“No matter how right your doctrine is, if you’re a jerk, you’re wrong.” –Scott Welch (Assoc. Pastor at my church)
I only have one thing to add to this. Without love there is no true doctrine because Christ’s message was a message of love. We need to remember to approach all things and people with an attitude of love. We can’t be effective if we can’t love our enemies as ourselves.
This wasn’t going to be my original Thought to Ponder for today; but I think it’s worth the read.
Allah or Jesus
By Rick Mathes, prison ministry leader
Last month I attended my annual training session that’s required for maintaining my state prison security clearance. During the training session there was a presentation by three speakers representing the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths who explained their belief systems. I was particularly interested in what the Islamic Imam had to say. The Imam gave a great presentation of the basics of Islam, complete with a video. After the presentations, time was provided for questions and answers.
When it was my turn, I directed my question to the Imam and asked: “Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand that most Imams and clerics of Islam have declared a holy jihad [Holy war] against the infidels of the world. And, that by killing an infidel, which is a command to all Muslims, they are assured of a place in heaven. If that’s the case, can you give me the definition of an infidel?”
There was no disagreement with my statements and without hesitation he replied, “Non-believers!” I responded, “So, let me make sure I have this straight. All followers of Allah have been commanded to kill everyone who is not of your faith so they can go to Heaven. Is that correct?” The expression on his face changed from one of authority and command to that of a little boy who had just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He sheepishly replied, “Yes.”
I then stated, “Well, sir, I have a real problem trying to imagine Pope John Paul commanding all Catholics to kill those of your faith or Pat Robertson or Dr. Stanley ordering Protestants to do the same in order to go to Heaven!” The Imam was speechless. I continued, “I also have problem with being your friend when you and your brother clerics are telling your followers to kill me. Let me ask you a question. Would you rather have your Allah who tells you to kill me in order to go to Heaven or my Jesus who tells me to love you because I am going to Heaven and wants you to be with me?”
You could have heard a pin drop as the Imam hung his head in shame. Chuck Colson once told me something that has sustained me these 20 years of prison ministry. He said to me, “Rick, remember that the truth will prevail.” And it will!”
I may be about to go to bed, so don’t hold me to it, but I think I’m going to say something. Something beyond the standard “sorry it’s been 300 years since I posted last.”
I wrote a while ago that my job was in crisis, the medical definition of crisis being the point at which it will be determined if the patient will live or die. As of last Monday, it was official: the patient died.
It was a bad ending. I don’t want to go into a round of finger pointing, partly because I think I have co-workers who read this site, and partly because that’s just rude. Essentially, there was a difference of opinion between my boss(es) and me about how much a person could accomplish in a single day. My estimate was significantly lower than theirs. I tried my best and squeezed what I was told should be a painless 40 hours worth of work into about 45 hours, on average. If work was really really slow, I could get it all done without overtime, but at anything resembling a normal level of work, I couldn’t keep up.
In my mind there were three possibilities for what was wrong: Either the parameters for one person’s work was wrong, or there was some missing technique to getting it done that I couldn’t find out, or the worker was incompetent. I was under the impression that the parameters were wrong, but obviously, my employers decided that the worker was incompetent.
I don’t really have any hard feelings. I was getting pretty close to quitting anyway. How important, really, is a temp job? The thought of spending the next couple of years of my life under the pressure I felt for a measly $12 an hour was becoming less and less appealing.
The trouble is that, with temporary employment, that whole “two weeks notice” thing doesn’t really work. My original contract for that job was for two weeks. If I called in to my agency and said “hey, I don’t like this job any more. Can you get me a new one?” I would be gone the next day. Which would have been really bad for the people at work because I was the only one who knew how to do my job at all, and it had to be done on time every day. If I just up and quit one day, they would have been in some real hot water, and it just wasn’t the Christian thing to do.
So they hired me a replacement, and I trained him, and they let me go. Everybody’s happy. I’m now unemployed, but everybody’s happy.
My only real problem was that, two weeks ago when they brought in my replacement, I knew he was my replacement, they knew he was my replacement, but what I was told was that he was supposed to be my long asked for second person. This completely confused me. They just let somebody go the week previous because we weren’t allowed to have so many temps when business was so slow. I trained for a week, and the next Sunday I got a phone call that my contract had been terminated.
I am simply amazed at the massive lack of trust they communicated to me.
I’m not very good at picking favorites, so I don’t have a favorite bible verse, but one of my favorites is Romans 8:28—
 
“We know that all things work together for good for those that love God, who have been called according to His purpose.”
Given my uncanny propensity to perceive this whole worlds-realm as a kind of glorified game, my spin on “all things work together for good” comes out something along the lines of “all things work to my advantage,” or “no matter what happens, I win.” I made a friend really angry once, by playing this game—I forget exactly the circumstances, but I had just gotten done explaining that everything always plays into my hand, when she either did something really rotten to me, or she described something really rotten happening to me. I laughed and mildly adjusted the definition of “to my advantage” (that is to say, I turned common sense on its head).
See, the problem is we all think we know what is to our advantage. In fact, I’d bet that most of us put more faith in our knowing what is and what isn’t to our advantage than we put in the goodness of God. So when something truly awful comes along, we reflexively question the goodness of God, when in reality we ought to be questioning whether we know what is really to our advantage.
For instance: Jesus died on the cross. I think most of us can see why the disciples thought that was a bad thing. But I’d also like to think most of us can see how that actually worked out to everybody’s advantage.
So me: I just lost my job. Bad thing. But really, how bad is it? I’m no worse off than I was six months ago. In fact, I’m almost exactly in the same financial position I was in six months ago. Actually, I’m richer by three pairs of pants, two pairs of shoes (really nice ones), new silverware, a trip to my sister’s wedding, and a fish tank. (God forgive me for the fish tank). What’s more, I am now more than ever sure that I do not want a career in the mortgage industry. I’ve never seen a business that was so highly regulated by the government in all my life. Plus, I’ve learned a lot about business management (both good and bad), and the importance of distributed responsibility. I’m now used to working a solid 8-hour shift working on one thing, and despite whatever the news people are saying, the job market is much better now.
Probably the biggest advantage, honestly, is that I feel I’ve gotten a pretty clear sign to wait on the whole seminary thing. If my job hadn’t been so stressful, I might have been able, just barely, to stay in school. But His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.
So I’ve lost my job, and it was a bad break, but I have no doubt that somewhere along the line, this plays directly into my hand. My mom is convinced that God forced me out of my job precisely at this time because he had a better position immediately available for me somewhere else. That sounds good to me, but I’m not quite ready to jump for joy over a job I don’t quite have yet. I know this works out to my advantage, but I can’t guarantee that I know what my advantage is.
My two devotionals for today overlapped a bit, or at least they did in my mind. One verse came from Matthew 12:13, “Then he (Jesus) said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.” The second verse was from Isaiah 6:8, “’Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then said I, ‘Here am I; send me.’”
Both of these verses, while in very different contexts, require faith. If we listen to the undercurrent of God’s voice in our lives, we realize that God is not pleading for our help but is asking for people to stretch out to him in faith for personal restoration and through that restoration of those around us.
When we stretch out in faith towards our source of life, we become filled with that source and can affect others by supplying for their needs. The question is are we stretching enough?
I’m trying to get back in the habit of reading my Bible daily again and have decided to also read two daily devotional books, or “dailies,” simultaneously. One of the dailies is the well know book My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. The other daily is A Gentle Spirit: Devotional Selections for Today’s Christian Woman which is a compilation of several inspiring women such as Joni Eareckson Tada, Sheila Walsh, Twila Paris, Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot, Ruth Bell Graham, Corrie ten Boom, etc. So far everything is going well.
Today’s thought comes from My Utmost for His Highest. The verse was, “And [he] pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west and Hai on the east; and there he builded (sic) an alter.” – Genesis 12:8
Oswald went on to discuss worship and how we are called to give back fully the things he has blessed us with as a love offering. When we give back the blessing it’s a deliberate act of worship that can be used to bless others. If we insist on hoarding the blessings he’s given to us, the blessings will become dry and will be like the manna that rotted when the Israelites tried to “save some for later” instead of depending on God to replenish their supply.
Oswald then continued to discuss the verse reminding that Bethel was a symbol of communion with God and Hai is a symbol for the world. The only way we can honestly do any good in this world is to have communication with God. It’s true that we “cannot live by bread alone” and must consume the “word” of God thought our communion with him, but we must also remember that we cannot be effective tools for his glory and purpose if we completely divorce ourselves from the world by trying to set up our tents solely on the ground of Bethel. We can’t sit there and say, “Ok this is God’s spot in my day and that’s when I’ll have my quiet time.” Instead we should work towards having a continuous quiet time/communion despite the constant batter of noise that we receive from the world. We need to quite jumping around in our lives like “spiritual frogs” from worship to waiting to work and let God create in us an ever bubbling fountain of life to fuel our worship and work.
I just want to clarify. Going to MorningStar didn’t make my dreams any more real. They merely imparted to me, as Frank Herbert would say, “A terrible sense of purpose.” Before, I had plans. Now I am determined to follow through.
My apologies for all the introspection. But, it’s my site, and these are the thoughts that have been interesting me lately.
A quick (not) survey of my schemes.
This market is so underdeveloped. I have some major problems with nearly every Christian bookstore, chain or otherwise that I have ever encountered. There are three basic categories that I know for Christian media. The first is Theology, by which I mean textbooks. Original texts, Peer-reviewed journals, defining theological treatises, like Calvin’s Institutes. The thick stuff that your average reader doesn’t really want to read.
The second area is Didactic, by which I mean the vast industry I seem to have discovered for producing Sunday-school manuals for the denominations. Teaching aids, lesson plans, daily readers. This area actually ticks me off, because it seems that each denomination has their own specific publishing house that produces their propaganda, er, paraphernalia… oh! whatever, that they use to teach their people. So the vast majority of Christians, at least in the United States, is getting their theology dictated to them by for-profit publishing houses with clear theological slants. Most churches don’t pick and choose. If you’re a Baptist, you buy from Lifeway. If you’re a Methodist, you buy from Cokesbury. Each distributor is completely exclusive of the other irregardless of what may actually be the best teaching available. That strikes me as pretty stupid. Or at least narrow minded.
The third area, Retail (for lack of a better word), is by far the most dynamic. This is where all the books, movies, CD’s T-shirts and whatever else is out there is produced directly for people to just walk in, peruse, and buy. This is where most of our Christian culture comes from: Veggie tales, and Dennis Jernigan; Hank Hannegraff and Rick Joyner. (Yes, I did just use both those names in the same sentence) Ironically, though this is the furthest removed from the “theology” branch of Christian media, in the general public mind is where most of our theology is actually born.
And there are two problems with the way the market is currently being run. First of all, the Theology and Didactic branches of Christian media are usually completely divorced from what vendors sell retail. What’s more, Theology and Didactic materials are further divided by sect. You won’t find much Pentecostal theology at Lifeway, let alone a Pentecostal Sunday-school lesson plan. Secondly, and far more importantly, Christian retail is almost exclusively limited to major distributors. If a Christian CD isn’t distributed by Maranatha, Vineyard, or WorshipTogether.com, you probably won’t find it at your local Christian bookstore. Yet most of the Christian media that is produced is actually indie projects. How many itinerant preachers come to your church and at the end announce, “And be sure and check out my book, which is published by Nelsen Bible Distributors”? No. It was probably published by somebody you never heard of. Especially if the speaker has anything really new to say. Which means that if anything really new happens in the Body of Christ, you won’t find out about it until it’s already over.
I have a plan to fix that. And I could spend the next 3-4 pages explaining all of it. Suffice it to say that I want to create a system of stores that sell every form of Christian media available on a national level, and still manages to focus a good deal of attention on local writing, music, and art. If a book, CD, print, etc. becomes popular enough locally, it will then be distributed on a national level
Oh the plans I have for that… If I hit a high enough level of success, I plan to dabble a little bit in radio and the production end of the stick. Just imagine the potential if we ever hit the international level…
Moving on!
I will get that degree. I’m not sure exactly what all I’m going to do with it. But I will get that degree.
I’ve got a couple of novels, an epic poem, maybe a Christian TV series floating around here somewhere. I could go into detail on some of them, but I won’t do it now.
This isn’t exactly high on my list. But my major pet peeve with English bibles is that the translators spent years learning to understand the original Greek and Hebrew of the Bible. But they spent about zero time learning the language into which they were translating it. The result has invariably been only half a translation, because the translator knew exactly the meaning of the original word, but didn’t have at his disposal the perfect word out of the 1 million available in the English language. So I’d like to do my own translation of the Bible. You know. In my spare time.
This is at the bottom of my list, but it’s actually the most important. I’m 25 years old and I’ve been preparing for at least 20 to be a husband and father in the best family the world has ever seen. I want the world to be able to beat a path to my door and say “here lives the most wonderful family anyone has ever been a part of in a thousand years.” If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right. I could go on forever about that too, but I don’t want to scare off any interested parties just yet.
Anyway. I expounded in some detail about the bookstore, but on each of these things, I’ve been scheming for quite some while, and could speak with some great depth on all of them.
These are a few of my favorite dreams.
When I was a kid, my parents used to tease me. (Yeah. It happens.) Normal boys, they would tell me, want to be something when they grow up. You’re supposed to pass through these stages of different kinds of labels where you want to be a fireman, or a policeman. And then you grow up a little and you want to be a pro football player, or an astronaut. And then you grow up a little more, and you want to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a scientist. And then the sorrows and cares of this life rise up and choke the life out of you; you discover that you’re actually pretty good at numbers, and you settle down and become an accountant. Little boys are supposed to be always looking for these pre-packaged niches they can slide into and feel normal and successful at the same time.
And then I’d think to myself, or sometimes I’d say, Yeah, but normal little boys are perfectly content to play with Hot-wheels cars and G.I. Joes. I couldn’t play with toy cars when I was a kid, not really. It was too mundane for me. Yes. Cars. That’s how most people get around in this part of the world. You can go left, or right, or straight forward. If you’re feeling really tricky, you can go backward. We’ve covered that. Nothing new or imaginative here. Let’s move along! What I really liked, though, were those really nifty-cool cars that had doors you could pop open, because then I could pretend that this car had special doors that could fold out into wings, and then they could fly. Now that’s something worth thinking about. Cars that fly. You don’t see that every day. At least most people don’t. I do.
So my mom or my dad would say, “Kyle, what do you want to be when you grow up?” And I’d say, “I don’t know. What I’d really like is this job where I think up these really great ideas and then people get together and make them work. I’d be, you know, an ideas man.” And then my dad or my mom would chuckle (actually, I think it was my dad) and they’d say, “Well, I don’t think they make jobs like that.” And then I’d sort of mentally shrug my shoulders and go back to playing with my flying cars or reading my favorite fairy tales. And that was that. No ambition, really.
Well, sort of. I really did want to be an ideas man. I get these really great schemes.
When I was in, maybe kindergarten or first grade, my house was just across the street from my school. It was a grade school with this HUGE playground, because it used to be the town high school. The town built a new, nicer high school, and turned the old one into a grade school. They took the football stadium, stuck a couple of monkey bars in one end and called it a playground. 100 yards of playground, I guess back in the day they had money, because the wall around our playground was made up of solid red sandstone, about four feet high, all the way around. On one side, though, the wall went up to eight or ten feet, or maybe even higher, because it seamlessly turned into stadium bleachers. There was a low wall sticking out at the bottom, about three feet, and then every foot, foot and a half, it would go up and back, like a series of gigantic steps, all made of red sandstone, topped with cement. It was gorgeous.
It was also old. Old sandstone crumbles. I remember grabbing a friend and pulling him over to the bleachers and taking a stick (or maybe it was just my finger) and scraping along the stones, around the edge of the mortar. The stuff crumbled into powder in my hands. Yep, said my friend, and that red dirt? It’s only found in Oklahoma.
Well, I knew enough about economics, even at the age of six, to know what that means. If it’s rare, it’ll sell. Within days I had an operation going. We were going to harvest some of that red dirt, haul it across state lines, and sell it at exorbitant prices. We’d be the richest first graders in the world. I even had a giant 50 gallon bag (formerly for dog food) to carry it in. I don’t remember exactly what happened to our venture. I probably couldn’t get enough man power together to get anywhere with it. But anyway it fell through. Years later, having moved away from Oklahoma, I have to confess to my embarrassment that red dirt can be found almost anywhere, though perhaps not so often and not so bright. It also doesn’t seem to be much use to anybody.
When I was 13, I was on a swimming team, first though my local YMCA, and then through my high school. It was a different town—my family moved a lot. However, there seemed to be a vast shortage of Olympic sized swimming pools to practice in. The Y had one, and the Goodyear plant had one, but most pools in town were for recreational swimming, not for swimming laps. The only really good pools were to found on the neighboring army base. They had about 4 of them, all 100 meters long. Beautiful swimming pools—that couldn’t be used without a direct military connection. I saw a scarcity, and I jumped on it. I broke the news to my mom: I was going to build a series of Olympic-size swimming pools all across town. By virtue of their superior size and quality, all the teens would come to my pools and everybody would be rich. My mom’s only response was that I’d better wait to see if we were even still here in a few months. In two months we moved.
Understand, these weren’t “what do you want to do with your life” ideas. They were just schemes. Little schemes. The summer before my senior year in high school, I calmly stepped into my parents’ bedroom one night and explained to them my plan to drop out of school, get my GED, and open a new Christian bookstore to pay my way through college. I was completely bewildered that they insisted I complete my schooling. None of these ideas had the ring to me of “I want to be a…” They were projects I wanted to do not be.
Somehow MorningStar changed all that. I’m 19 and suddenly I decide I want to move across the country and attend a school that gives no solid guarantee of exactly how they are going to benefit you. For some reason my parents decided they no longer had the right or need to be my calm voice of reason. So I come lolloping over the mountains, thinking I’ve got the world in my pocket, ready for who knows what. I know I didn’t know what.
And the first thing that I really learned at MorningStar is that I am unimpressive. I just don’t have the star power. I mean, I’m a good talker, when I’ve got something to say, but I stink at jumping on somebody else’s bandwagon. I’m a relatively good writer, but that’s a mediocre skill in a land where hardly anybody really reads. There were a lot of other people there who were a lot more frighteningly beautiful than me, and every one of them was trying to lead somebody somewhere. I had a lot of places I wanted to go as well, but every one of my schemes required some preparation, and a lot of followers, and there weren’t followers left. Or if there were, they didn’t really have the time to sit through any proper preparation. So I decided to be a follower. And I discovered that I’m a terrible follower. Everybody was going the wrong direction.
Then somewhere, in the midst of all that, somebody had the audacity to imply strongly that there was something that I couldn’t do. It wasn’t even at my church. It was my then friend’s dad. I announced one day at his house that I was tired of living off my six dollars an hour at the grocery store, and that I was going to get me a job in a skyscraper, making $10 an hour. He kind of looked at me, rolled his eyes a little, and made a sort of hmph-ing sound. The ever classic snort of derision. And something inside me snapped. If there’s one thing that can get my goat, it’s even the slightest implication that I can’t. I can do anything I set myself to, and don’t you forget it. Within a month, I had a job in a skyscraper, making $10 an hour. I also had no friend, but that’s a different story and will be told at a different time.
Since then I’ve been saving up my schemes, and I have determined in my heart that I will not let one of them fall to the ground. Which is why I pray, Dear Lord, let me live to be 300. I’m going to need every minute of that time.
What am I going to be? I’m going to be me—and I’m going to fly.
The problem with writing these thingys so far apart is that, by the time I get around to writing one, so much has happened, I don’t know where to start. It’s 2:00 in the morning. For whatever reason, I can’t sleep. I’m supposed to teach a Sunday school lesson tomorrow, except my lesson plans are at the assistant teacher’s house. Oops. I also have a Christmas cantata tomorrow night, including a solo, except I’m recovering from what seems to have been a cross between a sinus infection and a killer cold, and my voice is all shot to bits. You should have heard my attempts at singing at Saturday’s performance. Scratch that. You shouldn’t have heard my attempts at singing. You’d have thought, “why’d they give that guy the solo?”
I guess the biggest item, really, on my personal “current events” list is that I am not currently enrolled in seminary at this present time. Maybe a month or so ago I posted something along about my absolute surety that rest was an important thing. I was terribly behind in my studies then, but I was confident that I could apply myself and easily catch up. Funny thing about applying yourself. It only happens if you have enough time. I could tell amazing stories, but I won’t just yet. Suffice it to say that my requirements at work and my commitments at church were more than sufficient without the added burden of trying to plunge myself immediately into the pursuit of another degree.
It’s a really great story, at the end of it, though. I was going to the final class with a sinking suspicion I wasn’t going to be able to complete everything in time, and I was planning to have a nice chat with the professor to find out what my options were. I get to the school, and there’s nobody there. Not even a mouse. I pound on some doors until I find one that’s open and barge in on the painters who are making a mad dash to finish the fresco before the chapel’s grand opening. I wander around aimlessly, looking for an administrator who can tell me what’s going on.
It turns out that all the classes for the semester have already finished. The very last class (my class) met last week. I read the calendar wrong. The fourth weekend of the month does not necessarily fall directly behind the fourth Thursday of the month, particularly when the fourth Thursday of the month is Thanksgiving Day. My final exam was due in 3 days. I had missed the class where they discussed the information covered in the final exam… by a week.
I emailed my professor and asked him if there was any hope. He referred me to the dean. By this point another week had past, in which I worked nearly a 50 hour week. Did I study just in case I had a chance? I don’t think so. I wrote the dean and essentially said (in much more flowery words) “Look, man. Even if you gave me an extension, it’ll be two or three months before I can even start to turn things in.” The dean writes me back and says, “Here is a one time offer. I will allow you to withdraw from the course even though it is too late…This must happen by the first of next week.”
Believe me. I hopped on it. Little miracles are miracles too.
Now that that whole mess is over, I really have to start asking questions. Presumably, my decision to enroll in seminary at this particular time was a poor one. 1500 additional dollars of debt without a single academic credit to show for it has got to say at least that. I’m not going to say, “Oh no, that was the will and plan of God!” My other option is to say that keeping my job was the bad idea, and I just have some real problems with that. At 25 a man has got to stand up and take responsibility for his own finances. I just can’t let the debt mount any higher.
So was I supposed to go to seminary? Am I supposed to go to seminary? Was my encounter months ago with the living God nothing more than the fermentation of an addled brain? I can’t say that it was. I mean, I really can’t. the only thing in this world that I really know that I can hold on to. If I unravel them, then everything is an addlement of the brain. What is my purpose, that God has not given me? What is my nature that God has not defined for me? Everything that I am has come from an encounter with the living God. Take that relationship away, and it isn’t just that my life changes, I simply cease to be. Descarte said “I think therefore I am,” but he was wrong. Nothing can exist, except in relation to something Other, to Someone wholly different, and unchanging. Without a proper frame of reference, everything falls apart, the center cannot hold.
Sorry about sliding into philosophy there.
My only hope for now is to say that “I see Him, but not yet.” God has begun so many good works in me, and I must trust that he will be faithful to complete them all.
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. – Genesis 2:19-20
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. – Genesis 3:20
Have you noticed that we are still shaping our lives with names? For example, I am called daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, Constance, Pumpkin, Spaghetti-head, sis, cousin, and Val by my family. But those are only a small part defining who I am. What if I were to add things like friend, scholar, student, listener, babysitter, roommate, confidant, singer, musician, artist, Christian…? Do you begin to see the importance of a name? I am not one or two of these, but all. They shape who I am and as I grow and my life changes I will acquire even more names like doctor, co-worker, employee, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, sister-in-law…. Each name shows a different facet of who I am and who I am to become, but they all must be looked at together to see me.
But just like all these names define who I am, my names for other people define who they are. I think that one of the greatest gifts that God has given us is the ability to shape with words and names. Why are we so flippant with our gifts? Are we blinded to affects of the names we place on people?
The tongue is also a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and in itself set fire by hell. All kinds of animals are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. – James 4:12
We have a choice to heap blessings or curses on people with a single name. Names like son, daughter, or friend can bring joy, acceptance, thanksgiving, and love. And names like liar, betrayer, or fool bring condemnation, hate, and disregard.
Be careful what you say in anger or out of hurt because a name goes a very long way; it can build up or destroy. Which will you choose?
A while ago, my darling and I were having a discussion. I don’t know particularly how it happened, but conversation turned to the story of the water from the rock. It’s one of the most fascinating stories for me, although it’s pretty well dispersed. In Exodus something, when Israel was first out of Egypt, they came to a place where there was no water. So they complained, and threatened to kill Moses. Moses prayed, and God directed him to a rock, and said “hit it.” Moses strikes the rock and FWOOSH! out comes enough water for 600,000 fighting men and all their families.
One of the old, anti-miracle-ist explanations for this miracle was that the rock that Moses came to was actually a great side of a mountain. Probably the person who thought this explanation up was from the Appalachian Mountains, because you see it there all the time: The drift water from the previous snows isn’t held just in the surface of the mountain, but inside every crevice of the mountain. You can drive by and see little rivulets creeping out of every minor crack in the surface of the stone. So, our anti-miracle theory goes, God directed Moses to just such a mountain, that had a vast store of water inside of it somewhere, and Moses struck it and just the right place, and all that stored water of the ages comes rushing out—enough to feed 600,000 fighting men and all their families.
The only problem with this explanation is in Corinthians 10:16, which says that “the rock which followed them was Christ.”
The image of a rock following someone pretty strongly implies that the Israelites treated that rock the same way they did the Manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the Ten Commandments, and every other physical manifestation of God’s supernatural grace for them: They picked it up and carried it around with them. Which means the rock would have had to have been pretty small. It couldn’t have been much bigger than the size of a watermelon.
And then the next time Israel was stuck in a corner of the desert with no natural source of water (which would be about Numbers 20), Moses prays again, and God says to speak to the rock. And Moses, because of the lovely mood he’s in, instead of speaking to the rock, he hits it, twice. And then there’s this big section where God tells Moses he won’t get to go into Canaan because he hit the rock instead of speaking to it.
OK. So what’s the big deal? I mean, of all the dumb things Moses has probably done wrong in 80-odd years, the thing that tops the cake and kicks him out of Canaan is hitting a rock with a stick. Ever hit a rock with a stick? Watch out! Actually, one explanation I’ve heard on this goes something along the lines of “Moses represented God as angry when he wasn’t,” which I guess is pretty bad. I mean, misrepresenting God, false prophecy, false teaching and all that. But I think it’s even more significant than that.
If you look at it with a little historical perspective, and remember what Jesus said about the whole Old Testament being a prophecy (c.f. “the law prophesied until John;” “not a jot or tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled;” etc.), what you realize is that Moses screwed up what was supposed to be one of the most powerful symbols in the entire book. Remember, “the rock which followed them was Christ.” God only told Moses to strike the rock once. Jesus was crucified “Once for all” (It’s in Romans and it’s in Hebrews. Go look it up.) As a Christian, what is one of the worst things you can do, in regard to your sin? Isn’t it to try somehow to earn God’s salvation? Jesus was crucified once. There is no need for anyone to do it again. It would be an affront to God to attempt to do so, like attempting to pay for your birthday presents.
Strike the shepherd and the sheep are scattered.
Strike the rock and the waters come.
They struck my Lord and they brought salvation.
Could they have known what they had done?
Jesus was struck once for our salvation, and out of his side, like blood and water, came an unquenchable fountain of life. Moses struck a bolder and out came enough water for 600,000 fighting men, and their families (and their sheep, and their camels, and their donkeys…) From Jesus Christ flows an unquenchable flood that has watered people in the billions. He was struck once, and now all we have to do is speak to that rock to receive anew that fresh fountain of life.
Now that was pretty good, but I’m pretty sure I already knew most of it, though it had never quite before congealed so nicely. But what happened next was pretty amazing. I dropped my darling off for the night and headed home (that’s not the amazing part), when the Holy Spirit reminded me of another verse involving water (here it comes—this has totally revolutionized my life). The verse from Ephesians 5 pops into my mind, about husbands: “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of the water of the word.”
I’ve always liked that verse, because it describes the word of God as this cleansing agent that automatically draws you to holiness. I like verses like that. Like “Acknowledge God, and He will direct your path,” which had me chanting a mantra of “God I acknowledge you” for months every time I found my self going on the wrong path. I had in my mind somehow this idea, like in Psalm 119, where it says “because of Your word, I have more wisdom than my elders,” that if I just hid enough scripture in my heart, somehow those bible verses would work their way out in my life and actions, and I would be this super-righteous person. I hope you can recognize the wrong direction I’m going here. Crucifying again, making a mockery of Christ, and all that sort of thing. I had in my mind this nice little formula: Read bible, become holy. The only problem is that it never really has managed to work.
So, anyway, I’m driving home in the night and this verse pops into my head and the Holy Spirit says “What if that word there is Rhema instead of Logos?” I don’t remember if I stopped the car or not, but I do know I shouted “WHOA!!!” about as loud as I could. (I’m pretty sure all my windows were up.) Right about then 10,000 stones were falling into place.
For those of you who aren’t in the know, there are two Greek words in the New Testament that are translated into English as “word.” One is Logos, and the other is Rhema. Logos is pretty famous already, as it’s found in English words such as logic, and every word that ends in –ology. Logos is also pretty famous because John used it like crazy in the first chapter of his Gospel. “In the beginning was the Logos…” John probably knocked the socks off of some Greek philosophers with that one, since Plato had used Logos to describe both the very mind of God, and the absolute foundation of all reality. Pretty cool intro to have the absolute foundation of all reality to become flesh and dwell among you. In everyday Greek life, Logos just meant the written word. Logos means, ahem, pure text. Heh, heh. (woo. I made a funny!) Logos has the connotation of all that is orderly, organized, planned out, structured, prepared. (Which is to say that Logos signifies everything that I’m not—the great irony abounds.)
Rhema means the spoken word. Theologically, Rhema would be prophecy: the word of God for now, that still small voice, the inner light, His work in your life—every aspect of God moving in your life that does not directly involve the book. Rhema connotes something lively, something powerful, something fluid, something flexible…like water.
Again, I hope you can see where I’m going with this. If Jesus himself is Logos, which is the scripture, and he is also “the rock which followed them,” something very stable, what could that water from the rock be but the very rhema-word of God?
OK. Back to Ephesians. “love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church … with the washing of the water of the word.” Do you see how the image changes? Before I had Jesus scrubbing his bride with the sound and unchanging scriptures. Now I’ve got him veritably flooding her with a fountain of cleansing… words.
What sort of words to you suppose Jesus is using, to wash over his bride? I’ll give you a hint: probably not many of them start with the word “woe.” Jesus himself said he came to save the world, not to condemn it. His purpose is to sanctify the church, to make her holy, and as I’ve pointed out before, to be Holy is not “to be a better person” or to change who you are, rather it is to become more distinctly who you already are. So the rock of our salvation is constantly pouring out the living water, which washes away all the things in our environment that have tried to change us. He’s saying, “Your feet aren’t dirty, that dirt isn’t part of who you are. Here, let me show you what beautiful feet you have. There, isn’t that good news?”
That’s a pretty powerful image, just as an injunction for husbands in regards to their wives. The manner in which we are supposed to demonstrate our love is not by brandishing them about with the order and understanding of heaven, but rather through life giving words. Not only that, but our words are supposed to be used to define our loved one’s very nature. Do you love the way her not-quite-long-enough hair gets tousled around and curls behind her ears in her frustration? Tell her. That’s who she is. Do you love the way she can put the fear of God and hell in any man, woman or child who comes near to hurting her children? Tell her. That’s who she is. Does her worrying about the future disturb you? Wash off those worries and remind her: that’s not who she is. If the rhema is the prophetic word, then it’s important to remember that to prophesy is to speak “edification and exhortation and comfort.” If it isn’t edifying, it probably isn’t rhema.
But it doesn’t stop in the natural. Husbands and wives are called to be a to the world of Christ and the church. If it’s powerful when a husband washes over his wife with the water of the word, how much more when Christ washes us?
Can we go back for a minute to that whole “water from the rock” thing? The thing that always bothered me when I was in my “read the bible and you’ll become holy” phase, was that I couldn’t quite understand the exact mechanism by which me reading my bible was going to miraculously produce a holy life and a better relationship with the living God. This Rhema and Logos bit really clears a lot of that up for me.
Let me just run through a couple of metaphors, and we’ll see how many of them I can mix in a single paragraph. Jesus is the “rock which followed them.” He is also the “manna from heaven.” In communion, or the Passover feast, “this bread is [his] body,” and the wine is his blood. But if the blood of Christ is the fountain of our salvation, then his blood is also the water from the rock. So, the solid rock is the Logos, and the flowing water is the Rhema.
So there’s a very interesting irony in the fact that, when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, the first thing he said was to turn stones into bread, since both stones and bread can be said to represent the logos of God. Fittingly, Jesus replies that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Want to guess which Greek word here is translated “word”? Would you believe… rhema? Which makes it pretty clear to me that Jesus was saying that the text is not enough alone, but it must supplemented by the daily specific direction of the Holy Spirit. You might say that logos, the rock, is like vitamins (life-minerals), and that some vitamins must be dissolved in water before we can use them (other vitamins must be dissolved in oil, but I’m not even going to try to make a distinction here between the symbol of oil for the Holy Spirit, and the symbol of water for the Holy Spirit). It’s also interesting to point out that both the bread (logos) and the wine (rhema) are present at communion.
So, no matter how you look at it, you need both the scriptures (logos), and the Holy Spirit’s daily leading (rhema).
But how do we get from the text to revelation, from Logos to rhema? I mean, the text is already sitting right in front of me. But how can I be assured of God speaking through it to me on a daily basis? Where is this unending flood that is supposed to be coming out, washing over me, making me holy and reminding me of who I am? This is probably going to be a no-brainer for you, but it came as a huge… erm, rhema to me.
In John 4:10, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Duh. Ask! Moses struck the rock when he should have spoken to it, a horrible crime against the revelation that God was trying to demonstrate: if we would just keep on asking, he would give us so many good things. “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” If we would just speak to him, asking him for revelation from his word, then He (the Logos himself, Jesus) would give himself up for us, washing us with the living water we need.
One last point, and then I think I’m done: In James it says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” Would you like to take a guess which “word” is used here? That’s right friend, rhema. I always thought that was a nice injunction to adhere to the bible, even though the metaphor made absolutely no sense. What does what you look like have to do with following orders? I thought it meant that a person who reads the bible, but then doesn’t adhere to it, is deceived. Well, yeah, but then we’re all deceived, and in a very general sense. But since it’s rhema that James is talking about, it starts to fall into place. Jesus washes us with the rhema and lifts away the conforming influence of our environment. The rhema renews our mind and reminds us of who we are. But if I get a revelation from God that I am a person who draws near to Him, and who asks for revelation from his word, and I don’t immediately draw near to God and ask for revelation, then I have forgotten who I am. I’m just not acting like myself at all. The rhema reminds us of who we are (in Christ, I guess I should say), and if we immediately go off acting like somebody else, then we are exactly like a person who looks in the mirror, sees that he’s a man, and then turns away and starts looking for an appropriate evening gown.
It simply isn’t him.
neumatikos 