The summer joke

I really want to delete the last post, “The summer intent”.  It seems like a joke that I said I would blog more over the summer, and then I miss an entire 3 months.  I don’t have much to say for myself, I’d rather just get on with writing, and hopefully you’ll enjoy following my writing as we begin a new season. 

The summer intent - more blog posts!

My blog has been very sparse this year, but I have a lot of things on my mind these days, so my intent is to post more this summer.  I am going to try to get back to writing short, semi-complete thoughts, rather than contemplated masterpieces (that I never reach, no matter how I try).  My hopes is that this will interest you in joining me in dialogue.  Have I said something that resonates with you?  Comment!  Have I brought questions to your mind?  Comment! (whether or not I can answer them doesn’t matter!)  Have I pushed you too far?  Comment and chew me out, I can take it!

"Help us get something out of it"

I cringe every time I hear someone in a church pray, “help us get something out of it” (meaning the sermon or lesson).  I remember this being said back in high school, and I’m sure I prayed this myself.  I wonder how far back this type of thinking goes? 

Why do I cringe?  Well, why do we go to church?  If it is merely to “get something out of it,” then it sounds like we are going for ourselves.  If we are only going to church for ourselves, then we are likely to compare the value of church with the value of the other things we do for ourselves.  If we begin to operate by this comparison, (whether we specifically think it through or not) church will eventually lose, because there are better ways to meet our personal preferences and stimulate our human senses and needs than going to church.  Think about it, how do we spend our time, if it’s up to us, and it’s entirely for us?

            - Working, because it earns money.  There’s no money to be made at church.

- Eating, because it gives us strength.  Sometimes there’s food at church, but if you’re picky at all, you have a better idea of where to get the food you prefer.

- Sleeping, because we need rest.  You can sleep in a pew (many do), but you’ll be more comfortable in your bed, sofa, or hammock.

- Seeing friends.  Many of us have friends at church, but some don’t.  Those that have friends might prefer to socialize at a quiet coffee shop or in the comfort and privacy of a home.

- Reading or learning.  There’s always opportunity to read and learn in church, but again, personal preference can tell us that we’d have a more productive time listening to a favorite podcast or reading a book of our own choice.

- Entertainment.  Some churches have very entertaining worship and media.  Much of it fits a style; if the style is yours, stay, if not, go somewhere else?  If we chose a church based on music or service style, then it is hard to criticize a person who chooses to forego church, and instead religiously attend movies, concerts, plays or comedy clubs that better suit their style. 

When someone prays, “help us get something out of it” at church, it sounds to me like they’re not content or satisfied.  Perhaps they keep attending out of raw determination, or perhaps they drift and decide the comedy club on Saturday night and a Sunday morning snooze sound better to their soul. 

Why do you go to church? 

What is church?

I’m not going to essay my answers to those questions, but I want to mention a couple of themes that I believe rise against the prayer to “help us get something out of it”.  Here’s my themes: Worship, Service, and Offering.

My themes do not mean that we owe something to God (we all know that’s a horrible motivator to go to church!)  My themes mean that we are in a reciprocal relationship with our creator and sustainer God.  Both God and us grow in fulfillment of our relationship, when we both feed it. 

Would you ever, on a date with your spouse, say, “Honey I hope I get something out of this time I’m spending with you.”  How would that go over? 

We go to church not just to “get something out of it”.  We go to worship, we go to serve, and we go to offer ourselves to our God and a body of believers in him.  We go because it’s a relationship that is much more meaningful than the meeting of our needs.


*author's edit added 2 days later:  I want to clarify that my intent in writing this post was not to criticize anyone who has prayed in the manner I have discussed.  I have admitted that I have also prayed in this way, and recognized that my attitude was wrong.  I cannot insist that everyone who prays certain words has a certain attitude.  Different hearts and attitudes are housed within similar words and phrases that we share in communication.  However, we say things for a reason, and what we say tells a lot about us.

Is there a healthier attitude behind the phrase "help us get something out of it" being prayed at church?  How do we guard ourselves from praying with a consumerist mindset... how do we guard our hearts against selfishness?

Welcome the immigrant, part 2

What makes it hard to welcome immigrants?  If it wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be writing about it, so go on, think of why it’s hard to welcome immigrants…

Let’s see… they look different, they speak different, they eat different, they work different, they live different, they worship different.  In addition, some are here illegally, costing us a lot, and we don’t know which ones are here legally and which illegally.  What else?  Some have snuck into our country and blown up stuff in terrorist attacks.  I’m sure there’s more, but does that at least suffice as a summary of reasons why it’s hard to welcome immigrants?

 So what should we do?  I guess that depends who the “we” is.  I hear some people talk as if we have the power to keep immigrants out, when really that requires political process and government policies.  That is a broader, less personal “we”, and not one that we can quickly or easily influence.  My question is, what should the personal “we” do about immigrants?  Our personal options are limited, and that can be frustrating to us sometimes.  It’s too expensive to personally round up the ones we suspect to be illegal and deport them, we probably don’t trust the law process to actually get rid of them, so I guess we can either kill them, or let them live.  Since the result of killing them is undesirable (going to jail), we settle for the lesser of two evils and let them live, frustrating as it is.  I’m making this dramatic on purpose.  My point is that personal frustration from involuntary tolerance can grow and become an issue much bigger than the matter that caused the frustration.  How does the old saying go, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?”  Well, don’t let hate for immigrants or foreigners grow wild, just because you know some are here illegally. 

If you’re struggling with holding a grudge against immigrants, ask yourself, “what would it take for me to not hold this attitude against them?”  You can’t make them disappear, we already covered that in the last paragraph.  Would you agree that it would help if they would assimilate more into American culture and values and life?  We all get frustrated over language barriers, and we get annoyed by people that don’t seem to understand “the laws of the land.”  If they would just be more like us, right?  Some immigrants do assimilate very well, others don’t.  WHY?  There’s plenty of factors that determine this, but I believe one of the biggest ones is whether or not they feel welcomed and cared about. 

Now here’s the whole point that I’ve been leading up to:  You have a powerful influence on immigrants.  You can influence them to love Americans, or hate Americans.   It’s pretty easy to influence immigrants to hate Americans, just ignore them, suspect they’re illegals, mutter slander about them, turn the other way when they’re approaching, you know, anything that portrays that they’re not welcome.  It’s not any harder to influence them to love us, but it takes a different attitude and approach.  So many immigrants come from cultures that value hospitality.  Then they come to America, and they never get an invite into an Americans home.  In college my wife used to take a whole armload of flowers to east African bazaars and hand them out to the women working there.  Many of them said they’d never been welcomed like that by an American. 

Whether or not an immigrant feels welcomed by Americans sets them on a path of building their attitude about us.  If they feel welcomed by us they will be more open to learning who we are.  If they know we care, they’ll share their struggles with us, and we can minister into their lives.  If they do not feel welcomed by us, they will be hardened by feeling like an alien.  A person that feels unwelcomed and insecure in a new setting will seek solace by looking backwards at their home culture and religion for guidance.  Many Muslim women who did not veil their heads or faces in their homelands have decided to veil after they reach America, because they don’t trust a culture that didn’t welcome them, and they became more conservative and devout to Islam as a way to cope with their insecurity.  Shocked? 

We have an influence on immigrants, and this is a powerful opportunity to change the world, as it comes to us.  Want to curb the growth rate in the number of mosques in America?  Respect Muslim immigrants, invite them to your home for a meal, and let them see that they can find people that respect and care about them outside of the religious identity they’ve had since birth.  Invite the person in to your home, and you are giving them an opportunity to look out of the religion that you fear.

Scary?  Sure it is, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever done.  Let’s say you work with a Muslim, or see one regularly.  Warm up to a house invitation by beginning to greet him or her every morning with a handshake, and ask them how their family is.  Make eye contact, show you care, stick around for their answer, listen to them.  If this person never warms up to you, don’t give up and generalize all Muslim people as cold or mean.  Try again, and keep trying, and you will help turn feared foreigners into people that you and me can say, “I’m glad they’re here, they have taught me something, and I’ve had a positive influence on them as well.”

Welcome the immigrant, part 1

We were driving through Des Moines, IA recently when I read the following on a billboard, “I was a stranger immigrant, and you invited me in. –Matthew 25:35”  I caught that it was a church that paid to put that billboard up, but I can’t remember which church it was, nor does that matter to me.  What they have done is taken an often forgotten bit of Scripture and flagged our attention to it with a perfect contemporary example of what this passage is getting at.  I like it.

Look at the passage with me (Matthew 25:35-40):

For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’

Actually you should read the whole of Matthew 25:31-46, but what I want to share today is clear in the five verses I copied above.

If Jesus walked through your town, what would you do?  Pull out all the stops and treat him like a king right?  If he needed anything, you wouldn’t ignore him.  We would all want to let him know how cool we think he is, and how much we appreciate him, and if there was time, we might even share a favor we want to ask of him.  Considering who Jesus is, and the power he has, we would all want to get close to him to see what he’s going to do next.  He’s got so much to offer; it would be kind of nice to have him pop out a personal miracle for us, wouldn’t it?  Is it starting to sound like relating to Jesus would be like relating to a celebrity?  You know, someone that you think you know because you’ve read the tabloids, and if you ever saw them on the sidewalk you’d try to act as cool as possible to try to grab an autograph?

Then along comes Jesus’ words to us in Matthew 25, and we have a sudden reminder that Jesus seems to identify more with the losers than with the celebs. 

Why does Jesus identify with “the least of these”?  Who are “the least of these”?  I could be wrong, but I think “the least of these” must include the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned.  I would say the immigrant fits right in on this list.  What I find in common on this list is that these are all people that will get in our way of our busy, important lives.  They will slow us down, and cost us something they probably won’t be able to repay.  It’s easy to begrudge that, and avoid people like this, because it’s a lot nicer to have a well-ordered life, the life that we feel we have earned… that we deserve.

If Jesus walked through my town, I admit that I would first be thinking along the lines, “what could he do for me?”  Nevermind that my needs are nothing in comparison with the needs around me, I would think first about my own situation, and what I would love to gain from an encounter with that guy that can do it all.  I am assured that Jesus loves me, so naturally I would expect that he wants to do something nice for me.  The last thing I would expect is for him to come to me and say, “I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I’m cold, I’m sick, and I’m in trouble with the law, help me!  Can you see yourself being rocked back on your heels if this happened to you?  It would be a shocker if Jesus came and personally identified with desperate human needs like this, wouldn’t it? 

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Who forgives?

If you follow my blog then I assume that you are at least somewhat aware that last week a soldier went off base and murdered multiple villagers, mostly women and children.  I don’t know what that story has done to your heart.  From the news coverage from the soldier’s country I gather that there is a sense of sadness for this soldier and his family.  Perhaps everyone finds it hard to believe that this man committed these awful acts, after all, he was raised in a country with higher standards, part of a fighting force with strict orders about the treatment of civilians.  To that end, it might have been encouraging to read the articles in the past 2 days, after the soldier’s name was revealed.  Along with his name, several stories were told about this man’s past traumas, and his current family.  By the time I finished reading those articles, I saw him as a man, not just a murderer.  Perhaps the same has happened for you, and perhaps we would agree that this information and perspective change helps us not lose hope in the war, in our soldiers, etc.  Pause for a minute, however, and consider the remaining family members of the murder victims.  They have just buried their wives, daughters, and children, including a child the same age as my boy that you all love so much.  There wasn’t a makeup artist that could hide the bullet hole in that child’s head; that is the last thing that the remaining family members saw when they put that child in the ground.  Pause.  What does that family feel?  Does that family care about the story behind that soldier? 

If only, right?  If only we could explain to this family that the soldier had suffered head injuries, and been on too many tours, and was wading through some family troubles back home.  If only we could help them see the man, as his loved ones knew him, before he became known to the world as a murderer.  Wouldn’t that somehow provide some solace for their broken hearts?  Maybe not.  Maybe their wounds are too raw. Maybe for a while the only thing that makes sense to the families of those victims is violent revenge.  That’s unfortunate isn’t it?

If only.  If only we in the west would inquire and learn more about the lives of the people that are labeled terrorists.  If only we would sort out the differing motives of the different organizations, to see that few are a global threat, and the rest have only domestic agendas.  If only we would ask questions about the situations into which these organizations were birthed, and understand the amount of turmoil and traumas those people have been through.  If only we would see them as people: husbands, fathers, brothers of people that would probably break our hearts if we met them face-to-face and heard their stories.  Wouldn’t that somehow make us more concerned about the amount of civilian causalities our troops cause there?  Maybe not.  Maybe 9/11 wounded us too much to see other perspectives.  Maybe for a while the only thing that makes sense is violent revenge.  That’s unfortunate, isn’t it?

Forgiveness sucks.  I mean it’s hard.  Much easier to believe our rightness and our victimization justifies our unforgiveness.  If the other side can’t see us as human, why would we bother to see them as human, right? 

Then one day a man came along and told people, “love your enemy.”  Some of his listeners blew wine out of their noses when they heard him make that joke.  Wait, he wasn’t joking.  In fact, he lived love for his enemies.  Take these examples:

He empathized with the sinner.  He knew why people did what they did, and addressed their hearts rather than punishing their sins.

He walked with the people that did the very sins that He commanded them not to.  He gave them a chance; He got to know them.

He forgave everything that they backwardly, purposely, spitefully, ignorantly did to Him, even though it literally killed him.

Who then is more equipped to forgive an enemy?  Followers of this man, or those that don’t yet believe or follow Him? 

Yes we would all love our enemies to come groveling to us, and we can try to force that with all the wealth and might of the world, but how can we say we follow the Savior if we don’t obey his commands?  How can we say we obey his commands if we don’t love our enemy?  How can we love our enemy if we don’t try to understand them, empathize with their traumas, and forgive them for their offenses to us?

Reflections on protesting

It seems we have made it through the protests and unrest here.  The last blog I posted was definitely the most dramatic day of that week for us.  The next day there was also a protest in front of the main UN office, but no one got hurt.  The day after that we were all back at work.  Now that some time has passed I want to share some of my reflections on the past week, and this whole aspect of life here:

-Going through the day I described in my last blog post, I did not feel any fear.  The next day when I read some new articles I quickly thought, “wow this sounds pretty scary.”  Does that indicate that we’re naïve here on the ground?  I don’t think so, I think it indicates that the news is becoming increasingly sensational.  At the same time, I think we continue to adapt more to this place, and that helps us keep level heads about what is going on, and how to not only stay safe, but well.  I won’t say much on this or you’ll think we’re frogs in the boiling pot.

-I was not, and still am not, alarmed by children chanting, “death to America.”  It surprised me, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I knew those kids, and they knew me.  The next day my wife and son walked the street, chatted with kids as they went along, and had a nice time out.  It has really hit me how impressionable kids are.  If kids that know us and enjoy interacting with us on a regular basis suddenly absorb hate messages against us, that tells me they’re impressionable.  This has made me think about how important it is for us to be here offering counter-influence.  By counter-influence I mean that we live in front of them, and speak with them, disproving the messages they hear that make our people group seem like an enemy.

-I was also in the bazaar 2 days after I wrote last, and had a nice conversation with a couple teenagers.  Usually teenagers here are awfully rude, but these two wanted to find out how the protests had been for me.  I made it clear that I’m not with the army camp, rather I live in a local house and work only with locals in an office that serves poor communities.  Then I could see that they were not going to argue with me, on the contrary they seemed interested in my opinion in how to stop the conflict.  They remarked about how foolish it was for their neighbors to join the protests and lights cars on fire.  “What’s the point of that?” they asked.  I’m always encouraged to talk with moderate, sensible young men, but even more so in the wake of the heated protests.

-When I learned the reason for the Qur’an burning, it raised a serious question and concern.  I decided my staff’s answer was going to be an important gauge of my willingness to keep working in this country.  I do this sometimes.  I pick an issue or an incident that I have a strong opinion about, and gather opinions from my local staff, and use this as an indicator of our common ground (or grounds for me to consider cycling the staff out and getting a new team!).  This time the issue was: can they differentiate between the pastor who burned a Qur’an as a statement last year, and the army men who burned the Qur’ans that were found with notes between prisoners this year?  I was pleased with the results from my informal inquiry.  All of the staff I talked to acknowledged the difference in motives.  The sharper ones also said that it was good that the Marines confiscated the Qur’ans that had been inscribed, because it is also not allowed to write in a Qur’an at all.  Then they suggested that the better outcome would have been if the foreign soldiers had turned over the books to the government.  If this would have happened, the government could have made a very strong religious-political move against the insurgency, saying that they are not really Muslims because they desecrate the Qur’an by writing in it.  Unfortunately this did not happen, who would have cheered for the foreigner troops had they turned the books over to the government, are upset with the troops for taking the matter into their own hands and improperly disposing of them by burning them. 

-My last reflection is that I am astounded by the readers’ comments on the American news articles covering the Qur’an burning protests.  Public fatigue for a decade long military intervention is understandable, but now the comments are growing stronger and more hateful.  That’s unfortunate, because that’s not going to help anyone.  If you’re tempted to jump on the hatewagon and wish that this country would implode and obliterate all it’s people so that it is no longer a bother to the west, please talk to me when I get home, I want to have discussions with folks like this.