Pavlov, God, and Holiness

This concept of grace first, then holiness is taking root in me. In my theology class today, the topic was sanctification. Though several views were presented, I walked away with some valuable confirmations of what I believe. One was that God pursues us relentlessly for ongoing transformation. So we can confess our inadequacy and inconsistencies openly to him because that’s what he’s already working on, and we can’t work on those things with him until we admit them (and working on them without him is futile). Once we admit them, he can empower us toward holiness. I was reminded that God does the work, and our part is to cooperate.

In a way, sanctification is all wrapped up in views of sin and sovereignty and all that. A little over a year ago I started asking, “what is up to me and what is up to God?” For most of my life I saw sin as simply a choice, an act of my will. But if sin is merely my choice, then holiness too, it seems, is my choice. This looks a lot like moralism and can so easily morph into self-righteousness.

I was reading about Pavlov and his dog earlier this semester, and I started thinking about how behaviorism looks a lot like how I used to view “relationship” with God—except instead of recognizing myself as the one responding instinctively like a dog, I was Pavlov—the cause, the mover. God was Pavlov’s dog. He responds to me based on my actions. I’m good (I ring the bell) and God will respond accordingly with the outcome I want. Only he didn’t. Not consistently. So I stopped believing, really. I didn’t stop believing in God, but I lowered my expectations of God and tried to answer my own prayers. I believed in my own power to change myself, to make myself holy through my own will and choice. I thought spiritual transformation was more about what I do than what God does.

But when I view sin as pervasive depravity that affects all of me (including my choices)—a disease, a pollution—I recognize that there’s no way I can cure myself or make myself holy. All I can do is cooperate with the work God is already doing and revealing. Admit, surrender, and receive. He does the work. I cooperate. This week, he’s working on my Pavlovian notions about holiness, grace, and sovereignty…

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. (I Thessalonians 5:23-24)

Grace and Cigarettes

I’m thinking of taking up smoking as a spiritual discipline. Maybe I’ll sit with God and have a cigarette. I’ve just been very struck this week with my need to embrace my humanity, my limits, my imperfection. It’s so easy for me to get into a brand of Christianity that is all about image, saying and doing the right thing, having it all together. I think of the saying, “don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls that do,” and I want to radically break out of a Christian culture that would whittle the Christian life down to that.

Most Christians I know don’t think that way, but I just don’t get enough reminders sometimes of my need for Jesus, my humanity, and my brokenness in the Christian culture. Sometimes it seems more like it’s not okay to be a sinner …or a smoker. Often I experience an expectation of perfection—maybe it’s just my own expectation of myself. I wonder if a cigarette with God now and then could be the reminder I need not to bow to those impossible expectations, but to breathe in grace (and tobacco ...and toxic chemicals).

I think my problem comes when I regard holiness over grace. Only through grace can we ever be holy, so a pursuit of holiness must never come first. (And I’m not convinced that holiness has anything to do with not smoking, not swearing, not drinking, etc.) I wonder what it would be like if churches looked more like AA meetings sometimes—no pretense, everyone aware of their own failure, confessing openly, admitting our need, holding each other up, but full of grace and understanding for everyone’s broken condition.

I want to love and accept others as Christ did, but a preoccupation with personal holiness prevents that. I have such a hard time loving people when I’m perfect. My desire for perfection makes it impossible to love because love is messy. Perfection is my point of need. And it is the very thing that keeps me from admitting my need. I am resistant to receiving grace because I don’t want to need it—to be limited and imperfect. So, I don’t want to be human. I want to be God. How like Eve. How human.

On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Matthew 9:12-13

John MacArthur on smoking, drinking, etc.

The Cross or the Palm Branch?

How do you respond when you expect a certain gift, but instead of the gift that you want, you receive the gift that you need?

I was asked today to consider why we don’t celebrate Easter every day, and I had to admit that for me it is often because I want salvation on my terms instead of what is offered. Then I started to wonder if, perhaps Palm Sunday is often more of a reality for me than Easter Sunday.

As Christ entered Jerusalem days before his crucifixion, he was welcomed and honored with a fanfare of palm branches. The palm branch was a symbol of triumph and victory in the Roman Empire, used in celebration of military success. I don’t think this symbolism was lost on those gathered to pay tribute to the long-awaited Savior—the one they had been expecting—the one who would bring salvation from the Romans, the one who would bring peace and power through a political reign. As they hailed him that day, they were not anticipating his imminent death. They expected a different Kingdom, a different salvation, a different peace than what Christ offered that week. I imagine that when he did not meet their expectations, many were disappointed, maybe disillusioned and even angry. Perhaps their expectation prevented them from receiving the gift. It was what they needed not what they wanted.

It seems that I too want to choose what I’ll be saved from. I want a salvation that is easy, that gives me rights and privilege. I want a Savior who meets my expectations, who fixes my problems, and gives me what I want. I resonate with what David Benner writes, “We want a spirituality of success and ascent, not a spirituality of failure and descent. We want a spirituality of improvement, not a spirituality of transformation. But the way of the cross is the way of descent, abandon and death. This is the foolishness of the gospel.”

If I’m being honest, often it is my expectation of God’s gift that keeps me from celebrating the true gift. He offers what I need instead of what I want. And what he offers is actually better than anything I could conjure or imagine I want. But I have to let go of my expectation of what is good if I’m to accept God’s gift—if I’m to see the goodness of his gift. It is the gift of life. I have to lay aside the palm branch that represents my conception of what God’s Kingdom should be in order to take up the cross.

He is not the Savior I want. He is the Savior I need.

Ally

Come fall with me
Into the messiness
Into the human disease

Pry my hands when I can’t let go
Hold my hands when the going is slow
Remind me when I don’t believe
Listen when I’m full of discrepancy
Push me when I’m paralyzed
Celebrate when dreams are realized
Intercede when I’m in captivity
Receive me when I’m in my poverty
Forgive me when I disappoint
Chastise when I think you’re my source

And let me pry and speak and hold and keep for you
in the messiness
where we become

Out of the Boat

How eagerly I jump out
Full of faith devout
Yet when my feet hit the sea
Doubt provokes my panicked plea

How quickly confidence fades
Inviting all these waves
So suddenly you shrink
Eclipsed by my uncertainty

How promptly I fall asleep
When the watch I need keep
Prayer vows are so easy to break
When my desires are at stake

How hastily I lop off ears
When to me your plan is not clear
I create a bloody mess
Instead of entering your rest

How swiftly I flee in fear
I deny you when they sneer
Refuse to call you my friend
Though I swore fealty to the end

How exhausted you must be
With this fickle fool that is me
I can’t seem to hit it half the time
But that work is not mine

How patiently you repeat
You invite to feed your sheep
From broken vessels made of clay
You build your Church for your display

So I believe that you’re not done
That the work of the Son
Is alive so I will see
All you’ve made me to be

Thoughts on The Shack

I’ve said before that I don’t like hype. But when it comes to a book with a lot of buzz, I usually can’t help myself. I gotta know why. So, I just read The Shack. And now I know why. More than anything, this book is a book about God. Most of the dialogue is an explanation of the ways of God straight out of the mouth of the characters that represent God. That’s gonna make people uncomfortable—especially when God is represented by a large African-American woman and a small Asian woman. There is no mistaking that William P. Young, the author, wanted readers to reconsider their notions of God and the Church and the Human Soul.

I waited to read the criticism of the book until after I read it so that I could form my own opinions. As I read, I suspected what others might have problems with. But I guess what bothers me about the criticism is the same thing that bothered me about criticism of Harry Potter and criticism of The DaVinci Code, and that is the admonition to stay away lest you be infected. Mark Driscoll said, “If you haven’t read The Shack, don’t!” They treat it as evil and dangerous, and warn that if you go near it, you will be harmed because you are too stupid to think for yourself, so we must tell you what to think. Why don’t we teach Christians to think for themselves, to engage literature and art, to affirm what is good and dismiss what is not? Let’s learn to discern rightly and to trust the Spirit of truth that dwells within, instead of reacting with fear and arrogance.

Personally, I appreciated the ways that this book challenged my thinking. I didn’t agree with everything, but it made me think, to consider whether some of my preconceived notions of God are based on Scriptural truth or based on man-made paradigms. And it did contribute to my understanding of a personal but transcendent God. One review I read lumped the book in with emerging church theology, which challenges modern paradigms. It asks why do we think this, why do we do this, and is this an accurate understanding of Scripture. I like that. But, recognizing that Satan’s first deception was to ask, “Did God really say that…?” I think we have to be careful then to recognize where our ultimate determination of truth is coming from. Moderns put confidence in the rational mind; post-moderns put confidence in subjective experience. Which is right? Here, Young is challenging the rational paradigm that many are stuck in. But I think we all have to submit our understanding of truth to God, trust that the Spirit and the Word work in harmony to reveal truth, recognize that that work can occur through both experience and rational thought, and remember that we are jars of clay. At the end of the book, Young writes in the voice of the narrator, “Do I think that it’s true? I want all of it to be true… I guess you and Sarayu [the Holy Spirit] will have to figure that one out.” So, I guess with that in mind, I would like to see criticisms of the book from a more humble stance, acknowledging what stories and art do, they make us think and ask questions. Should we fear that?

But honestly, I found very little in the way of theology that I had a problem with. Young shows us one man’s journey of healing with God as they tackle the barriers keeping him from relationship with God: his erroneous views of God, his unforgiveness, his setting himself up as judge of God and others, his ideas about God’s role in pain and suffering, his self-condemnation, his position in Christ, his sense of entitlement, his view of rules and expectations. It seemed to me to be an allegory of the way that God works in our hearts to bring about transformation. In fact, as I read, some of the passages seemed to be straight out of my journals as God has been teaching me on my own journey of healing and transformation.

From what I understand, Young himself experienced a similar journey, and I imagine much of the dialogue comes out of his own experiences with God once he decided to face what was in the shack. His own shack was his metaphorical place where he stuffed all his pain, shame, and guilt after suffering sexual abuse by the New Guinea tribe his parents were missionaries to, after grieving the loss of loved ones who died too young, and after cheating on his wife. I imagine that the legalistic, wrathful god of his understanding was not the God who met him there. He must’ve encountered a God of love and healing. That is how he portrays God in The Shack.

But a cursory reading or skimming of the book would certainly upset your theology. As I was reading, red flags went up on several occasions as I glimpsed hints of universalism, but as I read on, I saw that the Scriptural truth I believe was just being presented in a new way. He seemed to be trying to undo the legalistic, religious, condemning, wrath-bent perception of God that pervades today. Instead, he shows a God who loves beyond measure and pursues people as far as necessary to bring them into relationship. Absent is an exhaustive explanation of hell or judgment. Yet there’s enough of the gospel to keep it out of Oprah’s book club. I think this book touches those who haven’t been able to tap God’s love and grace, or haven’t been able to understand God’s desire for a personal relationship because of their focus on rules, systems, self-righteousness, institutions, guilt, or judgment. I was there. I get it. I’ve been to the shack. And for that reason, I loved this book. … oh, and because it was set in Oregon, land that I love.

Adonai-Jireh

Are you my Isaac
or my Regina?
one given back
one gone forever

it feels sadistic
this giving over
of what you love
to become better
the leap of faith
escapes reason
I can’t explain
but I find meaning

And yet I’m holding up my knife
Still hoping for the ram to arrive