualities that you presently lack but need in order to more fully become the person God intends for you to be.

My obstacles can be summed up with the acronym FLEW. (I know, I hate acronyms, too.) Fear. Laziness. Entitlement. Weakness. So, naturally, I had to come up with an acronym to show me the way forward: CHALDI. (Take that bit of irony, O Urge To Create Acronyms! See, it's not even a real word!) Courage. Humility. Agape Love. Discipline. Initiative. 

These five strengths of character are what I need in order to run with the horses. I need courage, humility, agape love, discipline and initiative in order to be the man God has created me to be. I need to know what my obstacles are, and where they pop up during my day. So what are the major obstacles to your spiritual growth? And what do you need in order to go to the next level of maturity and character?

Seeds & Shadows

How should Christians engage with culture? This is the question that is driving our discussion in the LOST class that I’m teaching (moderating, really) at church. Should we disengage from the nonChristian culture and create our own subculture? Should we fully assimilate into the culture and uncritically make use of new media and art? Should we create a sanctified, copycat version of every hip trend that becomes the latest flavor-of-the-week?

These are vital questions, particularly at a moment in history when Christians are said to be engaged in a Culture War with Secularism on the one hand and embracing a new breed of Hipster Christianity on the other. But did Jesus call us into a war with Secularism? Did he call us to have a faith that is cool and ironic? Maybe he did, but I think there’s a better way.

C.S. Lewis thought of the story of Christianity as the fulfillment of all the great mythologies of paganism. It is where religion has become full grown, he said. Where the myth has become incarnate. If this is true, then all the myths of pagan cultures are seeds and shadows of the gospel, planted there by God himself to provide a way for that culture to understand and to testify to our own culture that his story is the great enfleshment of all pagan myth.

And if that is true, then it is certainly possible that God is still planting seeds within pagan and secular cultures today. Wherever the gospel has not been preached, God is haunting the dreams of the artists and stirring the minds of the philosophers. And if that is true, then Christians should not take an antagonistic stance against culture, but rather engage with the culture redemptively. Our eyes must be open to see the seeds and shadows of the gospel in our culture because it is there that God is about his work of salvation.

This is precisely what I see happening with LOST. Of all the crap on television these days, LOST stands out as a thoughtful examination of what it means to be human, to find forgiveness, and to answer the call to self-sacrifice. It is high-art in a medium that tends to produce low-art and non-art en masse. It’s in places like LOST that Christians can find the seeds and shadows of the gospel for a secular culture, if only we can learn to stop condemning the culture and learn to engage with it redemptively.

Jesus & Culture: A LOST Class

As a Sunday School teacher (for lack of a better term), I've wanted to teach two classes for quite some time now. First, I've wanted to teach a class on Culture, particularly how Christians ought to engage with Culture. Second, I've wanted to do something with LOST, because there are all kinds of spiritual themes in the show that would be interesting to flesh out in the light of our faith. Well, last Sunday we began the convergence of these two desires of mine in a class called LOST, Spirituality and Culture. We're taking a look at the spiritual themes of LOST and how Christians should engage with Culture, using LOST as the primary lens.

The first session went really well, I thought. There was a lot of discussion about the show (of course!) and how we, as both Christians and fans of the show, interact with it on a faith-level. The question of Jesus & Culture is an extremely important one, and it gets defined in various ways by various groups of Christians. (See also H. Richard Niebuhr's classic book Christ & Culture.) At one extreme you have Christians who take the stance that Jesus is against everything in Culture, which means no TV, no film, and no music. (Or at least, no secular versions of all this.) On the other end of the spectrum you have Postmoderns who think that Jesus (and the Bible) are just another voice at the table, a mere product of Culture.

My hope is that we can find a middle ground where Jesus is redeeming Culture, where we can find spiritual value in the art, film, music, etc. of the unbelieving world. This is a place where we are not afraid of the media of Hollywood and the entertainment industry, but where we can view it critically and redemptively--where we come to a show like LOST not expecting a full gospel presentation, but rather an artful glimpse of the image of the gospel. If we can manage this perspective, not only will we no longer be so exasperating to a cynical and unbelieving world, but we'll find doors of connection and evangelism opening for us that never would have opened before. Who knows but that God would want to use a silly TV show like LOST to bring some people into his kingdom.

Book Review: Counterfeit Gods

That screaming sound you hear is me pulling the arrows from my soul after reading Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods. His incisive writing cuts straight to the heart of the issue of personal and corporate idolatry, those “counterfeit gods” we worship and serve rather than Jesus Christ. Keller tackles four of the most prominent American gods—love, money, success, and power—unveiling their worthlessness and the inevitability of disappointment we will experience when we worship them.

Each chapter reads like a sermon and concludes with a call to worship the true God and his son Jesus Christ. Through this repetition of structure, Keller calls his readers to abandon their false gods and worship and serve Jesus only. It is an effective literary and rhetorical technique (I can only assume that these chapters were originally written as sermons) in which the false gods are crushed and the true God is elevated to his rightful place on the throne of our hearts.

The real cunning of idolatry, he argues, is that we make idols of good things (or at least things that are morally neutral). Money, Sex, Power, and Success are not evil entities. They corrupt us not because they are inherently corrupting, but because we are inherently corruptible. “An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, ‘If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’” (xviii) Idols occupy a place in our hearts that belongs only to God.

Many of the books I have been reading lately have an academic bent. Counterfeit Gods, while being intellectually rigorous in its own right, is a book that all Christians (and nonChristians, for that matter) should read. It will help you unmask your idols, and to see the deeper needs of your soul that you’re trying to meet through your idolatry. Only when we remove our idols from the throne of our hearts will we be free to fully worship the true, living God who loves us and sent his Son to die for us.

You Are, But You're Not

As I read the Psalms, one of the things that strikes me is how the psalmists so frequently use the dichotomy of the righteous and the wicked, with themselves playing the part of the poor, helpless righteous. The wicked--the ones who are always rich and healthy, who have no problems in this life--are oppressing them or causing some horrible injustice and getting away with it.

The trouble for me is that I identify with both sides. I want to be the righteous person, but I know my heart too well to ignore the fact that, at some point everyday, I am that wicked person. So it can be difficult for me to fully click with the psalmist when he writes, for example, in 73:27-28:

Those who are far from you will perish;
     you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
     I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
     I will tell of all your deeds.

I know that I'm the unfaithful one. I know that I'm the wicked one. But, only because of Jesus, I am also--and more so--the righteous one. Not because Jesus makes me a better person (although I happen to think that he does, at least for me), but because my faithlessness is wrapped up in and covered over by his faithfulness. My unrighteousness disappears into his righteousness. My wickedness dissolves in the sea of his holiness.

You are the wicked one. You know the evil that you're capable of. You are, but in Christ, you're not. In Christ you are faithful because he is faithful. In Christ you are righteous because he is righteous. And I think it's good to live in this tension, knowing the evil you can so easily commit, but recognizing that all of your righteousness comes from, and is found in, Jesus Christ.