Anger is a Fire

True community is only possible in love; do not deny that love is a verb and so damage your soul—robbing yourself and others of the beauty born in its service.  Community is not an automaton, but a living body, and the lifeblood of true community is Grace. Grace supplies the power to deliver what grace itself demands, and it demands infinitely more than the law which has no power for its meager requirements. You find your anger is full and genuine, and you feel justified in its expression. It is natural; why deny it? What’s worse, to lie or to curse? But this question deceives for to curse is both to curse and to lie. Anger shared, like love, is multiplied not satisfied. The flame that is not put out spreads from house to house. If a man were to observe his house on fire and say, “look here, it would be a lie to put this fire out for here it truly burns,” wouldn’t you think him an idiot? And what would you make of this fire when it burned the entire neighborhood and community? Do you suppose anger is any different than fire and the fruit that it bears?

—reh

James 3:5-12

5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? 12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Communication is a Miracle

My graphics professor, Guy Chase, was a very patient communicator. He was never in a hurry to explain his work. It was more fun that way. He almost always made time to listen. Every fall I feel the urge to stop by his office at Bethel University, my annual tradition. I think often of his attachment to smiley faces and coffee prepared to his specification, “about like ice cream.” I used to bring him my paintings for a second opinion. Guy was honest. Somehow he knew the internal struggle that I went through as I learned how to make certain shapes and textures. He pointed to some flowers expressed as messy circles and said, “how did you get to the point where you could make those shapes?” It was a struggle. How did he know that? I remember him saying, “communication between two people is a miracle...there is no way to really explain it.”  

“...Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  
— Job 1:21

I think we all know something has been taken away. Have you heard the people talking? Nobody understands. Everyone is just making noise. Communication results in shared meaning, but all we share is self interest. Self interest leads to distrust, distrust to fear, fear to anger, anger to hate, and hate to death. We are dying. Do you know you’re dying? Guy Chase knew he was dying. He told me that day in his office—surrounded by smiley faces and ideas on the wall. They were good ideas. I pretended not to know already. I made him special coffee. Dale Johnson had secretly told me an hour before and made me promise I wouldn’t tell on him. He thought Guy might hide it. Dale was looking out for me. Guy said, “I have a joke to tell you.” He was smiling. I already knew the joke. “I’m dying” he said, and then he laughed. “Other people don’t think it’s funny, but I do. I feel fine, but the doctor said I could be dead in a year. I feel like I have so much to do. Is God really done with me? It doesn’t really feel like he is.” He wasn’t. Guy’s thoughtful ideas still live. There were many things we didn’t agree about. But we shared in a context—The Great Context. It was a miracle. Miracles still happen for those who share in him, but something has changed in the world. Everyone disagrees and hates each other for it. When Guy disagreed with me he smiled. So did I. I missed his funeral. I was in the hospital for the birth of my son, Gabriel. Gabriel is a patient communicator. He makes time to listen.

—reh

The Dark Side of God

God is holding back. We are all missing out on beautiful, awesome, things. Adam and Eve were struck to the core when they ate the forbidden fruit because it was good. They doubted God’s character enough to test him. But instead of finding a bitter fruit they found one good for eating. God had withheld this good thing. With every colorful plant, flower, fruit, waterfall, gemstone, all of the animals—the entire world—given to mankind as a gift, God asked him to leave one fruit from his lips. This was the essence of the eternal problem. “God is God and we are not” (Robert Barron). There is always more. If we do not trust him then he can have nothing to do with us; our relationship is impossible. He is holding back very good things precisely because he is good. He is good, and he is infinite. If he gives you a billion tons of anything he’s holding back infinity more because he has no end. He placed the forbidden fruit in the middle of the garden because this problem was inevitable. Why avoid it? It’s coming. No one can escape this unknown, this eternity. We cannot take him all in. The fabric of our existence cannot endure him without his own blood. “⁶ And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." (Heb 11:6-NIV). This is the thing that matters. Nothing matters more. Do you trust him? 1John 1:5 “...God is light, in him there is no darkness at all.” Darkness is as light to him (Psalm 139:12). But for us, now, the only way forward is to trust him—even the parts we cannot see, for he cannot be measured, tested or verified like a thing less than a man.

The Reasons Why

When you have no hope, when you believe that, “in the end, nothing really matters,” when all you have is now, when there is no difference, when all the vibrant sparkling colors of the world come together like mud, when your cells are pulled toward equilibrium like the heart of a man pulls his body toward the precipice, when you are so lost the feeling of falling is like coming home, when your eyes glaze over and your ears hear sounds from another place, when there is no meaning, when there is no truth, when your heart has given up, then you are ready to bring death.

—Ryan Hunt

Proverbs 29:18 Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom's instruction.

Deuteronomy 30:19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.

The Great Context

It seems impossible at times—to be anything other than a statistic. The world is working on that, you know? making you a statistic, that is. It is one of our most ambitious goals—to conquer our biochemical makeup down to every last atom, to manipulate it, to completely pars the human existence and experience—to make ourselves nothing while somehow claiming to be everything, even the creators of meaning.

We take “beautiful pictures,” collections of various combinations of red green and blue (RGB) displayed on our screens. But when we look at them do we see more than pixels? We interpret those images based on a context in our memories, things we have learned like the smell of an ocean breeze, the piercing cold frost in winter, and the feeling of a warm kiss. But science says even that can all be reduced to numbers. All of your memories, emotions, chemical combinations, decision making algorithms, according to a scientistic world view, can be laid out as numbers—reducing us all to data. But data by itself is meaningless. Having more numbers does not help the situation. Coding the RGB pixels on your screen to the data stored in your memory and trying to make meaning is ultimately as futile as the attempt to make five, six, and seven achieve meaning without a context. Context cannot arise from a finite thing; it is the finite that is evaluated against the eternal. In other words, if we are finite, then any meaning we achieve can only be in relation to a thing outside of us, and that thing must itself be infinite, not just infinite but eternal, the I Am.  

Again, if we can be reduced to numbers then our only hope for meaning is outside of us; yet hope itself—meaningless. But if we cannot be reduced to numbers, if there is something more within us, eternity, then we begin to take on the likeness of God. In His likeness we love. In the image of Him we create. And by His being we have meaning.  

It is not uncommon for us all to live in contradiction.  As Chesterton observed, we must all embrace both the known and the mysterious to keep our sanity, but the contradiction this world is living does not bring sanity. It brings sickness. It is a great contradiction; for if even the reflection of the eternal is in us, then we are not just numbers. If we exist there is a story, and that story is set in a context, and that context, the great and ultimate context, is not and cannot be just another set of data.

John 18:38 "What is truth?" retorted Pilate. With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and said, "I find no basis for a charge against him.

John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

—reh

The Gravity of The Throne

Everything matters so much, and if we can make a difference we must. We can make a difference, right?  We take the bait. We sit in judgement on others. Maybe we’re better at double checking our baby’s car-seat or putting our baby to bed on her back.  We read the study because we care. If the science says it we do it. We don’t leave our kids in the car while we pay for our gas when the pump is broken. We wake them up and march them in with us. We can’t risk anything. We buy the video monitor so we can watch our children sleep because someone might steal them through the window. When someone else chooses the weak road we call CPS on them. And if a child is injured because their incompetent parent forgot to do something we put them in jail. Losing their child isn’t punishment enough. Living with the guilt of tragedy under a forever darkening sky isn’t enough. We must make them pay. There must be justice. What kind of a parent doesn’t dot every i and cross every t? People should only be allowed to be parents if they are ready to take responsibility for everything because we do. If we really try, we can protect all children. The world needs to be better, and we can make it better. When our sons can’t make it out the door to school because they’re too anxious we bring them in for medication. When they can’t focus we bring them in for medication. When they lose their temper and lash out at school the powers that be bring them to the emergency department for medication. When they lose control because they’re freaking out, and they’re stuck in a sweaty stinky little emergency room with other crazy people yelling down the hall, and they’re forced to wear psych scrubs, and all they have are video games and a coloring book—they become violent at the closest person, and they get strapped down to their bed for medication. But it’s not our fault. We did our job. We read the studies and they say it isn’t our fault. But there will be another study—just in time for us to end our lives wringing our hands—trying to find someone else to blame. We must find someone to blame. It’s all preventable. Everything bad can be prevented. It’s just a matter of finding who’s at fault. The gravity of the throne consumes us; it crushes our bones. When we are God there is nowhere to turn. Welcome to hell. 

—reh

The Children of His Child

You think you’ll have a few kids and just raise them the way you were raised, but of course you’ll do a few things different. You’ve learned a few things from your parent’s mistakes. Then it hits you, you are not your parents. And the circumstances of your childhood cannot be recreated. It’s a new world again. The struggles that formed your mind, will, and emotions do not exist anymore. Sure there are struggles, but they are different. Your children will not be you, and it’s scary. Not because you’re amazing, but because you survived. Looking back at the minefield you can’t believe you’ve made it this far. You realize some of the mistakes your parent’s made were used by God to build character in you. The struggles that once caused you to question God’s goodness now shine like waters of grace. And that is where you find peace. Though the world has gone mad—He has remained. His redemptive power does not end. He has called the children of his child. Humble yourself. Help them to hear his voice. Lift them up in prayer. Sing to them. Hold them up and hope. Hope in the one who has made himself known to you.