With deep grief I have watched the events surrounding the Ferguson, MO, case and the Eric Garner case. I grieve over the loss of life, regardless of circumstance. I grieve over those who responded with violence, regardless of reason. I grieve over the angry divisiveness, heartlessness, and bitter words exchanged in the streets and online. I grieve that, no matter how you look at these stories, race is still an open-wound issue in our time.

I'm not going to tell you who I think is right or wrong, and I won't tell you who you should think is right or wrong, because that would reduce what you should think down to a single idea. The issues are complex, and I would hope that every one of us has a complex, even conflicting set of thoughts about them.

In all this, I have observed that people responded to the same set of facts based on how they were already bent. In other words, if I knew your socio-political leanings before these events occurred, I could have quite accurately predicted your responses to them. The facts of the case are the facts of the case, but how people responded to those facts was overwhelmingly conditioned by what they already believed before the facts were presented.

In other words, the facts matter less than our preconceived narratives. We all have agendas - things we want to happen, ways we want to be followed, structures we want in place. We have a narrative in our minds of how things have been and ought to be. Sadly, the real lives of the real people involved in real events are merely props to affirm the narratives in our minds. We're using them ... and their tragedies ... to affirm what we already believe. It doesn't matter which side of these issues people are on; I observe the same phenomenon in both directions.

Facts should change us, not vice versa. But we're letting it happen. How else could our differing responses be so easily predictable before the facts even came to light? The facts could have been different, but our respective conclusions would have been the same! And we're pretty angry about these "facts" - even though they don't really matter.

It's not just these two events. The same thing happens daily with politics, religion, international relations, and of course sports. It's not just them who do this; it's us. No sense in pointing fingers - both sides of every issue are filled with rhetoric that could be scripted without looking at a single fact.

Jesus once said that even if a man rose from the dead and warned people, they wouldn't listen. Facts don't matter - they just get repurposed. Therefore, the facts of your life don't matter, either, because my narrative is already set. I'll twist your story to fit my narrative, so you don't really matter.

The only way I can be different than this is to allow people to mess up my narrative.

When I was a young kid, we didn't have any pets. Somehow, I had it in my mind that dogs and cats were the same animal, but that dogs were the boys and cats were the girls. (To save my own life, I will not explain how that conclusion actually makes made some sense.) Our neighbors had a cat and a dog ... but the cat was male and the dog was female! That totally messed up my young narrative! I fought it, but eventually I allowed reality to change my narrative. The only way I could retain my narrative would have been to slander the reputations those two animals. (Sound familiar?)

Allowing your narrative to be changed doesn't mean you have to put your core beliefs on the chopping block. Whatever core beliefs are true need not change, even when the narratives must. Even though I have discovered halfway decent people who graduated from KU, I don't have to abandon my core belief in the absolute superiority of Mizzou. They changed my narrative, but not my core belief!

This is especially crucial when we consider our kids, who encounter narrative-busting people every day. If our narrative fails to accommodate the variety of lifestories they eat lunch with and study algebra together with, they will abandon the narrative - they will not abandon the busters. And if they abandon the narrative, they are far more likely to abandon the core beliefs you want to pass on.

I Don't Want You to Know Me

I don't want you to know me. Not the real me. In fact, I work really hard so that you won't know me, and indeed so that you can't know me.

If you knew me, you'd know my faults, fears, and failures. I mess things up, I have selfish tendencies, I'm not up to snuff in some basic character issues, I get angry, I don't always eat right, and I say stupid things. It's embarrassing. "Aha!" you say - "I already know plenty of your faults." Yes, you do. You know the faults that I don't keep totally secret. You don't know my worst, ugliest, most disappointing, shameful faults. I don't let you. They are part of me, and since I have successfully hidden them from you, I have successfully prevented you from knowing me.

If you knew these things about me, you probably wouldn't like me. The faults I let you know about may be annoying, but they usually don't prevent people from liking who they think I am. But the faults I hide - wow - if you knew them, then you wouldn't like me. Or at least not nearly as much. People with my secrets aren't really likable ... not really.

Instead, I tell you just enough to fool you. I actually want you to know my lesser faults, because then I can fool you that I'm being "transparent." I'll let you know about my molehill problem so that you won't bother to ask about my mountain problem. I give you a splinter to distract you from the plank. To be honest, you're pretty easy to fool.

In other words, what I present to you is a false me. It's a projection of a person, an image of someone who doesn't exist, a catalog of qualities good enough to make a phantom likable. Who you think I am isn't even a person. You can't have a real relationship with an unreal person, so you don't have a real relationship with me, no matter how often I tell you I appreciate our "relationship."

You see, I'd rather you knew a false me than the real me. I'd prefer that you like a false me than be disappointed with the real me. I don't want to be rejected, so I don't allow the real me to be accepted. I can coast along pretty well if you like the person I project to you, and then I can pretend that you really like me. But you don't ... because you don't even know me.

I do this because I falsely get my identity and acceptance from you. I know intellectually that my identity is in Christ and my acceptance from God by grace through Christ. I know all that. And yet I still vainly try to get my sense of self from you. If I truly did get my identity from being in Christ, and if I truly did accept my own acceptance by grace from the perfectly gracious God, then I would let you know the real me ... the accepted me who knows who he is. But I don't. Instead, I put on you responsibilities that belong only to God.

I don't want you to know me because you're my idol. I don't idolize you in the worship-y way, but I look to you for something only God can give. Thereby, I foolishly make you my idol.

I'm sorry for putting you in such an awkward position. It's unfair to expect you to provide what only God can. Plus, it never works. I can't be known by idols.

Read this again to see if you find yourself in this composite (but not totally fictional) character.

I Don't Have Time for This!

This Sunday is the last in our series on how Jesus redefines everything in our lives as disciples, pulling our thoughts mostly out of 1 and 2 Corinthians. To review, this is where we've been:

1. I am a Disciple (the "tree") 
2. I am on Mission (the "fruit") 
3. I am Being Transformed (the "roots")
4. I Worship the Risen Christ (the "trunk")
5. I Belong to a Community (the "branches") 
6. I am a Disciple who Makes Disciples (but what kind?) 
7. I am Missionary (learning to think like a missionary right here)
8. I am a Consumer (we can become consumers of church, rather than disciples)
9. I have a Vocation (our 3 callings)

This Sunday's message will be "I don't have time for this!" from 1 Cor 9:19-27.

And we don't really have time for all this ... do we??? I simply can't add all those things to my life, because I'm already hovering around the "overwhelmed" status. Quite frankly, I just end up feeling guilty about all this, which is worse than before.

We must be honest enough to admit whatever feelings like this we have, and we must be brave enough to explore those questions.

I'm not going to explore here what we're going to explore Sunday morning, but I did want to create a simple list of the series so we can see the big picture of where we've been. I also wanted to put the question about time in your mind in advance to get you thinking about it so that we gather together with fresh, real questions and ideas.

Let me prime the pump with the following:

• Does God ever give us too little time for what He desires for us?
• Are we foisting our idea of "time" onto God's plan? If so, how?
• What are we not fully believing that then leads us to think we don't have enough time?
• Are there things I'm not yet willing to give up in order to live life "on mission" according to a list like this? If so, how should I respond?

D17 Review

For the last 17 weeks, we've been discussing the "D17" - Seventeen Truths of Discipleship. There are more than 17 truths, and one could generate a completely legitimate list that differs from this one. Rather than trying to be the definitive list on discipleship, we would rather just focus on how a list like this can stimulate us to think about discipleship differently and seriously.

Discipling is the thing Jesus told the Church to do as the Church. His commission to us is not, "Get to heaven" or "Keep your nose clean" or "Pursue the American Dream with a Christian twist," but "be about the business of discipling all people groups" (my paraphrase). Therefore, we absolutely must have strong and clear convictions about the thing Jesus commissioned us to do.

Below is the list of 17 all together in one place. I encourage you to copy or print this list, keep it in front you, and spend some serious time reading, contemplating, processing, and reacting to it. What ideas about discipleship challenge you? What life changes are needed to be more serious about discipling others?

The impact of a list like this should be lifelong changes in convictions and habits. This will only happen by intentionality on your part. That's it ... no good intentions, no haranguing on my part, no feelings of being convicted will change a thing. Only your decision and action to be intentional. This is what Christ gave for His Church to do. Do I take that from Him slightly or seriously? Will we take this seriously as a family? Will we take this seriously as a church?

1. Discipleship is the process of moving from unbelief to belief in every area of your life in light of the Gospel (Mk 9:21-24)
2. Discipleship must be Spirit-led, because only He can reveal spiritual truth (Jn 16:8-11; 1 Cor 2:9-16)
3. Discipleship must be Gospel-saturated (1 Cor 15:1-11)
4. Discipleship must be community-based (Phm 1-3; 1 Thess 1:1; Lk 10:1)
5. Discipleship must be individually-tailored, based in one’s identity in Christ (Jn 21:21-22)
6. Discipleship must be holistic (Mk 12:28-31; Mt 23:23; Jms 1:27; 2:15-16)
7. Discipleship needs to be frequent and long-term (Jn 15:26-27)
8. Discipleship has to be modeled and experienced (Jn 13:12-17)
9. Jesus’ kind of discipleship is mostly unscheduled but very intentional (both organized and organic) (Mk 8:27)
10. Every moment is a discipleship opportunity (Mk 8:14-21)
11. Discipleship is going to be others-focused, especially the least of these (Mt 25:40; Lk 7:18-22)
12. We would never raise kids the way that most churches try to raise disciples (1 Tim 3:4-5)
13. Discipleship begins before conversion (Jn 6; 20:24-28)
14. Discipleship is obedience-driven (Mt 28:20; Jn 8:31-32; 15:10)
15. Discipleship is costly (Lk 9:57-62; 14:26-35; Mt 10:37-39)
16. Discipleship is not about works performed, but about becoming like the Redeemer (Mt 7:22-23; Rom 8:29; 1 Jn 3:1-3)
17. Discipleship requires humility (Jn 13:12-17; Mk 10:42-45)

See this blog for discussions on each of these. So much more can be written, but enough writing for now. There is enough here in just this one list to occupy us for the rest of our lives.

D17 P17: I Like the Entire List ... Except this One

For the last 17 weeks, we've looked at the "D17" - 17 truths about discipleship. We will list them all together next week, but this entry is about the last one. And it's probably the one I like the least, because it's the only one on the list that I don't personally aspire to. Perhaps the same is true for you, too.

Discipleship requires humility.

Why? Because Jesus. (To use the grammatically incorrect but common phrasing.) Because this is exactly how Jesus made disciples, and He expects us to make disciples the same way as He did. Consider two key events in Jesus discipling His followers. The more compelling of the two happened on the night He was betrayed as He shared the Passover meal with His disciples.

So when he had washed their feet and taken his outer clothing and reclined at table again, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you speak correctly, for I am. If then I—your Lord and Teacher—wash your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that just as I have done for you, you also do. Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand these things, you are blessed if you do them.” (John 13:12–17)

This is His key example for His disciples - the lasting image before the Cross. They will continue His ministry of making disciples who make disciples with the humble attitude of a servant washing someone else's dirty feet. The Jews considered this task too demeaning even for Jewish slaves - only foreign slaves would be made to do this. Jesus says that His model of disciplemaking is something so humble that it's lower in stature than something they considered too demeaning for a slave.

He finishes by saying that if we do this voluntarily, we are blessed. How crazy upside-down is that? No matter how you turn this and twist this, you can't escape that the Jesus way of making disciples requires humility.

The second example is a teaching He gave to His disciples:

And Jesus called them to himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their people in high positions exercise authority over them. But it is not like this among you! But whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be most prominent among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42–45)

The key phrase for me here is "It is not like this among you!" He didn't say that it shouldn't be or that we should avoid it. He said that it is not that way. Our "system" or manner of making disciples will not be making disciples if it's not like this - like servanthood. Not even Jesus came to be served but to be a servant to others.

Making a disciple is serving them with such a humble attitude of service that it is more humble than that of a slave. We cannot make disciples the Jesus way if we have an attitude of superiority, as if we're better than the one we disciple, or that we're their spiritual "hero." The Jesus way of making disciples requires humility.

For those who refuse to intentionally make disciples because they don't feel qualified or good enough, there's good news! You've got a lot of the humility required already! Now, that sense of inadequacy comes from a model of discipleship that expects the discipler to be the superior one, the "expert." But it is not that way with you. Now, all you have to do is turn that humility into the attitude of a servant with respect to someone else's discipleship. Every follower of Jesus can be a discipler of others, and the ones who think themselves pretty special are the least qualified.

If we don't grab onto this last truth of the D17, then the entire 16 truths before this one will not be effective. Humility is non-optional. We cannot make disciples with pride, arrogance, or even a sense of superiority. We can only make authentic disciples of Jesus by being more humble than First Century Jewish slaves.

D17 P16: I really don't care what you do...

Throughout this series on the "D17" (17 truths about discipleship), we have explored several things we ought to do. Discipling is something we do, and through discipling, we teach others things they ought to do (especially to do all that Jesus commands, as He taught in the key text of the missional conversation, the Great Commission in Matt 28:18-20). In fact, one of the main thrusts of discipling is to get people off the bench and into the game, to be doers of the Word and not hearers only.

The 16th truth of discipleship may sound like a total contradiction to all of that.

Discipleship is not about works performed, but about becoming like the Redeemer.

Discipling is indeed about doing - taking up our crosses and following Him. But discipleship is not about the works we perform. It sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth at once.

Think of it this way: a game of football is not about hiking and passing and blocking and running. It's not the goal of the game to hike the ball. Hiking the ball is what you do in order to achieve the goal (scoring more points than your opponent). Hiking is necessary and essential. It requires training and practice. It must be done well. But football is not about that.

Works are what we do as disciples, but that's not the goal of discipleship. What we do is necessary and essential, and may required training and practice. But if Person A does more works than Person B, that doesn't necessarily mean he's accomplished the goal. The goal is not to "hike the ball," but to become like the one who redeems us.

In Matt 7:22-23, Jesus warns His listeners that just because people did things "in His name," they weren't guaranteed entrance into the Kingdom. "Depart from me," He tells them, "I never knew you." The accumulation of your works is not what matters.

Paul says in Rom 8:29 and John says in 1 Jn 3:1-3 that the destiny of those in Christ is that they will continually be made more and more like Him, the Redeemer, and eventually will be exactly like Him. That's the goal. That's the work that Jesus is doing in His followers, and therefore the work that followers should be doing with each other. In other words, discipleship.

Everything, and I mean everything, we do as followers should be for the purpose of us becoming more like Christ. It is not about accumulating good works, although it's certainly the case that good works can make us more like Christ. Again, hiking the ball compared to winning the game.

This also means that everything God does in our lives will be to the same end - to make us more like Christ. Everything He allows in our lives, everything He puts before us, every way that He answers our prayer - everything, and I mean everything, He does in our lives is carrying out His promise to make us more like His Son.

D17 P15: If you hahve to ahsk...

When the menu has food I can't pronounce and doesn't list the price of anything, I know I'm in the wrong restaurant. I won't like the food any better than a Gates burnt ends sandwich, and I won't be able to pay for it. "If you hahve to ahsk, you cahn't afforhd it."

The Gospel is offered to us freely. There is no price tag on it that tells us how much we must pay in order to acquire it. But it is a gross misunderstanding of the Gospel to then conclude that the Gospel doesn't cost us anything. A lack of a price tag doesn't mean it doesn't have a price. The lack of a price tag merely says, "You can't afford it."

"Free" doesn't mean "without personal cost."

"Free" means that the price to bring you into the Kingdom of God is so large that it must be given to you as a gift by the only one who can actually afford it. But following Christ still costs you everything. Following Christ means forsaking all other gods, giving up living for yourself, surrendering your security in mere things, and being willing to let go of everything, even of your own life, if that's what it takes to follow Christ more completely.

Furthermore, "free" doesn't mean "of little value."

The value is determined not by what you would pay to acquire (which you can't afford any way). Rather, the value is determined by the price that Jesus paid to offer it to you freely - which was His life, His unbroken relationship with the Father, and the penalty of sin. If the Gospel didn't cost anyone anything in any way, how valuable would it be? A free gift of gold is more precious than a free gift of tissue paper - it's still free, but the value is determined by the cost paid by the giver.

The 15th entry in our series of the 17 truths of discipleship ("D17") is this:

Discipleship is costly (Luke 9:57-62; 14:26-35; Matt 10:37-39).

It is offered to us freely (we can't pay for it, let alone afford it). But it cost Jesus the greatest costs ever paid, and receiving that gift means it costs us every reliance on worldly ways and every attempt to find in things that which can only be fully found in God through Christ.

How can the Gospel cost us nothing and yet cost us everything? No analogy is perfect, but consider the difference between purchasing something and ridding yourself of valueless things in order to make room for what's truly valuable. Purchasing means I give an equivalently valuable thing in order to get something in return - I deserve the thing because I paid its worth. "Making room" is ridding yourself of all things that occupy the spaces designed to be filled uniquely by God.

Those spaces are not confined to Sunday mornings or to mere behaviors. Rather, they are the very spaces of what it means to be human: my sense of personal identity, the satisfaction of my soul, my security, the purpose I live for, the ways I choose to respond to challenges and stresses - everything about being human. The Gospel costs us every false way of filling those spaces so that they can be filled by God alone.

The Gospel costs us everything related to being human so that we can finally be truly human.

To disciple someone else will also cost you - time, effort, money, and emotional energy. You will enter into the messiness of someone else's imperfect life, and you will give up the facade covering the messiness of your own. It will cost you tears. It will create some heartbreak. You will suffer some disappointment. And it's worth every bit of it!

And we if share the Gospel without also telling people that it will cost them everything, we sell the Gospel short and lie about its true nature. People must know that the Gospel is free but is also worth giving up everything. Jesus did not shy away from telling others what following Him would cost:

Luke 9:57 As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go.”

58 And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

59 And He said to another, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.”

60 But He said to him, “Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.”

61 Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.”

62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

27 “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

28 “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?

29 “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him,

30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

31 “Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?

32 “Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

33 “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

34 “Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned?

35 “It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Matthew 10:37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

38 “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

39 “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”