Curing the Cancer: Mistrust

Lately a spirit of unity has been sweeping over the youth ministry community where I live.  It seems that we’ve all come to the conclusion that if we don’t work together we’re like people swimming alone up a swift river…working really hard and not going anywhere.  More than that, I think we’ve come to realize that in a city like Boulder, unity in the faith community speaks volumes to people seeking truth in their lives.  Boulder is a place of deeply fractured belief systems.  There is no one dominate world-view, and people are precisely attracted to living here for that reason.  Being united in belief and practice stands out in sharp contrast to the world around us, and the power of cooperative truth can be a strong magnet to people looking for the Lord.

The last thing we need to have is a fractured Church.  I think we’d all agree with this statement, at least in spirit, and I know that there are many people who have heartbeats driving them to promote unity in the Christian community.  That is wonderful…and needed.  I’ve been wrestling with this idea though, and I’m constantly confronted with the question of why.  Why is unity so hard in practice?  More importantly, what does Christ mean when he calls us to be one as he and his Father are one?

            As I’m being led to work in unity with the people around me, I’m realizing just how hard it can be.  I’m beginning to understand how little differences can actually become huge barriers in the process of gaining momentum.  To begin the process of understanding each other and moving to a place of true undivided ministry, we can’t just expose the areas that we disagree on and attempt to reconcile them.  This approach is many times impossible and even dangerous.  We will always disagree.  In fact, we should disagree…it’s healthy.  Homogenous ministry approaches and worldviews can lead to blind-sided organizational structures and will miss out on reaching/communicating to whole groups of people.  Without disagreement, it is impossible for us to improve, restore and grow each other as iron sharpens iron.  An iron sword standing alone becomes dull and useless…as do we when we aren’t opening ourselves up to the criticisms (and even the slightly off-base ideas) of others.  This leads us to the conclusion that it is not disagreement on it’s own that is causing so much strife within the Christian community …it is something much deeper. 

Something is present in conflict that tries to take our differences (that which are inherently beautiful and part of our creation) and turn them into ugly irreconcilable monsters that threaten the very fabric of our being.  I want to dive deep into mistrust and the ways in which it divides and conquers the body of Christ.  Mistrust acts like a cancer cell in our spirit.  It breeds on itself and multiplies until it takes over whole regions in our lives.  It takes away the freedom and beauty that comes when the Christian community acts in a healthy way. 

Mistrust is developed in two major ways as it relates to the ministry community: It comes from our own insecurities around who we are in Christ, and it comes out of a misunderstanding of the kingdom of God.  When we forget the darkness that Christ called us and redeemed us out of, we can quickly forget that the Lord takes us first as we are and then begins the process of transformation within us.  He takes all of our shortsighted ideas, our less-than-holy lives, and our brokenness, and in turn he gives us life.  He lets us on to his team…he asks us to join his ‘club’.  We forget that we are imperfect sinners called to live deeply in grace, and then we project impossible standards of perfection on to those around us that are still actively falling short.  When they don’t stand up to those standards, we call them heretics and accuse them of watering down the gospel.  Couldn’t this be what Jesus was partly rebuking the Pharisees for in Matthew 23:4 and Luke 11:46 when he mentions the burdens that they place on people without lifting their own fingers to help them as they stumble?  It seems that one of the problems of the Pharisees was that they pictured a kingdom of heaven without the broken, messy, and redeemed people of the world.  They were the epitome of mistrust.  They didn’t trust each other, let alone other Jews and Gentiles.  When Christ called lowly fishermen to be his disciples, heal, teach, and start his church, it raised more than a few angry fists. 

All this to say, as we live in a kingdom of crazy, broken, and sinful people, we can’t let disagreements (however right and just we may be in the situation) become a foothold for disunity.  Instead, we should act like Paul encourages us to in Galatians 6:1…restore each other gently.  We need to pick our battles and any time we begin to worship the clarity of our theological pool, we have to remember that Jesus just might come walk through it with muddy boots on.  

A Bible Divided?

"Arise, my soul, arise;

Shake off thy guilty fears;

The bleeding Sacrifice

In my behalf appears:

Before the throne my Surety stands,

My name is written on His hands.

My God is reconciled;

His pardoning voice I hear:

He owns me for His child;

I can no longer fear:

With confidence I now draw nigh,

And 'Father, Abba, Father,' cry".

-Charles Wesley-

This is beautiful.  And at first glance it would appear to be only talking about a reality that comes to us in the New Testament with the sacrifice of Jesus.  While never saying the word 'mercy', the hymn is all about the deep, incredible and abounding mercies of God.  That we, an imperfect and rebellious people, should ever share the table with the Most High and be called his sons and daughters is truly an amazing and undeserved thing.  These truths are not something that most Christ followers would protest against, but there is something that we mustn't ever mistake.  The mercy of God is not just something that happens to 'appear' in the New Testament as if it had been hibernating throughout the Old Testament.  In fact, mercy and judgement, being one in the nature of God, appear in equal parts throughout the whole Bible.  Even though the Lord doesn't need defending or explaining, it is helpful to see the ways in which this oneness of character is shown throughout the scriptures.  

It is a great, awful, and mysterious thing that God continually tries to reconcile himself to rebellious sons and daughters of his creation.  The fact that the prophets of the Old Testament were sent to us at all shows the mercy of the Lord abounding in it's infinitude.  How many times does he plead with his people to repent and turn back to him in the Old Testament?  To count would miss the point because that is what the whole Bible is about.  The coming of Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the merciful nature of God, but with it also comes ultimate justice.  

John 12:47,48 says this:  "As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him.  For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.  There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day".

Jesus is saying here that he doesn't need to point an accusing finger at anybody, as if he were some judge sitting on a bench deciding peoples fates on a whim.  He's saying that his job was to come and speak truth to all that would hear and all who wouldn't.  That's it.  God's mercy is out there for all that decide to take it and live into it.  Jesus didn't come to judge anybody, but that doesn't change the fact that his words are truth and they never change.   

I also think it is important that we realize that God didn't just decide to one day change his nature and send Jesus into the world.  He is perfect in both his justice and his mercy.  They never contradict themselves in his nature; His words are the same yesterday, today, and forever.  

Immutability

"Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee we find no variableness nor shadow of turning.  We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety."

Even if you know what the word immutability means, how many people have ever really used it in a sentence?  I have a horrible vocabulary and I never was good at pulling words out on the fly to impress.  In fact, I still have a few words that I am constantly using in the wrong context...and I don't care.  The truth is though, that I've come to love this little (or not so little) word immutability lately.  

It means being incapable of change.  

Most importantly, it is a quality that is central to understanding God.  God is immutable.  He is incapable of changing.  His very nature prohibits itself from changing.  To change would imply that what the former state of God wasn't perfected in it's entirety and a need to change would be present.  He would either have to go from bad to better, from better to worse, mature to immature, or vice versa.  God is perfect.  He is what he has always been, what he wants to be, and what he can't help but being.  Of course we are talking about the core here...the very nature of God.  Even when Christ was born into the world, God didn't change his nature...Jesus was there from the beginning.

In a world and life that is wrought with change, some good and some bad, most people would say that it is hard.  Even if it is a change that needs to happen, it pulls us away from our comfort zone and isolates us with doubt.  We need to realize that change is not an inherently holy thing.  It is a result of fallen people needing to re-align themselves with their creator.  A man who walked closely with the Lord once said:

"In God no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape.  Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux.  Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle."

Don't we all search for an everlasting permanence in our lives?  Don't we forever seek the solid rock to make our home upon?  Don't we desire to settle the Promised Land and live amongst family that know us?  I'm convinced that even the hard core wanderers among us (and I've done some wandering of my own) deeply desire to put their roots down in the soil of permanence.  That is what the Lord offers us.  That is what he wants to redeem us to.  Each of us know inherently that life changes ultimately bring us to the final change...death.  The cyclical nature of change ends up bringing us to a point of finality and fear.  It's depressing if you think about it.  

Can we seek the immutability of God while still realizing that the Lord works his plan of redemption through the very process that he stands against?  He desires complete permanence for us in him, but to bring us there he needs us to change.  I hope we realize that God will never change to suit our needs or fill our brokenness...instead he invites us into his immutable umbrella like a hen gathering her chicks.  That is beautiful...and immutable.

where words fail...

"Lord, how great is our dilemma!  In thy presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak.  Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say?  Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.  Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe."

-A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

This is not just a reflective prayer written down by a man who intimately knew God, but truth of a real dilemma that we are faced with as people.  The more we get to know the Lord and see his ways, the more we get faced with this situation.  The Bible is full of scripture that speaks to this very truth.  David in The Psalms, Jesus speaking of the hearts of his followers, and Paul talking about the supremacy of Christ in the book of Colossians as well as the work of the Holy Spirit in the children of God, all describe this.  Our prayer should be simply that God shows us himself in this way...and then we wait for him to reveal himself.

Healing

"As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, 'Have mercy on us, Son of David!'  When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, 'Do you believe that I am able to do this?' 'Yes, Lord,' they replied.  Then he touched their eyes and said, 'According to your faith will it be done to you'; and their sight was restored." -Matthew 9:27-30

I just returned from a trip to Mamelodi, South Africa.  I went down there with a group from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was assigned to be a part of a medical team for the duration of the trip.  Mamelodi is a township outside of the city of Pretoria, created during Apartheid, and almost 100% black.  The makeshift city (full of squatters and people of abject poverty living alongside middle class families) has a staggering HIV/AIDS positive population.  We set up medical tents out in the lower class neighborhoods and invited all who needed it to come and receive the medical treatment that we could provide.  There was about 15-20 people on the medical team, including a handful of nurses and three doctors.  I have no prior medical experience.  My job was to work in the Triage tent, effectively being the first person to come in contact with those seeking care.  I had to figure out whether or not they needed to see a doctor, and if not then I had to let our "pharmacy" know what they needed to help alleviate some of the illnesses they came in with.  Every day 300+ people would show up to receive care, and the doctors/nurses could only personally see so many of them.  I got rather good at diagnosing the common cold, heat rash, women's health issues (don't ask), and arthritis in the elderly.  I prayed that the Lord would give me eyes to see into what was ailing them and to speak directly into whatever it was.  Many of the people simply needed someone to talk to.  Many of them were also beyond help, dying of AIDS, and in the advanced stages of cancer.  I personally witnessed dozens upon dozens of people get tested positive for HIV and have to be confronted of the new reality of their life.  I saw dozens of babies, many less than a year old, come in with lesions all over their bodies, already living near death with AIDS. 

All this to say, it hit me that we were "doing" relatively little:  Maybe a diagnosis here, some ibuprofen there, and a lesson on menopause to some wholly uneducated women all around.  For the most part, we had none of their prior medical histories, incomplete testing, and referrals that would probably never end up in a real doctor's office.  People were dying.  They needed a miracle.  The Lord showed up.  I saw it with my own eyes and was a witness to His healing.  These people had more faith that God would heal them more completely than a doctor could any day.  Many would come up to us, not believing in Jesus, and ask us to pray for them anyways.  I felt like I was living in the Book of Acts in the Bible.  I saw people walk that couldn't before.  I saw people see who couldn't before.  I saw people hear the name of Jesus for the first time in their lives.  

We live in a country that has been blessed (and it is a blessing) with wonderful health care, and the most gifted doctors in the world.  We can easily forget that many in the world don't have that.  We can easily forget that in those situations, prayer is powerful.  Prayer is essential.  Who is praying?  We know that in the Bible, Jesus would simply heal people on account of their faith.  i.e. they just believed that he could do it.    

pass the halves...

If you read the beginning of Genesis 15 in the Bible, there's this peculiar story of God making a covenant promise to Abraham (Abram at the time). It was a promise that he and his descendants would take possession of what would become known as Israel (i.e. the Promised Land). Abram asks God how he can know for certain that he will gain possession of the land and God does something crazy. He asks for a bunch of young animals to be brought before him, cut in half and lined up down a sort of aisle with each half on the opposite side of the other. Then God, in the form of a blazing torch, passes through the aforementioned aisle. This in turn seals the covenant, or promise, that God just made with Abram. I did a little reading and found out something interesting. It was a widely held practice in the ancient near east (Middle East) to seal covenants in this way. Ancient Hittite (the kingdom that found it's roots in modern day Turkey) and Amorite (semi-nomadic peoples of Mesopotamia) texts indicate of similar practices being held to seal covenants made between different parties or people groups. The thing about it was that by performing this ritual and personally passing through the animal halves, you were calling down a curse on yourself if you were to break the covenant. In a sense, you were witnessing your own fate (through the fate of the dissected animals) if the entirety of the covenant were not kept. This sounds like some other crazy and distanced ritual of the ancient world until we realize that God himself passes through the halves on his own accord. He is calling down a sort of curse on himself if His end of the promise is not kept to Abram and his descendents. Then I thought...God didn't need to do that. He's GOD. His word should be enough for us. Later in the Bible, there's an account through the prophet Jeremiah of Israel not holding their end of the covenant to be faithful to God. He draws on this ritual narrative again of passing through the halves. Essentially he's saying that it is now the people of ancient Israel's fate to end up like those animals. Then I think to Jesus. The lamb (frequently the animals used in the ritual sacrifice were lambs) that was sacrificed for us. The New Testament talks about Christ's body being broken for us. All the images I have in my head of this ancient ritual of passing through broken animal halves come rushing back into my head. They go immediately to the fact that instead of holding us to our end of the bargain and covenant, God took the curse on Himself. I bet an ancient king wouldn't have done that to someone who broke his treaty...