Once a Blessing; Now a Curse?

Over the last few weeks, Cassie and I have become acquainted with a new facial gesture. It's a sort of uncertain, consoling thing people do with their eyebrows, usually accompanied by the thought of a smile. Uncertain because they're not sure how to respond to what we've just told them. There is something in their brain that says, "Oh no! I'm sorry--" but there is something in our faces that says, "Isn't this great!"

See the thing we tell them is: "We're having a baby!"

And Cassie and I couldn't be happier (this side of heaven, at this point in our lives)! We are expecting our first child, and I begin to identify with Mary (though not half so ambitious in the promised results of our primogenitor) at her own annunciation. It's a time of incomprehensible anticipation-- joyous anticipation!


So why? Why is it that some raise their eyebrows? Why is it that some outrightly say, "You're too young, too newly wed"? Why is it that our non-use of birth control in the first nuptial year is so out-of-the-ordinary in our society--even in our churches? It is almost as if there runs an insane line of thinking (though mainly subconscious, it is basically pervasive) which goes thusly:

Yes, children are nice once we grow bored with life being just the two of us (sanitized: once we've had a number of years to just get to know each other) and have exhausted the pleasure of complete and absolute privacy--maybe a couple of progeny would be nice then, to carry on the family name at least. Children can be cute after all--in small quantities, of course. But thank God we now have the technology to obviate that burden that used to inevitably accompany marriage! Now, we can be free--to build our careers and our bank accounts (I mean, to be responsible stewards), to get to know each other without ubiquitous interruptions (I mean, besides the never-sleeping TV, the husband's video games, etc. Now we can "control" the interruptions.).

Some even seem to think: It is YOUR responsibility to avail yourself of this newly en vogued vivial-sovereignty. After all, your marriage will suffer if you have children right away, and God MIGHT cease to meet your needs if you embrace parenthood while you're still stuck at that low standard of living in which newlyweds usually find themselves. God, after all, does not condescend to those who are foolish with the gifts he gives: God helps those who help themselves.


Now, this is not a rant against birth control. Most adamantly not. There are, I believe, some very good reasons for birth control. But, friends, we've gone too far! We make newlyweds to feel awkward and foolish, strange--as if they've got two heads (or three or four, to make it truly strange) or as if something slipped--when children come along in the first year of marriage.

When the Creator of our earth and race and the Inspirator of Scripture calls something a "blessing" and "an inheritance from the LORD" we ought to be more careful not to call that into question. I fear that we in the West have become so enamored with a certain standard of living that anything that could keep us from that life is viewed as a curse. And anyone who decides to raise a family at a significantly lower standard of living is a poor steward, maybe even "worse than an infidel" like the one condemned in I Timothy 5:8 (which, by the way, was written in a cultural context when the average person did not even have electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, more than four sets of clothes and many other things we consider just the bare essentials. Let's be careful how we apply that verse.).

It seems we've got lots of kinks in our thinks; most of those will take many other sessions to straighten out. But can we start with one thing, please? When someone tells you they're pregnant, be excited for them! I understand, it makes life more difficult, but when God calls something "a blessing," trust Him enough not to call it a curse!

"Be Jesus to them."

This is a motto I've heard (and read) a lot the past three years. From Shane Claiborne or Mother Teresa or Francis Chan or Philip Yancey, it seems many Christians are trying to take a fresh look at the Jesus of the Gospels. "The Jesus I never knew," as Yancey puts it, seems to be calling out to American Christians in our generation to remember his concern for "the least of these, My brothers," and to open our eyes to the needs that lie in our cities' gutters or a forgotten ocean away. What does it mean to "take up your cross?" What does Jesus have in mind for us when he calls us Americans two thousand years removed from those first net-forsaking fishermen to also "Follow Me?" What does it mean to imitate the Son of God and "be Jesus to them?"

I came across this list of Jesus impostors with a simple Google search (the quickest way to get the facts!). While Jesus was certainly an eyebrow-raiser and a radical in the eyes of many, somehow I don't think these anomalies have quite got what it means to "be conformed to the image of [Christ]." And yet, if we are content to simply sit back and perform our religious rituals and favorite Christo-American pastimes-- attending church, talking about theology, listening to Christian music, reading Christian books by Christian authors writing about Christian things to do or think about, going to Bible study to sing and to do all the above activities with people who are just like us-- we are also missing something essential in our reflections of the Messiah who gathered to himself lepers and prostitutes. All of those rituals that I listed, those are very nourishing for a vibrant Christian life-- but there's more!

"Good things come when Jesus comes!" was the jubilant song echoing from lungs of Africans in the film I just watched. As we watched an American well-driller and an African evangelist carry good news-- clean drinking water and eternal living water-- into village after village, our friend Liz turned to Dustan and said, "The Gospel brings social reform!" And I was thinking in my mind, The Gospel brings better life! That's what real good social reform is-- better life. In many different ways, physical and spiritual.

My own first trip to Africa lent me an awareness of the physical needs of those on the poorer sides of the tracks-- or the ocean-- three years ago. Since then I've wrestled long and strenuously with my role as a bringer of "better life"-- both spiritually and physically. I have been given great gifts as an American: freedom of travel, discretionary finances, educational depth and breadth-- to name just a few. How should I use them? What quickly became the heaviest motivator on my heart was, How can I use this wealth on myself when Christ cries out to me from the teary eyes and open hands of the poor and needy all over the world-- in Greenville and in Africa? But, as I saw needs I had never noticed before exponentially multiplied before my burdened soul and as I eagerly reached into my middle-class American pockets and reached out to calloused, dirty, drug-plagued hands, I soon realized that I could easily spend all my time and resources dishing out my valued American dream into needy hands and never bring my hungry fellow man to the feast that my Father has prepared with the broken body and spilt blood of His Son. A feast to which he bids me compel the hedge and highway dwellers come!

So over the past three years my thinking has developed to the question, How can I best use these resources made available through a worldly citizenship from an unprecedentedly wealthy and free country to further a Kingdom whose King conquers through love rather than swords and bombs, by sacrifice rather than with Roman denarii or American dollars? I've had to learn that God directs the path of each member of his body uniquely, that I cannot judge my brother who drives a Mercedes anymore than he ought judge me for the color of my shirt. The wallet that opened for the purchase of the $50,000 luxury sedan is also the wallet that feeds my pastor and donates generously to my enormous school bill-- and that wallet is filled by the same Father whose love compels me to "sell everything [I] have" and follow his Son to the poor and illiterate.

But understanding that liquidating my meager assets and showing up at the rescue mission food line with a backpack full of cash to hand out with the chicken soup and stale bread is probably not what will shake the gates of Hell most, how do I sacrifice it ALL for the Kingdom of Heaven?

Live in a shed? Drive a $500 car? Shop at Goodwill, SOS, Safe Harbor, Miracle Hill? Live off Raisin Bran and charity? Type this post up on a 10-year-old Toshiba? Leave it all for China, Albania, Africa? Sure. That's for me, and I'm sure there's more to pursue, there's a heavier, more rugged, more fatal cross awaiting me. For Roland the Well-driller it is a life in Africa far, far away from his American homeland. For Dennis the Evangelist it is a headlong, do-or-die assault on the Hell-tended gates of a demon-worshiping village in West Africa. For you it could be walking to school, providing care for your aging parents or grandparents, giving your summers to the mentally impaired or the foreign mission field, walking to the fringes of downtown to find blank-eyed homeless wanderers and to be a friend-- a true friend. It could be to take that guy out to lunch-- you know, the guy that just has no clue how to hold a conversation and leaves Sunday School as fast as he can because he doesn't want to feel awkward standing around with no one to not-be-able-to talk to? It could be to sell everything you own and give the money to an orphanage. To go and live in that orphanage.

Whatever the cross, whatever the reflection of Jesus that you will be called to be, it will be your own, but you will not be alone. You will find the body of Christ more ever-pervasive than you have ever imagined. You will share in the sufferings of Christ and find out what it really means to "be Jesus to them."

Episode 3: I Once Was Blind from Dispatches From The Front on Vimeo.

When I die . . .

"When I go, don't cry for me;
In my Father's arms I'll be.
Wounds this world left on my soul
Will all be healed, and I'll be whole.

It don't matter where you bury me,
'Cause I'll be home, and I'll be free.
It don't matter where I lay;
All my tears'll be washed away."

--Mary McLaughlin

Please don't spend money on a coffin I'll never actually be inside of to enjoy.
Please don't paint me as a perfect Christian at my memorial-- I'm not.
Please do celebrate at my memorial-- bubbles, good food, good memories, high hopes.
Please let Cassie "preach" at my memorial.
Please let those who need the closure see my deceased body, but please not everyone-- I won't be in it at the moment, and so it won't really be me. It's just not a good representation of me anyways-- since when did I ever lay that still?!
Please do invite everyone I know to the memorial: friends, enemies (especially enemies), co-workers past and present, random dudes off the street; go through my contacts, my emails, my facebook friends, my receipts-- the works!-- it'll be the biggest day of my life!
Please do go through my journals; there are things I've written in there that I want preached or told at my memorial-- but I'd better good and dead before you touch them!!!
Please do cry if you need to, but remember, I want you all to go on-- not just "move on" but to push ahead with a renewed vengeance, raging against the gates of Hell with a triumphant smile through your tears. Know that though Hell succeeded in bringing me to a physical death, it is a very temporal success and eventually will be robbed of even that physical death. When you see this physical body succumb to that accursed Death, please rage all the fiercer against those black and awful gates and snatch many others from Hell's grip.
Please, if I am martyred for the Gospel's sake, please forgive my enemies and love them as God loved me when I was his enemy and murdered his Son.
Please sing lots of songs celebrating my Saviour and my HOME! (Because whereever I live forever, it will be with God, and that is home.) I have a playlist on my computer (WMP) that has some good suggestions; it's called, "Created for a place I've never known."
And remember, there's a good chance I might be able to watch the proceedings, so I'll know whether or not your honor these wishes, and if I'm allowed I will come haunt you . . .

This is the happiest time in my life. I've never been happier, and I expect the coming years here in this life to bring an even deeper happiness (along with sorrows deeper than I've yet experienced). I have a great life here with many inspiring dreams and beloved people (esp. Cass) seemingly worth living for. But none of this (no, not even my bride-to-be) can compare to what awaits me when I finally leave "Jordan's stormy banks" and come to that "fair and happy land where my possessions lie." That's why I'm excited to die-- I hope it happens tonight! I mean, I feel bad for those to whom God has given a love for me, those of you that have to stay behind with my dust, but try to be happy for me! And we'll meet again . . . soon.

"It is not death to die . . . "

This goes here; that goes there.

Compartmentalization. One of those rare seven-syllable words.

In my last post, I mentioned that missions gets compartmentalized. I then went on to compartmentalize it (sort of). When I say missions gets compartmentalized, what I mean is that, in relation to the rest of life, missions gets pushed into some separate sphere, some separate category. And partially, I think that's ok. Partially, I think that's tragic. To our 21st century American-Christianity mindset, there are different stations in life, each clearly distinguishable from the others. You can be a teacher, you can be an artist, you can be an accountant, you can be a marketing manager, you can be a piano teacher, you can be a pastor, you can be a missionary, you can be a church-planter. You can even be a tent-making church-planter or missionary. You can be this, or you can be that. And this goes here (or stays here, rather), and that goes there.

But answer me this: what makes a tent-making missionary in Bangladesh different from an elementary school teacher in Cary, NC? Well, the missionary goes to a foreign country-- overseas. Ok, right. True. And, to be honest, that's what I based my own compartmentalization of missions on. It makes sense: Missionary: missi: to send (Latin). Therefore, to go, like far away. The only problem is that Jesus sent all of us! GO into all the world sounds an awful lot like a missi, like a sending.

The world is not just a geographical globe. It is a very dysfunctional, disconnected community in a headlong fall. The world is a people-- all people-- that have become disconnected from God and, as a result, dysfunctional in the very thing for which we were created: love. To go into this world is simply to be where people are. When you are at the grocery store, you are in the world. You have "gone". Good! So that's half the command.

Now the rest is to make disciples of all peoples. Yeah, that's the hard part. No, it's impossible. What we as mere men and women can do, what is possible to us, is to make disciples for ourselves. We can get people to follow us. But to make someone a disciple of Jesus, they have to meet Jesus. There's a popular phrase I've read and heard, and I like it. It's the idea of Being Jesus to people you meet. That means, chiefly, to love them, to do good to them. For some people that's buying them a meal. For some that's adopting them as your child. For many it's simple taking an interest in their lives. That's love. That's what love does, of course (I Corinth. 13), and Jesus is most typified by love. It's as simple as asking the clerk at the grocery store how late she has to work that night and offering some sympathy. Finding out if he is in college or if she has kids and how old. When you start getting people talking about what they really love or really hate, you start to get into who they really are. And what they are is created to be God's people, His children, His love. I don't mean to make it sound easy. It's not. I'm terrible at it, mostly because I'm more compelled by fear than love.

Disciple-making is hard and nervous and scary. But it's what we're here for. It's what we were "sent" into the "world" for. In that sense we have wrongly compartmentalized missions. In that sense we are missionaries everytime we walk into that grocery store or Starbucks or assembly floor or office or school building or into the same room as your undiscipled child.

Have we forgotten this? Have I forgotten this here in America as I am training to "go?"

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's not something I am a good example of. It's not (I am sad to admit) something that I do often. But I want to.

Jesus, you've given me what seems like an impossible command to follow. I mean, at least the second half seems impossible. I get scared when I think of initiating conversations with people I don't know. Please drive out this fear by giving me a love for You that spills over to people, to these people that you have sent me to. These whom you have died for. Let me be YOU to them. Let me love them. Compel me to love them!

Remind us that America is not our home. This is not where we "stay"-- this is where we have gone, where you have sent us. Remind us that we will stay with You one day, but now as we love you, we are to seek to do your will, which is to go into the world and introduce them to you, to show them who they must follow as disciples!

Here am I, Lord, BUT . . .

Missions. Missions has perhaps become too compartmentalized in our western perspective on Christianity. No, I'm certain it has become too compartmentalized. But missions is what I want to do. It's what God has given me a burden for. When I speak of missions I'm referring to traveling to a culture that is foreign to me specifically for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel "in the uttermost parts of the earth." This is a passion for me. I live in a land that is bursting at the seams it's so full of churches. When you look at the spiritual grid of the earth, America should stand out like a full moon, for we have in this nation the most numerous (except for China) and the most visible collection of Christians that the world has ever known.

My desire is to see other places in the world that are currently pitch black spots on that world lighting map become white hot lights of worship of the God who created all people everywhere. I want to be part of that. I want to go and be there where the world is darkest-- where no one else wants to go.Why there? Why those particular places? I don't know. It's hard to explain, and I hope it's not simply a maverick sort of attitude that's driving me. What I believe to be in my heart is the compelling urgency the springs from the Apostle Paul's own voice in his words from Romans 10: How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

It's that, "Who else?!" question that got me in the first place. I think I was in 9th grade. The summer before ninth grade, I think. There was an evangelist preaching a week of services at our church, during which we actually met in the National Guard Armory's gym because our church was under renovation. I remember sitting in those uncomfortable metal chairs in that sweltering humid heat and that evangelist listing off city after city of millions of people but with few enough churches to be counted on one hand. He talked about how for every ten missionaries that leave the field only one is going out to replace him-- and yet the world's population is growing?! I left that service thinking, "Wow. Something needs to be done! Someone needs to go!" But it had not yet occurred to me that I could go. That came later.

God and I had this conversation that I can still remember today. Now, you may think, Naw, God doesn't talk to people like that anymore! Not like He talked to Moses. And I would say, First, how do you know? And, second, no, it wasn't quite like that. It was more like a conversation I have with myself. Only instead of myself being the other thought-voice in my head, it was God the Spirit. I'm pretty sure of this. It went something like this, I was just boredly sitting on my bed thinking, thinking about all those people in those big cities in Asia and other places and how every two seconds or something, someone dies and how many of them go to hell, when God said--"said"--

"Well, what about you?"

To which I quickly and matter-of-factly replied, "Who-- me? Nah, I'm just . . . me. Just Seth. I'm not a missionary. No one in my family has ever--"

I think God kind of interrupted me there, but it was OK because I really had nowhere else to go; He said,"Why not? What does it really take to be a missionary?"

I was dumbfounded (you never win even a single point in a debate with God): "Huh . . ."

And He kept on coming, "If not you, then who? Who else?"

I think I changed the subject at that point, because there was no decision yet. It was something more organic than that. God changed my thinking with that conversation. It was more organic than some flash of light at midnight, called by a vision thing. Almost reflexively, I started to take an interest in missions, in traveling, in foreign cultures. I made a public commitment at my church the next year or maybe just a couple of months later, but that wasn't really the big deal. That's not what's kept me going towards the coasts, towards the airport terminals. I know some people say you have to have this "missionary call" or whatever, but that's bologne. How do you know what God designed you to be? I don't know. It's different for everyone. Love God and follow your dreams, pursue what you're passionate about.

I don't tell you about my "conversation" with God in order to give you a template of some mystical "missionary call." My point is don't rule yourself out, just because you don't think you're anyone special like a-- oooh!-- a missionary! Just think about it. Pray about. Ask yourself: why not?

So back to dark and forsaken places. Why? Well, I guess, I figure that if I'm going to be a missionary because we desperately need reinforcements, I'm going to go where those reinforcements are needed most: the darkest places. Of course, that's pretty general, and I may start out in a less dark place (like China) just to get my bearings and some experience until a more specific burden takes shape.

All in His image.

at the Bookstore. 28 April, 2009.

The first lady pours her heart out to me. She's old and the doctor gives her no hope. Another doctor seeks to make her life better. He's a good physician. She's read a lot and thought a lot. She's lived a good life. She wears a cross from a necklace. Not afraid to share what she believes. Even to her class. But that was back when she was a high school English teacher. The world is different now. She's scared for her grandkids. "You have no idea what life used to be like in the world I grew up in . . . and that's too bad." She doesn't like our new President. Thinks he's doing a log of damage to our country. She's not afraid to say what she believes. "he stands on foreign soil and tells people that America is not a Christian nation anymore." And there is hurt and frustration apparent in her eyes, in her voice, "Now, tell me, why is that man our President?!" But she just saw her doctor today and just needed someone to talk to about it-- and life. So she thanks me for listening, and I thank her for sharing. She's inspired me tonight-- in some different way-- by her tenacity towards doing what she believes to be right and making a difference. For God. She's a Godsend. Another thank you and "have a good night!"

The second lady is with her husband. He's leaving, but she comes back to the counter. Gotta have that Tommy Tenney Journal. "I have observed something about you: you are a good listener." Ironically, I'm speechless. She elaborates. I thank her and try to praise God's grace. "Good night."

And I am alone again. No one to listen to. Only thoughts. But there's a little boy out in the mall. And he's helping his dad push his baby sister in the stroller. And there's the lady with her husband. Somewhere. And somewhere there's a lady dying with her diabetes. Somewhere there is a boy growing up with his baby sister. And she just wants someone to talk to. He just wants to be a grown-up big brother. She just wants to live. And we're all so different. Somewhere out there are a lot of different people. All made in HIS image.

The Hated.

Am I ready to be hated?

It's a question I've had to ask myself a lot the past year or so. I keep asking it to myself, because I can't seem to get a straight answer out of me. Oh, I'm sure I'm ready to die, even to be tortured by people of another religion and culture who probably barely speak English and view me as this dangerous criminal against communism or Islam or some tribe's voodoo-- something dramatic like that. But am I ready to be hated by my friends at work?

Am I ready to be hated by those I love? "hated"-- in a way-- or just not understood, scoffed at, not supported, disrespected. Am I ready to stand firm when other well-meaning believers try to convince me I'm being unwise, "not a good steward," or just plain too radical? Am I willing to love that recklessly?

Am I ready to be hated?

I don't really have anything to add to Jesus' words; just not sure i'm ready . . .

Mat 5:10-12 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
Luk 6:22-23 "Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”

Mat 5:44 "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Mat 10:16-25 "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. . . . Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved . . . A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.

Joh 15:17-20 “These things I command you, so that you will love one another. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

Rom 12:14 “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”

2Tim 3:12 “Those who try to live a godly life because they believe in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”