Monday, October 22, 2007

"Become God's You"

A new book by a popular television preacher holds out the hope that you can “Become a Better You.” The book’s instant success, I suspect, is the result of both the preacher’s popularity as a television personality and his up-beat, relentlessly positive message that feeds our need to succeed by telling us, “There’s a shortcut, a secret, to success.” It’s the perfect book for the “culture of self-esteem” that wants somebody …anybody… everybody … to tell them that it really is “all about me.”

But if the author really is interested in talking about the biblical perspective on humanity, the book is mistitled. The Bible has no interest in your “becoming a better you;” it's interested in your becoming God’s you. We are not sui generis beings (of our own kind or genus). We are not free to become anything we choose to become (indeed, most of what I euphemistically call “my choices” turn out to be, upon closer inspection, not “mine” at all but merely the result of good marketing or genetic predisposition or the influence of others). We are only “free” to become what God had in mind for us when He woke up one morning and said to Himself: “I’ve got a great idea! I’m going to make me a ______________” (insert your name).

Can you imagine, for instance, a situation in which Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s play were to say to the author: “All right, Will. I get the idea. I see where this whole thing is going. Why don’t you take the day off and I’ll take it from here."? Of course it could never happen because there is no “Hamlet” apart from the creative imagination of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare as Hamlet’s author “thought him up,” so to speak, and if Hamlet tries to be “Hamlet” without Shakespeare, he will not thereby “find himself,” he will only self-destruct. In the same way, you and I were made for God. He is the author of our lives; He “thought us up” like characters in a play, and apart from His will and plan and purpose for our lives we self-destruct.

And so, it’s not about you or me; it’s not about “becoming a better you;” it’s about becoming God’s you. Any other “you” is a fraud whose life, severed from its Source, cannot be sustained.

I’ve always loved the story attributed to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. He dreamt one night that he died and stood before the Great Judge of all and was called to the Dock to give an account of what he had done with the great gift of life he had been given. Heschel says that, to his amazement, he was not asked about what he had done on such and such a day, or any other specific thing. He was not asked why he hadn’t been more like Moses or Maimonides, or David or Einstein. Instead, he was asked one and only one question: “Were you or were you not Abraham Joshua Heschel?” And Heschel says: “Then the Holy One, Blessed Be He, leaning forward to hear my response, said to me words that haunt me still. He said: ‘It’s important to me, you see, because you’re the only one of him I made!’”

Thursday, October 18, 2007

"It's Me, O Lord!"

There have been some high profile moral lapses of late, some political, some ministerial. I’m sure you’ve noticed. While I never want to be guilty of “piling on,” I, like you, find it disappointing when people we’ve trusted let us down. It is all the more painful when those persons occupy lofty perches from which they often pontificate about the indiscretions of others. It’s shocking and disillusioning when the politician who built a career railing against moral lapses in the larger society is discovered to harbor a few moral lapses of his own. It’s disturbing when the minister who masqueraded as the “morality police” for the rest of us is caught engaging in behavior that is not only immoral, but also illegal. What is one to think?

Well, I don’t know what you would think, but I know what the prophet Isaiah thought: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his/her own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). Isaiah is pointing out two important truths those of us who call ourselves Christians should never forget: (1) none of us is blameless and without sin; our differences are always a matter of degree, not of kind; and (2) the same Christ who died for you died for your brother and your sister; that is, redemption is a corporate act, not just an personal one. I’m reminded of an old Negro spiritual that makes the same point: “It’s not my brother; it’s not my sister; it’s me, O Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.” That’s why Christians never dance on the grave of a fallen enemy, because finally we recognize the enemy as our brother and sister...persons to whom we're related in deep and abiding ways...persons for whom Christ died.

There’s an old Hasidic legend that goes something like this:

One day, a disciple came to the Rabbi and asked: “Rabbi, did God enjoy all that he did throughout our history?”

“No, not everything, my son,” the Rabbi responded.

“What do you mean, he didn’t enjoy it all?” the student replied.

And the Rabbi, full of wisdom and humility, looked at his student and said:

“When our people were coming through the Red Sea, God had to rescue them, so he appointed a group of angels to take care of it. And the angels looked down and saw the Egyptians chasing the Israelites, and the angels parted the waters and the Israelites went through and when the Egyptians tried to follow, they released the waters and chariots and men and horses all tumbling and drowning, and the angels started jumping up and down and shouting and saying: ‘We got ‘em! We got ‘em! We got ‘em!’ And they danced around and danced around. And the Almighty came along and said: ‘What are you singing and dancing about?’ And they said: ‘Look! We got ‘em! We got ‘em! We got ‘em!’ And the Almighty said: ‘You are dismissed from my service.’ ‘Dismissed?’ they said, Why?’ And the Almighty said: ‘How can you dance and sing when some of my children are drowning?’”

Monday, October 15, 2007

"Prayer Donors"

On Sunday, September 9th, the Dallas Cowboys opened their 2007 football season by honoring two former players who shared more than a locker room. Former fullback, Ron Springs, was ailing from diabetes-related renal failure and desperately needed a kidney transplant to live. Former teammate, Everson Walls, did what many would regard as unthinkable – he donated one of his own kidneys to save his teammate and friend’s life. Ron Springs, in speaking of his teammate’s gift of life, said: “A lot of people said to me, ‘I’m thinking about you, Ron;’ or ‘I’m praying for you, Ron.’ Everson gave me his kidney.” There are friends, and then there are organ donors.

It occurs to me that the same can be said of intercessory prayer. When some say, “I prayed for you,” what they really mean is “I asked God to do something about your situation, but personally it cost me nothing.” But what if prayer were more like donating a kidney than “sending up a wing and a prayer” to God in the hope that He will somehow intervene so that I don’t have to? Larry Dossey MD in his best selling book Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine describes prayer in just such a fashion. He says that we all possess a certain, but limited, measure of spiritual energy that we can “spend” however we choose. That spiritual energy can be marshaled in our own behalf, or it can be “spent” on another in terms of intercessory prayer, what he calls “healing words.” If we choose the latter, we not only make some of our own spiritual energy available to another for that one’s healing and wholeness, but we also thereby reduce the amount of spiritual energy available for ourselves. In a sense we become “spiritual organ donors,” prayer donors.

The late John Claypool used to tell a story about a man who prayed for his friend to be healed. Suddenly, on his knees he felt a presence confronting him, asking him: “Do you love your friend enough to give up ten years of your own life so that his life might be extended ten more years?” The man got up in a cold sweat and for a solid hour considered the option that had been laid before him – to shorten his own life by ten years so that his friend might have those years. Then, he got back on his knees and prayed: “Yes, I do. I do love my friend enough to relinquish ten years of my own life in his behalf.” Amazingly, sometime later his friend recovered. Was it because of his intercessory prayer? I don’t know, but I know this: There are prayers, and then there are “prayer donors.”

The Driver’s License Bureau puts a little heart on the driver’s license of every person who is an organ donor. Perhaps we should place a little cross next to the picture in the church directory of every person who is a “prayer donor.” Silly idea, isn’t it? But when the chips are down, those are the people I want praying for me!

"They're coming, Mr. Roarke!"

Back in the late 70’s a television drama called “Fantasy Island” debuted. The premise was the story of how a group of people looking for that “something” in their lives to fill the void booked floatplane passage to Fantasy Island where, they were told, their “dreams would come true.” The Island was run by Mr. Roarke and his diminutive colleague, Tatoo. Each week when the floatplane ferrying the new batch of hopefuls to the Island came into view, Tatoo began calling to Mr. Roarke: “They’re coming, Mr. Roarke! They’re coming!” Typically, the hopefuls discovered on Fantasy Island that they weren’t really looking for what they thought they were looking for, that the “hunger” that drove them to desperation was deeper than they first believed. Part of the show’s success, no doubt, was that it touched a deep hunger for “something” which most of us spend our lives trying to name and find, like those who booked passage to Fantasy Island.

That’s precisely what Jesus had in mind with his constant talk and action about the Kingdom of God. There is a place deep inside us all, he taught, that is our truest home, the fulfillment of our deepest fantasy, and part of the frustration we feel is that we spend our lives chasing illusions rather than the “real deal.”

I saw this acted out just today in, of all places, a network morning show. Two people were discussing (debating actually) what men and women really want in relationships. One person had made a career (and considerable money) assuming that there really is no deep longing for authentic relationships; rather, simply put, women want money and financial security and men want physical beauty. The other person argued that that was much too cynical; that both men and women wanted something more, something deeper, a deeply satisfying relationship that included friendship, mutual respect, mutually-held values, and commonly-held dreams and aspirations, and that to reduce relationships to merely the physical and financial was “settling” in the worst kind of way. At that point in the debate, the first person turned to the other and said: “You need to get out of fantasy land.”

Indeed. While the second person wasn’t arguing from a Christian perspective, she was, nonetheless, acknowledging what all Christians know to be true: There is a hunger in us all that nothing in this world can ever fully or finally satisfy. To be Christian means that we have caught sight of another world whose values and vision are so utterly alien to the values and vision of this world that we come off sounding like lunatics committed to the utopian dream that there really is a place called “Fantasy Island” where we really belong, where we are at home, and where our deepest longings and desperate dreams and haunting hungers are surfaced and satisfied.

When Christians gather to worship we circle this other world like a floatplane ferrying its haunted hopefuls home. And somewhere, angels announce our arrival: “They’re coming, Mr. Roarke! They’re coming!”