To the Young People I Know

When I was a kid my dream car was a Ferrari F40, but a black Porsche 911 turbo would be a respectable sports car for a family-man with a good career—maybe as a genius creative director at an ad-agency.  I loved J-Crew, Polo, and million-dollar houses in the parade of homes. It was extremely important to do things and own things that reflected, what I knew to be, superb taste. But if I couldn’t own the thing that expressed my taste I would find occasions to express my approval of those items so others wouldn’t misjudge my taste. The display of good taste, to me, meant you were the right kind of people—you were smart, strong, dedicated, and fun. You were a winner, and you cared about quality. The first car I actually bought was a gold 1987 Porsche 944. It was a salvage-title, but it was a good buy at six-thousand dollars in 1998, not actually a choice for an eighteen-year-old-kid.  It was more like getting struck by lightning. Gold wasn’t my preference in theory, but in person it was pretty persuasive. It did a good job of helping me to express the truth of my “superb taste.” I decided it was more mature than red anyway. My boss at the painting company was worried customers would think we were over-priced. They did. I remember this one lady was worried her son would drop out of college and become a painter instead of a lawyer like his father. She kept checking to see if I was done painting so I could leave before he got home from school and saw my car. They were stuffy—mental note, “lawyers don’t have fun,” a belief that would later be challenged by Matthew Mcconaughey in A Time To Kill and Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich. I mean, they made being a lawyer look cool so maybe I could too. But what I really wanted to do was get into film. I thought maybe I could really make it big, and I figured it was worth checking into. So I did it. Yeah, forty-year-olds did cool stuff as kids too. I lived down the street from NBC studio where the tonight show was filmed. I interned for Satellite Films off of Irvine, across the parking lot from the Capitol Records building. I got to see behind the scenes, meet famous people, and make connections. And I found out that being successful in Hollywood and having a healthy family was a pretty tall order. Maybe not impossible, but probably impossible for me.  So as a junior in college I started to give up the thing that my excellent taste would have dictated for the thing that the spirit inside of me seemed to be pulling me toward. I turned down two job’s in Hollywood. I turned down the guy at the special effects company (they specialized in explosions, wow, total dream job) and the owner of an art direction company I worked with on the set for MTV. The jobs were nothing fancy, but nonetheless, they were open doors. Fast-forward to twenty-two years later. I’m married (I love you Kelsey). I have a dad-bod (okay that's my fault). I have six kids with number seven on the way. I’m a registered nurse. Our family vehicle is a fifteen passenger van. We’re living in my grandma’s old house, and I feel extremely blessed. What happened? Did I completely lose my sense of style? Am I a loser? Did I just lower my expectations to meet my low performance?  Let me make one thing clear; I’m not saying a fifteen passenger van is inherently christian. But I am saying that what I thought I wanted and what I actually wanted were two different things, and it isn’t because my taste changed. I still really prefer Ferraris and Porsches to the van and fancy houses over my grandma's old house. But somewhere along the way I learned that what people have and do might be an expression of their taste or performance, but it might just be an expression of obedience, sacrifice, and faith. That realization was convicting. Could it be that people I had judged as boring, strange or even dumb were actually daring, passionate, and wise? What we have and do says much about our values, but being able to have the best of both worlds is a mirage. Being your best you will involve giving yourself up and allowing Christ to shape you.

Luke 9:24 “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

Brokenness and Love

How will they know we are Christians by our love if His love has not flooded our own hearts? And how will His love flood our hearts if we do not drink it in? We drink when we are thirsty, long for cleansing when we are dirty, and for healing when we are sick.  And if we are made aware of our own sin and the cost of our redemption, how will we not be broken? We will. 

There is one way to move forward as a light in this dark world and that is this—we move forward from a place of brokenness, in hope, with our eyes fixed on Jesus. This life is for becoming, for being formed, for taking on, the likeness of Christ. This struggle, this tension, is not meant to be lifted, for His grace is sufficient. 

Seculars say we move forward by believing we are enough, by placing the blame for pain outside of ourselves, that by loving ourselves we can love others; it’s a deception. The one who has been forgiven much loves much and it is the love that is evidence of the forgiveness we received. The powerful love of God flowing through us cannot be separated from our brokenness. Though we are being made whole, the context of our gratitude is the cost of our failure and God’s willingness to pay it. 

If we believe our redemption was cheap do we really have it? The payment for all sin is the blood of God’s Son. There is no cheap redemption.  The emptiness of self-esteem is becoming evident even to the world, but now will you trust another if you cannot trust yourself? Besides Christ every object of hope is a mirage.

—reh

Luke 7:44-47

44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”

John 13:35. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

1John 4:19  We love because he first loved us.

Romans 10:11 As Scripture says, "Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame."

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