the problem of pain

I may or may not have stolen the title for this post from a c.s. lewis book.

I have not read this book, and this post is not about that book.

but I like the title anyways.

Pain sucks. for the past 2 months I've been dealing with chronic joint pain. It started out in my knees, but has progressed to just about every joint in my body, from my neck to my toes. Last week I was diagnosed with rheumatory arthritis. which is essentially the immune system going haywire to the point that it attacks the body's joints, causing inflammation and pain in the joints.

This is not fun.

But this post isn't about that.

This post is about responding to that.

When the realization that I will be taking pills for the rest of my life to deal with this, and that even then, nothing is guaranteed, I was angry. Angry at God for allowing this to happen to me. Haven't I been faithful? Haven't I done work for your kingdom? How am I supposed to get up early and have a quiet time if i can barely get out of bed and ready on time because of the pain. How can I stay in shape and take care of my body? Why God? Why do you hit me with this on top of everything else I have going on in my life?

And to be honest, I still go back to this massive self-pity party sometimes, I still have moments where I let myself get angry at God because of this. But I was quickly reminded of what my friend Derek would say.

"This is not how God intended it to be."

And he's right. When God created the world, everything he created was good. There was no pain, no suffering and no death... until the fall. But now we live in a world that is corrupted by the fall. Our relationship with God, with others, with our environments and with ourselves have been corrupted by the fall. This includes pain. God never intended for us to feel pain, but we were selfish, we chose to be selfish, and the resulting world is broken because of it.

And Christ has redeemed our spirits, but not yet our bodies. So while we've been given spiritual freedom in Christ, our bodies our still bound to this world. Following Christ doesn't mean you are less likely to get cancer, or AIDS, or arthritis. We have to deal with these things like the rest of the world. Though we should deal with it better than the rest, because we have eternity to look towards. We should have hope for freedom from this broken world.

We often don't.

We feel like we're entitled to more.

That we've earned the right to a good life.

That's nowhere in scripture. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that we should expect to live a life free of pain. That if things go like they should, we'll live a happy, pain-free life. In my opinion, that is the problem of pain. That we are surprised when we encounter it. That we are unprepared to deal with it because we've grown up in good neighborhoods and with bad theology. I hope I learn to deal with it better, and learn to trust God despite it.

the far side of the sea

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there Your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast."

-psalm 139:9-10

I really like the poetry in the Old Testament: Psalms, parts of Isaiah, etc. This is one of my favorite psalms. I can't give you a good reason why, it just struck me the first time i read it.

There's a lot of different things in there, from God knowing when you rise and when you lay down, to Him making us as creations ' fearfully and wonderfully made,' to the psalmist petitioning God that He would search his heart for any offensive way. It has a lot of good and comforting things in it.

The thing that i love about verses 9 and 10 is that the author is saying even if i go beyond the sea, away from everything I know, away from the temple in Jerusalem where God dwelt, still God will pursue us there. There is no where that is too foreign or too far that God will abandon us. It's not a revelation by any means, but I think the poetics of how it is put here really struck a chord with me. (growing up by the ocean, I find particular peace with scriptures that speak of water and of the sea.)

I think it resonates with me a lot right now. I've moved far away from where I experienced and grew in God the most in my life; Blacksburg, College, IV, Pritchard. And so part of me equates that place and those people with God. Like in the Old Testament where God did something for the patriarchs or the Israelites and they would erect monuments or altars, I feel like there are places back at Virginia Tech I could do that for. The tree to the right of War Memorial Chapel, litton reeves 1670, bollos, Allen and Dave's apartment/rooms over the years, pritchard crossover lounges and burchard plaza are all places where God did something in my life. I don't have a lot of those places here. I don't have that same history with God in Chesapeake.

And maybe I never will, maybe this is my wilderness and God will lead me out of it into somewhere else. I don't know.

Is anyone else like this? Do you have places where you would build altars of remembrance for what God has done or just places you've experienced God more often? Where are they? What kind of places are they?

Autographs and Apologetics

So I was talking with my friend dave today, he mentioned some of the professors he had up in northern VA were some of the top minds and authorities on apologetics. They were authors and well known people in their field. Kind of a big deal. He said how they were just regular guys but despite that he had to avoid falling into hero worship when he interacted with them.
I think this is a common trend in our Christian society that seems harmful to me. We view well known christian authors, artists and speakers with this sort of worship that belongs with Christ, not with man.

I think it's a carry over from American culture at large. Whether it's actors, musicians, athletes or some other person that is either talented enough or lucky enough to make it into the spotlight that is today's media, we elevate people to the level of worship, or near worship, We want to model our lives after Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, John Mayer, Jay-Z, Lebron James, or Tom Brady. Even people who make it onto reality shows, American Idols, Top Chefs, Next Top Models, etc. Why? Why do we seek out fame? Is it because of our own dis-satisfaction with our identity?

Even within Christian circles; people want to be hip like Rob Bell, or counter-cultural like Shane Claiborne or adventurous like John Eldridge. Why do we stand in long lines to get our books autographed by these guys? Or push people out of the way to get a drumstick that the drummer from Mercy Me threw out into the crowd? I'm not saying anything is bad about any of these people. but I am saying at some level, all these people, from Brad Pitt to Shane Claiborne are not worthy of our devotion.

That belongs to God alone.

And I'm also not saying that doing certain things like these people are bad. Shane Claiborne has an incredible passion for the poor. And I love that about him and his ministry. But that stems from what God is doing through him. Not what Shane is doing himself. And as great as his books may be, they aren't scripture, and we shouldn't treat them like they are. Not everything in it is correct and true of what God desires for us. (Not to seem like I'm railing on Shane Claiborne, of the people I listed, he's probably the person that I struggle the most with hero worship of, so this is as much a reminder to me.)

We should look at one another with the same eyes that God does. That we would love one another and seek out how to sharpen one another into the men and women that God created us to be. But Christ should always be the model for our lives, and we should seek His face.

abiding vs. dropping by for a visit

So one of my favorite passages is John 15 talking about the vine and the branches, and it's something that comes to mind a lot when i think about spiritual matters. Tonight I was thinking about verse 4 where it says

"remain in Me and I will remain in you" (NIV)

or another phrasing i like

"abide in Me and I in you" (KJV)

That got me thinking, what does it mean to abide in Christ?

When i think about abiding, i think about living in, dwelling, making my home there. but I feel like most times my relationship with God looks more like a corner store than a house. I when I come in, I get what I need, maybe make some small talk, and leave. Some days it's raining, or I'm on the other side of town, so I don't come in at all.

Seems like a funny metaphor, but I think it's pretty accurate. My days might consist of a quick prayer, a brief quiet time, and then the rest of the day God gets put on the back burner. Even Sundays when I go to church, it's just a bigger block of time before I go my own way and leave God behind. I've got to deal with work and traffic and bills and chores and in all of these things, there's little or no thought or need for God.

This doesn't seem like what Christ is asking of us in John 15. or the rest of the Bible for that matter.

So I don't know if it's just the patterns in my life, or the way I choose to live in those patterns that keeps me from abiding in Christ. I don't want stop by, i want to be there for the long haul.

Any thoughts on how this should work? or examples of how you can abide in Christ throughout the day?

church inc.

I'm finding myself frustrated by the church lately.

not the capital c Church, the collective whole of those who believe in and follow Christ, but the little c church. The organizational, business-minded church.

disclaimer, this is not a blanket criticism of all churches, this is a specific incident and specific church, though I'm sure it's not exclusive.

What is the church supposed to be? a lot of times when I think of the church, I think of Acts 2: 42-47

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

Are there churches that exist like that? Forget on a church-wide level, are there even small groups like that? I don't know anyone that does that.

Recently, a couple I am friends with got burned by the church I grew up in. I won't go into the details, but basically there were some mistakes made along the lines of policy and protocol in asking their friends (who were also in the congregation) for financial help to adopt a child from the Congo. They were told they have to give back all the money they had gotten, and first go through official channels before they could ask their friends for money.

While I agree that things could have been done differently in asking for the money, nothing they did justified the response from the church, unless one of the people making these decisions legitimately thought they were trying to con their friends out of money.

Now, obviously I'm going to be biased in this; these are friends of mine whom I love and care about, but since when did the church become run like a business and not the organization which is supposed to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth? When did it become an organization which became concerned more with it's legal liability than understanding and grace?

Maybe this is just me ranting about this particular incident, but does the church in America seem this way to anyone else? Something that functions as a business first and a dispenser of teaching, grace and community second.

Which leads me to the larger question of what should the church look like as an organization?

Whatever it is, if it is without Love, it is nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

dealing with death

I don't think man deals with death well.

I guess that's because we were never intended to, God never intended for us to die, but sin entered the world and it's all downhill from there.

I attended a funeral today for a high school friend that died last week.

He was 23.

To be fair, we weren't real close anymore, we'd gone to high school together and lived in the same neighborhood, but I went off to college and he went off to college and our paths very rarely crossed since. But it's still the first person who I've known and have been friends with who has died.

All day my thoughts have been returning to the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. But even then, I didn't know any of the victims personally, I mourned the collective loss of life, but i didn't know any of them. The only way I got any connection with some of the victims was that 4 of them had been involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, and I got the chance to go and listen to some of their stories from the people who knew them. So I only slightly began to understand the weight of the lives that were cut short. But I'd never talked in person to any of them, never shared a ride with them, never hung out after school with them...

And that what makes today harder for me. I grew up with this guy, played backyard football with him, shared jokes with him. And while I hadn't done any of these things in years, I knew the kind of person he was, the genuine kindness he had towards people. He was a good guy who loved God. On top of that, his father was killed in a plane crash over Afghanistan 4 years ago. For his mother, younger sister and brother to have to deal with all of this in a 4 year span seems ridiculously unfair.

And there's no other way I can explain that. I sat here for a few minutes re-reading that last line and trying to come up with something else to say about it, but it simply seems unfair. I'm sure God can redeem it, but i can't see it. I guess that's why I'm not God...

How is man supposed to deal with death?

It's easier when it's someone older who's fought illness for years, or when we have no personal connection to it. Which is why we can sit here and hear about 70 people being killed by a suicide bomber in some far off country and hardly bat an eye at it.

I think it's also easier when we can blame someone for it. When it's some horrible crime committed, we can blame the person committing the crime. If it's cancer or some other disease, we can blame the disease. I guess in this case, where my friend collapsed for no reason that's been figured out yet, you could blame God. But blaming God doesn't seem very helpful to me. I think that's why we blame people, we want our anger at their death to feel justified. But what is our anger to God? What is our sense of justification to Him?

I think this post has been fairly long and rambling so far, so I'll tie it up and maybe return to some of the stuff later. Is there a 'right' way to deal with death? Are there ways that our society deals with death that are 'wrong?' I don't know. the only thing I do know, and the thing I've been returning to is the same thing I returned to during the April 16th shootings, and it comes from psalm 34:18

"the LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

and I pray that would be true for my friend's family now.

Re-reading books

So i've been reading during my lunch break at work, which has given me some time to get through a lot of books so far this summer. But i think the book i've enjoyed reading the most has been "to kill a mockingbird." I read it years ago in high school but reading it now i better appreciate the issues of it. I think you still can see issues today between the races have improved, but there's still a lot going on under the surface. The book convicts me on a few prejudices i still haven't let go and reminds me that while there are people with prejudices that are wrong, they aren't necessarily bad people. It's a great book, read it if you have the chance.