Questioning the Answers

When Certainty Ceases to Make Sense

The Good News of How Bad We Are

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A couple weeks before the Corona lockdown ensued, I met a friend for breakfast on a Sunday morning at a local diner, a decadent dive of sorts that probably hasn’t been renovated in 30 years, has a menu that stretches to the Idaho border, and serves cinnamon rolls that are as big as your head. 

It’s the kind of place where I’d picture a 57-year-old hardened detective nursing a cup of coffee as he uses empty sugar packets and a smoldering ashtray to intently recreate a crime scene for a rookie cop sitting across the table, all the while allowing a cigarette to dangle precariously from the corner of his mouth, its smoke streaming up and disappearing into a dense haze that blankets the air. Back when smoking in public was a thing, of course. 

That morning, as I slipped into a dark-green vinyl booth and waited for my friend to show up, there was no such excitement going on. Four older women were at the table next to me, their conversation nondescript. A couple people sat at the counter on the other side of the restaurant. 

After a few minutes, two men carrying Bibles came in and sat down at a nearby table. I’d guess the older man was in his fifties, the younger man probably in his thirties. The older man’s Bible was very large. A statement piece, of sorts.

I didn’t pay much attention to their doings, figuring they were going to have a Bible study over breakfast. “Knock yourselves out, guys,” I thought to myself. “Just be careful where you wield that big ole thing.” 

My friend showed up and we started to catch up on the latest goings on in our lives. As we talked, we’d occasionally hear a distinct comment from the Bible Table. It was mostly the older guy, who seemed to be getting louder for emphasis. The table was in my line of sight and I noticed the man growing more and more animated as the conversation continued. His big Bible was flopped open, small pieces of paper with notes on them scattered about.

It was clear they weren’t having a Bible study. The younger guy didn’t have his Bible open at all. He was listening to the older guy, responding mostly with nods and uh-huh’s . 

My friend and I weren’t interested in what was transpiring at that table, but we kept clearly hearing the words “gospel” and “sin” rising to the surface. Then it became clear. He was practicing a sermon, and the more he mentioned sin, the louder and more animated and intense he got. This diatribe was definitely meant for an audience.

He started to throw in the word “cross,” at which point the intensity was mixed with palpable indignation. We could feel it from our table, exchanging almost uncomfortable glances with each other. 

Occasionally, he broke out of “preacher” mode to mentor the younger man, insisting that “people need to understand,” and mentioning “the congregation,” “sin,” and “the cross.”

We did our best to block out the distraction, but then, after the man returned to preacher mode, he said something neither of us could block out.

“No matter how good you feel, you’ll never know how bad you are.”

The words were delivered with bold intensity. With conviction. With a rage that was controlled, yet unmistakable. 

My eyes locked on my friend’s, stunned. His jaw dropped in disbelief.

“Wait. Did he actually just say that?” I asked. Thinking maybe I misheard, I repeated the words. “‘No matter how good you feel, you’ll never know how bad you are.’ Is that what he said?”

My friend nodded. “Yeah, that’s what he said.”

We stared at each other, stupefied. 

My jaw clenched and I felt my blood start to boil. Part of me wanted to storm his table and unleash a string of f-bombs and tell him what he could do with his gigantic Bible. 

But I took a deep breath, looked off to the side and then back into my friend’s eyes, and simply said “Can you believe that’s the world we came from?”

He had a slightly nauseated look on his face. “I know.”

It’s super ironic, because “gospel” means “good news.” And this man’s passionate exhortation was peppered with the term.

Yet, the gospel that’s been crystallized within the greater Christian world has a huge element that, unfortunately, can be summed up with what this man said: No matter how good you feel, you’ll never know how bad you are.

Sure, it may be packaged more attractively, edited for consumability, and delivered with more finesse and grace, but that’s the underlying message. 

At the very core of who we are, we’re messed up. We’re lacking. We’re unworthy. We have no intrinsic value apart from choosing the proper response to being told that we’re messed up, lacking, unworthy, and without intrinsic value. 

And, as this gentleman was so eager to point out, we better not forget it. “You’ll never know how bad you are.”

This message wasn’t only happening at the table in the diner in preparation for a Sunday sermon. It’s a message that’s rampant. 

And damaging.

Words have power. We all know that. Science has proven it. The Bible even speaks to this effect. 

I’ve made some bad choices with my kids over the years and I’ve said some things I wish I hadn’t, but I would never, ever think of saying something like “No matter how good you feel, you’ll never know how bad you are.”

Put in this context, it’s a no-brainer. If I did say something like that to my kids, I’d probably get lambasted from everyone who knew I’d done it. And rightly so. 

And yet so much of the Christian world is marinating in this very message. Absorbing it, whether consciously or subconsciously and being affected accordingly. 

The problem is it isn’t true. It’s just bad theology. Theology that was surprisingly absent for the first thousand plus years of the church’s existence. 

This is why my blood can start to boil and I want to start dropping f-bombs. Because this message can be crippling and people are internalizing it as truth when they don’t need to. When they shouldn’t be.

My friend and I expressed gratitude for extricating ourselves from that form of religion, then quickly carried on with our time together.

I’m not sure who was ultimately on the other end of that man’s message. But it was a Sunday morning, so I’m sure countless people near and far were about to be on the other end of some form of that message. 

And unfortunately, it’s a fiercely protected message. I remember years ago when I started to push against the message in my own church at the time, only to find myself one night at a table surrounded by people in church leadership showing me scripture to “prove” that in and of myself I was, in fact, an object of wrath.

It was a quick reminder that pushing against something only creates more resistance. So I walked away. I need more than social-distancing from a message that says I’m an object of wrath.

Sometimes I see people standing on street corners holding signs that say things like “You are enough,” “You are worthy,” “You are beautiful.” 

And I think that maybe someday these messages will make their way into the greater church. And that they’ll be sufficient on their own, absent of any form of “You’ll never know how bad you are.”

I’m hopeful that the narrative will change. I’m not sure how it’ll happen, but I’m hopeful. I mean, it is changing in some places, I just wish it would happen more quickly for the sake of those in the pews.

But I guess the Titanic doesn’t turn on a dime.


Image credit (all images from Pixabay):
Field landscape by enriquelopezgarre
Bible by StockSnap
Grassy walk by Tabeajaichhalt

The Voice of God

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Photo credit: High Park (license)

Since last fall, I’ve been volunteering in a theology class at a local university. As one of several people facilitating small groups for the class of about 70 freshmen, I was asked this past week to share something that struck me from the current text we’re reading, a book called Dangerous Wonder by Michael Yaconelli.

There were several things from the first few chapters that resonated, from the idea of Jesus being a rule breaker to a whole discussion about the necessity of having a faith that dares to ask questions. For sure, the idea that our questions can make others uncomfortable to the point of silencing the one asking the questions hits very close to home.

But what struck me the most was actually in the introduction, where the author says “There is, deep within all of us, a voice. It speaks to us continuously, knocking on the door of our consciousness. When we are children, the voice is very loud, shattering our awareness with overwhelming clarity… It shouts to us with a whisper… This voice of our childhood is the voice of wonder and amazement, the voice of God…”

It’s a beautiful idea; one that I believe is powerfully true.

He continues, “One sad day, we are aware of an absence. We can no longer hear the God-voice, and we are left with only silence – not a quiet silence but a roaring silence. We did not want to stop hearing God’s voice. Indeed, God kept on speaking. But our lives became louder. The increasing crescendo of our possessions, the ear-piercing noise of busyness, and the soul-smothering volume of our endless activity drowned out the still, small voice of God.”

So we go from living in a space of beautiful and mysterious clarity to an unfortunate pseudo-reality, reeling in a sea of deafening noise and being drowned by life itself.

And finally, “Most of us cannot say when it happened, we only know that it happened. When we became aware of the absence of God’s voice, there were a thousand deaths within us.”

A thousand deaths within us.

A haunting statement.  It lingered with me.

As I pondered the notion of God’s voice being drowned out, I realized that for most of my life, it wasn’t busyness, possessions, the noise of life, or endless activity that were my problems, even though I’ve been steamrolled by those things at various times.

For me, religion had drowned out the still, small voice of God.

I didn’t realize it when it was happening, of course, but I can look back and see that I allowed doctrine, dogma, revered or respected spiritual leaders, and even scripture to drown out the voice of God in my life.

The idea of scripture taking precedence over the voice of God in one’s life can be a tricky thing in evangelical America, where the Bible isn’t merely affirmed as critical, but is often revered as the ultimate authority.

For example, a few years ago, I was sitting in church and the pastor was talking about the need for us to be more in touch with the Spirit, but he promptly insisted that the Spirit will never lead us to do something that isn’t “biblical.”

He then urged the importance of relying on the counsel of others to decipher whether the voice of God that we’re hearing is actually the voice of God.

On the surface, that might sound reasonable. I actually adhered to such logic for years, but it’s problematic.

And this kind of thinking has the potential to lead to a thousand deaths within us.

I suspect the reason we can be leery of the voice of God – particularly when others are hearing it – is because we want control.  We want to uphold the status quo.  We want things to be simple and tidy and to fit into our understanding of what’s true and right and acceptable.

But God doesn’t work that way.  If anything is biblical, that is.

Seriously.  If we learn anything from the Bible, it should be that the Bible was never meant to be the thing.

Five times in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus starts a teaching with “You have heard that it was said…”  In other words, “You have heard that it was biblical…”

And then he goes on to explain how the people had missed the mark and it was time for them to move to a new place of understanding.

Huh?  But how can the divinely authoritative Word of God miss the mark?

I love the story in Acts 10 when Peter falls into a trance and has a vision about animals that are impure and unclean. A voice tells Peter to kill and eat, but Peter – being the good, devout Jew that he is – responds with righteous indignation, “Surely not, Lord!”

Peter was responding the way his religion had used scripture to say he should respond.  How God expected him to respond.

In modern Christian terms, we could say that he responded biblically to something that was unbiblical. Good for him. Peter/God: one. Satan: zero.

But the story doesn’t end with Peter’s righteous indignation. It ends with a transformation of Peter’s thinking and understanding.

It’s a fantastic representation of our desire to cling to what’s familiar – all the while using the Bible to insist we’re doing what God expects – even though we’re clearly being called to let go of an old way of thinking and move in a new direction.

If anything represents the falsity of the notion that God won’t ever lead us in a direction that’s not “biblical,” it’s the Bible itself.

I encouraged the class of impressionable and good-hearted prospective leaders to always listen for the voice of God and to take great care not to let it get drowned out by anything around them… especially religion.

As I write this, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes, which is attributed to thirteenth-century poet and Sufi mystic Rumi. “There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”

Great advice, Rumi.

Great advice.







Christmas Eve Reflections

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Photo credit: Snowflakes at Christmas (license)
Photo credit: Snowflakes at Christmas (license)

A couple weeks ago, my nine-year-old daughter approached my wife with grave seriousness. The two went upstairs to our bedroom so my daughter could be ensured privacy as she opened up about something that had been weighing heavily on her heart.

“Sometimes I think Santa isn’t real. I don’t understand why he doesn’t get gifts for you and dad.”

And so began “the talk.”

In our house, we’ve never attempted to make an airtight case for Santa Claus. We mostly asked questions and allowed our kids to navigate it and come to their own conclusions.

The Santa bubble was burst many years ago for my son, but since then even he has allowed his sister to navigate it herself. I’ll never forget the year a Wii showed up under the tree. In his exuberant excitement, my son jumped over to me to say thanks, but he quickly caught himself. Not wanting to devastate his sister’s understanding of Santa, he made sure his back was to her and quietly mouthed “Thank you.”

Over the last year or so, my daughter started piecing things together. Boxes in the basement from Amazon that are strangely similar in size and shape to presents under the tree. Catalogs showing up in the mail shortly after Christmas from companies whose products had shown up on Christmas morning.

And the list goes on.

In short, the reality of what my daughter was experiencing didn’t match up with her understanding of Santa Claus.

My daughter went on to talk about the conflict she was faced with because some of her friends do believe in Santa Claus and some don’t.  My wife’s response was brilliant – something I would never have thought of and one small example of why she’s amazing. I was intrigued as she relayed the story.

“Your friends who don’t believe in Santa Claus? They’re right.”

My heart sank a bit.

“And your friends who do believe in Santa Claus? They’re right, too.”

My face contorted in a bit of confusion.

“There was a man named St. Nicholas who lived a very long time ago and who was very generous…”

A very brief explanation followed of how a real man with a reputation of being very generous eventually morphed into a man who flies through the skies in a sleigh pulled by reindeer to deliver presents to children across the globe.

My daughter was surprisingly content with the whole thing, now able to embrace the truth and spirit of what it all stands for without having to wrestle through the fact that her experiences – and her ever-maturing gut instincts – don’t line up with what’s “supposed” to be true.

I can’t imagine how things would ultimately shake out if we told our daughter that she needed to defend her position or attempt to show others with differing ideas why they’re wrong. Or if we told her that she needed to hold unwaveringly to a belief in flying reindeer. Or if she felt the need to put her friendships on the line by drawing lines in the sand.

I can’t help but reflect on the parallels to my years in the evangelical world, where positions are defended, beliefs do need to be unwavering, and lines are drawn in the sand.

As I sit here across the room from a beautifully decorated Christmas tree with nicely wrapped packages around it, I think about the birth of Jesus. I think about his radical teachings about God, inclusion, and unconditional love, all of which challenged the religious system of the day.

And then I think about the modern institution of Christianity and how the core message of Jesus is often enveloped in so much dogma that many people feel suffocated.

And I desperately wish the church would get better at loosening the grip, allowing people to breathe, and trusting that things are going to be okay.

Tonight, for the first time in many years, my wife and I won’t be putting milk and cookies out for Santa or a carrot out for the reindeer. It might be a little sad that our daughter no longer believes in Santa, but our experience of Christmas will be no less rich and meaningful.