Piety Priority

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Hey, I don't deny that there's something very good about church.  It's communion with God's people, and God is love, specifically a communal love, seeing as He is a Trinity.

But anyway, I encountered one of those picture memes that only has words on it, so you wonder why it's a picture instead of merely text, and it said this:

Last night I...Got Drunkin the Spirit
Got Highon Jesus
And Dancedbefore the Lord
What's your church like?

So basically, God is a drug.  A glorious drug, mind you, but a drug nonetheless.  Or maybe what struck me the wrong way was the emphasis on doing.  Or maybe it's the rhetorical quip at the end that basically says "If you don't worship like this, then you aren't as Christian as me (or at all), and there's something wrong with you."  I don't know who wrote this, but I saw some stranger share this and he said:

"My church, yep!  'The most dangerous place in the world is on the front seat of a dead church.'"

Wait, what?  Whaaaa?  Since when was it dangerous do honor God in a simple, modest way?  And since when was a very particular type of worship instituted by Jesus?  Why are we to look down with contempt on churches that don't make rock concerts out of their services?

A little more dismayed, as I was looking through these Christian images on Pinterest, I noticed that this wasn't an isolated piece of bad attitude.  Right next to this was another image of a middle-aged man clenching a microphone in one hand and, in the other, his empty fist, and it said:

"Life is too short, Heaven is too sweet, and hell is too hot for you to be playing with stuff that will make you lose your HOLY GHOST!" - Aaron Bounds

This is posted on a page that's basically dedicated to looking like a particular kind of Christian.  And I won't be a coward and leave this anonymous and inoffensive; I have the guts to single out Pentecostals for having this attitude and making pages like this.  Sometimes it's merely a cultural thing and a matter of pure preference, but I remember one Pentecostal church I visited believed that it was mandated by the Bible (because of something said in Psalms) that Christians must convene in churches with radical worship.  This is way too common within the Pentecostal culture.  This criticism is universal, however, and I will get exasperated with any church that swears someone will lose God if they're not zealous enough, or if they aren't radical enough, or if in any way their particular form of worship doesn't match their particular standard.

Otherwise, come one.  Look at this one:

You have to live PAST the shout!

That's true!  You do!  Except truisms like this don't actually communicate the truth when they're being received in the spirit of piety priority.  When you prioritize piety, you hear this, and your attempts to live past the shout, to truly live in the Spirit, essentially results in shouting even more and more, and if you take a good step back at it and listen with a bit of perspective, you'll realize that it's nothing more than noise.  The more earnestly you worship, the more radically you try to live past the shout by shouting more, the less you become truly humble before God and the more you become merely...loud.

Pentecostalism, I will give you a break, though, because now I'm turning my attention to my homeboys in the Catholic church, starting with the Reformers.

Come on, CRC blokes!  You know you're really Catholic!  Sola scriptura my sweet butt!  Why do you treat baptism like a sacrament?  Why do you use the same creeds?  Why are pastoral duties delegated exclusively to men?  Why are your serves so similar to Catholicism instead of, say, some random other world religion?  You may think you're different, but good grief, have you walked outside Christendom and seen just how different you are liturgically from other world religions?  Scripture alone isn't going to make you that similar to Catholics.  It's not inevitable that all Christian churches are going to look a certain way, and the Reformed and Catholic liturgies have more in common than merely the "basic Christian stuff."  I mean, I've been to a Greek Orthodox church a couple of times now and you have no idea how different they are!  You go to that, and suddenly the similarities between Catholic liturgies and traditions and Reformed liturgies and traditions is much closer than previously imagined.

So the whole "we don't do tradition" thing sort of falls flat.  Even though always I flinch when a Protestant pastor pridefully says "in the Reformed tradition," at least he's acknowledging that there is a tradition, and that by extension it's basically a tradition taken from Catholics, just, you know...reformed.

Now moving on to the old-school Catholics.  Now, before I get started, I know from first-hand experience that Catholicism isn't a homogeneous group.  I've talked with very well-educated Catholics who believe that God must logically know whether or not you would choose His salvation or not, and others who take a more Armenian point of view, just to list one example.  Yet, where the church speaks on the highest level, she has definitively spoken.

So there are these things known as the Precepts of the Church.  Depending on how you count them, there are five or seven of them.  One of them is contributing to the church's needs, and another is confessing before a priest your sins at least once a year.  The first on that's listed, though, is that a Catholic must attend mass every Sunday and on every holy day of obligation.

This is where things get tricky.  Jesus said that whatever the apostles, and Peter in particular, bound up on Earth, so would it also be bound up in Heaven.  Supposedly this means that if the church writes down a new precept, then it's considered part of the eternal Law of God.  So it's not just the Catholic Church that commands it, God commands it.  Supposedly.

When I looked these up, I discovered on a couple of the first Catholic websites say, without flinching, that this was a mortal sin.  Which means that you'll lose salvation because you didn't go to church.

Now, they make exceptions.  If a mother can't because she's taking care of a child, it's okay.  If you're sick and can't go, it's okay.  If for any reason you can't go, then you're okay.  You're not sinfully forsaking the assembly.  It's just a problem when you won't go and, if the Catholics speaking online truly represent the the Catholic church on this, then I'm going to Hell.

I have a problem, because I slept in this morning.  Yes, I could have woke up, but I didn't want to.  A couple of hours went by, and I missed my opportunity.  This week, I'm not a Christian.  However, I will become Christian next week when I visit mass again.  Or maybe I can be Christian right now if I feel guilty enough for that sin and promise God that, if the nearby parish had a late night mass, I would surely visit it.

Someone told me that I must not have really sinned because Jesus probably wanted me to have my sleep.  Maybe.  Yet, I'm going to take ownership of this and say that, yes, sleeping in instead of going to church was a little bit disrespectful.  There is an element of sinfulness in that, I suppose.

Regardless, there is no way that this is a mortal sin.  Pentecostals worship noise, and Catholics evidently worship consistency, and in both cases what ends up happening is that they make a piety priority.  What is the most important emphasis that we as the church must have?  Piety.  It's what makes us Christian.

Now, calling out Catholicism like this hits close to home.  I consider myself Catholic, so it's hard to do this.  She often perplexes me when she says things like this, since other past statements make me wonder how seriously I should take them, and if I understand the whole picture.

For example, Catholicism teaches that a righteous Muslim is, in a way, following Christ and will go to Heaven.  Not everybody has to explicitly confess that Jesus is Christ, and sincerity is enough.  In other words, God has mercy on those who don't know any better.  Yet, does that mean that for people like me, who do know better and who are familiar with, say, these precepts of the church, are going to Hell for not being good enough Catholics?  Is there a clause within Catholicism that clears all this up and shows that this really isn't as all-bad as it sounds?  Do these experts misrepresent Catholicism, and does the official Catechism mention these precepts as nothing more than a mere recommendation that's desired but not really necessary, that these are church laws but not necessarily God's Law?

My mother sometimes doesn't make it to church.  She's exhausted.  She doesn't have the spiritual energy to summon the willpower that we all know human beings are capable of.  She just doesn't make it.  Then the other day, she's telling me how uncomfortable she feels that someone who knows her keeps track of how often she visits church and how often she doesn't.  She's a Catholic, by the way, and she's called this attitude out at being un-Christian.

There are many, many other Catholics how would rather not have this attitude.  Maybe Catholics are better than their lawmakers?  I dunno.  Like I said, it isn't an entirely homogeneous group, and I have been friends with a well-educated Catholic who said that I wasn't going to Heaven because my way of understanding the Eucharist as the literal body and blood of Christ didn't match up word for word with age-old Catholic semantics but, nevertheless, he commended me on attending mass regularly as though it were an essential step in my salvation.

But for Christ's sake, when did following a bunch of rules have anything to do with salvation?  And if we recognize the failure in that, we create a ton of rules for how to be better than mere rule-followers.

It seems that if you're obsessed with tradition, you create a piety priority.  It also seems that if you want to break tradition, you still create a piety priority, because you basically create an institutionalized definition for what spontaneity is supposed to look like and then follow that.  But then that spontaneity isn't really that spontaneous, now isn't it?  And is spontaneous always going to look the same in a world of diverse people?  And is spontaneity always a sign of joy and sincerity, can it com from something else that has nothing to do with the Spirit?

Whatever the case, it seems like everyone's obsessed with worshiping Him the "proper" way, the way that He would have wanted.  That's what all those Goddamn piety is all about.

Now I wonder: what is piety, anyway?  Because it's listed as a gift of the Holy Spirit, and that part of the Bible isn't going away.  What is piety?  Tempting as it may be to resort to a dictionary, I'm going to resist the urge.  The way I understand it, piety is the expression of our faith...somehow.  It's some sort of outward sign.  Which basically means that one of the gifts of the Spirit is the fruits of the Spirit.  That's still too vague, though, and it doesn't help me.  Maybe "Piety is faith put into practice?"  Eh...I wouldn't have a clue.

Evidently, though, piety can be a good thing.  Whatever it is.  Personally, I'd just never make it a priority.

Sincerely,
John Hooyer

Hope Amidst the Pain

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Paul encouraged people to find joy in the midst of suffering, and I know a lot of Christians who think that they're following that advice.  I remember telling someone that I was suffering from depression, though, and at first I was happy and encouraged with her response.  "You have Jesus!  Jesus heals everything!"

I so wanted to be that kind of Christian.  I so wanted to be that guy who had so much faith in God that I could persevere in the midst of suffering.

Then someone else, shortly thereafter, condemned me for the depression that I couldn't quite shrug off.  He saw me sitting in my chair, looking forlorn and contemplative, thinking about something that was burdening me.  He went up and told me that after all God's done for me, and what with all that He's doing for me, and what with how big He is, that my depression was a sign that I was doubting Him, that I didn't love Him enough, that I was holding out on Him.

Then, of course, I come across the "sadder than thou" argument.  That's what I call it, and I've called it that for nearly three years now.  Someone inevitably looks at what you're going through and says "Oh yeah?  Well I went through these extenuating circumstances!  I'm not letting it get to me!"

That's good, except I'm not them.  And that fact is, regardless of how difficult my circumstances are, it's about how I feel.  And I'm just going to outright say, the things that have happened in my life are often times sad.  They're not merely "negative."  That's an impersonal word that use to describe sad things.  It's up close and personal, though, and I've seen sad things happen.  Even when Christ is in my life, that doesn't necessarily change the basic nature of the unfortunate, sad things that have happened, and I feel like the only human reaction, if I were truly compassionate at all, would be to feel pain when dealing with the loss that I've had.

I mean, Mitchell, I am never going to tell you to get over that death in the family a few years back.  That would be inhumane and cruel.  

So this is what it feels like when people tell me that because Jesus died for me, that I should never feel sad no matter how bad the circumstances:

Because a true Christian can handle suffering and not be overwhelmed.  Because a true Christian prays and realizes that it's all okay.  Because suffering is, apparently, nothing more than mere discomfort.

I hate this poster.

Shannon, you wrote an entry about the terrible irony and insensitivity of Psalm 23, and while I don't feel that way about the psalm in and of itself, I complete agree with the point.  I hate it that when someone suffers, we try to tell them that they're not suffering, and that it's somehow an illusion.

I've said it before in longer, more extensive dialogue that I think Jesus gives us strength in the midst of our suffering not by making it go away, but by suffering with us and validating that pain.

Otherwise, I feel that those "Oh yeah!  Hallelujah!" Christians equate suffering with bad circumstances.  "Be cheerful and abundant even in bad circumstances!"  The worse that bad circumstances can do is make you uncomfortable, after all.  Except, of course, if the bad circumstances don't actually make you personally suffer and actually experience suffering, then those circumstances aren't suffering, aren't they?

Suffering is something you actually experience.  You're in agony and despair.  Because something is wrong, and it doesn't matter how wrong, because at the end of the day wrong is wrong is wrong.  You have the explicit right to feel cursed when you're part of a cursed Creation.  It would actually be unhealthy if you didn't, because then you'd be numb to pain and unable to protect yourself from evil.  You wouldn't have any compassion.

I knew someone once who thought she was cheerful.  She was the person who told me that I had Jesus, and that I didn't need my anti-depression pills to help me with my condition.  I remember asking her if she ever cried, and she told me that she never felt sad because she didn't need to, because of Jesus.  Furthermore, she even told me that she never even felt sad even when her loved ones died.  Even then, as much as I had tried putting faith in her, I didn't think of this as strength.  It was cowardice.  She wasn't really that cheerful or happy, not deep down inside.  It was more of a well-practiced generally positive attitude.  Good manners, decent behavior, no sign of any imbalances.  But it was poison to me.

So I...I walked away and I didn't go back to it.

What do I have now?  How can I possibly deal with this pain that doesn't seem to go away?  This pain that a positive outlook doesn't really fix?  People want me to be cheerful.

What is cheerfulness, anyway?

That's actually a pretty big question to ask, now that I think about it.  I looked up "Bible verses having to do with cheerfulness" and none of them quite give me that "Hallelujah" vibe.  Some of them didn't actually even mention cheerfulness at all, and instead talked about courage and patience.  Some of them refer to joyfulness.  In any case, I'm never quite given the impression that Paul is referring to Christians as happy paupers with billy sacks waltzing their merry Matilda down the countryside and whistling tunes like "The Bare Necessities" and "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da".  That's the image that I sometimes think comes to the mind of most people: That circumstances might be bad, but if you're cheerful, you're going to handle it like a Disney character.  There's something cute and colorful and innocent about that word.

If you want my opinion on what cheerfulness looks like, though, I think it comes in the form of hope.  There may be tears in this lifetime, but I think that God gives us hope for what is promised to us, that which we do not yet have.  I think that it gives us strength, and that's how we deal with suffering.  We don't necessarily leave our suffering or escape from it, but it allows us to live even as death curses all the little nooks and crannies in our lives.

I think that it's hope that allows us to cry, too.  Have you ever noticed that sometimes, when we're hurting the most, that crying is the healthiest response?  Like it comforts us without insulting us?  I imagine that God's the type that lets us, when we're absolutely broken and don't know how to handle anything, to grieve for our injuries and losses, and to run to Him and dig out faces into His chest, and we just cry and cry and cry.  He doesn't tell us to get it all together, and He just holds us and He's there.

If there's anything that God doesn't want us to do, it's become bitter.  We get fed up, we've been broken enough, and we begin to embrace the pain in a way that's very different from tears, and it's bitterness.  I can't recommend that, and I think it's unhealthy, but out of compassion, I find it hard to condemn anyone for that.  The fact is, I know.  I know it's hard.  I'm bitter, too, about a lot of things, and I wish I wasn't.

Have hope, though.  Faith can sometimes be difficult, but please, please, please, please, please, please, please...always have hope.  Hope is easy.  Hope you can always have.  Hope is composed of tears, and it comes just as naturally if we don't hold ourselves back.

Sincerely,

John Hooyer

Becoming More Compassionate

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

"Praise God!  Trust in God!  Don't worry!  He's there!  Look at how great God is!  Look at how mighty He is!  Mighty to save!  Mighty to do miracles!  Great and powerful!  Wise and wonderful!  I'm a Bible-believing, prayer-praying, song-singing, Spirit-sprinkled, faith-fulfilled, brightly blessed, saved and serving Christian!"

Please, just...go get your American flag while you're at it.  By now, we've become pretty good at associating a flag, a bald eagle, and a robed man with hippie hair together.

American flag: Grand.

Bald eagle: Grand.

Jesus: Grand.

In these things, we love, and Jesus most of all.  Jesus, the most perfect representation of greatness and majesty.

You know, I was looking through that one website people love to use nowadays.  It's called Pinterest, and I'm not much for it, but I gave it a shot and looked through Christian pages and felt a little...empty.  It disappointed me.  I found a lot of things I liked, a lot of good wisdom, but really, something seemed missing.

There was so much praise, so much encouragement to not worry when God's providing, so much profession in salvation.  It was big.

An explosion.

That's what it was like.  It was like the opening crawl to a Star Wars film.  BLAM!  Pictures of the cross strewn all over, making their way into every other picture.  Glorious and triumphant.

Wait, what?  The cross was triumphant?  Why are we depicting it that way?

Then I backstep a bit, and I sort of figured out what was going on here.  I was talking with my sister recently about this, that something seemed so hollow and empty as I went through these pages.  In some ways, I could put my finger on it, because it's obvious to me when there's not enough Grace.  There was a spiritual issue as I went through and tried to figure out what was wrong with these Christian pages I was going through.  How could I tell that there wasn't Grace?  What were the telltale signs?

I began putting together a page of my own, just for the sake of reflection, and I began putting together pictures that spoke to me on that deep-seated level, that were more than just Christian triusms, soundbites, and quips.  After a while, I think I began seeing a theme.

Mountains.  The planet Earth.  Galaxies.  Then, of course, those animated pictures that show everything in the universe to scale.  You know the ones.  They start with Earth and then zoom out until the Earth is a dot and then the sun is a dot and then there's a red giant that's so big that we can't even fathom it.  I get the picture; God's bigger than that.  These make good sermons, I guess, and they're a bit inspirational.

Don't fault me, though, when all this saber-rattling and boasting in just how big Christ is fails to help me develop an intimate relationship with God.  It feels like I could get the same spiritual high if I visited a planetarium.

See, the bigger you make something, and the more you emphasize how big it is, the more distant it becomes.  Show me a picture of VY Canis Majoris, and the best I can tell you is "Cool."  Knowing that something is big, through, really doesn't change my life.

I began scanning the internet, scourging it for all that spoke to me about Christ.  I discarded the ones that thumped the cross like it was a flag, or depicted Jesus like a lion.  Too triumphant.  It was religious patriotism.  Didn't seem right...

Then I saw pictures depicting Jesus and things that He did.  That spoke to me.  Some of them weren't necessarily preaching anything in particular, and they were just biographical facts.

Oh yeah, that's right.  God became a regular old Joe Schmoe.  A person that I could have touched if I lived in that place and time.  This person wasn't big and grand.  He was small, and humble.

When I place all worth on this Jesus, I find that it humbles me.  All the inspirational pep talks left me feeling a little stranded, but this changes me.

The apostles didn't worship some far-off abstract God.  They had a relationship with Him.  They didn't have to fight in order to create an imaginary relationship, because He became an historical reality.

I can see why disbelief in this caused the Gnostics to become less loving.  If they couldn't believe in a Jesus who was small, then they couldn't really become small.  They couldn't empty themselves.

Once I began thinking about it, and once I began seeing Jesus as a simple, humble servant, once I began treating Him as someone I have a personal relationship with, not just as God but as a man also, I believe that the spirit in which I look at the world changes.  I find that nobody has to preach anything to me, that I simply become more compassionate simply by confessing that this little guy means something to me.  That's the Spirit which I live by.

Sincerely,
John Hooyer

The Grace Talk

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby

Also all my friends at Dordt, who time and time again have been a family and a home for me: Justin, Hannah, Rebekah, Anna, Joy, Bailey, Marta, Marissa, Aubrey, Heidi, Adam, Michaela, Lance, Calvin, Kelli, Kaycie, Andrew, Bridget, Monica, Craig, Cait, Tanner, Nathan, Dirk, Justin Mills, and Aaron,

All my friends in Christ, all the people I haven't met, and hopefully the entire world,



At some point, every parent has to give their children the "Grace Talk."  That's what this is.  This is someone being as clear as possible that Grace is indeed Grace, with no bargains, conditions, or petitions.  This is what I believe everyone needs to hear and constantly be reminded of.

On March 19, 2014, Dordt brought in a man named John Lynch to speak at Chapel.  This is a service put on at the B.J. Haan Auditorium at Dordt most Wednesday mornings.  There most likely isn't one going on today, since it's finals week, and people like Hannah are going to be graduating, but I figured I'd turn back the clock and revisit what was the most important sermon I ever heard on that stage.  It's this outlook that has made every sermon by Aaron Baart a treasure, and that has given gentility and, well, gracefulness to many others who have spoken before the campus, such as President Erik Hoekstra.

This stuff is important to me.  There's a reason why I don't get tired of saying the same thing over and over again, because I know how easy it is to lose sight of what's important in life.

So John gets up.  He talks.  The Dordt students embraced him like a Lynch mob.  I find myself completely on the same key as him, and so relieved that he wasn't letting this issue go, wasn't getting sidetracked, wasn't trying to apply it to a tangential issue.  Maybe I cried, but I don't remember.  I definitely remember crying right at the end, though, as everyone started leaving their pews.  I went up to him and gave him a hug and said that this meant so much to me.

A recording of this particular chapel service is available on the Dordt website, and I would listen to it over and over again, particularly as I was completing my artwork.  I remember going through my painting for Justin, and just putting it on repeat.

It took me a while, but I finally completed a transcript of John Lynch's speech, and that's why I'm writing this.  To translate a work of oratory into a work of literature, that's something.  It has meant a great deal to me to keep myself immersed in this, and it's given me a bigger heart for all of you guys.

So here it is.

FOREWORD by AARON BAART

Good morning everybody. Welcome to Chapel and, um, welcome to this new series we're kicking off in Chapel today. Um, thanks for the incredible response we've been getting across campus. People have been signing up for small groups and collecting books in Student Services. Caleb van der Hill continues to help us out. If you have not got in a small group yet and you're panicking because you're realizing you're missing out on something, Caleb van der Hill is in the back. Um, he's got his, um, books as well as signups and can still get you connected, or feel free to swing by student services any time today and Emily Vander Greene can help you as well.

So this is our first week going through, um, this series – on The Cure., and when we talked about doing this project from the very beginning, um, one of our goals was to ask one of the primary authors, um, John Lynch to come help lead us. Um, it worked in John's schedule for him to be here; uh, it's been fun showing him around campus, introducing him to Dordt. Uh, John Lynch, uh, is the primary author of The Cure, has been pastor for, teaching pastor for, thirty years. He opened doors in Phoenix. Um, he's written multiple other books, travels around speaking and leading, and um, we're just absolutely thrilled that he could be here this morning, so will you please join me in welcoming John Lynch.

And I'll offer a quick word of prayer as well. Please bow your heads with me. Father God, we want to thank You so much for all the ways You keep speaking to us, revealing truth, and inviting us into life with You. Thank You for the gifts and the wisdom, the insights, the vocabulary You have given to John in his journey to speak that voice, and invite us into life with You. Father, use him again this morning, that his words will convict our hearts, draw us closer to You, and just set us on fire for all it is that You are doing, and in Jesus' name, amen.

JOHN LYNCH

Amen.

Good morning everyone!

(Good morning.)

That was really pitiful. Come on, I went through TSA for you people. Work with me now. Work with me. Good morning everyone!

(Good morning!)

Thank you, yes, my people.

I know what some of you are thinking: Did that elderly man step in some turquoise paint? I can explain. Listen, um, when I go places I'm asked to – most places, Aaron didn't do it to me – but most places, they want you to dress “business casual.” I don't have that particular look. I have casual and I have slovenly. Um, when I dress up I just look like a dweeb. I have Dockers on and these shoes that look like a tribute to The Pilgrims, or, er, uh, I just look stupid. So one night my wife and I, Stacey, are strolling in an overpriced, high-end mall, and I walk by this store. It's called Han, and I see these shoes, and I think, and I say, “I...I...I must have those shoes.” And Stacey says “Well it's your birthday. Let's go get them.” I said “Really?” and I'm thinking, “This could put us back sixty-seventy bucks. These shoes, um, are-are roughly the price of a mid-sized Sedan.” But it was my birthday and she got them.

Look, here's the deal. I'm sixty. I don't care anymore. Thank you.

And here's the deal: if you don't like them, I'm not going to be around much longer anyway, so...deal with it. But I love them. Love'em. I have a whole fleet of them. Um, so deal with me.

Drinking water, just because I can.

Alright guys, I am so honored to be here with you! I'm so proud of you guys that you're going through The Cure! Can't believe the commitment this campus, your leaders, have made to do this. So when I found out what you're doing, I said, “I'lll...I'lll...Yes. Just yes.” I hope what today does is maybe...gives common language, maybe to stuff that you already know but didn't have words for. So I hope, I hope this is a great beginning as you start this series.

THE SERMON

This all begins, doesn't it, back in the Garden, back there the lie was believed? Two people in unconfirmed righteousness are told a lie. “Hey hey hey hey! You can eat of it...Don't, c'mon. He just doesn't want you to have the knowledge of good and evil. He wants to hold out on you.”

And you know the story. “You surely will not die,” and when the woman saw that it was good and it was delightful to the eyes and the tree was desirable, she had some and she gave some to her husband. And then the eyes of them were both opened and they knew that they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. First act of sin management in human history. And you know it doesn't work when you try to manage your sin, and the way you know is that you still hide.

And so they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the Garden and the Lord called out to the man, saying “Where are you?” knowing full well where he was, and Adam said “I heard the sound of You in the Garden and I was afraid, because I was naked. For the first time in my life, I felt nakedness.”

Interesting, the word for “naked” changes from this point on in Genesis. Before it just meant “without clothing.” Now suddenly it means “Estranged. Alone. Odd. Not sure what to do. A feeling of 'I'm not right! Something's particularly wrong with me!”

“I was afraid. It scared me. Because for the first time I realized I was naked, and so I hid myself.”

And there it is.

A stone drops into a giant pool, a pool of DNA now, drops into a giant pool of history, and their concentric circles work their way out down through history, and they work out and they work out, and they touch every single human, and they find themselves...all the way to me. And now whenever I feel like I don't match up or I get embarrassed or I get afraid or exposed, or I do something or something gets done to me, that tries to convince me that I'm not enough, that I don't match up. Shh! I hide. I put on a mask.

As early as we can remember, we've performed for acceptance. If I'm good, talented, beautiful, together, competent, right enough, I'll be loved and accepted and happy, and if not, I will be pitied and patronized and rejected and I'll live a second class life.

You know what it's like? It's like the “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” theology. Santa Claus. We created him because we couldn't handle God. Truth is we can't handle Santa Claus. We made him all jolly and chubby, but the guy's really, truly a controlling omniscient legalist with unlimited power.

“O you'd better watch out, you'd better not cry! You better not pout...I'll tell you why. Cause Santa Claus's coming to town! 'O ho ho ho ho,' he's making a list! He's checking it twice! He will, oh my, he will find out who's naughty'n'nice!”

And this controlling omniscient legalist...He's coming to town!

“He knows when you've been sleepin'...” Which in my book is wrong, okay? I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're jolly. I don't want to wake up and “Ah! Santa! Get out of my room!”

“He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad or good...”

So be good for, um, Goodness' Sake. And your worth is on how much you do right and how little you do wrong, and he's always writing stuff down, and he's going to find you out! Oh, and this omniscient legalist, he's coming to town, so you'd better watch out. You'd better fear this guy. You'd better stop sniveling. You'd better not pout. You'd better put on a good face and act like you're somebody better than who you actually happen to be. Dance better, put on a good show, just be better than who you are, for goodness' sake! Don't be a whiner. Fix yourself. Try harder. Do more. Be better. Don't have so many problems. Watch over your shoulder. Get better in a hurry, and if you can't, at least bluff like you are, because you're constantly on trial. And if you want good things to happen in your life, you'd better figure out how to keep this guy happy.

It is genetically wired into us, isn't it? We learn early on to perform and the highest value is being accepted, and the means of acceptance is right appearance.

*sigh*

There's a problem, because I fail. Gosh, if you could get into my head, you would say “Why are we having this guy come preach to us?” I fail, and another result of the Fall, it feels like nobody fails like me. Mine feels weirder and more shameful, and so I live with this secret awareness of just how poorly I'm doing, how little I've grown, and so I feel unfit, unworthy, unlovable. Shhk – I'm naked!And I cannot stand that feeling. Just like Adam, it freaks me out. It makes me afraid. It makes me feel alienated in the world in which I walk. So no one must know. I've got to mask myself with enough reasons to be loved. I've got to brag, I've got to put others down, act healthier, idealize myself, posture, bluff, uh, religify myself, keep a smile on myself, avoid correction, justify and rationalize and hide the real me.

And then comes the Gospel. Maybe for the first time, maybe for the four hundred a fifty f...five, fifth time. The Gospel.

2 Corinthians 5:21. “He, God, made Jesus, Who knew no sin – who had never sinned – to actually bec...become sin on my behalf.”

He, God, made Jesus, Who had never sinned, actually take on all my garbage, all my filth, and not just mine, but everyone in history's. And He becomes it. He, God, made Jesus, Who knew no sin, to actually become my sin, and here you go now, listen to this: “So that I – The one who put Him on the cross? – So that I might become the righteousness of Christ in Him.” So that I actually carry full righteousness in me!

What? Are you kidding me? Why? Why would He – why would I find myself being loved like this? Jesus saying “To the exact extent that My father loves Me, so also I love you.” And you...when the Son does this, and I find myself actually believing it, it rewires my circuits. And patterns get broken. I dare to believe I'm lovable just because He chose to love me. I'm delighted in. Holy, righteous. I begin to believe that He created me lovable, that He actually wanted there to be a John Lynch on this planet like he is now, right now. He just had to...He had to break through the chasm of sin separation, and this radically remakes us.

And then...something happens. I don't know – you tell me. I...I...Maybe you go through a season where you don't experience His love as much, or you feel dry, or maybe you fail God in some way that you promised Him you would never fail Him again, and you did and you did again and then you did again. And subtly, gradually like ssssssssssmoke it sssssssssssslips back under the door, the lie reawakens. You b-begin to presume that a sense of His absence or bad circumstances must be due to His displeasure with you. So the cycle starts back up again.

Okay, I'll sure things up. I'll straighten the magazines. I'll set some standards. I'll get serious. I so got this! I can do this! I-I-I-I'll get serious about my behaviors, I-I-I'm-I'll-I'm going to sure things up, and then the river will flow again. Whew! I can do this!

And one of these times, because He's absolutely crazy about you, He will say “That's enough.” And He will finally call you out.

You'll be walking along doing the Christian life, just one path, it's always been that way. You've just been walking the Christian life, and then suddenly – Boom! Right in front of you, one path becomes two, and there's this giant pole right in front of you. And this giant pole shoots way up into the sky, and over to the right side there's an arrow, and an arrow on this one. This one says “Trusting God.” And this one says “Pleasing God.”

Well I uh...uh, whew, don't get it. No, I just want to do the Christian life. I admit, these are both great.  I don't want to have to choose between either one, now just do the Chri – but there is it, and it's not going away. And from this point on, whichever one you choose will become the primary motivation of your heart for the rest of your journey.

So eventually, frustrated, I look up and I see “Trusting God.” That can't be right. That doesn't give me anything to do. Alright, stay there...“Pleasing God.” Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...Yeah yeah. See, that's, this has got to be it, because after all He's done for me, the least I can do is I want to please Him. I want to make Him happy. I wanna – I wanna express how enough that I care and that I-I can real-really prove to Him that I...

Oh my gosh, I see what's happening. This is it. He just finally made this path so that I would choose and be with the sold-out people of God. I get what's happening here. So I do, I take this path of pleasing God, and it starts out – I go through some thickets, some brambles, and then eventually trees are growing. Eventually I'm in a thick forest, and I walk for a long ways. Eventually, the forest opens into a clearing, a wide clearing. Acres and acres and acres of clearing, and off in the distance I see this glimmering, shining building.

And the building has, eh, eh, words on it and as I get closer I can see it. Beautiful building. And now as I've walked closer, another five minutes, I see that it says “STRIVING HARD TO BE ALL GOD WANTS ME TO BE.”

Yeah! Ha, woowooowoowoowoowoowoo!

I mean, it sounds like an [unintelligible at 17:30] and a big “C'mon!”

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

And I'm, I'm, I'm there. Now I get closer and I see that there's a door on the building, and the door has a doorknob, and written above the doorknob are two words: “Self effort.”

And I'm thinking “Yeah. Finally somebody says is. Somebody has the nerve to say it, 'cause that's exactly right. 'Cause I – God does His part, so I gotta do my part. Right? I mean, God helps those who help themselves? That's in scripture...behind like Malachi or something? I – It's there.”

So –

chk! chk!

I open the door and I walk in.

Thousands of people! Cacophony of sound! The place is packed, and it's overwhelm...! I-I-I'm stunned; my jaw's dropped; I'm just li – I can't believe it. I'm here with the sold-out people of God.

And I don't notice as I'm standing that behind me a hostess...walks and she says to me in a voice that upon further reflection is a little slick, a little oily – she says, “Hi. Welcome to the room of good intentions.”

And I'm blown – I don't even hear what she says, I just go, “Hello! Heh, huh, you have no idea how excited I am to be here! He, how's everybody doin'? Hwoo! Hha haey-aye!”

And it's quiet. Not a sound.

“Hey, how's everybody doin'?

Finally, somebody steps forward. One person says “[clears throat] Thank you, we are doing just fine. Yes we are. We're fine. Thank you. Bob, Debbie, Carl? We're all fine. Just fine as fine can be. That's who we are. We're the fine people. Fine-ness – you can see it. We're that kind of people. Kids are doing great; the liquidity in my position at work; I have a...spendable currency with a basis of, of dialectic. We are doing just fine. Thank you for asking.”

...I'm thinking, “Well that's odd, but they seem fine, and that's great.”

And then the hostess says to me, “So how are you doing?”

And I say, “Oh, whew! Thanks for asking. I-I've been struggling with a lot of things, but now that I'm here, I think that I-I be, eh, uh, and I, but I gotta tell ya – ”

And she does this, and she pulls from behind her a mask, and issues for me to put it on. Well I don't want to put on a mask. I've never worn a mask in my whole life but...as I look at the mask, it looks very similar to the expression of the faces of the people in that room.

I so want to make it. I so want to be accepted. I so want to be loved. I so want to be known.

Ah, God, help me.

Shhhhhk! I put on the mask and I...I say, um, “I'm doing fine. I'm doing alrigh – I'm d-do-doing fine, thank you for asking.”

You're in the room of good intentions! And there's a banner on the back wall. I don't see it at first. It says, “Working hard on my sin to achieve an intimate relationship with God.” Working hard on my sin to achieve an intimate relationship with God!

Yeah. See, that's right. That's right again. Beca-because when, wh – when I was first a Christian, it felt like He and I were so close. It felt like I could talk to Him, like I could almost touch Him...and then something happened. Over time it felt like Romans Seven: the things that I said I was going to do I didn't do, the things I said I wasn't gonna do I did, and over time it's like He got further and further away on the other side of my sin, and this mountain started growing of all my stuff, of all my junk, all my garbage, all my fish bones and coffee grounds and mildewy stuff. This steaming, hissing, pussy mount of of my stuff. And He keeps getting further away as it grows, and it's got wet cat food that's been left out for a week, mixed with mayonnaise, and it's just, just – gaaahh! And I can't see Him anymore because of the steam and the vapor that's rising, and He's so far away.

But I imagine Him now, shaking His head with His arms folded, saying “Fffffhhhhww, I had so much hope for that kid – but he has let Me down so many times and so – I don't want to hear it anymore!”

And I want to call out to Him and say, “I, erhmgh, I lo – I love You I know You probably can't hear me, but I d-d-d – You watch now! Now that I'm in this room, I'm gonna get things fixed! You're gonna see, that mound's gonna get small, and we're gonna be closer again!”

But what nobody tells me in that room is that there's nothing I can do to make that mound grow smaller, and what nobody tells me in that room is that trucks more of that stuff are being brought in every day, and what nobody tells me in that room is that when I wear a mask...

When I wear a mask, only my mask gets loved.

Oh, but this room, you guys, [sniffs] this room is beautiful. It is inlaid with ivory and parquet floors, and beautiful, flowing balconies and staircases and, uh, i-i-ivory and shining, glittering chrome – it is magnificent! It has sincerity and perseverance and courage and diligence and full-hearted fervency and sold-out determination, and I'm thinking, “Yes! This is it! I'm gonna make him so happy and one day soon we're gonna be so close.”

[heavy breathing, gulps, breathes heavily again]

But weeks turn into months and I notice that many here sound cynical and the look so tired. And their conversations, if you listen to them, they're superficial and guarded, and if you catch them when no one's looking, and they can't tell that anyone's around, there's deep lonely pain in their faces. And I'm starting to think differently. I'm no longer as relaxed. I've got this nagging anxiety. If I don't behave, if I don't control my sin enough, I'm gonna be on the ousts with everybody in this room.

And probably with God, too.

So I do. I invest more effort into sinning less and I do. I gotta tell you, I feel better for a while, but despite all my striving, despite all my sincerity – da-gaah! I keep sinning! Some days the same sin, over and over and over again! I-I get fixated on trying not to sin. I can't seem to do enough. I never get through my list. I never feel like I've done enough! I feel like I'm making every eff – stinking stinking effort to please a God Who's never pleased enough!

[panting]

And gradually the path to pleasing God is turning into “What in the world must I do to keep Him pleased?”

Uh, m-muh-my...my dear brothers and sisters. When I embrace this theology, I reduce godliness to a ridiculous formula: more right behavior plus less wrong behavior equals godliness.

More right behavior!

(Less wrong behavior!)

Equals: Godly Man.

And there's only one problem with that theology. It has to improve to reach the level of heresy. Did you hear me? It has to improve to reach up to heresy. Why? Because it disregards the godliness and righteousness that God has already placed in us...on our worst day. Yes, we mature in godliness, but if we disregard the righteousness that's already ours from trust, we are set up to live in hiddenness. We can never resolve our sin by working on it. We may change behaviors for a while, like moving deck chairs around on the Titanic, but when we strive to sin less we don't, and it causes us to lose hope. It keeps us immature, and even the [wheezing]...

And even though this theology's been breaking out hearts almost a thousand times – ten thousand times – we keep desperately hoping that maybe this time we'll be able to control and stop our bad habits and sin by enough – [wheezes] – sincerity and will power.

[Strained breath. Gulp.]

And I can't breath! I can't breath in this room! And I want, I wanna call out and I want – but it's the one thing that nobody wants to talk about. Do not talk about that! [strained breath] What's wrong with me? Why can't I make – why does it seem like everybody else –

[Strained breathing. Voice almost cracks.]

And eventually, even though I'm pretty convinced that this is the only chance that I have to be around the sold-out people of God...

Ch-chk! I open the door and I walk out.

Now what do I do? I'm devastated. I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I th-that – this was it. This was my one chance and I blew it. And I wander. I wander for like forty-five minutes to an hour. I-I'm, my head's down, I'm not even looking, until I run smack-dab into that pole again, where the two arrows were.

With almost no hope I look up at that arrow that says “Trusting God.”

Ah, you've got to me kidding me, right? You've gota be kidding m – is there a third path?

And hearing nothing, I start walking again. Down this path. [sigh] Walk, same thing. Trees, thickets, bushes, brambles, forests, walk out into a clearing, giant building off in the distance, same thing.

Except this time the words are different. And I keep walking because I can read them now, but they don't make any sense. I keep getting closer and saying “What? That can't mean that.” But there they are, written across, right across the wall, the front of the building:

“Living out of who God says I am.”

Wwwwhat? My ear hears one word right after another. “Living out of who God says I am.” Well we'll get right on that (what does that mean?)!”

I keep walking, another five-ten minutes, and I see that there's a door on this building, and then I see that there's a doorknob, and there's one word written above the doorknob this time. It says this: “Humility.”

Shhhhhhhhhhk!

Humility. Trusting God and others with me. It dawns on me so much. It just hits me. I've tried so hard. I've tried so – I've tried so hard to impress You, to convince You that I was worthy of Your love, that I could pull this off, that I could be enough – and You never wanted! You're bigger, You're faster, You're stronger, You're better, and all You ever wanted me to do was trust You in me.

Help. I'm all messed up. I'm all battered and help me, I don't know how to do this anymore! I – I don't know where to go if this doesn't work.

Chk-chk! And I open the door and I walk in. Same thing. Huge crowd. Cacophony of sound. Thousands of people. And I'm just staring now. And I don't notice that there is in this room also a hostess, and she walked up behind me, and she doesn't say anything for a little bit. She just looks at me and smiles. I don't see her until I hear her words in maybe the most beautiful voice I have ever heard in my whole life. She says “Hi...hi kid. Welcome to the room of Grace.” And she's very cool, ve-very smart, very wise. Listen who what she says.

“So how are you doing?”

Well I've been here before, so I say, rmhm, “Fine. I'm kind of fine. Sort of fine. Who wants to know?”

And then I look our here at this audience. Same thing again. It feels quiet. I'm feeling mocked. So finally I've had enough, and I yell out –

“Hey! Everybody! Hhhahahaha! You know what? I'm doing – not fine! Hhhaha heh! There you go! Haven't been 'fine' for a long time. Ah-hah? I'm tired, I'm confused, I'm afraid, I feel guilty and lonely, I'm sad most of the time, I can't make my life work, and I'm so far behind I'm befuddled on what to do next! It leaves me frozen. And if any of you squirrely religious people knew half my dailey thoughts, you'd want me out of your little room. So there! Doing fine / not fine at all! Hhhh-thanks for asking, I think I'll go now!”

And my hand is on the doorknob, when from way, way back in the room, someone yells out “That's it? That's all you got? I'll take your confusion and guilt and bad thoughts and raise you compulsive sin and chronic lower back pain! Oh, and I'm in debt up to my ears and I wouldn't know the different from Showtunes and Classical music if it jumped up and bit me. YOU'D BETTER GET MORE THAN THAT LITTLE LIST IF YOU WANT TO PLAY IN MY LEAGUE, buddy!”

And the hostess leans over and she says to me, “I think he means you're welcome here.”

You're in the room of Grace.

Grace.

Garrace.

A hundred and twenty-seven times in the New Testament.

And you can't say Grace except in a Scottish or Irish accent for this is the manner in which God speaks.

Oh, and the Judaisers hated it. They hated it. Romans five through eight.

“Paul! Don't you dare! You can't talk to these people about Grace! They'll take advantage of it! I know what they'll do. Th-the-you can use it like paprika, but don't talk to them about it! Use it like a condiment, but that's it! You gotta keep screw, the lid on these people! They'll take advantage of it, do Christianity. They'll space out, they won't be sincere in their faith. Don't talk to them about Grace!  Appeal to their flesh, tell them to do more, tell them to try harder, work harder! Gra -I'm telling you, Paul, it won't work!”

And Paul said in Romans five through eight, and perhaps I'm paraphrasing a bit out of the NIV, he says “Thank you so much for your kind interest, and you have a great point, except for two things. These vermin that you talk about? They're new creatures. They don't want to get away with anything. All they want to do is love and be loved by their God. They want to jump up into His lap. They want to know and be known by Them. That's who they are. They're brand new creatures. They have Christ in them.

“On their worst day! Christ is in them! Fused with them! I can't tell where Jesus ends off and I start out. He cannot define His own Name anymore without mine included, and I cannot define my name without His.

“Oh, and one more thing. The Holy Spirit lives in them. Third person of the Trinity, very impressive, powerful, yeah. Pfffw! He can do stuff? And He's able to exhort them, comfort them, draw them, draw their attention, and the only thing that keeps them from obedience, heartfelt obedience – although they'll comply for you – but what keeps them from heartfelt obedience is moralism that appeals to their flesh and tells them 'You should, you ought, what's wrong with you, when will you?'

“Oh, you can get compliance by any method, but if you want heartfelt obedience that obeys from the heart, I'll take Grace. I'll take Grace.”

I-I wrote a piece a long time ago called “The New Testament Gamble”. My kids were just so young, they were like seven, five, and two. Now they're all grown up, but at the time I was so scared it caused me to write this piece, this gamble, that wasn't a gamble to God but it sure felt like one to me. It was God saying “What if I tell them who they are? What if I take away any f – element of fear and condemnation and judgment or rejection? What if I tell them that I love them? What if I turn over the cards and tell them that I will always love them? That I can't love them any more than I love them right now and I love them right now no matter what they've done, as much as I love My only Son? That there's nothing they can do to make My love go away? What if I told them there are no lists? What if I told them they were righteous with My righteousness right now? What if I told them they could stop beating themselves up, they could stop being so formal and stiff and weird and jumpy around me? What if I told them I was absolutely crazy about them? What if I told them that even if they were out at the ends of the Earth and did the most unthinkable, horrible things and were unfaithful in their marriage, when they came back I'd receive them with tears and a party? What if I told them I don't keep a log of past offenses, of how little they pray, of how often they let Me down, or made promises they don't keep? What if I told them they don't have to be owned by man's religions, additions, or traditions? What if I told them if I'm their Savior, they're going to Heaven no matter what, it's a don deal? What if I told them they have a new nature, that they're saints, not saved sinners who should 'buck up and be a better if you're going to be a Christian after all He's done for you?' What if I told them that I actually live in them now, that I put My love and power and nature inside of them at their disposal? What if I told them that they didn't have to put on a mask, that it was absolutely exactly okay to be exactly who they are at this very moment with all their junk and not have to pretend about how close we are, how much they pray or don't, how much Bible they read or don't? What if they knew they didn't have to look over their shoulder for fear of things get too good the other shoe's going to drop? What if they knew that I will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use the word 'punish' in regards to them? What if they knew when they mess up I never get back at them? What if they were convinced that bad circumstances are not My way of evening the score for taking advantage of Me? What if they knew the basis of our friendship was not how little they sin but on how much they let Me love them? What if they had permission to stop trying to impress Me in any way? What if I told them I – they could hurt My heart and I would never hurt theirs? What if I told them I kind of love – really a lot – Mumford and Sons, too? What if I told them that the 'thees' and 'thous' always confused Me? What if I told them I was never that fond of the Christmas handbell with the white gloves? What if I told them they could open their eyes when they pray and still go to Heaven? What if I told them there was no secret agenda, no trap door? What if I told them it wasn't about their self-effort, but allowing Me to live My life through them?” And I raised my kids in that, and now they're grown. They trust Jesus more tenderly than I do, and they don't have to live a double life.

You guys, are you gonna be the guinea pig test and try this out? You see, it's all over Scripture. Second Timothy two...two-one says: “My son, be strong in the Grace that's in Christ Jesus!”

Acts twenty-thirty-two: “I commend you unto God and to the Word of His Grace which alone is able to build you up!”

Hebrews four-sixteen: “Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of Grace that we may receive mercy and find Grace that will help us in our time of need!”

Romans five-two: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we've obtained our introduction by faith into this Grace in which we stand!”

Romans six-fourteen: “Sin no longer gets to be master over you because you're no longer under law, you're no longer under buck-up-ism or moralism. Sin will no longer be master over you because you're under Grace.”

Period.

You see, you know what we're doing, right? We're talking about Hebrews eleven-six. Without faith it's impossible to please Him. Faith, the noun form of the verb pistos in the Greek. The verb form is “trust.” Without faith, without trust, it's impossible to please Him! See, you could all day long try so hard to “C'mon! Here I go! I'm gonna try to please you – ”

He says “You'll never do it enough and you'll never learn to trust.”

But if over here – if over here – I dare to believe that on my worst day I wear a robe of righteousness, that He says “There's no condemnation of you, kid. I'm crazy about you. I know everything that you're going to do, and I can't stop thinking about you. I adore you.” If I dare to believe that I'm Christ in John Lynch, He will say this: “Listen to Me, John, you're doing it. You're doing it, kid. You're trusting Me. Not only that, you've never pleased Me so much in your whole life.”

Whew! You see guys, um, pleasing God, it's an incredible desire, motive, it's wonderful. It just can't be primary motivation or it will imprison our hearts. For if all we bring to God is our moral striving to please Him by solving our sin, we're back at the same square that put us in need of salvation. We're stuck with our talents, our desire, our ability, our longing, our hootspa, our diligence and resolve to make it happen. Pleasing is not the means to our godliness. It's the fruit of our godliness, 'cause it's the fruit of trust.

Oh yeah, there's a banner on the back wall of this building, too. It says this:

“Standing with God, with my sin in front of us, working on it together.”

What if the shed blood of Jesus was this powerful, that for you who have dared to put your hope in Christ, that He was never there on the other side of your sin? Because of the shed blood of Christ, He walks all the way up and around that sin, and He stands in front of you, face to face, six inches away from your face, and He smiles that smile that no human can make, and He says “I know, kid. I've known from before the world began, and I'm crazy about you. I'm not ashamed. I'm not mad. You're right on time. I've got you.”

And then He was – He would put His hands on my shoulders, and then, without warning, He would pull me into a bear hug so tight and He would hold me so tight and with force!

I wanna fight it. I wanna say “No no no no! You don't understand! Youdunnome! This is not right! But I've been b-b-bi-bu-t-t – ”then after a while I don't want him to stop ever. I want Him to hold me like this forever.

But He keeps saying, “I know kid. I'm not ashamed. I'm not mad. I'm crazy about you. I know. I know. I know.”

And He keeps holding me like that and He keeps talking like that until He's absolutely convinced that I believe Him. And then, and only then, does He loosen the embrace, and only so much so He – so that He can put His arm around me. So we can look at my sin together.

I always – every time I do this – I always imagine Him with His arm around me and looking at my sin, and I imagine Him saying “[snort] Aheh. Wow. Hhhahahahamahaheh – My, my my, that's a lot of sin! Don't you ever sleep?” and then He would say, “And we'll – we'll deal with it when you're ready, kid, and I've got your back. I'm crazy about you.”

Hmm.

Have we been changed? Oh gosh, as day is from night, we've been changed. We've received a brand new core identity! We've already changed, been changed. We're not gonna – I can't stand going into stores, Christian book stores, say “Man, it's time to change!” You've already been changed! You're not going to get changed any more, you've got all the Holy Spirit you're gonna get!

If I took a caterpillar to a biologist and said “tell me about its DNA,” He would say “John I know this looks very much like a caterpillar to you, but – by every scientific testing and every expression, this that I'm holding is a caterpillar – but you know what it is? It's a butterfly.”

Wow. He has placed into a creature looking nothing at all like a butterfly a complete butterfly, and because it is a butterfly in reality, one day, if you will let it, it will inevitably, invariable turn into a butterfly. In the meantime, yelling at it to be more like a butterfly will just hurt its tiny little ears.

And so it is with us! I'm a brand new creature, brand new DNA! Christ in John, fully righteous!

And He says, “You're immature, kid, but if you'll believe it, you will mature into it beautifully. Oh, by the way, if you'll trust it, you will love more and sin less.”

Now not everybody stays in the Room of Grace once they get there, for not only must you believe you're accepted, you must learn to accept the yokos who are already here, and the ones who enter each week. And they are goofy and odd and flawed and and failed and strange and inappropriate. Oh, every now and then a presentable one slips in! But he or she usually soon discovers his schtick is a mask. He must, too, learn to rest in the sufficiency of Christ, or he'll go back to where appearances make the man or woman.

And now you. Now it's down to us. This – this day, prepared before the world began, with this precious group of students at Dordt College. I know what some of you are thinking. You know what you're thinking. “Yeah, but you don't know me. You don't know what I hide. You don't know the stuff I carry. You don't know the garbage I've done. You don't know how I feel second-place. You don't know how I don't believe I fit here. You don't know how outside I feel.”

So maybe, just maybe, as you go through these next eight weeks...maybe you'll be able to tell someone – all it will take will just be one – and just say, um, “I need to tell you something about me. I trust you with me. I think you're someone who is safe with me. And I want to tell you this...”

And maybe, just maybe, they will lean over to you and say, “That's all you got?” and it will be their way of saying, “You have always been, your are now, and you will always be welcome here.”

I'm so proud of you guys. Thanks for having me.

BENEDICTION by AARON BAART

Thank you very much, John. When I hear you speak, I hear the heart of the Father. Sometimes the voice of Liam Neeson, but – the heart of the Father. Have a great day, everybody!





Sincerely,
John Hooyer

Suffering is the Limit

Mitchell, Brody, Shannon, and Shelby,

Recently I shared a quote from Pope Francis.  It stood out as very meaningful to me and my experiences, so I decided to share it via Facebook.  Sometimes I do these things and I'll get a few people to jump on the "like" button, but very often these little inspirational quotes go unnoticed.  Usually, it's the more complex quotes that people tend to ignore, and in hindsight, it should not have surprised me that the one acknowledgment I got was when someone replied saying that it was nonsense.  I was in the right position so that the language of Francis's thoughts on suffering spoke directly to me in a way that wasn't universal, but highly specific, almost tailored for my reception.  Others wouldn't understand, at least not right away.

Unfortunately, on Facebook people rarely ever ask for clarification and assume that I've phrased things as plainly as possible, so when I try to get across wisdom like this and it doesn't make sense right away, I've had it a few times where people have told me that I don't know what I'm talking about instead of being curious enough to ask "What exactly do you mean by that?"  This this particular instance, the person said "nonsense," that I should stop speaking heresy and start reading my Bible.

Meanwhile, I realize that, given the complexity of the thought, it would be best that I write about it in depth here, where it's more natural to go into depth and take my time.  Now let me repeat the quote, minus the typo:

"Suffering is not a virtue in itself, but the way we accept it can lead to virtue.  We are called to fullness and happiness, in search of which, suffering is the limit.  Because of this, we fully understand the sense of suffering only through the suffering of God made Christ."

Exegesis

I realize that this statement actually looks quite confusing.  The wording works for me, but had it not, what would the most appropriate response have been?  In his book Creative Ministry, Henri M.J. Nouwen says that we shouldn't be competitive with our opinions, but rather be perpetual learners ourselves and always be willing to ask others whose viewpoints don't immediately make sense to us, "Tell me more."  Communication is a two way street, and sometimes we on the receiving end must take the initiative in making sure that we understand.

Therefore, I have to ask three important questions:

1. What is the context in which Pope Francis said this?
2. How can we break this quote down and rephrase it?
3. What parts of this statement are semantically unique to the Roman Catholic vocabulary?

2

Because I'm rebellious and somewhat unpredictable, I'm actually going to start off with the second question.  How can this quote be rephrased?  This is actually, from an exegetical standpoint, the first step in understanding any text, since we must look at internal evidence for meaning to see if it answers itself before resorting to other, possible unnecessary measures for interpreting the text.

Let me brake it down into my more inclusive language:

1. We can't consider ourselves good simply because we suffer, since this is a universal condition of all mankind, but there is a Christian way of understanding suffering.
2. God intended Creation to be good and wishes to restore it to this perfect order.
3. We suffer in spite of this, and we can only find meaning to the sheer offensiveness of suffering in light of God's own voluntary suffering in Christ.

Once you break it down and actually think about what's being said, it's pretty straightforward and there's nothing here that's against the Bible.  It's very sensible, and in fact quite ecumenical.  This initial paraphrase doesn't make any particularly bold truth claims outside of its presumption that Jesus was God.

Yet, there's one thing that I didn't translate that doesn't quite make it into the breakdown.  What am I to make of the statement "Suffering is the limit?"  How does this fit in with the rest of the main theological points?

At this point, I will need to dig a little deeper, because I can't presume to simply know what this means merely by looking at the quote itself.


1

Looking at it now, the post really does need context, and the way I attributed the quote to him is actually a bit misleading.  This isn't a quote by Pope Francis as we know him, but actually before he was pope, and his name was Jorge Mario Bergoglio.  This isn't something that he said while in his current office.

Francis said this after due reflection on his own life.  I encountered this quote by picking up a booklet about him, and here's the two paragraphs that directly led into it:

The family was not rich, and his mother was temporarily paralysed [sic] after the birth of her youngest child, so when Jorge came back from school, under her directions, he would cook ingredients previously prepared by her.  Although they did not lack for the necessities of life, they had few luxuries either, so his father asked him aged thirteen to begin part-time work in a clothes factory alongside his studies.  After a few years, he began to work in the mornings at the Hickethier-Bachmann chemical laboratory, controlling food hygiene, while he attended afternoon classes till 8 pm.  In his interviews with Sergio Rubin and Francesca Abrogetti, published as El jesuita, he speaks of his gratitude for what he learnt through this work, especially concerning the importance of the quality of one's work, of the dignity given by work and of the social consequences of good work and leisure 

His own experiences of suffering, especially during a grace illness when he was twenty-one, in which he lost a lung, have formed his compassion in his ministry.  It was only when Sr Dolores, who had prepared him for first communion, said "you are imitating Jesus", [sic] that he found peace and could make sense of his suffering.  In the light of this experience he says [the quote that is the subject of this entry].

Interestingly, I was writing about the relationship between hard work and leisure a lot the other days.  I also wrote about the ironic sense in which work, in its own way, is a suffering of its own, and yet it can be so fulfilling.

Francis's motto is Miserando atque eligendo, which means, as I'm translating it, "Looking at him who needs mercy and choosing him."  Since Latin is fairly flexible, you could actually order these words in several different ways, but the formula and the relationship created is still the same.  There are two words, mercy and choice, which are conjugated into verb forms and are applied by the active subject of the sentence to a direct object.  "Miserando" means to have mercy, "atque" means "upon him," and "eligendo" is the act of making a positive choice regarding that person.  The theme for Francis's ministry, the words which he chooses to be forever remembered by, are words of compassion.

Taking all this into account, I let it inform me of the personality of the person speaking.  Pope Francis is a man deeply committed to service toward others, and I believe that when he speaks of suffering, he's really talking about two things.  One, he's talking about suffering itself, and two, he's talking about suffering as it relates to service.  Then he, like Mark, emphasized Jesus as the suffering servant.  He began to find justification for suffering once he began going into a vocation of lifelong service, at which point he would have undoubtedly also tried to find justification for service.


3

My sister and I had a talk the other day about how Catholics and non-Catholics often believe in the exact same things, but only don't realize it because different traditions use their own words for a shared belief.  In the case of Catholicism, I've noticed that suffering is uniquely honored in the faith in ways that at first seem unfamiliar to non-Catholics.  Suffering characterizes Lent, in which we are called to suffer like Christ.  Mass is traditionally also considered to be union in Christ's suffering.  Catholics have an intimate relationship with this word and it comes with many preconceived notions.

When a lay Catholic speaks on suffering, there aren't necessarily multiple layers of semantics.  However, when a well-educated Catholic speaks of suffering ---- particularly if he's in the priesthood ---- it's important to understand that his way of acknowledging suffering is intimately tied to a broader series of doctrines and insights that together create a holistic portrait for the faith.

In the history of the Christian tradition, one of the first arguments to end up defining the character of the church was the nature of Jesus.  There were those who struggled with the God-Man doctrine, because it was unseemly for God to empty Himself to the point of being a dependent infant, begotten of the line of Man, subject to the random and arbitrary nature of history, and to ultimately suffer and die.  These were a contradiction, because a God who was omnipotent and eternal could not become these things.  What's more ---- and I believe this is the real reason why most would struggle with this doctrine ---- they believed that God should not subject Himself to this.

In the words of Catholic Answers:

Words fall far short when we are undergoing suffering, and reasoning cannot remedy the profound sense of the offensiveness of suffering.

It's offensive.  It's our natural tendency, as theists, to believe that God should be revered.  Not only should we worship Him, but we should refuse to believe anything so as to make Him lower than what our preconceived notions of what an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent God should look like.  In that sense, I'm sure that the Gnostics believed that they were doing Him a favor when they denied His incarnation, and in particular His suffering.  Because suffering was offensive, and to believe that He took on such an offense was a further offense unto Him.

Even today, an occasional well-meaning Christian will struggle with the idea that God was completely human.  Acknowledging that doctrine sounds dangerously close to humanism.  Therefore, while they celebrate Jesus as God, it's hard for them to rejoice in Him as a man.  This still opens some tricky implications, though.  If Jesus was God, than everything He was and everything He did is to be celebrated.  That includes the Resurrection and everything good that happened to Jesus, but how do we celebrate His Passion?  How to we worship and celebrate in His death without indulging in a faith that professes a hatred of God?

Therefore, Gnostics radically reinterpreted history in order to fix this "problems."  The early church was divided, and many of the epistles, particularly by John, address the Gnostic beliefs within their midst.  The Gnostic solutions, to say the least, were contrived, but they had to be in order to counter the offensive claim that Jesus was a human being and that He became subject to the most human of all acts, suffering and death.

They said that Jesus was a human, but that Christ was a separate entity, not unlike the Holy Spirit.  An analogy that might work for some people is that Jesus was sort of like a character from an anime my sister's a fan of, Yugi from Yu-Gi-Oh!, who shares his body with an ancient spirit named Yami Yugi.  Jesus was a mundane human being, although through His miraculous birth He was prepared for His special selection by the Christ.  For thirty years, He lived a normal human life.  Then, upon His baptism, Christ descended upon Him, and He has the Son of God in Him.  It was for this reason that the first thirty years of Jesus' life were unremarkable (because Heaven forbid that the Messiah should enter into the world without fireworks going off every time He ate breakfast).  During His ministry, when He had Christ in Him, He did many remarkable things, and those things could be attributed to Christ in Him.  When He suffered in His Passion, it was Jesus suffering, but not Christ, and when Jesus died, the Christ left His body, because God was too good to die.

By denying suffering, the Gnostics made Jesus more distant and denied His mission, and it was against this heresy that the early church had to struggle against.  The early church fathers, and therefore the Catholic church, had to address suffering in order to make sense of their faith.  The very first Christians came to their faith not by being ideologues, but witnesses, and humbly accepted Jesus' ministry for what it was, no matter how much it challenged their preexisting suppositions.  Jesus' suffering was a fact, and therefore had to be understood.

Therefore, when an educated Catholic speaks of suffering, he identifies it very strongly with Jesus' experiences.  It's the lens from which he understands it, the direction that he's coming from.

According to Catholicism, and historic Christianity in general, the very fact that Jesus suffered validates our own suffering.  He didn't just tell us that it was bad and awkwardly say a prayer for us.  He had enough passion to come down and suffer like us, and with us.  I think it's very important to acknowledge that He suffers with us, because God has a heart for community and relationship.  He has a heart for togetherness.  He proved that those who suffer aren't alone, but rather that all that is good and true in the universe, Himself, the Logos, suffers along with them.  We treat a detached godliness as something to strive for, and sublimity as an ultimate desire, so that when we're suffering, we think something must be wrong.  Yet, Christ suffered, and everything was right with Him.

Suffering, therefore, is beautified.  Catholics respect suffering.  They respect those who go through it, because they are enduring something that Christ endured.  It almost sounds as if they're affectionate of suffering, though, as if it's a good thing, or a virtue, and that isn't the case.  That is why we need people like Jorge Mario Bergoglio to clarify that suffering is still an offense against us and therefore not a virtue, but it is virtuous to accept suffering as Christ did, because Christ did.

Why did Christ suffer, though?

While doing my research, an article on Catholic Bridge explained our reason for suffering in several ways, one of which happened to conform with my interpretation of the Pope's statement that we suffer in order to serve others.  Yes, it is good to find relief from suffering, and we should pray for God's intervention, but when He doesn't take it away, it isn't reason for despair.  There is a reason for it, and one of the reasons is service.

Catholics are not afraid of the Cross. We love the Cross. Catholics feel that if we prayerfully offer up their sufferings to God, they can benefit those in the world who are suffering but who do not know Christ. This is called "redemptive suffering." We don't go chasing after suffering but if it is persistently there even though we pray, then we don't waste the opportunity to use it for good. This is what Catholics mean when they say "I am offering it up."

Christ suffered for us, with us, because He was a servant to the poor.  His suffering was a part of a mission that could not be complete without it.  It had a purpose toward helping others and leading to our Salvation, and it's absolutely necessary.  In 2 Corinthians 5:21, it says that Jesus became our sin for us.  He took on our garbage and our filth, all that was offensive about us, and took the blame for it.  He couldn't just magically forgive us and say that He didn't hold it all against us, because He wanted to fully embrace what forgiveness entails, that is, restoring a complete relationship with us.  God needed to be with us much as He is with Himself in the Trinity, so He came down and forgave us by living life with us, both physically and, through His suffering and death, spiritually.

The Catechism puts it this way:

Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases." But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the "sin of the world," of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion. (1505)

Where is says that He covers our sins for us, that He paid them for us, is standard Christianese and, pragmatically, all we really need to know.  Yet, I took the liberty of adding emphasis to where the Catechism goes the extra mile, right there at the beginning and the end of the paragraph.  It says that not only did He associate with the sick, but He was truly touched by them, inside and out.  He was touched not just physically, but at His core.  This is the type of God who would weep with us when we showed signs of death, because He didn't just intellectually acknowledge our suffering as real but experienced it for Himself.  The Catechism then reaffirms that suffering is purposeful if we don't deny it but accept it and allow Christ to take it on for us, because then we become united in Christ.

To that extent, Catholics believe that by suffering we show salvation to others, because we can more authentically live as one flesh when we suffer together.  It breaks down the barriers we have with one another, and we become one.  Extra ecclesia novum salus.  True salvation requires the reception of a relationship, and we cannot share that with others when we limit our ways of being spiritually available to others.  The Holy Spirit wants to be active inside the workings of interpersonal communion.

Even more poignantly, Pope John Paul II spoke about suffering as a vocation and its salvific implications.

Man hears Christ’s saving answer as he himself gradually becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ. The answer that comes through this sharing, by way of the interior encounter with the Master, is in itself something more than the mere abstract answer to the question about the meaning of suffering. For it is above all a call. It is a vocation. Christ does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else he says: "Follow me!" Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my cross. Gradually, as the individual takes up his cross, spiritually uniting himself to the cross of Christ, the salvific meaning of suffering is revealed before him.

That's a pretty heavy declaration, and very distinctly Catholic to the extent that non-Catholics would instinctively shy away from accepting it, but it also isn't one that's made lightly.  John Paul II knew what suffering was like.  He knew it well, more than most.  He had the right to talk about it.  He also looked at Christ and saw a God who, though He was better than him in every way, was nonetheless relateable.  As much as Catholics celebrate life every mass with the Eucharist, His suffering is still a historic fact of His ministry.  It's intuitively obvious that God should live.  That God should resurrect  --- that is to say that He must come back to life after having suffered and died ---- is another ordeal.  It says a lot about His nature.  It was such an out-there idea that many had trouble believing in it, and the Gnostics came up with wild theories about how Jesus and the Christ were two different people, and that the Christ was not in Him when He suffered.  He saw a Christ who didn't ask him to enter into the suffering to be more Christlike, but a Christ who entered into suffering much like him.

He speaks of taking up our own cross, and that could sound enough like a call to give up pleasure in pursuit of righteousness, but that isn't exactly what he's getting at.  After all, he had already been suffering.  It isn't something he chose to do; he received the offense of suffering in one form or another whether he asked for it or not.  Taking up one's own cross involves making peace with our own suffering and accepting it for what it is, that it doesn't distance us from Christ but rather gives us an idea of just how humble He was in order to experience what we experience.  Incidentally, this also gives us strength.  We don't become superhuman, but when we're free to make peace with our pain and offer it up to God, we're enabled to endure it better.

Some would still hold John Paul II suspect for claiming that through our own suffering we take part in saving the world.  That sounds a lot like humanism again, like he's claiming that Christ's sacrifice wasn't enough.  Except it is.  Christ's sacrifice, and particularly His resurrection, is enough.  He's saved us, and our salvation comes from having the identity of Christ in us.  Because God can't say our name anymore without acknowledging His Son, it transforms us.  If we confess that we're free to truly be who we really are, then we can truly be with one another.  We can live with them and die with them.  Through that relationship, the Holy Spirit works wonders.  Through genuine relationship, it redeems the messenger and the receiver of the message.  We share the Word with people by truly sharing ourselves.  That is how salvation spreads.

Another common opinion that people have is to suppose that we cannot possibly enter into Christ's suffering, that nothing compares to His sacrifice.  They're right.  They're also wrong.

Have you ever heard someone try to be optimistic and say "At least it can't get any worse!"?  Then, of course, the irony gods feel provoked enough to respond with a thunderclap, followed by an instant downpour of rain.  Things just got worse.  In the same way, imagine if Jesus, in the midst of His crucifixion, comforted Himself with the same motivational thinking.  Then it rained, or a Roman officer decided to stab him in the groin a few times, or scorpion crawled onto Him and stung Him several times.  It doesn't take much imagination to imagine how that death could have been worse.

As a writer, I've explored the idea of pain through science fiction.  I invented a character who had his spine ripped out, replaced with a cyborg spine, and had his brain altered to that he could experience pain beyond that which was humanly possible.  At the end of the day, we have only so many nerve endings to pick up pain, and our brain has only so many neurons to comprehend it.  This character had his limits unnaturally redefined to the point where he experienced pain fifty-three times greater than what a human technically can biologically experience.

At least it can't get any worse.  Well, no, not really.  This young man thought that he was the be-all and end-all of suffering, until someone else much, much later in the story came around and willingly suffered even more.  This person had his brain transformed so that it was bigger on the inside, the size of a universe, and converted into the substance of time-space itself so that it didn't have biological restrictions.  He was then inflicted pain to great that it literally filled that entire universe.  Every unit of quantum foam of space and time within him groaned under the weight of physical and mental pain.  He was in agony.  The human brain processes information at about forty miles per hour, but one side of his universe-sized brain could conceive the pain on the other side of his cranial universe instantaneously, a billion times over.  All the while, the people who inflicted this on him mocked him, and let him suffer while the wicked prospered.  They inflicted pain on those he loved, and those he loved turned their backs on him.  He was constantly reminded of his past sins and made to not only suffer, but to hate himself.  It shattered him.

Right there, I just imagined a type of suffering that technically eclipses Cavalry.  To enter into Christ's suffering, therefore, does not necessarily mean to be beat, whipped, and given a slow, torturous death.  I think that it's unfortunate that Catholic ministers use the term all on its own, "entering into Christ's suffering," when on its own it sounds so presumptuous.  It makes non-Catholics think that Catholics are full of themselves or blind to the blackness that Christ went through.  That isn't the case.

Catholic Answers puts it this way:

Indeed, the suffering of Christ overcomes the worst possible suffering of the human person—permanent alienation from God, the source and summit of all goodness. All suffering in this life—like all happiness—is imperfect, partial, and finite. Even the worst possible human life, spread over the longest spans, comes to an end. Hell does not. It lasts forever. In comparison to the pains of hell, the worst human suffering on earth pales. Jesus saves his people from hell.

All suffering is finite.  Even Jesus' suffering while on earth was finite.  Cavalry was finite.  It doesn't matter if we suffer in exactly the same way as Jesus did, but rather that we suffer at all, and that we acknowledge that through this suffering we share our humanity with Christ.

Christ's suffering came to an end.  He died.  No matter how much we suffer or how much we receive blessings, we all die.  It comes to an end, all of it.  Except, according to the [Apostle's Creed], which the Catholic church acknowledges, He descended into Hell.  This would, by definition, be perfect suffering, and one that I do not believe that we an ever truly endure in this lifetime.  I do not know if the Catholic expression that we enter into His suffering covers this area of Christ's ministry.  If this statement by Catholic Answers is anything to go by, and if the author's statements perfectly represent Catholic doctrine, than no.  We never have to consider ourselves as being peers in Christ's trip to Hell.

This now sounds more like something non-Catholics can be comfortable with.  That all sounds about right and consistent with ecumenical Christian beliefs, just expressed in different words.  It also leads into where they're technically right when they say that we can't truly feel what Christ felt when He suffered.  John Paul II says:

His suffering has human dimensions; it also is unique in the history of humanity—a depth and intensity that, while being human, can also be an incomparable depth and intensity of suffering, insofar as the man who suffers is in person the only begotten Son himself: "God from God." Therefore, only he—the only begotten Son—is capable of embracing the measure of evil contained in the sin of man: In every sin and in "total" sin, according to the dimensions of the historical existence of humanity on earth. (SD 17)

At the end of the day, our suffering is merely human suffering.  That's bad in itself.  I can't put a value on just how bad that is.  It's not like we can say "Look on the bright side: it's only suffering."  Only suffering?  Is there anything worse than suffering?  Something worse than suffering, though, would be suffering.  Still, there's an added dimension to this.  None of us can experience suffering on the sheer level offensiveness as it was inflicted on Jesus.  It is our place in life to suffer, but Christ was innocent, and furthermore, He was God.  Considering His divine identity, His was suffering on the most depraved level.  He took it on.  He accepted that insanity.  At least with us, we can suffer and call it just.  Yet, for God Himself to suffer, it's like dividing by zero, and it literally redefines the universe.

In this way, the Catholic faith reaffirms what non-Catholics believe about Christ's suffering.  It admits the greatness of His incarnation and His ministry and His death.  It also reaffirms that he truly suffered on our behalf, and that His life and only His life is sufficient for us to live ours in eternity.  The Catholic faith doesn't teach "He does His part and I do mine."  It teaches something very familiar.  Again, it's in different words.  It's painted in different colors, but it's there.  There are still some discrepancies, and among other things, not everyone agrees on exactly how much this peace, once it is revealed to us, outwardly transforms us.  Not even all Catholics agree on that one, so at this point I can't really speak for the Catholic church on what a Christian looks like, and I'm merely speaking from myself and my experience.

Finally, the Catholic church has to address this problem of pain.  It's a church founded by witnesses to the greatest representation of truth the world has ever known.  It's founded in history and in actual experience.  The church has to address suffering and synthesize it with its worldview.  Suffering isn't something that can be escaped but rather a universal, inevitable part of the human experience.  The job of any religion isn't to try and come up with a poetic story that sounds good on its own, or to force an agenda on reality that prevents us from seeing it as it really is.  It has to explain suffering as we actually experience it.  In the words of Dr. Robert Stackpole:

So, in Catholicism I found the bloody crucifixes not to be disturbing but just plain honest, because that's precisely where most of us are, most of the time, in one way or another: We are with Jesus, on the Cross. The fact that the Son of God Himself once cried out on the Cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34) is one of the greatest comforts of the Catholic faith to me.

This isn't liturgical language, but a Catholic writing in his own words, sharing his own life with anyone who cares to listen, and I think it hits the heart.  Jesus shared in our suffering on that cross, admitted to its existence, validated it.  He didn't say "On the bright side, it's only suffering," because He knew how terrible and wrong even the slightest bit of suffering is.  This is a personal God.  This is a God who comforts us by being with us in Spirit and Flesh.  This God is the most realistic, personal God there is.  Once people realize that, they finally make peace with their suffering and live.  They will also become more compassionate, more honest, more truly themselves because of Christ's suffering.

Hermeneutics

Asides from the deep semantics, there's a personal reason why this quote stood out to me.  It brought out some thoughts that I had been having, and I thought that quoting the Pope on this could function as an appropriate prelude to them once I felt I was ready to share them.  Some of those thoughts I already covered when I explained the Catholic views on suffering, and that's natural, because I believe this is all tied together.

Around Easter time, I had made some thoughts perfectly clear: that I didn't believe that we could forgive out debtors but rather allow God to forgive them, and that Jesus' greatest achievement was not the crucifixion, but the Resurrection.  I've been thinking about what else I had to say on that subject.

When Francis said "suffering is the limit," then, it gave me something to think about.  I could explain everything else he said, but his use of that clause didn't make sense.  Even after all this exegesis, I still can't quite explain what he meant.  It's just sort of there.

So what I say now, I don't necessarily speak on the behalf of the Pope.  These are just my own thoughts, the things that he got me thinking about.  To say that suffering as the limit, though, strikes me, and it gets me thinking, because something about that made sense to me.

One thing I thought was maybe that when we pursue rebirth, it's necessary to die along the way.  Another thing I thought was that all suffering is suffering, and we can't say "On the bright side, it's 'only' suffering."  Also, I considered that there's something to say here about how death is the ultimate penalty for sin and, after that, we can do nothing more to pay for it.

Considering this within the context of servanthood, though, I thought about what we could do for others in our pursuit of the coming Kingdom.  How are we limited in our service?  What boundaries has God set in place?

Well, here's what I suppose.  Jesus died, and then He resurrected.  As it happens, I'm going to die, too.  That's an act of suffering, a curse put upon me for my sins and the sins of my distant ancestors, Adam and Eve.  Dying doesn't make me virtuous, of course.  It just makes me dead.  Everybody does it.  This suffering, this apparent final act, caps my ministry on this Earth.  The very best I can offer my neighbor is to love them unto death.

What I can't do for them is to resurrect myself after my death so that they may have life.  I can preserve life, for a while, but I can never create it.  I cannot be a source of life for them.  I can't.  Only Jesus can do that.  Only Jesus could rise from the grave.

Because of that, I suppose I will rise from the grave as well, someday.  However, by then, I think that my calling for service will be over.  I think it will have ended when my final act of suffering reached its limit.

I can suffer for them, but I can't give them life.  Instead, I pursue happiness and fulfillment, expressed through my hope for the coming Kingdom, by living it out today and living as Christ did, but lowering myself, emptying myself, and giving up glory for the sake of truly being with others by taking on the curse of the world with them.  In a way, that's life.  It isn't necessarily salvation, but I suppose that it make salvation possible.  My passion is the limit to what I can give others when I share the Gospel.

Acknowledgments:

These entries have lately become more and more about essays filled with research, citations, and challenging exegetical conclusions, and so as not to lose track of what I set out to do in the first place, I really want to really address you specifically, especially since time has gone by.

I want to give you all my heartfelt thanks.  Shannon, you were a godsend in helping inspire me to finish the second half of this entry.  You also such a sister in Christ when I expressed my love of Christ but my annoyance with Christianity.  From one blogger to another, thank you.

Mitchell, we're reaching the end of the spring semester and I suppose you'll be busy, so I think I'll wait for another couple of weekends before calling you.  The phone call I had with you this last Easter, though, was one of the freshest experiences I've had in all this last month.  I really look forward to the next time that we can catch up.

Brody, it was a pleasure talking with you on Easter, too.  I tried calling a lot of people, and you and Mitchell were the only ones who picked up, which was a happy coincidence.  You two are the two I consider my best of friends, and if I could have called only two people, it would have been you.  So that worked out just perfectly.  Anyway, I hope that things go awesome down in Mardi Gras land.  Also, though I don't want to call it quite yet, I just want you to know that I might get a new job over the summer and have that kind of work schedule you had last year, with work weeks totaling up to 80 hours or so, all of it dedicated to welding.  It's intimidating me, but you're an inspiration.

Shelby, congratulations on the engagement!  I know I told you that in person, but I just want to also get it in writing.  I'm officially congratulating you, happy for you, and wishing the best for you.  Justin's a great friend, and now I no longer feel uncomfortable and tentative about all those jokes I made about you two tying the knot.  Remember that painting I gave Justin?  I considered including you in it as one of the great things in his life, but at the time it was just a little presumptuous.  Now I know that if I do something like that again for him, I will have some interesting new things to include.  I hope to be able to make it to your wedding, and even if I can't, I also hope to have a great wedding present prepared.  And if neither of those things, by goodness, I'll just wish you the best!

Sincerely,
John Hooyer