A Question That Can Help Us Live Together

I was reading a book about communication this spring that included a chapter that encouraged being direct about our desires and needs. (This is not always an easy thing for Midwesterners or Lutherans, since both groups have a tendency to avoid conflict, but that's a topic for another blog post.)

In the midst of proposing being direct, the book raised an inevitable question: How can be we direct and assertive with about being rude or bullying? One of the suggestions that was offered struck me as very simple and profound. Before speaking, ask yourself one question:

Is this vital or preference?

In other words, is this something that is necessary to address because it may cause harm? Or is it something that's really about my personal preference? If it's the second option, it's probably better to let it go or at least start the conversation with "This may not be important, but I'd prefer..."

Is this vital or preference?

As I think about it, there are times I can get upset when the reason is "I don't like this" instead of "this is a problem." But I think it can be easy to confuse the two because so many things in life are tuned to my preferences. When I can program my car to know exactly where to put my seat when I climb in and I can get almost anything I want delivered to my house in 24 hours, it's hard to remember that what I want isn't the most important thing all the time.  But if we all live thinking that way, we're going to create friction...probably a lot.

Is this vital or preference?

In Lutheranism, we have a word for this. Martin Luther referred to things that were preference as "adiaphora." Literally Latin for "undifferentiated things," adiaphora basically means, "things that aren't life or death issues." In church, that God loves us and transformed the world in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is vital; whether we serve donuts or danish during coffee hour is adiaphora. Knowing the difference is important to making decisions and keeping the peace.

It's a small thing, but asking "Is this vital or preference?" could be a tool for smoothing relationships, avoiding unnecessary conflict, and learning how to live together. And making the world healthier, happier, and safer for everyone IS vital.

Standing in the Gray,
Pastor Ari

“Hit the wall, have to crawl; even if we lose it all, we're ok.” -The Rescues, “We’re OK”

You Are Not Trash

Much of our North American culture is built to be thrown away.

Fast food is served in paper and plastic that's meant to be disposed after use and most groceries are sold in packaging that's thrown away after use. Most minor appliances are cheaper to replace than repair. It's expected that devices like cell phones will be replaced every 18-24 months. The average American creates about 4.4 pounds of trash per day.

It safe to say that we expect many things in our lives be temporary and quickly obsolete.

But that's not how God operates.

The Bible tells of a God that refuses to give up and throw away his people. Though they complain about God in the wilderness. Though their rejection of God leads to exile. Though they crucify Jesus. God sticks by God's promises to redeem, repair, and resurrect those in need. It strikes me that even in Revelation, the image of the new creation is not one where the earth is eliminated, but is made perfect and complete by the arrival of heaven.

There's an important lesson in that I strive to remember from time to time. You are not trash to God. God won't throw us away. God's grace isn't temporary.

The Reality of God isn't a throw away culture.

From the Gray,
Pastor Ari


"And in this day when something's worth is based on what someone would pay, it's nice to know I'm worth one Jesus to You." -Everybodyduck, "Tetelestai"

I Don't Like Genesis 22

I've been dreading this coming Sunday for over a month.

You see, this coming Sunday, the lectionary my church uses has appointed Genesis 22:1-14 as the Old Testament reading. And Genesis 22 is one of my least favorite parts of the Bible: the (near) sacrifice of Isaac.

This is the type of text that I usually preach on because there are elements to it that I just can't let pass without some kind of commentary. But the elements that make this passage so difficult also make it hard for me to shape into a decent sermon*. So after much thought I decided to wrestle with it here instead.

For those who are not familiar with the story, God chooses to "test" Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his only remaining son, Isaac, who was a miracle child and meant to start a great "nation" of people. (Abraham's semi-legitimate son, Ishmael, was already sent off in another troubling episode.) Abraham obeys and gets so far as placing his bound child on the altar and raising the knife to slay him when God steps in and stops him.

I'm bothered by the text because of the connections it holds with two problems that are sadly still relevant today: child abuse and violence in the name of God.  When we continue to see children abused and exploited and when suicide bombings, apartheid, and KKK lynchings backed by religious beliefs are current or in recent memory, it's troubling to read a story of God promoting this type of behavior and a person of God who is willing to do both -- and is commended for it.

There are many explanations of this text that seek to ease some of the tension in it:

• God had invested a lot in Abraham in making him the father of promise and needed to know that he would be faithful regardless of the task.
• Abraham's Schwarzenegger-esque words to his servant--"We'll be back"--suggest he expected that God wouldn't actually make him sacrifice Isaac and both would return.
• God was using this episode to condemn child sacrifice (which was practiced by many of Israel's neighboring religions) and show Abraham how his God was different from other gods.
• Isaac was likely a teenager and Abraham was over 100 years old and couldn't have over-powered Isaac. Therefore, Isaac wasn't a victim, but a willing participant. (In fact many early church leaders used this story as a foretelling of Christ, who also willingly carried the wood to be used for his execution up a hill expecting to lose his life.)

But none of those explanations answer the biggest problem I have with the story: Why did God feel the need to test Abraham? Was God feeling cranky? Was it morbid curiosity? Shouldn't God have already known whether Abraham was faithful? (Abraham had already left his family and home and moved hundreds of miles at God's request.) 

I want to believe that Abraham got the message wrong. I want to believe that between the time the events happened and they were written down, the detail of God testing Abraham was added by the scribes. But I believe that the hard parts of the Bible can't just be brushed off because they're hard or we don't like them. We have to deal with them.

But we don't have to deal with them in a vacuum.

One of the parts of Lutheranism that I love is how we read scripture and one of the key parts of how we do that is the premise that "scripture interprets scripture." Martin Luther, who was often arguing the meaning of scripture with his opponents, knew there were parts of the Bible that didn't seem to agree with each other and so insisted that difficult or confusing texts be read in the context of the whole Bible and especially in the context of the words of Jesus.

In that light, Genesis 22 is easier to swallow. Elsewhere, God clearly condemns child sacrifice (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10), God speaks through Hosea to say "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," and Jesus says "Blessed are the peacemakers" and "Let the little children come to me, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to them." Regardless of whether God tested Abraham or why, I look for solace in the fact that in the end, God's true nature won out. God stayed the execution and kept Abraham from killing his son. That is some good news in an otherwise difficult text.

I still feel very uncomfortable with this text, but faith, like life, is rarely simple and God, if the Bible is any indication, is quite complicated. I sincerely pray often to know and understand God better, but Abraham knew God well and that didn't seem to make his life any simpler either. Just one more troubling thing to wrestle with.

“I’m not sure if anybody understands.” -Fun., “Some Nights”

*To me, a sermon is the Living Word of God encountering human reality and creating new life. That sounds kind of vague and fluffy, I'm sure, but what I mean by it is that a sermon is not the same as a lecture. A lecture passes along information; a sermon creates an encounter with God's law and gospel. Every attempt I made with Genesis 22 felt like a lecture.

A Critique of "Preacher" by OneRepublic

One of my Christmas gifts this year was the album "Native" by OneRepublic.  I was excited to get the album because my interest in the band has been growing ever since I had the chance to see them in Central Park this summer on our youth servant trip to New York City. My interest was further piqued when I noticed a song on the album titled "Preacher" and I eagerly listened to this song that shared a name with my profession.

The song deals with the singer as a young man and his grandfather, who was the titular preacher of the song. What I love about the song is the positive light the grandfather is shown in and the closing line of the chorus: "He was a million miles from a million dollars, but you could never spend his wealth." I love those parts because most popular media portrays my colleagues and I as an unbending hell-fire moralist (like John Lithgow in "Footloose") or as a well-meaning, but somewhat clueless grandpa figure. We are almost never portrayed as complex, real people (both men AND women) living ordinary lives. (The closest example I can think of are the Edward Norton and Ben Stiller characters in "Keeping the Faith.")

So, thumbs up for singing about pastors as down-to-earth, hard-working people, because most of us are (or try to be). But then the song includes this line: "He said God only helps those who learn to help themselves."

Ugh.

I hear this verse quoted a lot by Christians and I get it. It is an attractive idea to believe God rewards or blesses those who have first done something to deserve it. It fits in with everything else we are taught in society, right? Work hard and you'll get the promotion, etc. The phrase is simple and easy to remember and a good motivator to live properly.

And all that is fine and good, except for the fact that it isn't a Bible verse. The phrase "God helps those who help themselves" doesn't appear anywhere in scripture. (It actually comes from Greek philosophy.) In fact, when we read the Bible, we actually find God frequently helping those who can't help themselves. Many of the people God calls are cowards, dimwits, or weaklings. The chosen people of Israel (with the exception of a few glorious years under David and Solomon) are usually the schoolyard chumps, getting kicked around by their bigger and stronger neighbors. When Jesus is wandering around Palestine, he is helping and healing those who are most desperate and vulnerable and none of the Gospel writers remember him saying, "So what have you done to cure your leprosy on your own?" And, in places like the minor prophets and Matthew 25, God gets angry with humans that don't help the helpless, too (i.e. the poor, the sick, the hungry, etc.).

Rather than demanding people help themselves before gaining any divine attention, the Bible speaks of a God who seeks out the helpless and blesses them. In the church, we have a technical term for this kind of thing. We call it grace.

Grace is the belief that every good thing from God -- God's love, forgiveness, special attention in our time of need -- are not something we earn or deserve, but are a gift. They come to us not because we have "helped ourselves," but because God chooses to be generous. And this grace is a cornerstone of Christian thinking.

It's a crazy idea. It's crazy to us as industrious, goal-oriented North Americans. We want to earn things, to deserve them. But it was a crazy idea in ancient history, too. In one of the readings my church used last weekend, St. Paul tells the church in Corinth that this thinking is "a stumbling block" and "foolishness" to most of the world. While it may seem natural to us to take pride in earning rewards, or boasting in our spiritual accomplishments, grace doesn't leave any room for that. As Paul writes in that passage, "Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord."

For me, grace may grate on me when I want to take credit for the good I do, but it is good news on those days when I seem incapable of "helping myself," when I am painfully aware of my mistakes and shortcomings. On those days, hearing that God loves me and can do good in spite of me truly is a wealth that cannot be spent.

"Dreaming about the things that we could be." -OneRepublic, "Counting Stars"