Legacy of Calling

Over the next couple days, I am going to be highlighting different students that need help attending Urbana. My unabashed hope is that you will fall in love with these students, and in turn donate money or frequent flier miles to help them attend. 

Wait, you don't know what Urbana is yet? 

(I am a terrible staff worker)

You should go to the website. 

Then you should DEFINITELY watch this video (warning, Billy Graham will give you goosebumps on your goosebumps). 


I love Urbana. I answered the call to come on staff at Urbana. I learned how much the American Church needed the Global Church at Urbana. 

God is doing something. Every week, another student who just met us asks me if we have money to help. One student, nicknamed "T" asked me if I could help her. Her dad won't let her drive (she lives in Akron, Ohio). She said to me "if I could get my flight paid for, I can go. He won't help. Is there anything we can do?" 

Who is T? She is a new leader of our first Black Student Bible Study. She is a member of God's Harmony (the WSU Gospel Choir). She is smart. Funny. Missional. She is a FRESHMAN. She wants to go to Urbana and lead with IV for the next 3 1/2 years. 

So yes, I want your money. But I want to re-invest in the Kingdom of God. I want to re-invest in the Inland NW. I want re-invest it in global missions. 

If you want to give, give here.

And keep coming back here! I am going to start uploading pictures and stories of students who need help. I want you to love students like T with me! They are great. They inspire me. I hope they can inspire you too,

Pain

Physical therapy.

I hate the idea of doing (more) physical therapy. I skipped it for the torn meniscus, but it looks like my recent back pain is going to take me back. Well then.

If you can permit me a moment to list my injuries:

• Simple arm break x5
• Compound arm fracture x1
• Ankle spiral fracture (requiring surgery) x1 
• Tibial Plateau Fracture (including a dislocated kneecap) x1
• Torn ligaments in shoulder x1
• Torn ligaments in knee x1
• Torn meniscus x1

Now, this post is not about you feeling sorry for me (though if you want to for a minute, I'll take it), but to reflect on pain. I joke with my friends that I have a tremendous pain tolerance, but a low discomfort tolerance. For example, when I broke my ankle I drove myself to the hospital. I thought I had a sprain! I thought a break would hurt more. I ended up having surgery at the earliest possible moment. Does that make me sound tough? Well anyone who has ever endured me taking 3 bathroom breaks during an hour long meeting will attest that I am not nearly as tough when it comes to discomfort.

Why is this? I think that it comes down to mindset. When I am injured, I slip into a different mode. I anticipate pain and I am able to push through. I make jokes. I focus on everything but the pain. I am sure anyone who has ever been injured does the same thing. Pain destroys normalcy. The pain is all that matters, thus it can be dealt with. Life stops for pain.

Discomfort is a different animal. Discomfort is not easily ignored. It doesn't destroy normalcy, it joins in with normalcy. It occupies your mind and space, along with work and family. It demands your focus, even though it isn't severe enough to be granted your full attention.

That is what may back feels like. It is there. It is always there. Every moment I spend with my wife. Or kids. Or students. Or Jesus, is accompanied by a degree of pain or discomfort. Every chair feels wrong. Every standing position feels just off. It feels like wearing a pair of underwear that is two sizes too small. Except twice and hour the underwear electrocutes you. Or something.

The problem is, when do you deal with that kind of discomfort? It is never the most important thing for you to do. I'll confess, my back has hurt for months, but without a spasm last week, I wouldn't have seen a doctor.

I bet you can guess where I am going, but let's go there. How does this apply to life? How much soul discomfort do we tolerate because it doesn't feel painful enough to stop everything for?

In the course of life, there are moments of extreme pain that stop everything and demand full attention. Death. Divorce. Legal troubles. These stop everything. And I have noticed that most of us actually do WELL in these moments. We buckle down and get stuff done. We are strong for everyone else. We step up.

But what about the steady, gnawing issues? The addictions that don't seem to be causing problems. The doubt. The fear. The persistent feeling of inadequacy. Do we stop and deal with these, or do we wait for the crisis?

I have been reflecting for the past year or so on Jesus' command to not worry (Matthew 6:25-34). I have noticed how little worry I tend to have in major moments. I am not worried leading inner city projects. I just believe in God's protection. I don't worry about my staff overseas. I rarely struggle with existential questions when faced with death. But daily? I worry all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. I worry about money. I worry about my kids. My health. My wife's life satisfaction. My standing with people I respect. My standing with people I don't respect. My standing with God. Okay, so I worry about how other perceive me.

I find it interesting in Jesus' instruction not to worry that he focuses on what you will eat, drink, wear and tomorrow. I don't perceive that Jesus is talking about major crises of the day, but I think he talking about very, very basics. The day to day stuff. I think that is much, much harder to respond to normalcy with faith than it is crisis moments.

I have begun to think that faith in "big" moments is easy. It is confidence in Jesus in regular moments that is hard. Jesus' invitation to learn a worry-less existence from him is radical because he wants to invade our normal.

I would rather have a broken leg than a bad back. I know how to deal with pain. It's the gnawing that I can't stand. However, my life (spiritual, emotional) is so much more acquainted with the gnawing. I am sensing an invitation to notice. Notice my back (as if I could ignore it!). But also to notice my feelings. My fears. My worries. My compulsions. Notice the gnawing. I know how to give Jesus the big. Now I think he wants the small. At eighteen I came to realize that my life was too much for me to carry. Now I am learning just how little of it I can actually bear. Is a less productive me and less loved me? Scripture says "no". My mind often says "of course!". Such is the burdens I am invited to lay down.

I think learning to live free of worry starts with noticing all of the gnawing and entrusting those things to Jesus. Facing the gnawing is tough. It is like noticing how bad you have to pee. No one wants to highlight that which makes them uncomfortable. But I am coming to believe that is the way to knowing Jesus in the small. I need to know Jesus in the small.

Now if you excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.

Why I have been posting about Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice

I remember in August, watching the first round of protests in Ferguson. Watching is a strong word, I don't have cable and even if I did, the major news networks had no cameras in Ferguson. I "watched" via Twitter. I began following protest leaders and journalists who have been talking about race and police violence for years. I will never scrub from my mind images of tanks rolling through an American city. Never.

Getting my initial news from protesters was a strange experience. I am used to hearing from professional journalists first. Not from the streets, not from the fray.

I think that has shaped much of my interpretation. Prior to that night (which humorously, involved me watching Muppets Most Wanted with my family while constantly refreshing Twitter), I had used terms like "systemic injustice", but I had no knowledge of the number of police killings of black men. I would have assumed it was higher than whites, but I had no understanding of how skewed the ratio is. According to the Centers for Disease Controlled and Prevention, blacks are killed by police at twice their rate of the general population. Are more simply, African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but are victims of 26 percent of all police shootings. 

And very few people from outside of the black community knew, or cared until people started protesting and tweeting about what happened between Mike Brown and Darren Wilson.

I have heard from friends who believe this is a media creation. It isn't. The media had no interest in Mike Brown (or Trayvon Martin before him). Protesters and social media started the story.

Absent of my friendship with a black friend who was tweeting and posting of facebook like crazy, my first exposure to the story would have been CNN, or another national news source. I am indebted to my friendship with someone more personally impacted for gaining a grassroots perspective.

But this is all background data. I want to talk about why I personally care, post stories, host prayer vigils and unabashedly feel like there is a major problem with race, power and policing in America. I realize many who I consider good friends disagree with me. That's fine. I don't expect universal agreement. But recently I spoke with a friend who misinterpreted a comment I made on facebook over a year ago and came to some pretty inaccurate conclusions about my beliefs. I would rather explain in long form and hopefully further dialogue.

For simplicity, I am going to say what I believe and don't believe about these issue. I will start with the negative, frankly because it seems like where most anger and misinterpretation exist.

What I don't believe:

• I don't believe that Mike Brown was necessarily "innocent". I use innocent in quotations here because of all the charges that have been levied at Mike Brown. So yes, I concede that Mike Brown probably hit Darren Wilson and generally acted aggressively in a mutually aggressive situation. He also probably enjoyed weed and was a jaywalker. All of these crimes probably earned him an arrest and potential jail time. So no, Mike Brown was not innocent of the crimes that have been lobbied against him in death.
• I don't believe Darren Wilson consciously chose to kill Mike Brown because he was black. While I believe racism is alive and well, don't think that Darren Wilson likely is a proud racist killing black people out of a personal agenda. This is also likely true for the police in Staten Island and Cleveland.
• I don't believe that Darren Wilson would have been found guilty in a trail. As much as I wanted an indictment and spent hours raging and praying about their not being one, I don't think that Wilson would have been convicted. In America today, if an officer "feels" in danger, they are authorized to use lethal force. I think that is asinine, but people are not convicted by the laws we want, but the ones we have.
• I don't believe that Mike Brown was a super human demon. I have honestly not been more horrified by any aspect of this case than I was listening to every white member of a panel on NPR agree that Darren Wilson made for a compelling witness. I read the testimony. He assigned mythical powers to Mike Brown. The ability to run through bullets, the possession of super-human strength, the power throw a death punch. I don't necessarily think that Wilson is a liar, but I think that his recollections are impacted by other factors. 

What I believe:

• I believe the justice system is skewed to protect police. I will not attempt to quote this whole article, so just read it: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/.  Basic gist, if a case to goes to a grand jury, there will be an inditement. Unless you're a cop. That is wrong. When you combine this reality with the increased likelihood of blacks being shot by  police officers, you end up with a system that blocks the pursuit of justice. 
• I believe that the police are given too much leeway in how they enforce laws. From Randly Balko of the Washington Post: 

             Sen. Rand Paul took some heat this week for pointing out that Eric Garner was essentially executed for selling untaxed cigarettes. I’m not sure why this is a controversial thing to say (especially since Paul also explicitly said the video itself was “horrifying”). Every law, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is enforced with the threat of violence: If you fail to follow it, the state is saying it reserves the right to use violence to force you to comply and/or force you to submit to a penalty for violating the law. Every law passed also creates more opportunities for interaction with police officers, the people entrusted to use the violence necessary to enforce the laws. How a proposed law will be enforced, and potentially abused, ought to be considered in addition to the content of the law itself.

For example, primary seat belt laws give cops another way to racially profile black motorists. It’s another excuse for a pretext stop. Earlier this year, I put up a post about the harrowing video showing South Carolina state trooper Sean Groubert firing a barrage of bullets at motorist Lavar Jones as Jones reached for his driver’s license. Groubert had pulled Jones over because Jones wasn’t wearing his seat belt. It isn’t the first time a seat belt stop has escalated to violence. In September, an Indiana family filed a lawsuit stemming from a seat belt stop that resulted in police smashing a car window and tasering one of the occupants. A Georgia family has filed a lawsuit after a traffic stop last January that ended with a teen being pulled from the car and handcuffed at gunpoint. He was cited only for not waring a seat belt. A seat belt stop in Florida last year led to an officer inadvertently running over and killing 38-year-old Marlon Brown.

Now, I doubt that New York city council anticipated that failure to comply with this particular law would result in a man’s death, any more than legislators in Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina, or Florida anticipated that seat belt enforcement could end in tasings, shootings, or arrests. But you enforce the laws with the police institutions you have, not the police institutions you want. Low-level offenses are a tool police sometimes use to do sweeps for outstanding warrants, or as part of a “broken windows”strategy of law enforcement. These are tactics overwhelmingly deployed on low-income and minority communities. 

I realize that some Balko's ideas sound a little Libertarian, but I feel like his large points are worth looking at. If police are practicing "broken windows" law enforcement (basically treat petty crimes with great seriousness and it will clean up larger crimes before they occur), then they should be obligated to practice the same policy on themselves. Treat even small infractions concerning abuse with absolute seriousness. Self-police more harshly than you police others. Isn't that the heart of Jesus' teaching about removing splinters with a log jammed in your own eye? Furthermore, as long as police have carte blanche on how they enforce the law, we may have a moral obligation to only have laws that are deemed worthy of intensely physical enforcement.

• I believe that people operate with personal prejudice and that police are people. From Constance Rice, a Civil Rights lawyer who works with LAPD to build trust between white cops and black communities: 

          Cops can get into a state of mind where they're scared to death. When they're in that really, really frightened place they panic and they act out on that panic. I have known cops who haven't had a racist bone in their bodies and in fact had adopted black children, they went to black churches on the weekend; and these are white cops. They really weren't overtly racist. They weren't consciously racist. But you know what they had in their minds that made them act out and beat a black suspect unwarrantedly? They had fear. They were afraid of black men. I know a lot of white cops who have told me. And I interviewed over 900 police officers in 18 months and they started talking to me, it was almost like a therapy session for them I didn't realize that they needed an outlet to talk.

They would say things like, "Ms. Rice I'm scared of black men. Black men terrify me. I'm really scared of them. Ms. Rice, you know black men who come out of prison, they've got great hulk strength and I'm afraid they're going to kill me. Ms. Rice, can you teach me how not to be afraid of black men." I mean this is cops who are 6'4". You know, the cop in Ferguson was 6'4" talking about he was terrified. But when cops are scared, they kill and they do things that don't make sense to you and me.

This makes so much sense to me. In spite of my personal experiences with black men (good friends, spiritual leaders, never one violent or threatening situation), I still find myself nervous on city streets and at night. This is in part to still being part of mostly white communities (InterVarsity, Moscow Idaho, WSU, my church) and in part because I have been told over and over again by news and television programs to fear black men (especially "thugs", whatever that actually means).

But, as long as our laws only require that police "feel" scared, then they are going to be more inclined to act more violently towards those they perceive to be scary.

• I believe this is a spiritual issue. I believe that world has a real spiritual enemy. I believe that he wants to kill and destroy. I believe that unity is antithetical to his purposes. Racism; deep embedded fear of the "other" increases his purposes and takes us further from the dream of Revelation 7:9, of every "tribe, tongue and nation" praising God together. (Right now, do you feel like white and black church are closer than they were 6 months ago?) If irrational (and generally unnoticed and unexamined) fear is combined with institutional power, it bombs unity and costs lives. Both serve to benefit the kingdom of the devil and weaken the witness of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is as old as Eden. This is why Jesus went to Samaria, drove merchants away from the Gentile gate and commanded Peter to not call anything that he made unclean. Jesus' ministry of reconciliation wasn't PC, it was Kingdom building. Over half of the New Testament is written by Paul; and Jewish, Roman Citizen. He left positions of comfort and safety to boldly cross lines of division. This is the work of the Kingdom. I believe with all my soul that these long term, long standing places of injustice and prejudice and violence are being exposed by the Holy Spirit Himself (yes, I think God can use Twitter). 

          The uncomfortable reality that we in the white church need to embrace is that the perspective of the New Testament is the perspective of persecution and occupation. The early church was so harshly persecuted, that to call anything that the white Christians are encountering now persecution is borderline insulting (yes, including IVCF's campus access issues). The challenge that faces most of us is how to translate these early church writings into a post-Christendom context. I worry that we are used to empire-defending, because we are used to being the empire. When events happen like are happening in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island they rupture our sense of injustice and re-calibrate our sense of victim hood. It is simply easier to look away, or to blame the source of that rupturing. 

• I believe that is time to listen. I have been accused of making many of these problems worse by using terms like "white" church and "black" church (as well as Latino, Asian, etc). My response is simple: look at Sunday mornings in America. Our churches, for the most part are segregated. And as such, our theology is shaped by our cultural experiences. This is why during a time of civil unrest around race, white Christians need to lend their ears to black Christian leaders. We are one body. We can't now (especially now) ignore part of our body. Paul (who was a cross-cultural missionary, who bridged the gap between race, power and politics) says: 

15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.-- 1 Corinthians 12:15-26, NIV

It is imperative that we listen right now. We have to have "equal concern for each other" right now. Here is a great place to start: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2014/12/05/eric-garner-black-christians-react-anger/

• Final Thoughts: I don't expect total agreement. I don't expect Christian Democrats to start voting Republican, or vice versa. I don't expect to see masses of white Christians join protests who are not inclined to do so already. But I do hope and pray for respect. I do hope for listening ears. I do hope to see issues like these discussed in churches. I have had several white Christian friends say to me: "people don't realize how much better it is now than during the 60's. People are ungrateful". Try hearing that. Try hearing someone say to you: "I realize that it is bad and that black people are more targeted and villianized than white people,  but it's about as good as it can be expected to be". That is not solidarity. That is not mourning with those who mourn. We get to disagree with the "how's" and even the "why's" for the inequality that is being painfully exposed right now. But I don't believe that we get to ignore it or call coverage of it inconvenient. Our body is wounded. We need all of our limbs. 

   

 

"God is Not Dead" and the Danger of Provoking Christians

I have been asked several times if I have seen the film God is Not Dead. I mostly laugh off the question by telling people that I have limited time and money budget for films and Winter Soldier took up all the allotted funds.

That answer is partially true. I would rather see the Captain America movie than watch Hercules as an evil Philosophy professor. Generally, Christian movies don't have a great reputation for being well made or nuanced (yes, I realize that I just implied that a Marvel comic movie has more nuance than Christian films. I defy anyone to prove me wrong). Winter Soldier on the other hand, flipped the entire Marvel film universe upside down! Seriously, see this film.

As I understand the premise, God is Not Dead is about a college student who is bullied into acknowledging that God doesn't exist by zealously Atheist philosophy professor. The student is threatened with a failing grade if he chooses to acknowledge God's existence without proving it to a degree that is satisfying for the professor. I can see why people would want me to see this film. I am a missionary to the University world and I have Philosophy degree. From the outside looking in, I may seem like the target audience for a film like this. In actuality, I have gone from not caring about the movie, to being disturbed by its existence (which yes, will lead me to actually seeing it).

I went to a Christian high school and public University. I have spent significant time in both the Christian and secular education worlds. While I was in high school, scores of recruiters from Christian colleges visited our school. They emphasized not only their educational standards, but their mission to raise Christians who could combat secularism and fight the good intellectual fight for the faith. To listen to these recruiters, there was an army of professors who saw it as their life mission to torpedo the faith of thousands of incoming freshmen every year. Going to these Christian schools would not only protect your faith, but would make you an agent for good that could beat back these influencers.

If you know my story, you know that I not only went to Washington State University, but had a profound re-introduction to Jesus. The faith decisions that I made at my secular college continues to influence my life, both personally and vocationally. In my studies, I was never asked to abandon my faith or ridiculed for having it. As a philosophy major, I wrote about Jesus and his influence in almost every paper I wrote. If I saw an opportunity to juxtapose Jesus and Kant, I took it. As long as I made good and thoughtful arguments, I was never punished for my views. My grades were fine and the higher level my classes were in my major, the more my own thoughts and opinions were welcomed. As far as I know, none of my professors shared my beliefs, but that didn't cause them to deride them. While I was a middle of the road student, the two most accomplished students in my class were also professing Christians.

Somewhere between 50-75% of  incoming Christian freshman college students will leave the faith by the time they are 30 (according the Pew Research Group and Barna). That is a sobering fact. No one seems to totally understand how to stem the tide. Concerned parents, pastors and church-goers want to understand why. It seems like in humanity, we prefer simple answers that make intuitive sense, rather than complicated answers that draw from a variety of sources. Universities become the villains in the narrative that surrounds this exodus. Sometimes it is simpler to narrow that villainy to the professors. I also can imagine that there are enough stories of particularly militant professors out there to create a confirmation bias ("my best friends cousin's nephew was told that only science can be fact"). Truth be told, I have looked for simple solutions to a complex problem in my desire to be more effective on campus.

InterVarsity's (my employer) vision is to see "Students and Faculty Transformed, Campuses Renewed and World Changers Developed". I will be the first to admit that "Campuses Renewed" feels like the most daunting task. Campus renewal is a huge call, that requires not only a desire to see the campus be more Christ-centered, but a deep and authentic love for the University. That is my actual issue with God is Not Dead. I love the universities. I see the ones in my Area as my home. I love the environment of learning. I agree John Ortberg's statement that "ignorance is the devil's tool, that God is the God of truth". As long as Universities serve as the mustache twirling villains in the Christian imagination, they are not places to be renewed, but to be torn down.

I am deeply grateful for my college education. My philosophy degree serves me every day. I learned how to think and how to reason. I learned how to form effective arguments. I learned that I don't get to take my ball and go home when I don't like what someone else is saying (I also am aware that in most of my classes, I would have been docked for that cliche).

I also can freely acknowledge that WSU was and is not perfect. In fact it was pretty screwed up. In my 14 years in the Palouse, we rarely go a year without an ugly racial or sexually motivated hate crime emanating from my Alma Mater. Drinking is a real issue, and it leads to death, sexual coping and wasted years that do not result in degrees. Pervasive loneliness drives hundreds of students into video game addictions that remove people from real community and relationships.

And yes, while there are about a dozen Christian groups active, only about 10% of the campus is engaged in Christian community. The exodus is alive and well at WSU.

Dallas Willard commented that general attitude towards God at universities is not hostility, but irrelevance. Students are not told that their faith is a matter of the lack of intelligence, but it is actually minimized to being a insignificant part of who they are. Students are told by pastors and parents that they are supposed to "put God first", yet they spend almost all of their time working on majors that seem to them to be completely disconnected to their faith. On the campuses that I work, God is not dead, he is "cute". How is a weekly one-hour Bible study, or worse, a twice a year trip to a home church supposed to compete with such a pervasive message?

I think that we need to help students see that their majors and their studies are important parts of their own faith lives and of God's purposes in the world. God IS a God of truth. God loves knowledge and is the author of all knowledge. Their faith belongs in the classroom, because without God their is no classroom.

Jesus was more than a teacher, but he was still a teacher. Jesus educated people. He called his followers to follow him with their hearts, strength and minds. The message that the university needs is not that God exists, but that he matters. He matters in engineering, biology, sociology, politics and yes, in philosophy.

Too many students come into college with the message; "find a nice Christian group, hunker down and don't lose your faith". What would it look to invite our students to engage the campus, learn all you can learn, find God's fingerprints in your major and point them out until others can also see?

I think that if everyone could see the campus that I see fear would be replaced by compassion and excitement about what could happen. Millions of students every year are exposed to teachings that can change their lives and their communities. Now we have to learn how to get better at helping that experience be part of their faith development. We need to lay down our fear, and ask God for new eyes to see. We need to repent of any fear of knowledge that we have and instead ask for God to be revealed. We can only learn what God already knows. Jesus, as God in the flesh, was the smartest person to ever walk the earth, and he was called "teacher". Let us walk in the footsteps of our creator, savior and teacher.  

Nicodemus

I was recently asked to write and act out a biblical character's response to Jesus' resurrection for an Easter sunrise service. I chose Nicodemus.

If his name isn't familiar to you, he is a Pharisee who shows up three times in John's gospel. Once, he investigates who Jesus is at the beginning of Jesus' ministry (John 3). Another time, he tries to convince fellow Pharisees to seek more information about Jesus before arresting him (John 7). Finally in John 19, he along with a "secret disciple" name Joseph, claim Jesus' body and lay it in a tomb.

Nicodemus' first interaction with Jesus is his most famous. In this interaction, we find Jesus talking about the need to be "born again" and the famous John 3:16 passage occurs ("For God so loved the world that he gave is only begotten son, so that however believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life."). Nicodemus' other occurrences are rarely mentioned.

I went into this project unsure whether I was going to portray Nicodemus as convert, or as a curious person who was reluctant to make a final decision about Jesus. It is difficult to accurately portray someone's response to the resurrection when their entire story is left so open ended.

But it was the open-endedness of Nicodemus that intrigued me so much. In his first interaction he approaches Jesus under the cover of night, and with pretentious flattery. By the end of the conversation he is dumbfounded and silent. This is not uncommon for Pharisees in the gospels. What is unusual about Nicodemus is that he comes back. He advocates for Jesus (if ever so slightly) in front of his peers and he steps out of the night to ask for Jesus' body. Remember, the night of Jesus' crucifixion, every disciple except for John bailed on Jesus. Nicodemus was there.

I think that Nicodemus should be the model of the gradual conversion. He let Jesus and his words haunt him. When Jesus humbled Nicodemus, he let himself become affected at a deep level. Nicodemus had a ton to lose, and some church lore says he indeed lost it all, eventually becoming a church martyr in the 1st Century.

I admire disciples who immediately follow Jesus. Levi, James, John, Peter...these guys had the guts to drop everything to follow Jesus. Maybe Nicodemus doesn't measure up to them. But the good news of the gospel and of Easter is that it is not about measuring up. I know so many more Nicodemus' than Peter's. I know many who are on the Nicodemus road right now; trying to decide if Jesus is trustworthy and worth the risk.

Below is the rough draft on my monologue. Seems appropriate to post it here, since everything I write here is a rough draft. Please take a look at it. And if you are so moved, pray for a Nicodemus in your life. You never know where people really go when the step back into the night.

 There are two things in my life that I have really wanted; to be a Pharisee and to see the Messiah. I fear that it has been revealed in my actions which was more important to me.

I should go back to the beginning. My name is Nicodemus. I first met Jesus a few years ago, during Passover. I came to see at night, after he had made a scene at the Temple. I came at night because it had been a long day.

No.

I came at night because I was afraid. Even then, Jesus was not well-liked by my companions. The spoken reasons were varied; he wasn’t educated, he was a rabble-rouser, he was irreverent. I think at that point though, we were angry that he didn’t need us. He held sway over the people; our people, and we weren’t part of his world. The council asked me to go and talk to him.

I was nervous. I had heard about his healings and was transfixed by his boldness in the temple. I think it was my nervousness that caused me to blurt out how we knew he was from God. I tried to endorse him. I would learn that evening that Jesus never wanted, or needed endorsement. I have never met a man who was less concerned about other people’s opinions of him. I thought that he was stonewalling me after that. I thought that our conversation was all about him keeping me at arm’s length. I thought that I blew it.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized that he was actually inviting me to be “born again”. He longed for me…FOR ME, to be born of the Spirit of God. He talked about freedom; being like wind. No one knew how trapped I felt; no one but Him. By the time he spoke about the “Son of Man being lifted up”, my head was spinning. I forgot that the snake in the desert was for the healing of the people. I stumbled back into the night. Exhilarated and confused.

You know, I thought that just maybe this was all going to work. It seems so naive now. I thought that if my brothers could meet him, he would exhilarate them too. But as you know, it never happened. First it was Sabbath healings. Then his claims of being God’s son. But throughout it all, it was his indifference towards us. They were so angry that he would heal on the Sabbath, but they were so much angrier that he never wanted to debate us about it. He didn’t care about proper channels. He wounded their theology, sure. But he more so wounded their pride.

In my self-deception, I still thought the relationship could be saved. Jesus was clearly from God, we were teachers of the Torah…there had to be hope right? I believed that right up to the next Passover. Jesus again appeared in the courts, now declaring Himself the living water. You should have seen the faces of my brothers, they were furious. They sent guards to arrest him. When the guards came back empty handed, only with their own amazement about Jesus’ teachings, my brothers exploded in anger. I mustered up the last bit of my courage and reminded them that our investigation of his claims were still incomplete, but stopped short of saying what my heart was screaming, “he may be the one!”

I am not sure why I was surprised when they shot me down. But I did, finally know then that it was over.

I have told myself since then that I didn’t leave because I still had hope. Maybe I could do more from the inside than I could from the outside. But in reality I didn’t leave because I was a coward. When I stumbled out from my meeting with Jesus into the night…I never really left. More and more, I wanted to be born again. I was tired. I was tired of my life and my politics, but I also felt increasingly stuck in them. Not to mention that being a Jesus follower went from being crazy to dangerous.

During the trial, I just watched. Horrified, I just watched. Whatever nerve I had to speak up was lost. I was silenced. Silenced by the darkness.

It wasn’t until he was up on the cross that something happened. For years I had been living in a fog, but when I looked up at him, I remembered his words; “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,^[f] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” He told me three years prior that it would come to this. He knew. He knew me, he knew us, he knew the people. We were dying, he was the cure.

I didn’t know how to respond, but I knew Joseph was going to ask Pilate for His body. I went with him. I spent a fortune on aloes and spices. I know…too little, too late, but I had to do something! Have you been in that position; when everything becomes clear and you have to respond; even if that response seems woefully inadequate?

When I heard that he rose from the dead, my response surprised me. I believed, even when I expected to be cynical. I tried to be objective, but I knew…no, I KNOW that it is true. For the first time in…I don’t know how long, it feels like daytime. Three years ago, Jesus created a deep discontent inside of me. Now, I have no position other than being a disciple of someone the world thinks of as a failure and crackpot. My family thinks I am crazy, and many of my new brothers doubt my worthiness. In many ways I agree with both my family and fellow disciples. I think I am crazy, and I cannot say why anyone should count me worthy. But I can’t go back. I can’t go back to the darkness. I bought a tomb, and ended up more alive than I have ever been before. I will not go back.   

Would Jesus Eat Frybread?

Hello all.

November 8-11 I was privileged to take a University of Idaho student to InterVarsity's national Native American Student Conference entitled "Would Jesus Eat Frybread?". WJEF (as I will now call it for short), was hosted in the Yakama Nation. I have been thinking about how to process my experience into words for awhile. This is in part as a result of a busy fall, and in part because my experience was so multi-layered. As a result, forgive me for choosing to reflect on my disjointed thoughts with bullet points.

• Why have a Native student conference? Because it is extremely necessary. Less than 1% of students on campus are Native. Many come from reservation life, which I am learning, is very different than any other culture in America. Many students who came to WJEF are the only Native students in their IV chapter (this is the case for the student I took from Idaho). The questions that they are asking cannot be adequately addressed by a Christian who does not have experience on the Res, no matter how well meaning that person may be.
• What happens at Native student conference? Here is where I need to make a confession, WJEF was the most cross cultural experience of my life. More so than being in China for six weeks and more so than living in a Latino neighborhood in the southside of Chicago. I first noticed that there was no powerpoint! Not even one slide! If you have been to a Christian conference before, you know how strange this is. Worship was led by an amazing women of God (Cheryl Bear. Google her and buy her music.). She led not only through music, but through stories. She told personal stories, she told the story of God and she exhorted students to follow God. She spoke directly (and sarcastically!) about how to reconcile ancestor worship and the "great cloud of witnesses" in Hebrews. In China I spent most of time in a classroom and in Chicago my church resembled churches I had grown up in (albeit in Spanish rather than English). WJEF, on the other hand, had very few of the trappings and rhythms that this "professional Christian" was used to. I had no idea how much I have began to assume that I will be an expert and Christian events. Lord have mercy.
• What am I taking away? More than I think I know. First of all, I have precious friend in this Idaho student. I am so honored that I was able to share the weekend with her. I am also challenged in how I see God. My prayer life is often rich in requests, questions and friendly familiarity (all important components of a relationship with Jesus). At WJEF though, I saw a prayer world that was filled with awe and gratitude; awe that God was powerful enough to create all that we can see and interact with and gratitude that we have a land and creation to occupy. For both our hosts from the Yakama Nation and from leadership from the outside was a constant reminder of the blessing of the land. Even though these were the First Nation Peoples of the land, no one seemed to treat the land with entitlement. This posture convicts me about my own entitlement and how that alters the way that I approach God and His blessings.
• What's next? God has opened an amazing door at Heritage College, which located in the Yakama Nation. Two students have decided that they would like to plant a Bible study and would like InterVarsity to come along side them with training and support. I will be traveling to Heritage on January 26 and I would invite anyone who is reading this to pray! I am honored that I will once again be a guest in the Yakama Nation. I am hoping to continue to learn, pray and serve in any capacity that I can going forward!

Please don't read this blog and think that you know what God is doing among Native students. I am so young in this process. Please visit http://mem.intervarsity.org/nm/about-native-ministries for more information about IV's work with Native students. Also, go to http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/CherylBear to buy some Cheryl Bear music. 

And of course, a picture: 

sometimes you just need to yell at God during a thunderstorm

Prayer is really weird.

Best I can tell, if God doesn't exist I am going to have spent thousands of years of my life talking to:

• my hands
• the inside of my eyelids
• car windshields
• hot coffee/tea
• walls
• my bible

...and tonight a thunderstorm. 

If God is real though, I will have spent such a small portion of my life talking to and listening to the only one who matters. 

Either way (talking to inanimate objects or the author of everything ever) it seems dumb how sanitized my prayers are. If I am usually praying to a windshield, I doubt that the windshield cares much about my diction or whether or not I use some salty language. I cannot fathom that my coffee cup cares if my laments make sense, or if they are petty. 

I also cannot really see how God would care either. 

Don't get me wrong, I am quite sure that God cares that I pray and the content of my prayers. I am just not sure that God is easily offended or turned off by the content of the prayers. If God really is the author, he is in the heads of his characters. I am already known. "Thou's", "oughts" aren't going to fool him. Neither are worthless and meaningless platitudes like, "but I know you care". I am sure he does, but when I am uttering that line, I rarely believe he does. Who wants a God who is so easily buttered up? 

This week, my small group is supposed to be working on prayer. I doubted that I would find this week so difficult. In my head it seems easy to be honest and even vulgar with one who knows my inner vulgarity. Yet when I close my eyes (or bow my head, or whatever) I find myself often incapable of actual honesty. All the formality and hypocrisy that so appalled me in my early Christian days takes over in me. Rather than honesty, I become tongue-tied. 

But, when faced with a thunderstorm tonight, it seemed easier. Something about the violence of the scene before me made it easier to pray the violent, angry prayers in my own heart. They came out of me like vomit. All of my internal anger found external expression. Somehow, I was able to believe that the God of the lightning I could see and the thunder I could hear would appreciate those prayers. I worry that if I am unfiltered that I am going to hurt people and break relationships. For once, I wasn't worried about breaking relationship with God. 

Maybe part of prayer is to daily affirm that God can handle our crap. That he is not unaffected by us. He hears the cry of his people, even if the rest of the world wouldn't find those cries to be very important. 

I am not feeling thankful for as much as I ought today. Gratefulness is not my strongest virtue. But today I am thankful for this; I am thankful for the God who hears. 

writing stuff

For as long as I can remember, I have thought of myself as a decent writer, who could become a good writer if I tried. Of course, I have never really tried.

There is power in this way of thinking. I could be good at something, if I tried to be good at something. If you don't try, you don't have to fail. If you never fail, you always could have succeeded. It is a vicious cycle, but one that I unfortunately know too well.

When I was a freshman in college, I watched the movie, then devoured the book High Fidelity. The book centers around a thirtysomething man who owns a record shop. He is a sharp musical critic, who analyzes everything in his life through his harsh critical lens. He is also profoundly unhappy. This book was actually essential in my journey towards following Jesus. It helped me see that most of what was keeping me from Jesus was my harsh criticism of other people, people who were trying, but often failing at living virtuously. Like in High Fidelity, I had to come to the point of recognizing that those who tried, failed and kept trying were significantly ahead of me; the critic who shielded himself in self perceived untapped potential.

Back to writing. Here are the excuses I make not to write:

• "I don't have time". False. I have time. I work out. I watch sports. I play Words with Friends. I have time. I don't make time. But that is an entirely different issue. 
• "I have nothing to say." Listen, everyone gets blocked. Our ideas get blocked, ambition gets blocked, even bowels get blocked. The reality is though that creativity spurs creativity. I used to be able to run 7-10 miles. I now can run 2. However, if I ran 2 miles everyday this week, I could probably run 3 next week, and so on. 
• "The world doesn't need another Christian no-it-all book/blog/tumblr/etc". Here is where it really is. 

I think of writing externally, not internally. Before I sit down to write, I think about the audience first. I try to imagine what no one else has said. I (rightly) conclude that everything has already been said.

But here is the rub, I think that I still need to say it. I have thought about writing or being a writer since I was 10 years old. That is 22 years! My writing dream can order a drink. By comparison, I have known my wife for 12 years. I graduated from college 10 years ago. I have followed Jesus for 14 years. My thought of being a writer is older than all but one of my friendships.

I don't think it would be healthy to allow another 20 years to pass or critiquing others or wondering if I could actually do that thing.

So I will try to be here more. I will try to extract more thoughts from my head and see if I can get any better at the process. If you enjoy it, let me know. If you see things I can improve on,  also let me know, but nicely. I'm in a vulnerable state with all of this. If there is a dream delayed for you and you want to give it a shot, let me know...it's fun to embark on the journey together!