Saturday, June 25, 2016

Jesus Asks: Do you want to be made well?


This is the 22nd post in my series "Asking Myself," in which I weekly ponder one question posed in Teresa Blythe's rich book, 50 Ways to Pray. You can find the start of the series here and last week's post here. The first nine posts focused on theological musings, while posts 10 to the present prayerfully consider the specific questions Jesus posed in the New Testament.

Q: Do you want to be made well?

Jesus asks this question as a prelude to his third recorded miracle in the gospel of John. It's a story that doesn't appear in the synoptic gospels, and one that I've always taken to be more symbolic than historical because of the strange details. Here's the basics:

The setting: Not far from the the city Sheep Gate, the air filled with baaas and bits of wool and dust, a ring of covered porches surrounds a special pool. Perhaps it's a natural hot spring? But it's not like a resort so much as a makeshift hospital or the front of the auditorium at the end of a Pentecostal service. There are hoards of people; they are sick, blind, lame, paralyzed. They are waiting...
for a certain movement of the water, for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had. (John 5:4)

Monday, June 20, 2016

The simplistic title of Martin's "Shipwreck" belies its mysterious depths



I gotta start off by admitting I'm not in the kind of sudden shipwreck situation this book addresses. I was drawn to Jonathan Martin's How to Survive a Shipwreck for a couple of reasons. First off, the stack of impressive and diverse endorsements, including Rachel Held Evans, Steven Furtick, Sarah Bessey, Lynne Hybels, Michael Gungor, Rob Bell and Greg Boyd, was enough to pique my curiosity about Martin, founder and ex-pastor of Renovatus church in North Carolina.

But I think on a deeper level, I wanted to read the book because I've been pondering how or whether a church community can safely hold the vulnerabilities of those in leadership positions. Many churches have unspoken rules that cause pastors and lay leaders to bury their weaknesses and put on an appearance of imperviousness to their personal demons. When they fall, they fall hard, and the church often cuts them loose.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Jesus Asks: What are you looking for?


This is the 21st post in my series "Asking Myself," in which I weekly ponder one question posed in Teresa Blythe's rich book, 50 Ways to Pray. You can find the start of the series here and last week's post here. The first nine posts focused on theological musings, while posts 10 to the present prayerfully consider the specific questions Jesus posed in the New Testament.

Q: What are you looking for?

After John the Baptist sees the miraculous vision of the Spirit fluttering down to nest upon Jesus' head, he declares, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." The next day when John repeats the declaration, two of John's disciples, Andrew and, presumably, the apostle John, abandon their teacher and follow Jesus. Hearing the footsteps or maybe getting that weird sensation that he's being watched, Jesus looked over his shoulder and said to them in John 1:38, "What are you after?" (MSG) or "What do you want?" (NLT) or "What are you looking for?" (NRSV) 

I wonder about Jesus' reaction. Fully man, and never having had disciples before this, was it odd for him to suddenly have people following him? Also notable, Andrew and John's first response to Jesus was not an answer, but a question, like they were made to be Jesus' followers. They didn't ask anything about his theology or his messianic game plan. Instead, they got down to the practical details of their unspoken commitment.
"Rabbi, where are you staying?"
In other words, they were already set on being his students. They were going to follow Jesus wherever he was going and to stay with Jesus wherever He was staying. They just needed the address. 

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Zierman's "Night Driving" laughs, groans and grows through an evolving, once-fiery faith


Night Driving: A Story of Faith in the Dark, by former evangelical good girl and blogger Addie Zierman, was a fast, familiar read for me in many ways. She grew up in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, as did I. She experienced a warm and rosy falling in love with Jesus in her early teens, as did I. She is navigating a shift in her faith as she matures, as am I. She admits to escapism as her way of dealing with life's darker moments, as do I.

This memoir begins with what seems a bad case of seasonal affective disorder, which drives her to pack her two little boys and numerous totes of clothing, snacks and kid gear in the family minivan for a 3,000-mile February road trip from her current home in icy Minnesota to the beaches of Florida. (This might be where the similarities break down a little, as I would never be insane enough to drive myself more insane by taking a solo trip with children!) But, having lived in or taken trips to Asia, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Tennessee, North and South Carolina and Florida, I was familiar with the settings of nearly all her flashbacks and pit stops along the harrowing, hazy and heartfelt journey.

I can't tell the road trip vignettes as well as the author, so I'm going to stick to the major themes. Two impulses drive the entire story: to escape not only the icy bowels of a Minnesota winter, but also the dark despair lodged in her 30-year-old heart, long vacated by the bright and fiery faith of her youth. As Zierman describes it:
It's like this: Once upon a time, I learned that God came like light. I spent a long time head against the window, peering into the darkness, praying for God to come like a spotlight, like a fire, like some wild laser show in the pitch-black sky. I learned to fear the darkness, and when it came, I struck myself against everything around me, trying to make sparks (208).
She doesn't just write beautiful prose in order to shroud her failings in poetic mystery. Zierman's strength is in not shying away from the details of her personal darkness. In admitting to her "problem with flirting," her near-miss affair, her alternately loving and laissez faire parenting style, her unabashed infatuation with vampy TV shows, and her propensity to drink too much diet coke and too much wine, she avoids painting herself nice in this early mid-life word portrait. 

Perhaps it's her troubles with fidelity that pop up most often in the story. Of her addiction to "a certain kind of feeling" she gets from catching a stranger's eye, hearing a catcall, or turning the head in a car next to her at a stoplight, the author writes
If there was a support group for this kind of thing, I'd stand up and say 'I'm afraid that I don't exist if men don't notice me' (93).
While I bristled a bit to her addiction to male attention in all its crude and unsavory forms-- as an introvert I skew in the opposite direction--- I can relate to the desperate feeling of irrelevance and the longing for validation, and I think most people can. Framing this fear as an addiction that needs to come to light was immensely helpful to me. 

And that brings me to my final thought: Readers expecting explicit, biblical prescriptions for depression, waning faith or addicitons might find the book wanting. Though the author spent her formative years poring over scripture, and does eventually muse on some familiar verses near the end of the book, readers looking for lessons will see them quietly emerge from the author's personal experience. This is fitting, as Zierman's introduction to God and faith, like many Christians, was all about what we could feel. To counteract this ingrained habit, the book's concluding scenes delight in a God who dwells in the darkness as well as the light. 

In short, I recommend Night Driving to Christians grappling with hard-to-name addictions, an evolving faith, or the onset of a "new normal" in their spiritual landscape.

I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.

Friday, June 3, 2016

Jesus Asks: Why Do You Call Me Good?


This is the 20th post in my series "Asking Myself," in which I weekly ponder one question posed in Teresa Blythe's rich book, 50 Ways to Pray. You can find the start of the series here and last week's post here. The first nine posts focused on theological musings, while posts 10 to the present prayerfully consider the specific questions Jesus posed in the New Testament.


Q: Why do you call me good?

I let this question rattle around in my head for several days before looking more closely at the context. I remembered that someone came to Jesus and called Him "Good Teacher," to which Jesus shot back, "Why do you call me good? Only God is good." Rather than remembering the entire story, I mostly remembered the unpleasant feeling that Jesus seems to be a little snarky here. I mean, should we not consider Him good? And is He not God Himself? Is He trying to show his deference to the Father? Or is He trying to see if His inquirer is aware that His goodness is actually God-ness? 

Because of Jesus' track record for loving people through words and actions that are radical, counter-cultural, profound yet accessible, I'm going against the seeming dissonance in this question. I'm giving Jesus the benefit of the doubt that he's not being rude and obnoxious to someone who seems to be approaching him with humility and good manners. 

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Winsome

While I let my "Winsome Wednesday" posts trail off several months ago, I thought these two videos needed a place on my blog. I hope they give you the warm fuzzies as they did me!

God woos artist with the beauty of his craft 



 The Forrest Gump of the Owl world
 

 Can I just say this video made me want to become an ornithologist?