Introspection: Screeching Tires and Grace

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Screeching Tires and Grace

Scripture:

Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with each other and, if someone has a complaint against anyone, forgive each other. As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other.

Colossians 3:12-13 (CEB)

A thousand times I've failed

Still Your mercy remains

And should I stumble again

Still I'm caught in Your grace

From "From the Inside Out" by Joel Houston (Hillsong United)

There is nothing like the sound of screeching tires to ruin my day, particularly if that sound is coming from my own car. This is one sensation I experienced last Friday night when my car spun out of control and collided with another vehicle on the highway. The accident happened in a blur, but eyewitnesses to the incident helped me to fill in the missing pieces.

I was driving on a highway in my town when the driver in the lane to my right made an illegal lane change. In my efforts to avoid being sideswiped, I lost control of my car. My car spun three-fourths of the way around, collided with the other car, spun another halfway around, and ended up on the right side of the road. The other car, after my car collided with it, spun around 180 degrees and ended up on the median. In light of the circumstances, I could not have asked for a cleaner wreck. No other cars were involved in the incident; traffic was not halted; and, most importantly, nobody was injured.

Later that night, after riding back home in the wrecker that towed my car, I felt as though a lot of grace had been given to me. My car spun out of control on a normally-busy highway and only collided with one other car. A kind couple who had witnessed the accident took the time to return to corroborate my account to the police officer who arrived on the scene. The other driver and I did not get into an argument. A friend of mine who happened to see my car on the side of the highway texted me to see if I was alright, and I received a lot of supportive messages on Facebook after I posted about the accident.

God calls people to extend Grace to each other in the form of things like kindness, humility, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness. The kindness extended to me that evening makes me want to be more gracious to other people. I am a firm believer in the "pay it forward" philosophy, the idea that grace given to a person should not be paid back to the giver but rather "paid forward" to another person who needs it. In this way grace can spread like a beautiful chain reaction. The good people who stopped to help me left before I could get their contact information, so I might not be able to pay them back. Still, I consider myself indebted to anyone involved in a car accident that I witness.

Grace was a bit more difficult to recognize in my life in the days that followed the accident. In fact, I have even asked some of my friends to pray that I'll have patience as I deal with problems resulting from the accident. The warm, fuzzy feelings I experienced last Friday night faded as I had to deal with car rentals and insurance companies along with the typical frustrations and drama of my life with freshly-frayed nerves. In the past week, some of the worst parts of my personality - negativity about how things might turn out, anger about my circumstances, and frustration with myself - have bubbled up the surface a number of times, and I am less than proud of the things I have said and of the attitudes I have exhibited.

Sometimes I feel as though God is testing me and that I am earning an F on every test.

In an attempt to bring some normality back to my life, I went to two of my favorite haunts yesterday, namely a coffee shop and a bookstore. As I browsed the religion section, I came across a book that quoted the following proverb in the dedication:

The righteous may fall seven times but still get up,

but the wicked will stumble into trouble.¹

If you are familiar with biblical numerology, then you know that the number seven represents completeness. With that in mind, I wonder if King Solomon meant that, though people may fail over and over and over again, they are righteous if they keep on trying.

There are parts of our lives that can be difficult or nearly impossible for us to shake. Often we feel as though we simply need to grit our teeth and try harder, but that usually seems to do more harm than good. St. Paul, in one of his letters, mentions an unspecified "thorn in the flesh."² We typically think anything related to "the flesh" as something bodily, but "the flesh" could also refer to the self or to the ego. Sometimes I wonder if Paul was referring to a certain moral failure with which he struggled. In another letter, he writes, "I don't know what I'm doing, because I don't do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate."³

When Paul prayed for God to rid him of this "thorn in the flesh," God said to him, "My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness."⁴ Perhaps God was telling Paul that he did not have to be faultless because God loved him in spite of his faults. Theologian Paul Tillich might paraphrase God's answer, "Simply accept the fact that you are accepted."⁵ In a strange way, we need moral weakness in our lives to help us understand the power of God's grace and unconditional love, to help us understand that "God shows His love for us," as Paul puts it, "while we were still sinners."⁶ Otherwise we might fool ourselves into believing that God loves us because of our goodness.

God has extended grace to all of us because God loves us. In turn, we are called to love each other and to extend grace to each other. Perhaps it is also necessary for us to give grace to ourselves as well. On the subject of forgiveness, David A. Seamands writes:

There is no forgiveness from God unless you freely forgive your brother from your heart. And I wonder if we have been too narrow in thinking that brother only applies to someone else. What if you are the brother or sister who needs to be forgiven, and you need to forgive yourself? Does it not apply to you too? The Lord says to forgive your enemies. What if you are the worst enemy?⁷

I think that this can be said of other forms of grace besides forgiveness.

The world around us can be very graceless at times, but I think that sometimes we are harsher with ourselves than we are with other people. I know that I have said to myself things that I would hopefully never say to another person. If we are unwilling to give grace to ourselves, then have we truly accepted the grace God has given us? Are we truly listening to what God says about us if we are consistently condemning ourselves for our faults? A couple of years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to the concept of self-compassion, the idea that one should offer to oneself the same compassion, patience, and kindness one would ofter someone else. I think that this is a biblical concept, for Christ said, "You must love your neighbor as you love yourself."⁸

As I continue to deal with the aftermath of the car accident, I pray for God's help to remember the grace God has given me, help to extend grace to others in the midst of upcoming frustrations, and help to extend grace to myself when I fail miserably to be gracious. Whatever troubles you face right now, I pray for the same help for you the reader as well.

Notes:

1 - Proverbs 24:16 (CEB)

2 - 2 Corinthians 12:7

3 - Romans 7:15 (CEB)

4 - 2 Corinthians 12:9 (CEB)

5 - Paul Tillich. The Shaking of the Foundations. ch. 19

6 - Romans 5:8 (CEB)

7 - David A. Seamands. Healing for Damaged Emotions. 1981, David C Cook. pp. 30-31

8 - Matthew 22:39 (CEB) (emphasis added)

I took the picture of my damaged car the day after the accident.

If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Perspective: The Gates of Hell

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

The Gates of Hell

Scripture:

And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new."

Revelation 21:5 (NRSV)

Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.

Luke 16:26 (NRSV)

Mirrors on the ceiling

The pink champagne on ice

And she said,

"We are all just prisoners here

Of our own device"

From "Hotel California" by The Eagles

Recently, at a Bible study, a friend of mine said that a lot of Christians don't like to discuss the more troubling aspects of our beliefs, such as the fear of God, hell, and things of that sort. What he said bothered me, not necessarily because I believe differently than he does but because I too tend to avoid such topics when, perhaps, I should address them.

For eleven years of my life, I attended a Christian school attached to a fundamentalist church, and, though I am thankful to this school for imparting to me extensive knowledge of the Bible, I have picked up an aversion to discussing the subject of the afterlife. The Gospel, which literally means "good news," hasn't always sounded like good news to me. As I understood it back when I was a student, all people have committed wrongdoings and are thus doomed to eternal conscious torment. Jesus Christ, both the Son of God and the only man who never sinned, died in order to take the punishment for all people. Anyone who puts his trust in Jesus and in His sacrifice will be spared from eternal damnation.

I basically came to believe that, if I didn't get my beliefs about Jesus straight, I would burn in hell forever and ever, and this is the reason I originally "got saved." Still I found myself haunted by fears and doubts. To keep my sanity, I eventually decided to forget about the afterlife and to instead focus on this life while trusting in God and trying to do what God calls me to do.

Since then, my beliefs about a lot of things have changed, including my beliefs about the afterlife. I still believe in hell, but I don't believe in hell in the same way that a lot of Christians believe in it.

Here and now I will try to articulate my current understanding of the undesirable state of existence that some people call hell. I realize that my own beliefs about this topic are somewhat different from the beliefs of other Christians, so I ask you to read with an open mind but also with prayerful discernment. I fully acknowledge that these are only my beliefs, and I claim no actual knowledge of the afterlife.

The first thing I want to say is that humanity is good by nature, and I know that a lot of people would disagree with me in that regard, saying that humans are actually sinful by nature. According to the creation story at the very beginning of the Bible, "God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good."¹ God saw that all of creation was good after God had already created humanity, thus God saw that humanity was good as well. In other words, "God don't make no junk."

God saw that both the earth and humanity were good, but, if you tune in to a television news program or open a newspaper or look at a news website, you will quickly see that people are, in fact, not good and that the world is not the good place God intended it to be. Humanity is good as created by God, but the catch is that we are not good because we are not fully human. There is something both inhuman and unnatural about all of us. Somehow, for some reason, all of humanity has become broken, and, ever since this happened, God has been at work putting humanity back together again. It is for this reason that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, left the glory of Heaven to live among mortals.

Christians often say that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human, and I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Christians generally understand this to mean that Christ is God but that He is also like us. This is where I disagree. Peter Rollins points out that if Christ is both fully God and fully human then Christ is two things we are not. As Rollins once explained it, "To say someone is fully God is to say that they are as far from me as this earth is from the farthest star. To say that someone is fully human is to say that they are as far from me as the smallest quark."² In the life and teachings of Jesus Christ we see what God is like: as Christ said, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father."³ In Christ, we also see what humanity was meant to be, for Christ has set an example for us.

Jesus once said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."⁴ A way is not something a person believes but something a person follows. Jesus did not call people to merely believe in Him but to follow Him. Christ not only calls us to hope for a restored creation but also calls us to be His disciples, following in His footsteps and participating in His work of restoring creation. When we pray, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven,"⁵ we are not only expressing our hope for the future but also declaring our mission statement as followers of Christ.

According to the Old-Testament prophet Micah, all God really wants from people is "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."⁶ Christ embodied all of these things: He treated people fairly, showed kindness to those in need, and was the model of humility. Much more than that, Jesus embodied love. To His disciples He said, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."⁷ People do not live in the way they were created to live, but Christ leads us a different way, a way of love for one another.

Life is not what it was meant to be; the world is not what it was meant to be; and people are not who they were meant to be, but, like many Christians, I hold on to the hope that God's work of restoring creation will someday be complete and that all of creation will be restored to the goodness God intended in the first place. The end of the Book of Revelation describes a time when God will live on earth among the people and "wipe every tear from their eyes," a time with no more death or mourning or pain, a time of healing.⁸ I think Jeremy Camp describes this new creation beautifully when he sings, "There will be a day with no more tears, no more pain, and no more fears."⁹

Amid the beautiful description of the new creation is a chilling warning: "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, the murderers, the fornicators, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."¹⁰ If Jeremy Camp is correct that in this new creation there will be no tears, pain, or fears, then there can be nobody present to create tears, pain, or fears. This means that if a person is perfectly happy with the way the world is now - full of violence, hatred, greed, and exploitation - he or she won't be at home when God makes all things new. One of Jesus' first messages was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."¹¹ If we refuse to repent of the things we do that cause suffering, then we cannot be a part of God's new creation. God is not going to force God's way on us, but will rather let us choose which path we will follow.¹²

Hell is what we choose when we decide not to take part in God's plan to restore this broken world. Hell is what we choose when we reject the way of love Christ has shown us. I do not believe, as many believe, that hell is a literal lake of fire into which God throws people for not believing the right things about Jesus. I believe that hell is not necessarily a place at all but rather a state of existence - a state of faithlessness, hopelessness, lovelessness, and godlessness.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." ~ Dante's Inferno

So often people think of hell as something that people might experience after they die, but what if hell is a reality in the world of the living as well? I think it is completely appropriate to speak of someone "going through hell" or to speak of something "hurting like hell." In my opinion, the saying, "War is hell," is a literal statement. Some creeds say that Jesus descended into hell. On the cross, Jesus went through hell because of the faithlessness and lovelessness of other people, and He experienced hopelessness and godlessness as He cried out, "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?"¹³ When we make destructive choices, we put ourselves through hell, and we also put other people through hell.

C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, had a number of interesting thoughts about hell. In the novel The Great Divorce, he writes, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."¹⁴ In The Problem of Pain, Lewis writes, "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside."¹⁵

Perhaps the gates of hell were not built by God to keep prisoners inside but were instead built by hard-hearted people to keep God and God's love out. Perhaps hell is described in the song "Hotel California" when the woman in the story says, "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device."

Christ once said that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against [the Church]."¹⁶ What we often fail to realize is that Jesus is using militant imagery in this statement. According to Shane Claiborne, the followers of Jesus Christ - the Church - are called to storm the places of hell in the world in order to show love, grace, and freedom to those trapped inside.¹⁷ The Church is called to attack the unjust systems of this world and to show the world another way.

If you think that my beliefs have gone soft, please understand that my current belief about hell is the only way I can reconcile the concept of hell with the concept that "God is love."¹⁸ Please also understand that my current belief about hell does not necessarily offer me any comfort, for so often I am convicted about how I choose my own way over the way of Christ and therefore choose my own personal hell over the abundant life Christ wants for me. What does give me comfort though is knowing that I am still a work in progress, for God loves me and is working to transform me.

Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Whatever your beliefs about the afterlife, it is not enough for us to simply believe that Christ is our personal Lord and Savior. As Christ said, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of My Father in heaven."¹⁹ We must believe in Christ enough to actually follow in His footsteps. All of us are called to follow Christ in the way of love He has shown us. We are all called to be the Body of Christ, doing the very things Christ did. By following the Way, we learn the truth about who we were meant to be as humans, and we experience the abundant life that God intended for us since the beginning of creation.

Notes:

1 - Genesis 1:31 (NRSV)

2 - Peter Rollins. "Salvation for Zombies." January 15, 2012

3 - John 14:9 (NRSV)

4 - John 14:6 (NRSV)

5 - Matthew 6:10 (KJV)

6 - Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

7 - John 14:34-35

8 - See Revelation 21:1-22:7 (NRSV quoted)

9 - From his song "There Will Be a Day"

10 - Revelation 21:8 (NRSV)

11 - Matthew 3:2 and 4:17 (NRSV)

12 - Rob Bell. Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. 2011, Harper One. pp. 36-39

People gave Rob Bell a lot of grief for challenging common conceptions of heaven and hell in Love Wins, but nowhere in his book does he claim that there is no hell.

13 - David A. Seamands. Healing for Damaged Emotions. 1981, David C Cook. p. 43

14 - C.S. Lewis. The Great Divorce. ch. 9

15 - C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. ch. 8

16 - Matthew 16:18 (KJV)

17 - Shane Claiborne. Out of Ur: "The Gates of Hell." January 18, 2007

18 - 1 John 4:8

19 - Matthew 7:21 (NRSV)

The picture featured in this perspective is an illustration to Dante's Inferno by Gustave Doré.

If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.

Perspective: All that Remains

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

All that Remains

Scripture:

What do workers gain from all their hard work? I have observed the task that God has given human beings. God has made everything fitting in its time, but has also placed eternity in their hearts...

Ecclesiastes 3:9-11 (NRSV)

When it's all said and done

No one remembers

How far we have run

The only thing that matters

Is how we have loved

From "Blink" by Revive

In my last semester of college, I took a class on classic Japanese literature. One work that has stuck in my memory is an essay written in the thirteenth century by Buddhist monk Kamo no Chomei, titled "Hojoki" or "An Account of My Hut." Chomei begins his essay by reflecting on the futility of building a large house or trying to maintain an opulent lifestyle when there are so many natural disasters and changes in life that threaten to put an end to such things. He then goes on to describe his own modest dwelling and simple lifestyle. As he writes, he realizes that, ironically, he too has become attached to his own way of life.¹

Impermanence was a common theme of many of the works my classmates and I studied in this class. The emphasis on the temporal nature of material things is one thing I appreciate about Buddhist thought. This concept is also taught in Christianity, but I feel as though very few of us Christians truly take it to heart.

One day, a man of great wealth asks Jesus, "Good Teacher, what must I do to obtain eternal life?"² Typically people believe that to have eternal life is to go to heaven, a realm of everlasting bliss, when one dies. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright points out that this way of thinking is actually a misunderstanding. The Greek term zoe aionios, which is translated as "eternal life," literally means "life of the age." According to Wright, the rich man is asking how to obtain "life of the age to come," which the Jewish people understood to be "the new era of justice, peace and freedom God has promised His people."³

Jesus responds to the rich man's question, saying, "You know the commandments: Don’t commit murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Don’t cheat. Honor your father and mother." The rich man tells Jesus that he has always kept these commandments. Jesus then says, "You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me." The rich man walks away dejected.⁴

The rich man has a lot of treasure on earth, but Jesus points out that the man lacks something - something He calls "treasure in heaven." Jesus unpacks the concept of heavenly treasures and the difference between them and earthly treasures in the Sermon on the Mount:
Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them.⁵
Jesus points out that earthly treasures break, wear out, lose value, and become stolen but that heavenly treasures are always secure, never lose their value, and can never be taken away.

According to N.T. Wright, Jesus and the rich man are discussing life in the age to come. The end of the Book of Revelation paints a beautiful picture of this coming age as a time of peace and healing, a time when God reigns on earth.⁶ Amid this description of the coming age is a clause worth noting: "the former things have passed away."⁷ Evidently there are things that exist in the current age that will cease to exist in the age to come. I believe that Jesus, in His conversation with the rich man, is hinting that material wealth is one of the things that will not make it to the age to come.

The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes describes many things in this world, including material wealth, as "utterly meaningless" and "a chasing after the wind." The word in this book commonly translated as "meaningless" or "vanity" is the Hebrew word hebel which literally means "vapor." By comparing the things of this world to vapor, the author is pointing out their temporal nature.⁸

After Jesus describes the difference between earthly treasure and heavenly treasure, He says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."⁹ Basically, there are two types of things in our lives, and we have the choice to build our lives around either type of thing. We can build our lives around temporal things - things that come to an end - or build our lives around eternal things - things that last beyond our circumstances and even beyond our earthly existence.

At some point, the consequences of this choice will be made clear to each of us. Later in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus uses an analogy of two people who build houses. One builds a house on a rock foundation while the other builds a house on sand. After a violent storm, the house on the rock is still standing, but the house on the sand is reduced to rubble.¹⁰ The house built on the sand represents a life built on temporal things while the house built on the rock represents a life built on eternal things.

This is a warning that all of us should take to heart. All temporal things will eventually come to an end, and, when they do, how much of our lives will remain in the aftermath?

The rich man has built his life around temporal things and has ignored eternal things. He has spent his life accumulating material wealth, about which the Book of Proverbs says, "When your eyes fly to wealth it is gone; it grows wings like an eagle and flies heavenward."¹¹ Money does not last forever, for it can be embezzled, squandered, or lost in the stock market. Furthermore, we cannot take our money with us when we die. As a former pastor of my church would say, "Nobody ever saw a Wells Fargo truck at a funeral."

The rich man may be wealthy he meets Jesus, but in the age to come, he will be impoverished because he lacks treasure in heaven - treasure that lasts. Jesus essentially encourages the rich man to exchange his earthly treasures for heavenly treasures. By selling all he owns and giving the proceeds to the poor, he would make a positive impact on people's lives. Wealth comes and goes, but there is something about an act of kindness that lasts forever. Material wealth will cease to exist in the age to come, but apparently things like generosity will be highly valued.

Temporal things are not evil: I believe that God created them for us to enjoy. They become problematic when we build our entire lives around them and when they distract us from the things that truly matter. I think that the best way for us to enjoy the temporal things in life is with an open hand, knowing that they can be given to us and taken away from us at any time. When the time comes for temporal things to come to an end, those who hold them with an open hand will be affected very little, but, for those who hold such things with a white-knuckled grip, there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Many people describe the difference between happiness and joy similar to the difference between treasures on earth and treasures in heaven. Happiness is temporal because it depends on the circumstances of our lives which change from day to day. Joy, on the other hand, transcends our circumstances, so we can still have joy even when our circumstances leave something to be desired.

St. Paul writes that many things will eventually come to an end but that "faith, hope, and love remain - these three things - and the greatest of these is love."¹² May we all take a good, hard look at our lives and find what it is that we treasure. May we all learn to hold the temporal things of life with an open hand and learn to treasure the things that will last from this age to the age to come.


Notes:
1 - An English translation of "Hojoki"
2 - Mark 10:17 (CEB quoted)
3 - N.T. Wright. "Going to Heaven?" Published in The Love Wins Companion. 2011, HarperOne. pp. 33-35
4 - Mark 10:19-22 (CEB quoted)
5 - Matthew 6:19-20 (CEB)
6 - Revelation 21:1-22:5
7 - Revelation 21:4 (CEB)
8 - A recurring theme of the Mars Hill Bible Church sermon series on Ecclesiastes
9 - Matthew 6:21 (CEB)
10 - Matthew 7:24-27
11 - Proverbs 23:5 (CEB)
12 - 1 Corinthians 13:13 (CEB)

The image featured in this perspective is public domain.


If you have any feedback, thoughts, stories, or even arguments to contribute, please leave comments.