D17 Part 1: From Unbelief to Belief in Every Area

A frantic man steps out of the buzzing crowd, his son in his arms, and the weariness of his son's affliction carved deep into his face. "Teacher! Here's my son. He can't talk. A spirit has possessed him - it thrashes him and pounds him into the ground. My son ... he ... foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth uncontrollably. And then he stiffens up as hard as a board. I've tried everything ... everything! I tried your disciples, and not even they could help." He didn't need to ask Jesus for anything - his utter helplessness was enough of a plea. Jesus steps forward, and the demon attacks the boy yet again, but for the last time.

9:21 Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 9:22 It has often thrown him into fire or water to destroy him. But if you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 9:23 Then Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you are able?’ All things are possible for the one who believes.” 9:24 Immediately the father of the boy cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

(Mark 9:21-24)

What an amazing admission! "I believe; help my unbelief!" I believe. I believe enough to bring my boy to your disciples. Even their failure doesn't deter me - I still believe you can have compassion and can help us. But I also don't believe. I hedge my request by asking "if you are able," because I don't yet fully believe you are. I don't really understand you, and I don't know all that it means for me if you actually pull this off. So, not only will you help us by saving my son, will you help me with my unbelief? Because you said anything is possible for those who believe.

Too often, we reduce following Jesus to a binary question, yes or no. Do you believe? Yes or no! Check one. How cruel would Jesus have been shove a note into this man's hand with only two checkboxes, yes or no, like the binary love letters we passed around in grade school. The man believes, but he doesn't believe. We believe, but we don't believe.

Yes, there is a singular moment when a person can pass from the kingdom of this world to the Kingdom of God, and that happens only through believing. But we don't pass so cleanly in binary fashion from belief to unbelief. We believe unto salvation, but even as we are born anew, we are not completely rid of unbelief. There remain areas of our lives where we continue in unbelief, sometimes for years.

I have received the irrevocable gift of eternal life (by grace through faith), but I still don't fully believe God in every area of life. For me, it's sometimes about my future. Sometimes, it's about taking a risk in the present, needing God to "show up," but not fully believing that He will. Sometimes, it's unbelief about where my true happiness will be found - in things or experiences, rather than in Christ alone. I believe! Help my unbelief!

"Discipleship is the process of moving from unbelief to belief in every area of your life in light of the Gospel." If we understand that the moment of salvation where we become "regenerate" (reborn) is an event of incomplete faith, but faith nonetheless, we can then see that the rest of our walk with Christ is the ongoing process of replacing every remaining area of unbelief with belief. My unbelief about my happiness or my future replaced by belief in the Gospel of Christ says about happiness and the future - that's me being discipled. In other words, becoming a more complete follower of Jesus. It's not "just believe Jesus more," but "believe Jesus in ways that I have been stuck in unbelief."

But remember, "discipleship" is not something that begins after salvation. Discipling someone can (and should!) happen before salvation. We see it in the pages of the Gospels, but also in our daily lives - those curious about Jesus, moving from ways of unbelief to belief in areas of their lives before they receive eternal life. Eventually, that faith intersects with God's sovereign election, and a person becomes regenerate. But he merely continues on, moving from unbelief to belief in more areas of life. Discipleship.

The Elders have been wrestling with a list we're calling "The Discipleship 17" - 17 truths about discipleship that cause us to dig deeper into what it means to follow Jesus and live life on mission. This truth of moving from unbelief to belief is the first of the "D17," a definition we pulled from a book by Cesar Kalinowski.

Spend a few moments pondering this definition. How does this truth affect what your life as a follower should be? How can you help one another move from unbelief to belief in various areas of light in light of the Gospel? How does this change how to raise your children? How does this help you interact with those who are unconvinced that Jesus is the Son of God? What would it mean for the areas of unbelief in your life were one by one replaced by belief?

Squeak

I really wanted to go to this particular conference this week - a new topic with a free book. But, I had scheduled a repairman to come to the house at that time, so I couldn't go. Whine. Just as I'm considering the hassle of rescheduling the repairman, the washer goes out, and it must be repaired as soon as possible, so I book another repairman to come at the same time as the first, since I'd be homebound anyway. Smart, but now I really can't go to the conference. Whine. Then, the first repairman calls and says that he must reschedule, so I could have scheduled the other repairman for another time and still have gone to the conference, but no - I outsmarted myself. Whine. Then the second repairman calls and says he must reschedule for later in the day. Great! Now I can go to the conference. As it turns out, the conference was really not all that beneficial after all. Whine.

I whine at times. You whine at times. Sometimes I whine because you whine. But whining is the behavior. What is the real activity of whining?

At the simplest level, whining is the noise we make when we don't get what we want, and so we squeak like a toy squeezed too hard. I want A, instead reality serves me B, squeak. But this is not compelling enough to explain whining. A lot of things don't go my way, and I don't always squeak about those.

Dig a little deeper and we see that whining betrays those moments when we don't get what we think we deserve. I want a latte, but I deserve good service when I order one, but then the barista is careless with my order. Squeak. Again, this explanation is true enough, but too shallow.

Burrowing one more layer down, whining is the cry of a self-described king not being treated as royalty. More than just want or deserve, my kingdom is the realm of what I control. I fancy my realm to be rather large and significant, and it includes many residents who must bear evidence of my control. One exposure of my faux royalty, and squeak.

Yet I find all three explanations still inadequate, because they are all focused on self. At its heart, whining is God-oriented. Whining is a protest that God is doing it wrong. Whining says all the wrong things about Him ... to Him:

1) "Your provision for me is inadequate. You gave me less than You should have. I can't possibly do as You please with this little provision."

2) "I don't believe this will serve a better purpose. I can handle a few inconveniences, but only when the reasons are small enough for me to understand so that I can clearly see the better purpose. You have not shown me the better purpose in ways I can understand or am willing to accept, and therefore Your actions are objectionable."

3) "My purposes exceed Yours. You may well have Your purposes, and I may well even accept that as an intellectual concept. But whatever Your purposes may be, mine are more important to me. So take back Your purposes and succumb to mine."

4) "This can't possibly be to adjust my attitude. You can't be doing this because I need some change in my thoughts, feelings, attitudes, actions, or priorities. There's no way you're that much of a loving parent that You would use discomfort or inconvenience to mold me into a more Christlike person. Therefore, give in to my demands."

The core of whining is profoundly theological. Our view of God and of how involved He is in our lives directly registers on the whinometer. The less I see His hand, the more a peg red on the scale.

Some adopt a "no whining" policy. Although the rest of us really appreciate that, this is just a less annoying form of bad theology in practice. The biblical antidote for whining is not zipping one's lip, but contentment. Contentment is accepting the unassailable, persistent goodness of God's head-to-toe involvement in my broken and sometimes uncomfortable life. I can be content because I never slip from His perfect and beneficent care, not even a little.

Challenging Images

My privilege this past week was to be one of the adult leaders for our youth group at Challenge. Challenge is a national youth conference for the Evangelical Free Church of America held every two years in different cities around the country. This year, we got to be the host city for 5400 youth and over 1000 leaders. (See #ChallengeKC on social media.) This little blog can in no way contain the breadth, depth, and value of all that happened.

One of the events at the conference was the Berlin Walk - a tour through the down-and-out "streets" of Berlin. It was an immersion experience to learn about the enormous problem of human trafficking that plagues the world, but is so focused in Germany, particularly in Berlin, that this great country is called the "Brothel of Europe." Trafficking is not just for sex, but also for labor and other forms of exploitation. The EFCA is ramping up an enormous effort in Berlin in collaboration with many other organizations to bring the reality of Jesus to the city, expressed in ways like dismantling human trafficking.

Most often trafficked are women and children, usually with false promises and dreams. It is a violation that is almost universally decried and battled by people from different countries, religions, ethnicities, and class. I believe the vilest offense is that these trafficked persons bear the image of God, and the very act of trafficking them is a violent attack on that image.

No animal should endure what these people endure, and therefore trafficking is horrendous. More than this, tho, these people are image bearers, and treating them as chattel is a loud lie that they are not - a kind of graffiti of the soul.

As we walked through these "streets" and learned, I watched our youth, also image bearers. Safe, untrafficked, properly fed, groomed, and clothed, listening, reading, and praying about defaced image bearers. They even learned how American teens' appetite for porn on their smartphones actually feeds the problem of trafficking in Berlin (and around the world). But still ... standing there, clean, loved, valued, safe image bearers at a conference to pour more light on what it means to live as image bearers, politely learning about other image bearers who have no one to remind them they, too, bear the image of God. Set in juxtaposition, my heart broke for both our youth and their counterparts in places like Berlin.

I applaud those who deny God and yet still fight trafficking. We care about the same thing. For my tribe, the reality of the image of God in others moves us to respect them, to demand justice for them, and to forsake ways in which we steal from their identity as image bearers.

Yet it's not just because the trafficked bear God's image, but because I, too, bear God's image. And our youth. I want to fight trafficking because they bear His image and because I bear His image. What else does an image bearer do in order to reflect that image than to fight for the oppressed image bearers?

The world conspires to tell us we don't bear that image - the image doesn't exist, God doesn't exist, you're just a more intelligent critter than average on this planet, and so on. The message of Jesus says you are an image bearer, and therefore valuable on His scale. My love for youth fostered even deeper, our love shared with those we served in our projects, and our growing love for the trafficked persons conspire to say that yes, indeed, the image of God is real in all of us.

Hippy Crates

Ahhhhhh!!! A chance to breathe out and relax. Lynne and I got to enjoy a little vacation last week, and it was certainly good to unwind, unplug, and untask. It took me five days before I started sleeping in later than I normally do. We headed to the Lake of the Ozarks and ate our way from north to south.

One gray afternoon, we went for a drive. Along the turns and hills, we passed a scene that I now regret not stopping, backtracking, and getting a picture. Two signs, side-by-side on the same post, pointing in opposite directions. Pointing to the east, a sign for Casa de Loco winery; pointing to the west, a sign for Highway AA. Winery this way, and AA that way. Go too often in one direction, and you're going to need to go the other direction for 12 Steps. (But don't drink and drive.) OK, so it's not that AA, but I still got a chuckle out of it.

But where in real life do we try to hold opposing, contradictory forces side-by-side with no sense of irony, as if they can coexist in our lives peacefully?

The Internet is an obvious example - too obvious. On the same screen, in two windows side-by-side, we can read great advice on keeping our marriages vital and at the same time degrade women to mere objects; we can read healthy Mediterranean diet recipes and track the progress of the pizza we ordered; we can read an online Bible about loving our neighbor and blog about how people who vote the other way are all morons; we can reconnect with old friends and waste hours removed from humanity without even changing URLs! This way to the winery, that way to AA, all on the same signpost.

We can't believe both.

More significantly, we do this in our relationships. We treat the ones we love most in ways we'd never be so rude treating total strangers. We say "I love you" most frequently to the people we most frequently take for granted. We tear down those we have been specifically chosen to build up. We crush those we are to raise, we put away those we are to honor, we serve emotional poison in cups we take turns washing. This way to the winery, that way to AA, all on the same signpost.

James 3:9 says this about the tongue: With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people made in God’s image.

We do this. We admit it. But we can't sustain it. We cannot forever hold eternal opposites in one hand. We will eventually let go of one of them ... or both. Let go now. Check your signposts to see those opposing signs with fresh eyes. It's hard to bless well with a cursing tongue.

The Value of a Jerk

What an annoying jerk!

Last evening, I was sitting in a Starbucks waiting to meet with one of the guys, reading my book. My nose was buried in a chapter describing how the primary attribute of any person is not comprised of his faults, but from the image of God that He has placed in each one of us. The image of God, the book claims, defines us and gives us an inherent value that no amount of negative characteristics can wipe out.

As if on cue to test the theory, the table behind me was promptly occupied by a man, a woman, and the woman's daughter. The man surpassed annoying in less than 10 seconds, and built on his accomplishment from there. I began to wonder if the chapter referred to every single human being except one.

He interrupted, he was loud, and he clearly didn't listen much to others. He spoke to the girl, who looked to be about 11, in a manner less mature than she responded with. He complained about the trouble he was having with the unemployment office because they "claimed" he resigned his previous job, as he then went on to describe how he left the job of his own accord rather than get fired. (At least he didn't resign.) As he worked on his $4.50 drink (paid for by the woman), he whined that because of the unemployment office, he could not afford to take the woman out to dinner. Which he then immediately followed with a suggestion to the girl that the two of them spend the entire next day at the pool working on their tans. When the woman and daughter left, he made sure that the girl kissed him. I think the rest of the people in the coffeehouse heard my alarm bells going off.

It was therefore particularly difficult to get through that chapter of the book and give it any credibility at all. The chapter described people worse than this yahoo, but they (though real) were mere characters on a page to me. This guy was fouling my air.

Is it really true that everyone has inherent value just because they bear the image of God? Does this guy? Forget the monsters of human history - I need to resolve this idea with this guy before I can accept it as true.

First, there is the false assumption that my list of character flaws, annoying ways, and sins is somehow more meritorious than his. I'm not annoying in his ways, so I must be more deserving of this inherent value than he is. Even if I would score more favorably on some universal annoyance scale, it is false to say that I therefore have more of the image of God than he.

Second, this inherent value comes from an external source (God), while our horrible, annoying characteristics come from an internal source. If the value is external, and if that external source is unchanging, then everyone must have the same inherent, high value, no matter how unpleasantly the internal source spoils the environment it occupies.

Third, if I in any way limit the reach of the inherent value we receive from God's image, then I limit the reach of grace. I have no such authority.

So, the challenge for me is how to appreciate that jerk's inherent value. At this point, it's not his issue, but mine. The reason I have trouble with this is internal to me, independent of him. It's because I have yet to fully embrace how effectively God's image brings inherent value to everyone who bears it. It's because I have my standards that people must meet before I value them, placing a Law on them of my own device.

The chapter wasn't wrong. My attitude is.

I Warned You Not to Put These Two Together

Two beloved passages of Scripture, memorized, quoted, read for encouragement, recited at weddings, but not often put together. That's a bit odd, since they are about the same topic.

The first passage: Love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 19:19; Mk 12:31; Lk 10:27; Ro 13:9; Ga 5:14; Jas 2:8). Jesus calls this the second greatest commandment of all, second only to loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. That must be pretty important!

The second passage: The "love chapter" (1 Cor 13), which is best remembered from verse 4 on: Love is patient, love is kind, ... It's a lovely verse to think of with your sweetheart in mind.

However, I don't think I've ever heard these two great passages put together. Let's give it a try:

⁴Love is patient with its neighbor, love is kind to its neighbor and is not jealous of its neighbor's stuff; love does not brag to its neighbor and is not arrogant around its neighbor, ⁵does not act unbecomingly toward its neighbor or its neighbor's spouse; it does not seek its own in competition with its neighbor, is not provoked by its neighbor, does not take into account a wrong suffered by its neighbor, ⁶does not rejoice in its neighbor's unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth along with its neighbor;⁷bears all things perpetrated by its neighbor, believes all things for its neighbor's benefit, hopes all things for its neighbor, endures all things by its neighbor. 

⁸Love never fails its neighbor ... ¹³But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is loving your neighbor as yourself ... second only to loving the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Think of your neighbors. Include people of a different faith or political stripe. Think of the not-so-nice neighbors. Think of the people in our communities who end up in the news. Reread this combined passage with these neighbors in mind. Yeah ... those neighbors. Go ahead ... reread it. I'll wait.

Now, go love your neighbor as yourself.

Wally Speaks: Being There

The office bore the scars of a neglectful three years. Dimly lit, monochromatically drab with tired furniture that squeaked from old age and piles of forgotten papers, the "pastor's office" housed more artifacts than conversations. It slow-cooked every occasional visitor to help reduce the electric bill, and only a handful of the church's attenders could even tell you where it was. Every Tuesday afternoon for a semester, I traded beads of sweat in that room for the advantage of sitting with the interim pastor, a man worn peaceful over forty years serving others as a pastor and mentor throughout Southern California. He was Wally Norling, and those future pastors he mentored were called "Wally's Boys" (Larry Osborne, for example). Wally passed away in 2010.

I wasn't afforded enough time with Wally to ever warrant the label. But his soft-spoken, confident advice still props up much of what I do and how I do it. The contrast of his seasoned, cool wisdom and that sauna of a tattered room only amplified his gentle words - the church building is merely a prop on a larger stage. More importantly, ministry looks a lot like a mentor and his apprentice sitting together and not at all like a church calendar spilling over with harried activities.

Our paths to these meetings bore no resemblance to one another. He determined to be pastor at age 5, and was a shepherd to his very core all his days. I left behind 15 years of software at age 35 to attend seminary, and was well-versed in all the people skills you'd expect in a computer programmer. I was 40 years his junior, knowing nothing of that which came so effortlessly to him. By the way he answered me, I could usually tell when I accidentally asked a meaningful question. One of my best questions was hatched after my first "pastoral" hospital visit.

A dear, elderly lady had fallen dangerously ill and was only partially responsive, bedridden as she recovered in a rehab facility. Armed with every bit of the bedside manner one gains from coding C++, I fumbled, stuttered, and awkwardly silenced my way through 30 minutes that I later prayed her illness would prevent her from remembering. Happily, she recovered over time ... and never once mentioned that I had visited her. Whether that was illness or grace matters little to me.

In my next meeting with Wally, I managed slightly better verbal skills to mutter a mess of questions asking how to handle such situations - what to say, how to make people feel better, how to help them put illness in great, theological perspective, and so on. In effect, I was asking how to "fix" the situation like I was accustomed to fixing bugs in software.

Wally simply said, "90% of ministry is just being there." A lot like the time he had been spending with me, patiently waiting for one of my questions to be substantive.

Get out a concordance of the Bible. Search for "thou shalt fix." Nothing. No variation, no similar phrase. Search of "one another," and you'll quickly have a long list. Look for how many times the Lord reassures us by simply saying, "I am with you" or "I will be with you" or "I will never leave you." Even the Lord says, "A great deal of My ministry to you is just being with you."

Be there. Put "fixing stuff" way down on the list. Be there when people are sick and non-responsive. Be there when they have gotten fired. Be there when their dog dies. Be there when they are mad at God. Be there when they are drunk, in jail, stranded in the mud of their own creation, or cursing the whole world, including you. Be there when you don't know what to say or what to do. If you can convey that "I'm here to demonstrate that the Lord will never forsake you," you have done 90% of ministry.