Category: culture and current events

the highest stakes always involve darkness

As Bilbo scatters chickens with his flailing arms and excited steps, a neighbor calls out haltingly, “Mr. Bilbo, where are you off to?”

Without even the slightest hesitation and between lopsided, barefoot strides he yells back, “I’m… going… on… an… adventure!”

Breathless. Flailing. Determined.

The grin that anticipates adventure somehow stretches from head to toe … and it tingles. It’s that tingly kind of grin we get when risk and purpose and fear and excitement explode in an opportunity called adventure. For some reason, we are convinced the purpose is worth the risk and the excitement is worth the fear. And probably for that same reason, we wake up like Neverland waits on the other side of our bedroom door and run down the road like we’re planning to catch a ride on a magic carpet. Breathless, flailing determination that easily makes breakfast and the morning paper no longer important.

“A dark part has found a way back into the world.”

The highest stakes always involve darkness.
Always. There is no lopsided, barefoot run into something already discovered – something already tamed from its twilight.

Please don’t misunderstand: it’s not the darkness that excites, but what happens when a match is struck in a thick darkness. The danger of running into darkness is every bit worth it when you are holding what will make the dark light. The risk makes the hair stand straight up on our necks, but the thought of shedding light where darkness reigns is the reason adventure gets thick with breathless, failing determination.

Run with me and cast off your ordinary plans, but first – do you know where the darkness is and have you got any light to offer?

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

As you can tell, I am more than a little bit excited for The Hobbit to come out. I have watched this trailer over and over and over again and it never gets old. The highest stakes always involve darkness and this film will certainly paint it in its truest shade.

Posted on by Caroline 0

a film to see

I’m not someone who thinks history should be told through the rosy lens of the discontented nostalgic, but I am someone who thinks Steven Spielberg knows how to make a great film. Ever heard of him? Let me jog your memory: Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Catch Me If You Can, Jurassic Park, Memoirs of a Geisha, Transformers.

I hope in LINCOLN he is true to both history and his art… and I hope it makes us think.

Posted on by Caroline 2

te doy gloria

The chorus was like fingers playing my heart strings.
It was like a cool glass of something I forgot was my favorite.
It was like realizing I stood shoulder to shoulder with an old friend.

And it went something like this:

te doy gloria, gloria
te doy gloria, gloria
te doy gloria, gloria
a ti Jesus

I know what you’re thinking… “that’s it? that’s all it took?” And, yes. It was that simple. I was standing in the church service this morning with people from El Salvador and Mexico and Guatemala and the chorus came in like a wave on my soul’s shore.

I give you glory, glory
I give you glory, glory
I give you glory, glory
to you, Jesus

It is not a new truth – that the Lamb is worthy to receive glory – but it is a truth that feels weightier when felt the world over. This morning I sang it again in the language where I witnessed miracles, the language that made me desperate for miracles. And when I sing about giving Him glory, I do just that. I give Him the glory.

With each day, I’m tempted to write another chapter in Ecclesiastes and with each day God gives more reasons to be glorified. And so I sing. Sometimes the simplest phrases can best put all the tangled messes of daily toil into proper perspective. Sometimes the simplest chorus carries with it deep and complex theology about sovereignty and supremacy and hope. Yes. It’s that hope I pressed into as I sang with families in the chapel at the retreat center, because we are desperate to give glory to the only One worthy.

The bridge rings out a phrase weighty enough to follow all the glory giving:

con una corona de espinos
te hiciste Rey por siempre

That was it – one crown of thorns and it crowned the King of forever. So, today, I sang. I sang to give God the glory and I did just that.

I’ve decided I should sing more.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

a front row seat in the glorious theater

Darkness fell like a hush; the lights circled us as we circled the fire. The jumping glow splashed on our faces and warmed our autumn skin as we cupped black coffee in thankful hands. The sky speckled with stars and the creatures sang out their evening melodies.

And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God.

After reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, we had all carried around conversations that couldn’t happen over the phone and couldn’t happen half-hearted. This night was set apart to try to understand someone from the great cloud of witnesses – to look at the life of someone who treasured the Lord in such a way that he was ruined for anything else.

And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God, right there in the backyard of an Iowa farmhouse.

The candles glowed in mason jars to light the path from the woodshop, where we enjoyed a bountiful spread of German delights, and inside I was a mess of emotion. A weighty, good mess of gratitude and purpose and joy and hope and pain and fear and defeat and doubt and sorrow. When despair seems simpler and right, stories of hope read more like fiction. But not last night… not when we remembered people whose lives were anchored by one thing, driven by one thing, delighted by one thing … and not when I looked around at the firelit faces of my friends, whose struggles on stormy seas are anchored deep down by the same greatest treasure.

The struggle is not to stay upright, but to rejoice in the anchor which holds us. Bonhoeffer’s life was not about making the message of Jesus look good or better or more intellectual than whatever religion his peers and countrymen presented. He was not about being interesting or popular or approachable, at least in the end. Bonhoeffer purposed to be about truth. He set out to know God and to draw others into a knowledge of God as it is revealed in the Word of God. His culture said a lot of things, burned a lot of books, and printed a lot of promotional materials for massive political campaigns… but Bonhoeffer had eyes to shake off the surface storms and cling to the hope that anchored and the only hope that would reveal the evil that had usurped the hearts of his countrymen.

This. This is beautiful, I thought.

I love how David Hall describes John Calvin’s thoughts on our seats in the glorious theater.

Calvin described this world, moved by God’s providence, as theatrum gloriae. For him, every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to technology bears the potential to glorify God (Institutes, 1.11.12). Creation is depicted as a platform for God’s glory (1.14.20) or a “dazzling theater” (1.5.8; 2.6.1), displaying God’s glorious works. Calvin viewed the first commandment as making it unlawful to steal “even a particle from this glory” (2.8.16). Such comments support Lloyd-Jones’ later claim that for Calvin “the great central and all-important truth was the sovereignty of God and God’s glory.” (“The Theater of God’s Glory” by David Hall at Ligonier Ministries)

I went away from the night knowing we hadn’t talked about everything, hadn’t appreciated history completely, hadn’t understood theology thoroughly… but oh so thankful that we showed up at the theater. I’m thankful I have others with whom I can behold the glory of God and I’m thankful for the support we give each other to be unapologetic about truth.

Today, I am still purposing to know God, find out what pleases Him, and delight to do those things. And today I am thankful for those I can share steps with along the way.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 2

what it means to cling

It’s a strange unsteady that catches me today – grieving the evil and glorying in the God who overcomes. I can’t see how anyone who puts thought to theological matters can be any less than always emotional – either deeply despairing or deeply delighting. It is both despair and delight at once that stretch me and today I read these words that remind me of the tension,

“In all your longing to love as Christ loved, you sometimes forget that true love for one thing will, or at least it should, produce a hatred for whatever stands against it.” (from Note to Self by Joe Thorn)

I do forget. I forget that loving as Christ means hating what stands in opposition. “Hate” sounds unpopular. It sounds… mean. But when I forget to develop a healthy hate for my sin, I make friends with destruction. When I forget to develop a healthy hate for the sin in others, I lead friends to destruction.

And in all this, I am finding what it means to cling.

In the strange unsteady that rocks my boat today, I am learning to cling like my life depends on my grip. My desperate hold is always rewarded by the unfaltering strong arms of my Redeemer, who reminds me my life depends on His strength.

O, Heart Bereaved and Lonely
Words by Fanny Crosby

1. O heart bereaved and lonely,
Whose brightest dreams have fled
Whose hopes like summer roses,
Are withered crushed and dead
Though link by link be broken,
And tears unseen may fall
Look up amid thy sorrow,
To Him who knows it all

2. O cling to thy Redeemer,
Thy Savior, Brother, Friend
Believe and trust His promise,
To keep you till the end
O watch and wait with patience,
And question all you will
His arms of love and mercy,
Are round about thee still

3. Look up, the clouds are breaking,
The storm will soon be o’er
And thou shall reach the haven,
Where sorrows are no more
Look up, be not discouraged;
Trust on, whate’er befall
Remember, O remember,
Thy Savior knows it all

Posted on by Caroline 4

making me nervous

In a few weeks, I’ll sit around a table of delicious German food with some of my closest friends to discuss a true story of transformation, tragedy, and terror. We’re going to discuss a book about a life – the life of a man who would not tolerate a theology that would wipe out a race of people. Reading the book, Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, a few years ago was terrifying. I had walked inside the gates at Auschwitz in Poland and seen the incinerators; I had stood in the tower and looked across the field of long buildings built for suffering and death.

The account of this brilliant German man with the right pedigree and the right education and the right friends is ugly in its revealing of everything wrong about the world… about the human condition… about everything culture slowly and slyly considers “right” without question.

But book clubs with biographies are meant to focus on the past, to stir up nostalgia or pride or gratitude that terrible times had such wonderful people to overcome them. So why is The New York Times making me nervous today? Why do I think Bonhoeffer’s words would ring as poignant today, in our much progressed culture of tolerance?

Why does today seem so terrible?

I have to read the news in waves – a little bit here, a bit there… some in the morning and some over lunch. Because it feels ominous. A sliver of a column on the front page was dedicated to the continuing conflict in Syria while a lion and her cubs enjoyed a photo and feature further down on the page. Zoos are having trouble deciding what to do when babies “don’t fit the plan.” I guess those babies were part of, “All the news that’s fit to print” in a more prominent sense than the failure of any diplomatic, peaceful measures by Annan in the battered and bruised country of Syria.

This probably reads like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle and that’s because it is. I know I’ve got a hope secure and I know I’ve got to share this message, but is this world making anyone else nervous? When I sit around that table in a few weeks, enjoying good German food with kindred spirits, I have a feeling they’ll know exactly what I mean.

Posted on by Caroline 3

wholeness in Christ for the broken

Good morning, friends. This little post has  been brewing since I got a text from my mom at 7:30 am. She was on her way to Chick-fil-A to buy a chicken sandwich. They make a good sandwich, to be sure, but the closest store is an hour away and this is a particular day to make the trek for chicken.

And, with all my freshly-wakened, Wednesday morning (pre-coffee) clarity, I wondered if this emphasizing of polarization is productive. How can we sit down with the sick – those in need of the Great Physician – if we persist in putting ourselves in opposition? The lifestyle of the woman at the well didn’t stop Jesus from hanging out there – he didn’t go out of his way to go to a different well, one that supported a monogamous lifestyle.

He very intentionally went to where the hurting hung out because (though the woman didn’t understand she needed saving) he knew he could offer something they would never find in the cycle of their sin. We have to step into the cycle of brokenness in the lives of the wayward in order to point to the freedom of wholeness. It is so crucial that we recognize how desperately we daily cling to Christ for wholeness. It’s not as if we share a message that we’ve attained. Rather, we lean into God’s faithfulness and hang on his words and stand on his promises because He is our wholeness.

We have been rescued from the cycle of brokenness and this is a message to share with the broken.

Don’t get me wrong – I agree with Dan Cathy’s beliefs (which I think were originally intended to communicate his disappointment in the divorce rate) and boy! can he make a great chicken sandwich! But at the end of the day, I want to be able to sit down with the prostitute, the lesbian, the bi-sexual, and every kind of wayward. I’m not sure that they would feel welcome at a table full of my friends who clearly oppose what they claim as identity.

It’s a question of effectiveness, I think. I appreciate what everyone is saying, but I’m just wondering if it is all turning into noise.

Matthew Hall yesterday tweeted, “If not resisted, the siren song of political power/influence will usually drown out theological conviction & prophetic witness. #theory” and I think I agree.

In my Bible study this morning, I read:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26 ESV)

and this:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. (2 Timothy 2:15-18 ESV)

What does it mean to rightly handle the word of truth? avoid irreverent babble? Is it possible that people on both sides can lead people into more and more ungodliness? I just pray against the talk that spreads like gangrene and that in its place we would lean into the Word so much that what comes out in our speech is gentleness and compassion and hope. By all means, eat your chicken sandwich and enjoy it (Dan Cathy didn’t get so huge on the sale of a bad product), but consider what is the best way to engage with those who are sick and in need of a physician.

Go make a friend – have lunch, sit across the table, listen and care about the person looking back at you.
See them and let them see you.
Let’s pray they see Christ, whose love constrains us to obedience.

How Long (Love Constraining to Obedience) by Wayfarer

To see the law by Christ fulfilled, to hear His pardoning voice
Can change a slave into a child and duty into choice
No strength of nature can suffice to serve the Lord aright
And what she has she misapplies for want of clearer light

How long, how long beneath the law I lay
How long, how long I struggled to obey

Then to abstain from outward sin was more than I could do
Now If I feel its power within, I feel I hate it too
Then all my servile works were done, a righteousness to raise
Now, freely chosen in the Son, I freely choose His ways

How long, how long beneath the law I lay
How long, how long I struggled to obey
How long, how long in bondage and distress
How long, how long I tried without success…

Articles that give some great insight:

Evangelical Credibility and Religious Pluralism by John W. Morehead (posted at Qideas.com)

Why the Chick-Fil-A Boycott is really about Jesus by Trevin Wax (posted at The Gospel Coalition)

Is Chick-fil-A a Bold Mistake? by Denny Burk (Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College)

Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day: A Bold Mistake by Barnabas Piper (WORLD magazine)

Chick-fil-A Controversy Draws In Jonathan Merritt’s Sexuality by Jasmine Young (Christianity Today)

Posted on by Caroline 6

why mass murders remain mysteries

 

I was reading about the Aurora shooter, James Holmes, in the August issue of TIME magazine and learned, not surprisingly, that many people have tried to “figure out” the folks behind the triggers of mass murders. After such horrifying events as Columbine, Virginia Tech, and the Arizona shooting outside a grocery store, the wounds feel raw and people want answers.

Last week, a junior high girl asked me, “What would make a man do such a horrible thing?”

Her question resonates with families, friends, and social scientists in the FBI and Secret Service. We want to know why and we want to know what we can do to prevent senseless killings in the future. The research, unfortunately, is inconclusive. Though there are “sociological traits and behavioral cues that are associated with mass violence,” there are also a host of outliers that resist simple categorization.

The article closes with this,

In other words, there were few reasons to predict that Holmes was more dangerous than anybody else in Aurora. What law could account for such a person? Madmen will untie themselves from legal restrictions as easily as they depart from moral ones. But Holmes’ case, like the others, will be endlessly scrutinized, all in the hopes of recognizing signs that could stop the next mass murderer. (TIME article, “Preventing Mass Murder, Can We Identify Dangerous Men Before They Kill?” by John Cloud)

That doesn’t sound very hopeful. But there is something very important – do you see it?

“…Holmes was no more dangerous than anybody else in Aurora.”

Now, that sounds to me like total depravity, but let’s talk like laypeople for a minute. Basically, with all the research and months-long studies by the best of the best, we still cannot come up with a powerpoint presentation that explains exactly why mass murderers do what they do. We cannot figure out what makes them snap, except that they seem to be a lot like… well, a lot like “us.”

Hold on a minute. I know it sounds scary, but there’s something beautiful hidden here, so don’t miss it.

The article is right – it’s hopeless. Even “science” has failed to give us an answer this time (ironically, what some call “science” might be leading people towards this kind of behavior – see The Sunset Limited).

Hopeless happens to be exactly where God’s story starts making a whole lot of sense. The only one with enough power to break in to such a frustrating human system is someone completely outside of it, someone who doesn’t operate under the same constraints. If God can reach down and meet me in my hopeless state, then He can certainly meet my neighbors and the guy I met at the pool and the next mass murderer. Because, remember, he’s just like us.

It won’t ever find its way onto the list of sociological traits and behavioral cues, but isn’t it true that the heart of a man reveals his motive?

With every tragedy, we are shaken from our stupor and forced to look at the human heart. We don’t know who the next mass murderer will be or where he will strike, but we do know his actions come from a wayward heart.

So, who will share the message that the most wayward of hearts – hearts that seem to delight in evil – have an invitation to come home?
Who will admit that we are all capable of evil and we desperately need to be freed from the sin that binds us?

Who will solve the mystery of mass murders – that it is all about the heart?

 

Posted on by Caroline 0

John Adams, Mr. Bean’s Olympic debut, seeing the suffering of Latinos, and my re-introduction to Spurgeon

Hello, friends!

I am posting a this & that post today because my Sabbath is getting crowded with good things. I am learning to enjoy God as I walk through crowded days as much as when I sit through solitary ones – He is faithful either way.

___________________________

I read this article, “Not Like Me,” over at The Curator magazine because I resonated with the opening anecdote of a new father with a notoriously bad driving record driving his first child home in the family car. I think I’ll have a similar moment someday. But, the article mostly focused on this father’s hope for his children – a hope that they would have the freedom to be teachers and artists and writers instead of a computer programmer. I’m not sure how I feel about this idea of progress producing generations more free to pursue less technical careers. He quotes John Adams in a letter he wrote in a letter to Abigail,

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. (John Adams to Abigail Adams, [post 12 May 1780])

___________________________

Did you watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony? It was a production, to be sure. Danny Boyle‘s dramatic presentation drew 40.7 million people to tune in to NBC on Friday night. I was one of those 40.7 million and I think there were beautiful things and strange things and things I wouldn’t want my children to see (if I had children). This article from the Huffington Post, “NBC Sets Opening Ceremony Record with London 2012 Olympics.” I’m a sucker for good competition and the underdog stories that are so easy to dig up when there’s a world stage, so I’ll be tuning in this week in what will add up to more TV than I’ll watch all year.

___________________________

I am so grateful for this article from the Gospel Coalition, “Do You See the Suffering? Our Mirror Eyes and U.S. Latinos” because it says what people aren’t talking about in the political arena: it talks about what we see when we look at people. Take away policies and papers and really look at our Latino population, without mirror eyes. What do you see?

___________________________

I have been reading sermons from C.H. Spurgeon – a well-known preacher from England who became famous for his common (some said vulgar) style. I love what he says about studying God,

“There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subject we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold, I am wise.” But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with the solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God.”  (C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon, “The Immutability of God”)

___________________________

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

what do I stand for?

 

We love anthems, we do.

We love songs we can proclaim from rooftops with passion from our gut.

We love an anthem that rallies us around something, puts fire in our bellies, and stretches our vocal chords.

We love an anthem even when it proclaims confusion.

The song, “Some Nights” by fun could not be a truer picture of this time in history and could not have a more enticing, layered melody – a mighty furious, beautiful mess building our Babel.

In the music video, haphazard opposing forces roam while directionless firepower flies and the band pounds out their decidedly lost melody.

The song is certainly saying something.
Even as the chorus rumbles with heavy questions, we are drawn in to sing that something right along with them,

“Oh Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for oh
What do I stand for? What do I stand for?
Most nights, I don’t know anymore…
Oh woah, oh woah, oh woah oh oh
Oh woah, oh woah, oh woah oh oh”

Some nights … most nights … I don’t know … luck … wish … who am I?

These are words that describe a generation, words that build the walls of our own Babylon. We have exiled ourselves from meaning and certainty and hope.

And then we made it an anthem.
This is the music of waywardness.

Our art reflects our hearts and in the mirror we see a despairing image. Makoto Fujimura, artist, writer, and speaker, says, “We, today, have a language to celebrate waywardness, but we do not have a cultural language to bring people back home.”

When the music of waywardness becomes the anthem of a generation, one must consider if the straining vocal chords declare a superlative-worthy message or if best is reserved for something absolutely certain.

 

Posted on by Caroline 2