Why Doesn’t God Just Cure Loneliness?

Loneliness. Isolation. We’ve all been there. We’ve all experienced it. Perhaps it was just a moment of recognition. Perhaps it was weeks of feeling like there was no one there, who cared enough to reach out. Regardless, it’s a common experience.

At first blush, it appears that the Christian should never experience any kind of loneliness or isolation. After all, we know that Christ is with us through the presence of the Holy Spirit until we come to see him once more in the eschaton.

This “real presence” suffuses our lives and gives us constant companionship. Yet few of us have such a deep sense of presence. Too often, this makes us feel guilty that we are not living out the Christian life or inclines us to blame God for not coming to our help in times of need. But I wonder if something else occurs during these seasons of isolation.

The history of Christian spirituality has often brought up the idea that God withdraws himself from ourselves for a period of time in order to aid our growth. I’m reminded of Elijah who after his miraculous victory at Mount Carmel flees to the wilderness to escape Jezebel (1 Kings 19). After being sent on a forty day journey by the angel of the Lord, God comes and visits him in a cave. Isolated, alone, I imagine that Elijah was primed for the pity party he hoped God would throw him.

However, the Lord offers not pity, but a question: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God tells Elijah to leave, reminding him that he is not, in fact, alone – that there are seven thousand others who have not bowed to Baal.

God doesn’t provide intimate companionship for Elijah. In fact, God comes across as  somewhat aloof in this encounter with his prophet. God simply reminds Elijah of who he is, his commissioning, and then points to others.

Perhaps the reason that God feels far off in our times of isolation is because he is maintaining his distance to point us to others. Yes, in one sense, God is all we need. But he has also created us for community, for the Church.

Maybe in our moments of profound isolation God is inviting us not into immediate comfort but into future comfort. He reminds us: “there are others.” He invites us: “go find them.” And when we do, he indwells our relationships. It’s not a quick fix nor is it easy, simple or even that mystical. Being driven to relationship and to dependence upon others is, in fact, hard, stretching and challenging. But it’s the invitation we are offered.

Mom & God: All In, All the Time

Five to six years ago, life was a bit rough for me. Part of that roughness extended to my relationship with my mom. I wouldn’t describe myself as a full throttle teen rebel, but things were not as they should have been. I remember racing home moments before my curfew because I knew that my worried mother would still be up and that if I came home a minute or two late, her resulting adrenaline would keep her up most of the night.

It was easy at the time to rationalize and think that my mom just needed to relax and learn to go to sleep. I’m sure the thought crossed my mind at times. But in retrospect, I recognize that my mom was not trying to control or guilt trip me; she simply could not not help (even physically) her concern for me.

My mom was all in for me. Did her concern sometimes frustrate me? Of course. But I could never doubt that my mom cared.

In this way, she imaged the love of God to me. For myself, with my tendency towards legalism, I easily imagine that God is really only concerned about my affairs when I’m close to him. I imagine most of the time he’s off doing his God-thing, working miracles in some other part of the globe, but if I have a particularly powerful time of worship or can piece together three days in a row of prayer and journaling then he turns towards me and is concerned with the things in my life.

When I feel this way, those late nights coming home to my mom remind me of the truth. For, just like my mom who would wait up to make sure I got home regardless of the state of our relationship, so God, regardless of how near or far I feel from him, is there, waiting up for me, waiting to welcome me home.

It’s easy to think of God as a faithful God, keeping his covenant and love with those who love him. But my mom has shown me that he is also a love-no-matter-what God. When I feel like I am far from covenant, he loves me anyway, his thoughts are bent towards me and his heart yearns for my safe return.

Jesus taught us the same thing in the garden of Gethsemane. While he prayed, anticipating his impending self-sacrifice, the disicples slept. Yet even as their attention waned from him, Jesus heart was bent on them recognizing that if the cross was God’s will for their salvation, he would follow through. God’s attention is always on us; when we sleep, when we stray. When we are near, when we are far.

Thanks Mom for reminding me of this; it’s a lesson I pray I will never forget.

May we all dwell in the security that just like my mom has been and is for me, so God is for us – all in, all the time.

Loving the Church

In restarting my writing in this space, I ran through a series of post ideas. The first post that came to mind was something critical of the Church and its practices, seeking to push buttons, evoke a reaction. In some ways, the name of the blog lends itself to this: “Confronted by Christ.” Confrontation for us generally carries negative connotations, as evidenced by most people’s tendency to try to avoid it.

As I thought about writing that post, I was struck by easy it would be. Perhaps it is because the Church is an easy target. It is full of hypocrites by necessity; what we profess eclipses the lives we are able to live. Perhaps it is because the Church makes us  uncomfortable. It takes the most intimate parts about us, our relationship with God and others, and demands that we live that out in community. Perhaps it is because so many have had such negative personal experiences, whether it is women being shunted aside from opportunities to lead, people being alienated from the “core” of the church, or any other of a myriad of hurtful things that take place in broken community.

It’s easy to criticize. There is, of course, a place for criticism. It is hard to deem the Old Testament prophets, or even our Lord Jesus, as “tolerant” of misguided notions and poorly led lives.

But I feel convinced that what is needed at this juncture are people who love the Church. True, constructive criticism can only come from such a position.

The Church is not a comfortable thing to love. That should not particularly surprise us. We know ourselves, the dark secrets we wish to keep hidden, the tendencies that surprise even us at times. Yet Christ loves us. Out of that powerful reality, he invites us to love one another and even, yes, the Church.

Loving the Church is not in vogue, it is not the cool thing to do. But imagine a world in which Christians loved the Church, not because it is perfect or because it magically fulfills all their “needs,” but because the Church is Christ’s Bride, and what is loved by our Lord merits our love as well.

Ironically, perhaps the call to love the Church is more confronting to our own tendencies than criticism of it. The call to faithfulness to the Church, and thereby, to Christ is challenging in a consumeristic orientation towards Church. Yet, this is always the deepest confrontation Christ offers us; confronting us to love the things we may feel are unloveable. For some of us the unloveable is the Church. And so our greatest challenge is to love it.

May the Spirit renew our hearts that we may love the Church with the same love with which Christ loved us.

An Easy Calling?

In a recent interview at the leadership conference Catalyst, Mark Driscoll said, “No prophet ever woke up and tweeted ‘another easy day for me.’” Regardless of what one might think about Driscoll, he gets something right here.

What he gets right is that when it comes to the Gospel, calling and ease generally don’t go together immediately. This runs counter to how we are trained to think. In our culture of comfort, we tend to conflate the two. We believe that people should only do things that bring them great joy or what they are passionate about; “follow your heart” is a more common phrase than “obey and do the hard work.” Infected by such thinking, we can begin to think that being and doing who and what we are called to ought to be easy.

Yet, the call of the gospel is a fundamentally uncomfortable one. Leaving behind our claims to our lives, possessions, relationships, in order to follow Jesus is not the most “natural” transition. If we’re honest, the type of demands that Jesus makes of us wouldn’t help him go viral on YouTube.

He confronts us, the deepest parts of us, demanding our utmost allegiance. Maybe I’m alone in my feelings, but I don’t always find it easy to respond to this call. Many days, I am more inclined to recline with an episode of Seinfeld than I am to spend that same twenty minutes in prayer.

Fortunately, however, we know that this is not the whole story. Christianity is not another muster-your-willpower religion. We know that we have the Holy Spirit who is at work in us, conforming us to the image of the Son. The calling of the gospel never changes, but we do, miraculously becoming the type of people who delight in responding to that call, to giving our lives to Christ.

Surely, this is grace: God does not leave us to struggle with his claim upon us, but by working in our working, brings us to joy. Our specific vocations will look different – we may love them, we may hate them depending on the Lord’s purposes in our lives during that season. But what we are promised is that for those of us who strive after Jesus, the Spirit will be at work easing our burdens, giving us a new yoke, and making our fundamental calling a thing of joy.

Disneyland: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

My experience of Disneyland began at the age of two years old, being pushed down Main Street in a stroller and, according to legend, happily clapping my hands the entire way. I’m proud to say that my two-year-old delight has continued to this day…although I now avoid the clapping.

Disneyland is a bit of a paradox. In many ways, it is a cash-making machine, propagating capitalist society’s mantra that one can buy happiness for the cost of admission. The stores are filled with tourists willing to shell out an inordinate amount of money for a hat, sweatshirt, or corn dog. It’s certainly easy to become cynical of such a place. Perhaps that is our great temptation as Christians who are too often inclined to shrink away from a “corrupt culture” around us.

Yet Disneyland is not merely a gilded centerpiece on capitalism’s table. Disneyland captures a magical beauty. It is encompassing, pushing the limits of delight, reminding us that there are yet more beautiful things to be discovered. The breath-taking spectacle of the fireworks show over the castle, or Fantasmic!, or a myriad of other wonders may evoke oohs and ahhs, but for those with eyes to see, they are also reminders that there is more. Perhaps this is the best that human imagination can come up with, but we know that human imagination is not the only thing at work in this world, or in the one to come.

Disneyland isn’t perfect; it isn’t paradise. The wails of terrified toddlers thrust into costumed performers’ arms is a pertinent reminder of this fact. Yet Disneyland has taught me to wonder, taught me to delight, and even taught me to shed tears before beauty. These are good things.

There are certainly many bad things in the world around us, things we do not want to fill our hearts and minds with. But there are also beautiful things, even hidden among the bad. Disneyland reminds me of the fact that sometimes, in the midst of the evils of our culture or the perversions that surround us, real beauty can still be seen, the heavens can truly open up, and we can catch a glimpse of the Beautiful One Himself.

Yes, we need to be sensitive to the Spirit’s voice as Christ confronts us about the things that we accept too quickly. However, we also need to be willing to unabashedly wonder, marvel and delight at the good things he has allowed us to build and create. Let us always remember that such beauties are sacramental, pointing beyond themselves, and back to their Maker, the Lord himself.

Note: This is an adapted version of an article recently submitted and printed in Regent College’s Et Cetera,  student newsletter.

All is Grace

I met with a dear friend while I was home (he generously squeezed me into his schedule) and as we were talking the subject of grace came up. He shared about a study his church is going through and one of its central thrusts: correcting the common misconception that grace is only about salvation.

My friend went on to share that grace is not merely what saves us, but also what allows us to do or be any good at all. How true this is, and it was a valuable reminder for me. Yet as I write this post, I look towards a year that will be filled not just with me doing good or receiving good things but also, inevitably, a year that will have some painful moments.

My initial reflex, my gut reaction, in such moments is to feel like God is distant. And that his grace leaves with him.

But what if it is not just the good that is grace but also the hard, perhaps, even, the bad? God’s grace at work certainly does not create bad circumstances, but he does use them. Joseph reminded his brothers of this reality – indeed, in many ways, their abandoning him in a pit was God’s grace as it took Joseph to the place he needed to be.

A lot of this depends on our perspective and how we look at the world. Tolkien has his elves be envious of humanity’s mortality. For most of us, such an idea is ridiculous – society fears death, it is a bad thing. Yet from the perspective of immortality, death is grace, a transition to ultimate rest.

So, perhaps, are some of the “bad” things in our lives. Our struggle with health is perhaps God’s gracious way of inviting us to depend on him alone, rather than rely on our own strength. Our lack of discipline is God’s grace at work teaching us that our efforts will remain insufficient, and drawing our eyes to Christ. His grace is at work when he illuminates, demonstrates, and transforms our perspective, commonly in the midst of the megaphone of pain.

This year, my own challenge is to look not with eyes locked on the situation immediately before me, but with eyes looking through the situation to the generous hand of God behind it. I suspect that if I look in this way, I will quickly discover that Brennan Manning was right: all is grace.

Politics and Faith, Part V – Faithful Witnesses

This is the fifth and final installment in the Politics and Faith series. You can read the other posts here, here, here and here.

If you’ve been reading along, you probably realized pretty quickly that I haven’t attempted to lay out a comprehensive political program for the Church. Rather, I have sought to understand, in light of some fundamental Christian ideas, why we should engage in politics and some starting places for thinking about that engagement.

So the question remains – what is the Church supposed to do?

At the [less and less] recent Faith and Politics Conference at Regent College, Peter Leithart argued persuasively that martyrdom is the hinge of political history. He suggested that martyrdom is, in fact, the only thing that the Church has that has truly changed the shape of political history. Leithart pointed out that in the early days of the Church, the gladiatorial events were affirmations of Rome’s supremacy. By being unafraid martyrs, Christians upended this, turning the Colosseum into a stage for Passion Plays, re-enacting and witnessing to Christ.

The key work of the Church, then, is not to seek to affect legislature (although there may be an appropriate place for that), but to cultivate true disciples, or to pick up the language of martyrdom, faithful witnesses. 

There are multiple ways the Church goes about this, but certainly one which has been discussed far less than it ought is that the Church needs to create an imaginative space which offers a competing liturgy. Jamie Smith (also at the conference) repeatedly pointed out that to just call for political engagement fails to recognize the deep power of the political liturgy. The Church must be a liturgical Church, teaching and leading its followers into a life that is marked, like those of the early Christian martyrs, by faithful witness.

It’s not easy to do so in a culture in which we are comfortable. We can even “do church” from our couches, and watching on our television or computer screens. This sort of comfort is antithetical to building faithful witnesses – if there is nothing poking us, why should we poke back?

So we are reminded that in cultivating faithful witnesses, in being faithful witnesses ourselves, the Church is ultimately dependent upon God’s grace. It is a fitting place to end this series, as without the movement and ongoing work of the Spirit in the life of the Church, we can never hope to engage the political sphere in a constructive and shalom-spreading way.

May we strive, in prayer and action, to depend ever more on God, that we may be faithful witnesses in the political sphere – partnering with the state when it is wisest, proclaiming against it when it is needed, and, above all, witnessing to the goodness, truth, and beauty of Christ.