Promises

What's Grace?

People sing about it...

I have a tattoo on my chest that celebrates my fall into it.

Michelle and I were beginning to start a church for people in recovery named "Gracefall."

That's all great... what's it mean?

An over simplistic definition of grace is: "getting better than you deserve." People ask me every day, "How ya doin'?" and I respond, "Better than I deserve...better than I deserve."

My life's journey blessed me to live in a rehab house for 35 days where even the drug addicts across the street looked down their noses at the fourteen of us. We were the real sicko's... You can talk about alcoholism and AA in a grocery store and people will look at you and give an encouraging word. Not so with my disease.

These days it is easy to forget, I'm one of the untouchables. Everyday I get more than I deserve. I don't deserve my life; all I've been given. I don't deserve any of it. Every single breath is a gift.

Every computer glitch is an opportunity to trust or get angry. Every idiotic driver is a blessing and gives me the chance to live in grace or under law. Every act of thoughtless act of selfishness by my children is an opportunity to give what I've been given rather than satisfy justice. Every disappointed sigh from my wife gives me the chance to move toward her rather than back away. Every time one of my bosses lies to me (a daily occurrence in the car business -- they don't call it lying) gives an opportunity to offer loving truth in return. Ever time a customer lets me down (if we treated customers the way they treat us, we'd be out of business in two weeks) I have an opportunity to spew hate or offer love. I choose love, because love chose me first.

Sometimes I live in grace. Sometimes I want justice. I flip flop doing both. I want to live in grace. Because I know I if I got what I deserved it wouldn't be a pretty picture. I know what's on the inside of me. I know what Jesus has to look at every day, and I know he loves me anyway. I want to give that grace away.

I've been loved much and so I want to love much. I receive so much grace everyday, why wouldn't I want to give it away? I don't do it well... This I know. If I did, I wouldn't need as much grace as I do...

 

Escaping Escapism

Last year I had a boss who was one of the most inspiring and simultaneously most demoralizing people I've ever known. I would hide from his disapproval by doing nothing instead of doing something wrong...

I've spent nearly my entire life escaping the disapproval of those I loved. That need to escape disapproval cost me my first marriage. My escape from disapproval bound me to choices that no one considers to be OK.

I refuse to go back to that world. I refuse to live in a world where I feel continually disapproved of. I will choose to disassociate myself from people who have that power over me and demonstrate a propensity to disapprove of me. My life and the lives of those I love are more important to me than that...

Besides, why would people that are continually disappointed with me want to hang around with me? I guess I need to keep growing up and make choices that help me make good choices rather than bad ones.

Working the 11th Step

The 11^th Step – “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.”

“God is love, and he who loves is born of God. He who does not love, does not know God.” St John

The short form of my world view is as follows:

In the beginning all that existed was Perfect Love. That Perfect Love expanded, created and invited creation to partake in its loving party. Selfishness entered and said, “You can’t be happy that way, you have to look after yourself.” For a time Love seemed to have lost and selfishness ruled supreme. And then Love came again, this time more tangibly and demonstrated what Perfect Love really is, by giving up everything for something other than itself – indeed, something at war with itself -- Perfect Love sacrificed itself to selfishness and died. In so doing, Perfect Love conquered selfishness creating new life and invited us to share with Him in it.

The catch is that to know this Perfect Love, we have to follow it into death – death of self and demandingness.

A major stuggle in my life is that it feels as if nearly every message I receive from the world runs counter to my world view. I live in the instant age of immediate gratification where the internet makes answers to questions nearly instantaneous; where drugs and alcohol kill pain soon after they are taken; where I can view porn or find a “date” with a few clicks of a button, where marketing companies come up with new ways to manipulate my senses to cause me to want so unnecesarily…

The sensory bombardment of the post-modern Western world screams at me to demand more – more comfort, more quickly, more cheaply. And like every addiction (and as a society we are addicted to this) what we have is never enough. We search for new ways to accomplish what used to be accomplished easily. We need more, more, more… We die a slow death of consumeristic selfishness. And all through this marketplace of selfish demands, Perfect Love still walks and still speaks sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, beckoning me to turn from death and discover what I was made for – love.

This is why meditation becomes so necessary. Without it I miss Love. I move too quickly too often. I rush through and miss the voice asking me to get out of the middle so that He can give me what I really want. I need to tune out the noise and listen to the whisper. I need God moments, that increase in length until I find them taking the majority of my time. In so doing I will discover what Perfect Love calls Eternal Life. The great news is that I am able to live it now. I don’t have to wait for the afterlife to live eternal life now. (Thank you Jon Foreman)

Daydreaming is one of the ways that I try to create my own “eternal life”. I try to live either in the wreckage of the future or the glories of the past. My mind wants to inhabit a place other than my present reality. I try to re-live life or live in the future in order to believe I have control. When I buy into this lie I exclude any chance for eternal life. Eternal life is really found in accepting the present reality and allowing Perfect Love to rule everything in it.

I need help to do that. Meditation is a central help to me do that. I focus on every breath. As I breath in I consciously think, “God in,” and when exhale, I consciously think, “Me out.” I focus on feeling my body: my heel resting against the chair leg, the ball of my foot on the warming hardwood floor, my elbow resting on the dining room table, my fingers as they hit the keyboard, my bracelet as it digs into my wrist…the coffee taste still resting in my mouth. The presence of Love all around me as the early morning darkness knows it has to give way to the breaking day. And as the day breaks I continually ask…

Lord make me a channel of thy peace -- that where there is hatred, I may bring love -- that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness -- that where there is discord, I may bring harmony -- that where there is error, I may bring truth -- that where there is doubt, I may bring faith -- that where there is despair, I may bring hope -- that where there are shadows, I may bring light -- that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted -- to understand, than to be understood -- to love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life...

Re-creation

This passage was sent to me today. I dug and thought it worthy of being posted here.

God is never finished with creation, and God is never finished with us. We are constantly being re-created and we are invited to join God as co-re-creators of the world.  This re-creation happens in our attitudes and spirits as much as in the physical world.  We re-create when we replace hate with love, hurt with healing, despair for hope.  Our prayers beckons re-creation. We join this re-creation as we ask God do anew in us what God has done throughout the centuries. We pray for sight returned, babies born, lives revived.  We seek mercy unmasked, love unimpeded, and faith remade.  We join with all creation in seeking re-creation. For we know that all creation has been groaning for remaking right up to the present time.  And even we groan to be released from pain and suffering. We wait for God to give us our full life as children, including renewed bodies; we eagerly look forward to this freedom.
 
Doug Pagitt
Body Prayer

Worthy of Re-posting

This came to my in box, and I found it very timely. I hope you enjoy it is much as I do:

There'll be days like this, my momma said.
When you open your hands to catch
and wind up with only blisters and bruises;
When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly
and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape;
When your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment.
And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you.
Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way
the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline,
no matter how many times it's swept away.
 
Sarah Kay
spoken word poet and founder of Project V.O.I.C.E.

As I climbed, backpack carefully packed on my back I spotted a rock on the ground that was shiny held promise in the shimmering sun and so I picked it up and placed it in my pack. It wasn’t very big, the weight wouldn’t bother me, but as I climbed higher into the mountain pass there were other rocks that held equal promise. Each I would pick up and examine before placing them in my pack.

As I travelled those miles through beautiful mountain meadows and craggy mountain passes the weight of my pack grew heavier and heavier upon me, and still I found more rocks to pick up because I couldn’t live without them.

Finally, jumping off a small ridge on the trail the combined weight of the rocks became too much for me and I fell and found I couldn’t get up. I’d picked up more than I could realistically carry. I was done. I couldn’t go on.

Emotionally and spiritually the picture above is how I too often live my life. It is certainly how the alcoholic / addict lives theirs. My assumption is that these tendencies are part of what it means to be human; a result of choices made in the Garden of Eden many generations ago. If step four is our first surrender and housecleaning, step ten is merely our daily surrender and house cleaning.

There are so many things I pick up during the day: resentments against my boss, my wife or my kids; a shot of pride – taking credit for an accomplishment that was really a gift from God; and a long list of expectations of how I am supposed to be treated and catered to. I need to lay these things down promptly if I am to enjoy the journey. Bill Wilson, founder of AA writes:

We can’t stand it if we hate deeply. The idea that we can be possessively loving of a few, can ignore the many, and can continue to fear or hate anybody, has to be abandoned, if only a little at a time.

We can try to stop making unreasonable demands upon those we love. We can show kindness where we had shown none. With those we dislike we can begin to practice justice and courtesy, perhaps going our way to understand and help them.

Whenever we fail any of these people, we can promptly admit it – to ourselves always, and to them also when the admission can be helpful. Courtesy, kindness, justice and love are the keynotes by which we may come into harmony with practically anybody. When in doubt we can always pause saying, ‘Not my will, but Thine, be done.’” …. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous: Alcoholics Anonymous World Service, 1953: NY, NY. Pg 92-93)

 Jesus said something similar in the lingo of his own day:

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. 35 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. 36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?* 37 Is anything worth more than your soul? Mark 8:34-38 (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved

Peter said it this way: “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 1 Peter 5:7 (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)

 All of these encouragements are toward the same end: letting go of things we don’t need to carry. The message of the Bible is incredibly humbling and freeing at the same time: “You are not God. Quit trying to be God. Simply be who I made you to be, and in so being, be free.”

 A story is told of a gold fish that used to look at the humans outside of his fish bowl with such envy. “I want to be like them. I want to be free. I don’t want to be confined to this bowl. I want to see the world and take my place in it.” So one day he started swimming around the bowl with all his might. He swam faster and faster until he finally jumped out of the bowl. He landed on the table, out of the water, flopped around and then died.

 Sometimes freedom isn’t what we want it to be. The 10^th step is all about learning to be free in completely counter-intuitive ways – by “taking up our cross and following Jesus” in the way of the cross; finding resurrection that always follows such a death.

 The trouble with us as humans, at least with me is that I have a very short memory, about 24 hours long. That is why Jesus urged me to repeat this process daily, and why Bill Wilson called it a daily inventory. Following Jesus is not a one time event. Giving up my own life to follow Him is not a one time event. It is a daily, sometimes hourly event precisely because I forget.

 For me it takes the form of gratitude. The Biblical writer addresses this as well. Paul states: “Always be joyful. 17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess 5:16-18 -- Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)

 Gratitude is a sign of my surrender to God’s rule over and design for my life. It says, “Let me be thankful for all you give to me; whether I like it or not. Help me find you in the details and be grateful for all that you offer me.

 Step ten is really about a daily walk with God. It is part of God’s process of sanctification, and His purifying process in my life.

 

An Open letter to Maggie, Thomas, Sam and Alex

My Children,

The trip to Florida to get Sam triggered all sorts of emotions and thoughts in me. I’m not going to write anything here that you haven’t heard me articulate to you face to face. I really pray that these things will become a part of you though because they will help you so much as you travel your own life roads.

After the divorce in 2002 you know that I made some new friends that were willing to walk with me when all my old friends decided they didn’t want to (or couldn’t) walk with me anymore because of the bad choices I made which triggered the divorce in the first place. My new friends and I began to walk through life together, sharing each others’ burdens, loving one another unconditionally, the way people in the church are supposed to love each other but oftentimes don’t or can’t.

All of us in this circle of friends knew we were completely broken humans. We knew we needed God in our lives if we were going to have any hope; and we knew that He (God) most often revealed Himself in and through relationships to others. We also knew that we needed to give up being selfish, arrogant, ego-centric and childish if we were going to have any hope of obtaining the lives we wanted; and that our best efforts to do so always failed. God was going to have to take all these bad things in our lives away. The only way He’d do so was if we were entirely ready to let Him.

Guys, I believe with all my heart that we can’t fix what is wrong with us without help: help from God and from our fellows ( I know I can't). My best efforts to do so led me into a lonely and isolated life that ended in divorce and brokenness, hurting you.

Among my friends, I found a couple of guys (Dog Mike, and David – you know them) that had a bunch of stuff in their lives that I wanted in mine and who had been walking the path longer than me. I asked them to mentor me, passing on the stuff that they had picked up along the way . THey said they would and so now I get to tag along with them.

Dog Mike passed on three things that have become foundational to how I live. They are the three legs to the stool I sit on. You’ve heard them all and I list them in no particular order:

1. If I am disturbed the problem is in me.
2. What other people think of me is none of my damn business. And the corollary: what I think of myself is none of my own damn business either.
3. If I spot it I got it.

When I can remember these things, keep God in the center and lean on He and my friends (Including Michelle) I am OK. Nothing can touch me. Throw me your worst and it won’t really matter. I can deal with any amount of pain. I can make it. I can do what's asked of me: love God (by expressing gratitude to Him for all that is coming my way) and love those along my path that day. Let me go through each of them again for you, because I really, really want you to get a hold of these things, long before I did. You will live life so much more fully when you get hold of these truths. The grass will e greener. The sky will be bluer. The joy will be deeper, the pain more intense, the laughter more frquent, and the peace beyond aything you have ever known.

“If I am disturbed the problem is in me.”  

If this isn’t true we get tossed around on a stormy emotional sea because other people in our life have too much power. They can make us feel stuff. They have power in our life that no one but God should have.

This means that even when there are disturbing events around me: a fight with Michelle, or my boss doesn’t like the way I am doing my job, or money isn’t there for basic things that we need or want, or anything else you can think of – the part of the equation I can address is inside of me. Is God still in control? Does He still love me? Can I still trust Him? Am I doing my best? Doing the next right thing?

If the answer to those questions is, "yes," then I can rest because I can let go of what is going on; giving it up to the care of God. I can cease fighting to get the outcome I want and simply rest. If the answer to any of these is no, the solution is to change things so that the answers can all be “yes.” And since God doesn’t change, the problem lies in me and needs to be addressed.

I no longer can say, “If only that were different…; if only I had that…; if only they would… then I would be OK.” No, now I have to say, “God, what has to change in me so that I can be OK in spite of the way the world is coming at me? Help me to find gratitude for all this shit!” (Go ahead, say, "shit" when you pray. If you can't say it to Him then probably you shouldn't say it at all.)

“What other people think of me is none of my damn business… and the corollary: what I think of me is none of my damn business either.”

Since other people other than you guys are reading this, some of them might be offended y the word, “Damn”. I’d apologize but in this instance the word is used correctly. When I make what other peoples’ opinion of me my business I damn myself. As  a pastor it is what I did for thirteen years. I pastored as much out of fear of peoples opinions of me – of my positional sense – that I lost sight of caring what God thought of them or me.

By default, if I am caring about what people think about me, I am not caring about them. How can I love well when I merely want to make them happy? I can’t. How do I discipline you guys when I know it is going to make you angry with me? How do I say “no” to things you want to do when I know it will only serve to upset you and make you angry with me? I do it because I love you and want what is best for you. What you think about me is of little consequence. Love is all that matters. I have to do the next righ thing.

This makes sense if we really believe that “If I am disturbed the problem is in me. Too often I live for others approval. I’m a good Dad the moment I stop trying to look like a good Dad and start loving. When I try to look like a good Dad, I become a fraud. Every day I have to surrender my right to care what other people (including you) think of me. I surrender my right to look good. I surrender my right to not look bad. I surrender my right to succeed. I surrender my right to not fail.

For too much of my life – all of my first marriage – I put most of my energy into “being somebody”. This meant that energy that belonged to love was absorbed by self. While it appeared to others that I was loving (because I figured out very early that “looking selfless” made me look good) I was really doing good things and saying loving things out of selfish motives. Love wasn’t the motive. Self was the motive. Because of this I ended up broken and alone. I don’t want this for you. Fortunately for me, my God is a God of resurrection. Death always precedes real life. I needed all of the pain, and all of the brokenness to be someone that has any love to offer.

Did you see that I said, “Everyday I surrender my right…” it is because I am human and I forget. Jesus said, “Take up your cross, daily…” It is not a one time event. For me it is much more frequent event. That is why you often see the bumper sticker, “One day at a time”. It is the only way that many of us have found to live, “Surrendering, one day at a time…” I am not capable of much more than that.

If I spot it I got it…

People hate this one. Do you know though that when you spot something in someone else it is because of some shadow memory in you that causes you to see a similar shadow in someone else? Typically, we see something in someone else that bothers us. The reason this is true is because we are seeing our own shadows cast across the other person. The truth of this statement doesn’t take away from what may be true about the other person, but really what I need to worry about is where it is true in me, because “If I am disturbed the problem is in me.” (not them)

Let me point out that sometimes we see good things in others that need to remind of us of the good in us. If we see someone else growing we can rejoice because we are growing enough to recognize growth in the other. If we see kindness in another, it is because there is a measure of kindness in us. If we see giftedness in another it is because there is giftedness in us that recongnizes it.

This comes in handy when others say hateful things about us. If we are really connected (and this is extremely hard to do) we end up praying for the other because they are really telling us something of themselves. Once again, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to pay attention. We may need to pay attention to the deficits they are pointing us to without being overcome by the accusation. It is not in our best interest to care what they think about us. But it may be in our best interest to look at ourselves and our deficiencies so we can give them to God and not stress them. This is different from caring what the person thinks about us. It is being willing to be honest with ourselves and listen to what God may be saying to us about how we need to change.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So there you have the three legs of my resting stool. I forget them all the time. I have to be reminded of them all the time. It is why I hang with the friends I do, because they remind me of what I need to do to live moving toward God and love rather than away from him toward loneliness, isolation, and outer darkness. I moved that direction for a lot of years and so I have a long road ahead of me (the rest of my life actually) to move back to the center; back to God; back to love.

I don’t want you to have to walk as far into the darkness as I did. You deserve better than that. And so I write, loving you with all my heart; you being the reason I breathe; reminding myself as I type of the truths I need to remember to love you well.

Live and love well, guys. Love as I’ve loved you. Love as God loves you. Offer grace where you want to hate. Offer forgiveness instead of justice. Give up your need to be right. Cease fighting anyone and anything. Take up your own crosses daily. Physically get on your knees

as you get out of bed every morning and pray something like, “God, I give myself to you today so that you can do whatever you want with me; growing me however you want to (even if I don’t like it, help me trust you.) Please help me get over myself and my own selfishness today so I can love the way you want me to. Today will you deal with all my problems so that other people will see your power and your love, trust, and follow you too. I want to be absorbed in love today.”

 

Love Wins

Rob Bell has a video clip out introducing his new book, Love Wins.

I posted this clip on Facebook and then immediately posted a link to a CNN article that reviews the pushback against Bell’s apparent universalism (the idea that everyone is saved) . I do not know if Bell is a Universalist or not. I haven’t had a chance to pick up his book yet. I fear that many of the people that are attacking him don’t know what he has to say either, but that is an altogether different issue.

Because I know people that know him (though I don’t personally) I can say without hesitation that Bell is passionately in love with Jesus; is committed to living in Jesus’ Kingdom so long as he breathes; that he loves and cares about people very deeply. It figures, given what some are saying about him, that is not enough, however. 

Immediately friends began to comment about the topic. You can see the whole thread here. Me -- I'm pretty agnostic about it. My friend said what I think better than I could:

"...I am not so concerned with whether there is a heaven or hell. I am not living to avoid one or go to the other. I am living for one who is worthy of all my devotion no matter what happens after. I am not afraid of deception or heresy, ask the tough questions, but in the end I think the best way to ask the question is to change the direction the question is sent. Jer. 17:9 ("The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,and desperately wicked.Who really knows how bad it is?" Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. ) is often quoted without even finishing the verse, much less adding the next one (Jer 17:10 "But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.") and certainly not adding chapter 31. I don’t think I will know the mysteries of God so much by searching him out as by asking him to search me out. Inviting him into the deep waters of my own heart to search me and reveal me. Than I have more and more freedom to know him and the power of his resurrection. I don’t testify to the goodness and love of God to help people avoid hell or to earn rewards in heaven. I will testify because he is good and full of love and both his judgements and mercy are right. Let him be God.The human heart is the most deceitful of all things,and desperately wicked.Who really knows how bad it is?" -- Kent or Melanie Hempel

That being said, in the comment thread I was asked to explain my problems with Hell. And so here I sit typing...

In order to do so let me re-tell the gospel story as I understand it, in short-form fashion: Before there was a single star in the heavens or a galaxy to hold them, there was an eternal party going on. God -- the Almighty Three-in-One was having a blow out, and in the midst of this eternal, blow-out party he decided to create others who could join in the party. Even creation was a selfless act of love. He created so that we could all party with Him.

Now the Almighty Three-in-One was completely selfless. His holiness ("otherness," or "aboveness") came from the fact that he was simply "LOVE". His creation proved not to be. Indeed, we proved to be all about self -- self-aggrandizement, self-centeredness, egotistical, narcissistic, and fearful that we would be found out to be less than we needed others to think us to be. We were moving faster than warp 9 away from LOVE and love; toward complete isolation.

Then in an act of amazing grace, the Almighty Three-in-One intervened. God died. He came and in the greatest act of love ever, let selfishness, fear, hate, envy, pride, deceit, murder, betrayal and isolation win. The eternal party that had never previously been interrupted came to a screeching halt. Mourning ensued for three days. But death couldn't hold LOVE, and LOVE burst fromt he grave in a life-giving resurrection. By surrendering to the forces that stood against love and by dying LOVE won. 

It was made clear by God himself that the only way that life could ever be found by us was through the death of self. And the only way we could ever trust enough to die was because He did it first, and was willing to give Himself to us so that we could follow in His steps. If, as He fills us, we trust him enough to kill ourselves each day we find life that transcends the death we'd been living in our own power. If there is one truth in the gospel story it is this: Death always proceeds Resurrection. 

So what does this have to do with hell?  Let me try to explain: In the West we have been taught to think that life is about a series of bounded sets. The Christianity I grew up in taught me this. So long as I believed the right things, said the right prayers, and occasionally did the right things, my eternal destiny was certain. I could rest in the loving hands of my Saviour Jesus who was faithful to never let me down.

This belief sprung out of a Foundationalist philosophy that taught that there was ultimate truth out there we could capture and rest our faith upon. In so doing we would be standing on a Rock and our faith could be sure. Lots of people still live in this head space. I do not think they are wrong though I don't understand them. That is simply how they process the world. They still trust. But they trust differently than me. That is OK.

I process the world differently. Brian May, the lead guitarist for Queen, and a Doctor in Astro-physics, wrote a dissertation tracking space dusts' path through the universe. He found that everything was moving away from the centre. He argues that we are moving outward toward something he calls "complete isolation."

I think that he is right and that the physical is a mirror of the Spiritual. I've come to view spirituality as being about a "Centred-set" rather than a "bounded-set". At the centre is the Almighty Three-in-One, who continually beckons us to join his eternal, once-interupted party that shines more brightly than any star in his multi-lit universe. Meanwhile, so long as we stay on the trajectory of self that we find ourself on, we move toward complete isolation and loneliness. We become gods of our own reality, cut off from all other life. To me that is hell, for it is life without LOVE or love which flows from LOVE.

The only way we find life is through death. "If you want to save your life, you must lose it..." Jesus said (And then He demonstrated what He meant). I don't think he was kidding. I can think of nothing more horrid than clinging to life only to find ultimate aloneness and death. In my understanding, this hell is the natural consequence of our own desires. 

I don't think this violates the intention of Scripture. But I could easily be wrong. This is simply a word constructed picture that works for me to explain an eternal reality I won't fully understand until I pass through the veil myself.

Into this framework, I can accept some people who don't even know the name of Jesus choosing love, never knowing that it is because of Jesus' sacrifice they discovered love in the first place. While others who claim the name of Jesus choose against love and for themselves.

When Jesus came he lived outside of the box of what Jews thought a Messiah should look like. Many rejected him because he didn't look or live in a way that matched up to the pictures they'd been raised with that a Messiah looked like. So they missed him. Looking back we can see that they simply misinterpreted the pictures given all those years before in the Old Testament.

I wonder if we are not guilty of doing the same thing. We force the words of the Bible into our cultural understanding of them and miss what God was really trying to say. In so doing we communicate poorly and people tune us out. I know I do that all the time, despite my best efforts not to.

Hell to me is not so much about wrath and anger. My understanding is that all God's anger at how I betrayed him was poured out on Jesus at the cross. No, my understanding of Hell is that it is a natural consequence of turning our backs on LOVE and love and the Almighty Three-in-One giving us what we ask for.

A biblical exegesis of step 9

Step 9:  Made Direct Amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.

          Though I shouldn’t have been, I was quite surprised when I began looking at the Biblical directives to make amends – “confess”. My mind went immediately to a well known passage in James, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” (chapter 1 v 6. Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. ) This passage has long been important to me because it plays a significant part in my Mum’s story of asking the elders at church to pray over her for healing and having the cancerous tumor in her abdomen disappear literally, overnight.

            The passage has drastic connotations. Normally when we “go to church,” we put our game faces on. People sitting next to us in the pews know very little of what is really going on in our lives. The idea of a “shared life” is as foreign as living in the Falkland Islands (unless of course you’ve lived there or currently live there.)

            It is a shame that we have lost the reality that what unites us is not our strength and shared “victory in Jesus,” but rather our brokenness and need of His power in our life every day to simply live the way that He designed us and asks us to. Instead of sharing the reality of a marriage in crisis and kids in rebellion we feel the need to manage our image and pretend that we’re leading our perfect middle class family through the rough seas of a broken planet. We want others to think of us as better than we are because when we look at others, they seem so much more “put together” than we feel. The James passage is in direct contrast to this and gives us a way to live in real relationship that is so counter-intuitive to our natural way of thinking.

            Now, while all of this is true, it does not quite get at the specific directive of the 9^th step. “Confession,” in this instance, is not about “making amends.” It is about being honest and being real which are bigger principles we need to grapple with before we ever get to the action of making amends. This is not to say that God has nothing to say on the subject, but like His disciple Martin Luther, he has a way of saying things all over the place so we hear them all over the place, if we will but listen.

Below are a few more of His words on the subject.

"Or suppose you make a foolish vow of any kind, whether its purpose is for good or for bad. When you realize its foolishness, you must admit your guilt.5 "When you become aware of your guilt in any of these ways, you must confess your sin. -- Lev 5:4-6 (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. )

Here is the scene, The children of Israel have left Egypt and are in route to the Promised Land. God is giving them direction on how they are to live life together. Very early on in his list of instructions (kind of like a list you leave for your teenagers when you are leaving them at home for the first time for a weekend) of how to live together. Here is my paraphrase, “When you are stupid, admit it and make it right.”

We all do stupid things. Many of us do them again and again. When we fall into this pattern we lose trust with people around us. When we make promises and don’t follow through. When we continually do same irritating thing that bothers or wrongs our co-workers or family members. When we keep making mistakes that cost our teammate’s games or trophies, it has become too easy to merely say, “I’m sorry.” It loses its meaning. Words evaporate in the air and all that is left is disappointment and a building vow never to trust that person again.

The writer of Leviticus says, “Confess your sin.” Now to a 21^st century reader those three words are loaded because the word, “sin” is loaded, and “confession” is misunderstood. “Sin” here is simply missing the mark. And confession has in implied, “it won’t happen again” attached to it.

In AA members are taught a simple formula, “I was wrong. I hope you will forgive me. How can I make it right?” Those outside of twelve-step fellowships could learn from this.

Feeling badly about what you did (I’m sorry) means very little, really. You can feel badly for a whole gamut of reasons: people think less of you, you feel less of yourself, you hurt someone, etc… Why you are sorry is anyone’s guess. Acknowledging wrong however lets people know that you know you are not perfect, and that you screwed up. Asking how you can make it right lets them know you want to make up for what you did to the best of your ability. God has more to say on this a little later.

 In Num 5:6-8 (still more or less the same section of Scripture as Leviticus) God has this to say: "Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: If any of the people—men or women—betray the Lord by doing wrong to another person, they are guilty. 7 They must confess their sin and make full restitution for what they have done, adding an additional 20 percent and returning it to the person who was wronged. 8 But if the person who was wronged is dead, and there are no near relatives to whom restitution can be made, the payment belongs to the Lord and must be given to the priest. Those who are guilty must also bring a ram as a sacrifice, and they will be purified and made right with the Lord.* (Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)

 Here God is a little more specific: Confess your sin and then make restitution to those you wronged – 120% of the cost of the wrongdoing. And if the person and / or his family is no longer alive give the 120% to God.

 Someone may ask why God has this in his list of instructions and God answers in the Psalm 32:3-5: When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. 4 Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.Interlude  5 Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, "I will confess my rebellion to the Lord." And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.(Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved. )

 This was a lesson that I learned too late in life: I confess because it is good for me. I do not confess for the good of the other person. I confess in order to maintain my own connection to my Creator. I do not have the power to break the connection of the person I wronged or re-connect it. I only have the power to keep my connection in place. I do not make amends for the other person. I make amends for me and in so doing restore my connection to my Creator and allow for the possibility of ongoing relation to the other person. Our ongoing relationship ultimately relies on their relationship with their Creator. The only way any of us have any relationships at all are if God is in the middle either intentionally or completely unrecognised – but that is another post in and of itself.

 We will end with 1 John 1:8-10: “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.(Holy Bible, New Living Translation ®, copyright © 1996, 2004 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.)

 Part of being human in a fallen world is a demand to be god. We live in a universe that is running away from its centre. Scientists tell us that there was a big explosion and since that moment in time each piece of the universe is moving at extraordinary speed toward complete isolation, away from all other created objects, away from that awful explosion that sent us careening out of control away from our Creator. (Well the scientists don’t say that last bit.)

 We are but microcosms of the macro picture. We too in our natural state are moving away from the centre, which is our Creator, and in so doing we can’t help but move away from our fellows. It is simply the trajectory that by our nature we were created on. The only way to find true union is to change trajectories, turn around and move back toward the centre, toward union with God and our fellows. That requires the death of our natural self which wants to be self-sufficient and is grandiose and fragile.

 Our natural trajectory is way off the mark. In and of itself it is leading us toward a world of aloneness and pain. God’s word for it in John’s letter is “sin”. I find that the word is unhelpful though because it is so loaded. Word’s have pictures and “sin’s” word picture for me and many like me simply doesn’t work.

 To get a better picture of what God is saying that does work, I’ll accept: sick, going the wrong direction, got on the wrong freeway, self-centred, ego-centric, etc… because all those words paint a picture that I can accept. John may say, “If we say we have not sinned…” I will say, “If you think everyone is not ego-centric and self centred…”

 Come on, we all have, we all do… the 9^th step is simply about admitting how broken and foolish we are. We can laugh on the back side of things… “You know what an idiot I was… I remember when…” everyone laughs because we’ve all been there. That is confession.

 

That is the 9^th step. I need to add one note here. The end of the 9^th step states: “Except when to do so would injure them or others.” Above I stated that the reason we make amends is for ourselves. Now while this is true, it is true within the confines of love.

 It is wrong form me to unload my dump truck of guilt on your head so that I can feel better about myself knowing that in so doing I am turning your world on its head and destroying any foundation you may have.

There are Christian counsellors here in my city that argue that a complete “dump” has to be made for restoration to occur. I could not disagree more. I love you first, and in loving you I tell you the truth, and commit to being completely truthful with you, but I do not dump on you. Perhaps that should also be explored further in another post.

What is important is that we recognize that Bill Wilson figured some things out when he wrote these steps down that allowed alcoholics and addicts that wanted recovery to find a way to connect with God and find life free from drugs and alcohol. Those same steps can work for anyone that wants to connect with Jesus.

 

Two Authorities

From: As Bill Sees It

Many people wonder how A.A. can function under a seeming anarchy. Other societies have to have law and force and sanction and punishment, administered by authorized people. Happily for us, we found that we need no human authorities which are far more effective. One is benign, the other malign. There is God, our Father, who very simply says, "I am waiting for you to do my will." The other authority is named John Barlicorn, and he says, "You had better do God's will or I will kill you."

 << << <<      >> >> >>

 The A.A. Traditions are neither rules, regulations, nor laws. We obey them willingly because we want to. Perhaps the secret of their power lies in the fact that these life-giving communications spring out of living experience and are rooted in love. (1. A.A. COMES OF AGE, P. 105 2. A.A. TODAY, P. 11)

I posted this because of my previous posts on authority. there were so many questions from well-meaning "church people" who simply baulk at the idea of authority that is lived out daily in 12 step rooms. Bill Wilson in his usual crisp and clear manner seems to go to the heart of the matter.

I can't help but think that we have too long neglected the role of the Spirit (cf Jer. 31.31) because of a tradition handed down by earthly authorities that created human authority in reaction to very real problems and confusion left over by a church that was making a mess as it tried to live faithfully in those early centuries. 

Historically speaking, the real problem hit when Contstantine co-opted the church for the State's and his personal gain in the 4th century. In one fell swoop, authority in the church was turned on its head. I realize that more words need to be written on this and after I finish writing on the steps I will certainly revisit the subject.