New Wine

New Wine Articles by Scott Simpson originally published in New Wineskins 2012 issues

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Baptizing the American Dream

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Bounded or Centered?

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How I Overcame My Eating Disorder in Seven Courses

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My Paradox to Bear

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Why I Left? Questions, Questions…

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A Rock and a Hard Place

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Intimate Stranger

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Appearance or Substance?

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A Poem: Remnant Theology

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Ignore the Fine Print

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The Pro-Choice God

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When Thankfulness Isn’t Helpful

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The Great Escape

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Baptizing the American Dream

by Scott Simpson January, 2012 I do not choose to be a common man; it is my right to be uncommon if I can.

I seek opportunity, not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk, to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to a guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence, or dignity for a handout.

It is my heritage to think and to act for myself, to enjoy the benefits of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say: With God's help, this I have done.

--From the final pages of Success: The Glen Bland Method

I received the above quote from a Christian brother — a mature follower of Christ who sent this along with the admonition, “This is good for each one of us to adopt. I think you will like it.”

Why would he think I would like this? What exactly did he think would happen that would be “good” because of my adoption of this credo? And why would he think I needed something like this… as opposed to something like, the Beatitudes, or something from First John?

Could it be the current financial crisis? Could it be the current politicized debate over the “whys” of how much money has been lost on Wall Street? Could it be fear over the direction of the current president? The branding of him as a “socialist?” The “minority perspective” of this new commander-in-chief?

Could it be that my good, Christian friend and occasional mentor wasn’t thinking about Christ at all when he hit send, despite the obligatory “God’s help” near the end of the message? Could it be he was thinking of a baptized version of the American Dream?

Now, I’d love to simply chalk it up to differing political 2

beliefs and say, “let’s not let that come between brothers in the Kingdom…” but then, WHICH Kingdom are we brothers IN? The quote above demonstrates several “concessions” that I see consistently across the current face of American Christianity. Jesus has told us without exception that we can’t serve two masters — God and Money. I know that we all do, to some extent, but “baptizing” our tendencies toward the money-god is akin to placing the Idol in the temple of Yahweh and saying, “Won’t God be proud!” Then again, maybe “baptizing” is too strong a word for what’s happening. Let’s unpack Mr. Bland’s quote and see how it might differ from Kingdom ideology.

“I do not choose to be a common man, it is my right to be uncommon if I can.”

Contrast this idea with the beautiful description of the attitude of Christ which Paul says we need to have ourselves…

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!” ~ Philippians 2:6-8

It’s the “common man” whom Jesus spent his time with. It’s the common man whom Jesus defined as “Poor in Spirit.” It’s the common man, humbled in his own sin, of whom Jesus said, “He who has been forgiven much, loves much.” Jesus became the common man, born in a barn, raised in backwards Nazareth, no place to lay his head, despised and rejected. What is uncommon about Jesus is his capacity to embrace “commonality” in spite of his status as having been “ … with God in the beginning.

Through him (Jesus) all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. John 1:2b-3 This “Word becoming flesh” thing was a serious miscalculation. This was not a move up.

The son of God got “snookered,” as my grandpa’s coffee buddies used to say.

“I seek opportunity, not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk, to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.”

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Now, I could give my “A-men” to this… as it relates to the “state.” I don’t wish to gain my security from the “state.” I don’t long to have the “state” look after me… I don’t mind risk, dreaming, building, failing or succeeding… BUT… let’s be honest. The values driving this statement of “non-reliance” on the state have little to do with the Kingdom value of full reliance on God. The value that is consistently upheld in American society is self-reliance. “I want to take the calculated risk…” Who’s taking the risk? Who’s doing the calculating? I am. This “calculating I” sounds frighteningly reminiscent of the great minds that gave us the Credit Default Swap.

“I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to a guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence, nor dignity for a handout.”

There is, in these stated preferences, the implication that many among us prefer the “dole,” that there are plenty in our midst who desire no challenge, that many are waiting around for a “stale calm Utopia,” and that most of these people are ready and willing to trade their freedom and dignity for a “handout.”

Maybe. It’s possible.

But what do we do with those who never had anything to barter with? What of those whose challenges have overwhelmed them or who have literally never tasted fulfillment?

What of those born into slavery? Birthed into an existence devoid of dignity? What about “the least of these?” Can we, as people of the Kingdom, stand back and call the least of these to embrace their challenges … because we won’t give them any guarantees? Shall we keep them from the stale calm of Utopia… so they can somehow learn … fulfillment? Do we do them the favor of preserving their “dignity” and their “freedom” by refusing to give them anything … without payment?

What is most troubling is not that we believe this—most of us don’t—but rather that we don’t believe that this is really at the core of the Dream we are trying so desperately to baptize. There is an orderly, evaluative aura about the capitalist myth. Things make sense—those who work, eat… and sometimes even get fat. Those who don’t work, die.

The world stays orderly, and as long as I am at the top of the order, I want to keep it that way.

But what do we do with our God who, when at the top of the order of the cosmos, came down to the bottom to die for those who couldn’t help themselves? What do we do with the God of the ultimate undeserved “handout?”

"It is my heritage to think and to act for myself, to enjoy the benefits of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say: With God's help, this I have done."

In the end, it becomes clear. The “heritage” is very specific. What is valued is action taken “for myself,” action that leads to my enjoyment of “my own creations.” Remember 4

what the serpent said, just after the “…your eyes will be opened…” part? He said, “…and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” As our addiction to everything that our capitalist American society brings us deepens, so does our sense of “knowing” what’s best and what’s not. So does our sense of being “masters of our own destiny.” This is not surprising. We’ve been told of this from the very beginning, from Genesis through the prophets and right up through the Sermon on the Mount. What is troubling in this time of deep American financial crisis is that we have forgotten that we’ve been set free from this worry. Sure, we are in it, but not of it.

If our citizenship in the Kingdom of God teaches us anything, it is that the answer lies not in figuring out better financial solutions for ourselves so we can continue enjoying our own success, and then baptizing it all with a prayer and a tithe, the answer lies in the way of Jesus.

Can we see this? Can we see how radical the Kingdom is? Can we allow our own baptism to truly end life as we knew it, and reshape everything? Can we take on the gospel dynamic that says death actually leads to resurrection? That giving is actually better than receiving? That love has nothing to do with keeping things fair and everything to do with grace? If we get this, it means we won’t have a home in America anymore. It means we won’t fit into the free market system anymore. We’ll frustrate the cogs of the capitalist way of life. We’ll reveal the nightmare that is the flip side of the American Dream. We’ll be taken, ripped off, put out of the marketplace… maybe even left for dead… just like our King.

He chose to be a common man, relinquishing His right to claim equality with God. He sought to serve, abandoning security. As King, He humbled Himself submitting to death at the hands of worldly empires. Bypassing mere risk, He aimed for certain execution, showing that, to die is to live.

Refusing to barter, He claimed the last would be first. He chose the challenge of selfsacrifice, the fulfillment of His father’s long-told story. Trading His dignity to become sin for us, He delivered freedom to all… for free!

It is my heritage to think and to act as He did, to benefit His good creation, to face the world humbly, as He did, and say: Any good you see in me, this, God has done.

As you can see, I rewrote my friend’s forward. I don’t think I will send it back to him though-- I’m not sure how he’d take it. I care about our relationship—a lot. I don’t want things to digress into a hopeless polemic where he digs in his heels and I dig in mine.

But I’m worried about these concessions we’re making. We’re called to be salt and light, but sometimes we’re so tasteless and dim. What do I do?

Sometimes Christians are the toughest ones to talk to about Christ.

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Bounded or Centered?

by Scott Simpson February, 2012 “If I am lifted up, I will draw all men to me.” -- Jesus Identity’s everything when you’re a kid. But since identity is really a set of beliefs, a set of assumptions we make about ourselves, kids don’t think of it that way because children are unaware of the gap between the mind and reality. For a child, if I think it… that means it is.

Some people never outgrow that state.

So as we gain awareness about what our parents do, who they are, what they believe, what team they cheer for, what president they voted for, what make of automobile holds their loyalty, we plant our flag with each of those markers and begin defending them as though we’d believed them all along—because, for a child, there is no gap between belief and reality.

That’s how we come to develop our sense of family, our sense of tribe, if you will, and what it means to be a part of it.

There’s a lot of emotional weight placed on that sense of tribe. At some point, if I find my internalized ideas about Chevy pickups, or about President Obama, or about the Broncos coming into question, then not only is my identity threatened, not only is my sense of my parents’ or my group’s worldview threatened, but my sense of REALITY is threatened.

For the first time, I may begin to realize, “If I was wrong about THAT, then what else might I be wrong about?”

This emotional weight is why we look for boundaries. It’s why any interaction with others often leads us to a much clearer sense of how they are different from us, rather than how they might be similar, or at least moving in the same direction as we are. I need to affirm my identity, my family’s identity, my group’s identity. I need to affirm reality.

Groups define themselves in at least two fundamentally differing ways: 1) by their boundaries, and 2) by their center. Clubs are good examples of bounded groups. People are either in or out. If you’ve paid your dues, if your name’s on the roster, if you’ve completed the initiation, then you’re in. Otherwise, you’re out.

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In - Out - Boundary

Solar systems are a good example of centered groups. In a solar system, “out” and “in” are defined less by specific boundaries than by their relational attraction to the center: the sun.

Solar System

Sure, we can speak theoretically about the farthest distance the influence of a particular star reaches, but the defining factor isn’t distance or position. The defining factor is influence. As soon as a body comes under the influence of the unifying center, it’s part of the system, part of the group.

When I was young, I was part of a bounded church. Our identity came from our clearly defined boundaries. Being a “bounded” church strongly impacted my own sense of confidence, my sense of others (who were outside our boundaries) and resulted in the strong presence boundary issues had in our group’s teaching.

Confidence As a child in church, at first, of course, what my tribe believed was reality because my tribe believed it. But as I gained a broader sense of the world—came to understand that there were other perspectives, other ways of seeing and understanding things, and intelligent, good people who saw and understood them in these other ways— I needed something to ease the cognitive dissonance created by a world full of seemingly trustworthy adults who were often at odds.

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What I got from my church—almost all of the time—was the “evidences” approach. In other words, the way to solve doubt (and, of course, doubt was a thing to be solved) was through proof, by building scriptural evidences concerning the correct boundaries.

The issue here isn’t really whether the proof was valid or not, the issues were that, 1) knowing I was “in” was all important, and that, 2) knowing came by proving—usually “proof-texting.”

The difficult thing for me was that this method was really only a Band-Aid on the ache of waning confidence, and, in fact, it built the emotional weight up to a crushing level.

Think of the MASS of mounting evidence, placed like chips on a roulette wheel, all on one single number, MY church’s number. If at any point, an objection arises that I can’t prove away, everything tumbles. This weight actually undercuts the confidence it’s trying to build.

This was how our church defined faith in God, or faith in scripture—you worked yourself up rationally toward an absence of doubt— an absence of unanswered questions. But really, it was faith in my tribe’s set of assumptions about God or about scripture. And the very lack of questioning, the squelching of doubt, insured actual faith in God wouldn’t be grown. If we’d have had faith in God, we might not have been so scared to entertain real questions. We’d placed our bets, and it was all or nothing. In a situation like that, you know if you lose—really lose—there may be no coming back.

My church’s confidence builders didn’t build confidence; they constructed a stadiumsized domino design just waiting for a slight breeze, or a falling twig… or a smart agnostic.

Others We knew other kids who called themselves Christians, but we also knew EXACTLY why they weren’t really Christians. We could show you the book, chapter and verse. In fact, a youth-group buddy of mine, when we found ourselves on a school trip and in the church building of a group that was “other” than us, picked up a Bible from one of the pews and started thumbing through it.

“What are you looking for?” I asked him. He glanced up and smiled.

“Acts 2:38. I’m seeing if they have it in their Bibles… I know they don’t believe it.”

We were a bounded church because the boundaries we had all studied so desperately to prove to ourselves that we were right, became the relational lens through which we saw the rest of the world. It wasn’t just an intellectual thing for us. We felt the authenticity of others who disagreed with things we had learned were foundational to our identity as God’s people. We knew that in other areas, these were good, trustworthy, genuine people. That meant that it was dangerous to allow ourselves to actually know these others—we could only know about them. Trusting them threatened our whole system.

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And so what we knew about their beliefs came from tracts and youth studies on how to give answers to the false arguments of others. We didn’t move among them, we stood in the wings quoting the tribal scripts we’d practiced.

Many of them were quoting theirs right back, because they were bounded too.

Boundary Teaching The problem with teaching boundaries is that it assumes and promotes a non-relational system. You are in or you are out based solely on the rules and your particular actions in regard to them. That’s fine… but that’s not at all what we actually find in the Bible concerning God’s Kingdom. 

Bounded groups create an “us” and a “them” but Paul says Christ came to tear down dividing walls and that ours is a ministry of reconciliation. (Eph. 2 and 2 Cor. 5)

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Bounded groups gain identity from the details of their boundaries: what we believe about this issue and that issue; what we believe about the how, when and where of getting saved and added to the church; what we do and how we do it when we get together to do worship. But Paul tells us our identity is hidden with Christ in God. (Col. 3)

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Bounded groups treat others as projects to be won over, convinced or converted, but Paul tells us that it’s while we were yet sinners that Christ enacted His gracious act of death and resurrection out of love. (Rom. 5)

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Most importantly, bounded groups can’t call you brother or sister until you do certain things, perform certain acts or commit publicly to certain propositions about God or Jesus, while Jesus claims to be drawing ALL to himself, attracting everyone into a salvic system centered on himself. (John 12)

His gravitational influence is far wider than the walls of our churches.

In the parable of the wheat and the weeds, the disciples were taught very specifically that their job was not to sort. They were told that the field of the Kingdom would be filled with both wheat and weeds and that the sorting out was NOT their place.

In the parable of the banquet, those who should have been at the table didn’t come, and those who, by all accounts, shouldn’t have been there were brought in by the Master and seated and fed.

I’ve known all my life that religion is by definition bounded. But more recently, I’ve also 9

realized that God, the God who is agape love, is NOT bounded. He is, through Christ, destroying boundaries, opening up spaces for relational living, and transforming his good creation back into the kind of place that is centered on that love-nature so perfectly demonstrated in the cross and the resurrection.

The Kingdom of God is not bounded and boarded up like everything WE create.

Religion tries to teach people how to dress, how to act, what to say in order to enter into the banquet of the Kingdom. But Jesus? Well, he just sets the table and opens the doors, knowing that hungry people will come, and that good food sustains and transforms the dying into the living.

Whatever can be said about the issue of who we fellowship, I’ll only find MY sustenance at the table Jesus has set.

If the table I’m at is pretty exclusive, then it’s probably not His.

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How I Overcame My Eating Disorder in Seven Courses

by Scott Simpson March, 2012 I’ve rarely been really hungry. I’ve occasionally had a little craving for this or that—something sweet, or salty, or chocolaty… Sometimes I’ve had a really specific craving, like for my grandma Simpson’s fried okra, or my grandma Stockburger’s cinnamon rolls, or for my mom’s goulash, or for the fruit-shakes my wife blends up for me. But really hungry? Not so much.

First Course: I don’t know if the crowd in John chapter 6 are really hungry or not, but Jesus decides to feed more than 5000 of them. He asks Philip what they ought to do, and Philip brings up the issue of cost—it would take a half-year’s earnings just to give them all one bite!

You know the story, there’s a boy there with five loaves and two fish, and Jesus blesses the food and breaks it, and they feed everyone and have twelve baskets of leftovers.

Whether they were really hungry or not, they ate, and then they wanted more. Verse 15 says that Jesus knew “that they intended to come and make him king by force ...” and he decided to head for the hills by himself for a bit.

Having plenty sometimes sparks worry about insuring it will be available tomorrow.

Second Course: That evening the disciples were in a boat in a storm crossing the lake. Jesus freaked them out by walking on the water—in a storm no less! Once they calmed down and let him into the boat, they suddenly arrived safe and sound on the other side of the lake.

Fear over surrounding storms can cause us to think we’re a lot further from the shore (home) than we really are.

Third Course: The next morning, all those people who had the big meal finally found Jesus on the other side of the lake, “Hey! When did you get here Jesus?” they said. He told them not to work for food that spoils.

There’s a kind of food that doesn’t spoil.

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Fourth Course: But there’s an additional garnish on that last one. Jesus said don’t WORK for food that spoils. But he hadn’t made the “multitude” work at all for those loaves and fishes, had he? He just blessed them and handed them out. I’m sure now they were thinking, “Work for it? Why work when He’s so good at just making it and handing it out!” But they didn’t say that out loud. They asked the more respectable-sounding question concerning work: “What must we do to do the works God requires?” (verse 28).

Get that—what work should we do Jesus? How should we earn God’s favor so we can keep the bread and fish flowing?

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (verse 29) Jesus doesn’t give a “work” plan.

Fifth & Sixth Courses: Now, before this begins to sound like your run-of-the-mill grace vs. works dinner, let me point out a couple of subtleties.

1. They apparently had trouble remembering it wasn’t Moses but God who had fed them in the wilderness (verses 32-33).

2. Jesus’ statement makes it clear that receiving the bread or earning the bread or storing the bread or toasting the bread or spreading peanut butter on the bread or even distributing the bread doesn’t give life, EATING it does (verse 51 and on).

It’s tough to remember who’s supplying the food, AND it’s easy to play with the food instead of eating it.

Final Course: This “eating” thing was apparently so important to Jesus that he makes his absolute worst Public Relations move. He goes into great detail about how his flesh was real food and his blood was real drink and how, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The people begin to grumble, many leave and the disciples say right out loud, “this is a hard teaching.” Later critics even accused the followers of Jesus of cannibalism, pointing in part to this story as evidence.

Jesus knowingly lost followers to this teaching, despite the fact that in verse 39 he said, “I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.”

In some important sense, following Jesus is less important than eating him.

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I live very close to a people—and work with and among them—a people who are still very close to the spiritual nature of what they eat: the people of the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Oyate. You can read their sacred story of White Buffalo Woman by following this link.

I share this because I think our western perspective gives us some trouble with Jesus’ teaching that the Lakota don’t have. In general, we have become deeply disconnected from the food we eat. Our food has become a matter of practicality and so we go out of our way to remain disconnected from the sacrifice that occurs so that we may live. We buy our food at the market, giving us a sense that it is just one of those things we have because we pay for it. This creates some problems in its own right, but the deeper problem we have as a culture is a profound separation between the “sacred” and the “secular,” the “spiritual” and what we like to define as “non-spiritual.”

What’s troubling to the people in John 6 ISN’T the separation the Jesus makes between “spiritual” bread and “physical” bread, it’s the fact that he makes NO separation. He says “eat me” and doesn’t bother to soften or clarify or reframe. Even when he explains later to his disciples “the spirit give life; the flesh counts for nothing,” he isn’t saying, “hey guys—I’m just talking in metaphors,” he is saying, “The words I have spoken to you— they are full of the Spirit and life.”

How to Find Your Hunger  I preached my first sermon at age 8, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet. 

I was baptized at age 9, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet.

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I competed in Bible bowl, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet.

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I led high school devotionals in my Christian high school, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet.

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I went to India to preach in villages at age 17, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet.

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I taught at two different Christian Colleges, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet.

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I directed one of the largest Christian Camps among Restoration churches, but I hadn’t eaten Jesus yet.

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I heard, believed, repented, confessed, was baptized and walked the straight and narrow without eating Jesus, BECAUSE all of this made perfect sense, given my upbringing and the rewards that were built in to my life and the culture I inherited.

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My parents, grandparents, youth ministers, friends and many others drew me toward Jesus, but I think, perhaps, all these Christian people drew me so completely that I didn’t experience God’s drawing until a large portion of my Christian family rejected me and I was able to hear God over the din of all the well-meaning “Christians” I knew.

Until I was put out of the camp, I was NEVER hungry enough to be God-drawn.

“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.” (verses 44-45) How Churchyness Distracts from God’s Draw God doesn’t usually choose to draw us from WITHIN the “spiritual” categories we’ve separated off from those other, messy, “non-spiritual” things. He tends to surprise us with things like donkey- prophets and Kings born in barns, and our own surprisingly vacuous belly. 

(Course 1) So, we tend to REALLY enjoy our church fellowship—even saying sometimes that it’s a “little taste of Heaven.” Perhaps that “little taste of Heaven” is what we’re worried about losing tomorrow if we don’t manage to keep the camp vigilantly defended.

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(Course 2) We tend to become distracted by cultural and political storms that swirl around us, even though we know Jesus as the one who can waltz gracefully through the midst and across the surface, and so we forget that we really are at home in the Kingdom that HAS come and IS within us.

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(Course 3) We continue to fall into discouragement when Christian brothers or sisters let us down or spoil things because we’ve been gathering sustenance from THEM rather than from the One who NEVER spoils.

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(Course 4) We continue desperately attempting to distill the master plan, pattern or system that MUST be there in scripture, while Jesus has made it clear that He is the MEAL (and the only valid “plan” is to dig in and eat).

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(Course 5) We keep looking toward our OWN trusted sources to supply what is needed when God IS supplying all that is needed IN Christ.

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(Course 6) We push Jesus around the plate to keep Him free from our messy world-juice, and pick at His edges rather than eating.

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(Course 7) We forget that claiming Christianity, taking on its designating markers, and gaining its community benefits CAN leave us starved and dying inside if we try to draw our SUSTENANCE from Christianity, possessing its markers and embracing its community (rather than from Christ).

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Real sustenance is only drawn from Christ. But the good news is, there is no place you can go where Christ is NOT present . True sustenance—the kind that fills and never spoils — is both the RESULT of eating Christ, and the SIGN that it’s Christ I’ve been eating.

What’s the takeaway? Peter sums it up well in answer to Jesus’ question, “You do not want to leave me too, do you?”

Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” They didn’t just believe He had the words of life… they KNEW because they had been dining on the Word that IS Life.

And what’s the fundamental difference between mere followship (no, not a typo) and eating Jesus? Followship (as I’m defining it in my own life) has everything to do with visible markers and ultimate destinations. Eating happens in real time, right-now, filling THIS right-now hunger with the one and only right-now Jesus. And, like my Lakota friends know, the eating is a sacred thing that honors the flesh of the eaten by giving life to the eater. Anything less dishonors the sacrifice.

Eat Him. I don’t know how else to put it… and, apparently, neither did He.

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My Paradox to Bear

by Scott Simpson April, 2012 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ~ Mark 8:34 Pete Rollin’s book, Insurrection, opened my eyes to something of which I should already have been aware. When Jesus, on the cross, cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he really meant it. To imagine that he would make an outcry like that just for the dramatics, or for the sole benefit of the surrounding listeners, or just “to fulfill prophecy” would be to make Jesus the grand manipulator, to counter all that I know about his true nature. I have to believe that Jesus, at that moment, felt truly abandoned by God. It was a moment of “Divine Deism,” an experience of God’s absence. Rollins even dares to call it "atheism." “… a properly Christological reflection should lead us to see the felt experience of God’s absence as the fundamental way of entering into the presence of God. For if being a Christian involves participating in the Crucifixion, then it means undergoing this earth-shattering loss.” (Rollins 24) Rollins suggests, and I agree, that this IS the essence of crucifixion— to come face to face, as a human being, with the utter, existential angst of being alone, abandoned in the universe. This is the core of crucifixion. And the core of resurrection? Well, that would be living fully into the reality of the Love that IS God. But resurrection doesn’t happen until you’ve been crucified… on a cross.

“Resurrection is not some form of ascension in which we are miraculously transported out of our immediate problems or ripped away from our humanity in all of its frailty.

Just as the resurrected Christ is said to have borne the scars of the Crucifixion, so our Resurrection life will continue to bear the marks of the death we had to undergo. This new mode of living is not one in which the anxiety of death, meaninglessness, and guilt are taken away; it is one in which they are robbed of their weight and sting.” (Rollins 111) One prevalent American Christian view of “taking up your cross” to follow Jesus depends upon a line of reasoning that goes something like this: 1. Jesus expects followers to trust him implicitly. They must do what he does, believe who he is, love what he loves and despise what he despises.

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2. Most of the time, we humans are plagued with doubt. Doubt causes us to do what WE want, to dis-believe, to love things we shouldn’t… including things that Jesus despised ...

3. SO, taking up my cross means flogging my doubts into submission, playing the “Little Train that Could” by tugging my load up the steep hill, chanting “I think I can, I think I can ...” and then “I know I can, I KNOW I can ...”

4. ... all the while singing songs of praise and promise and stuffing any dark seeds of doubt so they’ll never take root and grow into giant redwoods.

It’s as if following Jesus meant leaving behind the burden of thinking and taking up the mantra of the happy-faced pew-zombie. That’s not cross-bearing ... that’s a frontal lobotomy.

The brain isn’t the “self” Jesus calls us to deny. The “self” I must deny in taking up my cross is the self that works so hard to justify its existence that it will abandon all integrity to gain affirmation. This is the lying self, the deceiving self, the false self. This is the self that has so little faith, it must manipulate all inputs and outcomes to make sure its own version of god comes out on top.

This is the god that often wears the name, “religion.”

One day, some 30 years ago, I was out walking around a lake with my best friend Mark.

We were high-schoolers, and were, as usual, debating some theological or perhaps cosmological topic, when he paused, bent to the ground, and picked up a rock.

“See this rock Scott?” he said.

“Yeah… what about it?”

“Do you know how many ADULTS I know who, IF this rock somehow proved — beyond any shadow of a doubt — that God didn’t exist, would tell me to throw it as far as I could into the middle of this lake so it would sink to the bottom and NEVER be found?”

As I recall, the conversation ended there. He had touched on something we both knew to be true, and both knew to be somehow deeply troubling, deeply wrong—deeply a-moral.

The implications shook us to the core.

Mark doesn’t believe in any sort of a sentient “god” anymore—especially the Christian kind. He learned long ago that, to be “Christian,” he’d have to choose between his brain and God. He made his choice around 25 years ago.

You see, many Christians believe that the greatest threat to faith is some combination of the Evolutionists, the Satanists the Abortionists and the Liberals… when, in reality, the 17

greatest threat to faith comes when we imply that people must check their doubts—and by that I am, of necessity, including their brains—at the door.

When Jesus said, “Take up your cross, and follow me” he didn’t mean “Drop your doubts, pump up your faith to 130 psi, do churchy stuff, sing songs filled with happy clichés, and be proud if you can become a martyr by taking some hits from your “worldly” acquaintances…” He meant, “You will have to die to be resurrected.”

Translation: Trust me, even as you doubt me. Bear your doubts and your frustration, and take them into the community with you. You all have them. God gave you brains enough to doubt, to question. Your questions may lead you to toss your most cherished understandings, to toss your most well-constructed arguments, to start back at square one, to feel abandoned, alone, left out in the cold—even forsaken by God. That’s death!

That’s crucifixion!

But the promise is resurrection: New life. This life is eternal in nature because it is made up of the one absolute that John reminds us “God is ...” and Jesus reminds us “… sums up the Law and the prophets ...”

Love.

But to get there, I can’t be afraid of taking up my cross.

I don’t get to play the game of closing my ears and eyes to whatever creates hard questions — that’s not taking up my cross.

I don’t get to limit my interaction to only people, books, blogs, music and theologians who give me stronger doses of what I already believe — that’s not taking up my cross.

I don’t get to put on the “no doubts” face when I’m among my community, or say and sing only those things that suit our Christian power-of-positive-thinking mentality — that’s not taking up my cross.

The cross is a paradox. It’s death AND life. It’s unconditional love AND absolute abandonment. It’s penalty AND forgiveness. In the life of the cross-bearing follower, absolute trust is placed in the person and Nature of Christ, and when the God-given brain I’m bearing brings on the questions, the doubts, the deep angst of loss, instead of a numbing chorus of “Trust and Obey” I may need a rousing wail of “My God! Where are you?! What’s going on here!!?”

In community, this could look like a death. But think of the love that can surround us in the darkest nights of the soul. Think of the courage it takes to be a wide-eyed, openeared human being who stands in what Parker Palmer in,A Hidden Wholeness, calls the “tragic gap” between paradoxical binaries. A small sample of my own paradoxical binaries would include: 

My own minute field of vision, and my absolute certainty of God’s Love

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

Clear, compelling evidence, and unnamable, mysterious faith



The utter pain of human existence, and the utter joy of human existence



The conviction that some things are always wrong, and that all wrongs can be transformed into good

“There is a name for the endurance we must practice until a larger love arrives: it is called suffering. We will not be able to [live] in the power of paradox until we are willing to suffer the tension of opposites, until we understand that such suffering is neither to be avoided nor merely to be survived but must be actively embraced for the way it expands our own hearts.” (Palmer from Courage to Teach, 88)

What is required in order to expand the heart, is humility about myself. I am a person of faith who is often faithless. I possess knowledge that I’m constantly having to refine and revise. I’m fearful of new insights that spark questions and doubt, and I seek those things out, because THEY are the green-growing edges of my self and my soul.

Somehow, I know, that when Jesus said “Take up your cross and follow me…” he meant, “You’re gonna die several times on this trip, but each time, your capacity to love and to accept love will be deepened.” “…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” (Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet) God gives me permission to question and doubt, to bring my brain along and trust that my ego will be confronted multiple times and put to death as needed ... and each time, I’ll find Love in Christ, in God ... and if I’m fortunate, within a community of souls who are also bearing crosses. The lovely thing is that the Marks among us want only to be allowed to bear their crosses with integrity, with honesty—to bring any and all questions to the table, to, as Mark once told me, “beat every idea with the Big Stick of Disbelief” to see whether it’s true or not. Walking any other way would be to make a mad rush toward Heaven while denying the cross Christ has called us to bear. How else can one fully commit life and soul to anything or anyone? Crucifixion is paradox, is a harsh, wailing question between what is now, and what might be possible tomorrow.

We can’t arrive at resurrection without going through crucifixion. We can’t arrive at the all-out praise at the end of Psalm 22 without going through verses one and two:

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My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.

The most surprising paradox for me? To see most clearly the integrity of Jesus’ crosswailing crucifixion moment not in the praise-singing crowd, nor in the fool-proof rationalistic theologian, but in an honest atheist like my friend, Mark.

20

Why I Left? Questions, Questions ...

by Scott Simpson May, 2012 Rachel Held Evans, in Evolving in Monkey Town, suggests that fundamentalism has less to do with WHAT ideas one is holding on to than with HOW TIGHTLY one is holding onto them. Fundamentalism can grow up around any set of ideas that can be identified, deified, and then defended at all costs. Greg Boyd calls this “confusing one’s map for the territory.”

In my tradition, this confusion happens because of the belief that, in a world of churches that “interpret” scripture, what needs to be restored, is a church that simply reads the Bible and does what it says. Without question.

Questions aren’t for God; questions are for vetting others, for ferreting out false doctrine.

God loosened my grip from my own tradition in two grand movements: 1. He made me aware of the disturbingly deceptive questions used to vet those who aspire to leadership positions within the fold.

2. He helped me to see that I NEEDED to ask questions that were apparently unaskable ... at least while I was still “within the fold.”

Movement One: Church Leadership Vetting Questions Until I spent some time outside of the tradition I grew up in, I wasn’t really cognizant of how inauthentically I approached these types of questions. The answers just popped into my head—I knew what was REALLY being asked. I aced the doctrinal question gauntlet when I applied to be a camp director for a Christian camp within my tradition, and though I’ve looked back at my answers many times since to see if I really answered honestly (I believe I did) I’m convinced that my capacity to both answer honestly and answer safely, led to my eventual firing (due to what I was told was a “difference in vision” between myself and the executive board members).

The questions seemed very general and innocuous on the surface, but as an insider, I knew what was being asked. I knew the hot buttons and how to give answers that skirted them.

Application Questions: For the following topics, we are not looking for a right or wrong answer, but a Biblical 21

basis for your belief. In working with young people, many controversial subjects often arise. It is of utmost importance that you as a Christian individual and as one in an influential position, have such matters resolved in your life, and that you be ready to give an answer to anyone who may challenge your standards, your life principles, or the hope that is in you (1 Peter 3:15). Please explain your personal convictions and what you would teach campers, counselors, and other staff members about the following topics. Be honest and to the point. Appropriate scripture references are encouraged.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

The Lordship of Christ The Biblical view of salvation The Biblical view of authority Who can be saved?

God’s grace What is worship?

What about mechanical instruments of music in worship?

What about women taking a leadership role in a devotional or public worship service where men are present?

9. Do you abstain from the use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs? What would you teach about the use of these substances?

10. Recreation activities such as dancing, rock concerts, movies, etc?

11. Dating practices, marriage, and family?

12. Abortion 13. Sexual purity (include homosexuality) 14. Sin 15. What are your personal goals for growth in the Lord’s work?

16. What do you perceive to be the greatest needs in the church today?

The problem was that these weren’t real questions. A real question seeks to discover something unknown. Though the instructions stated they weren’t looking for a right or wrong answer, I knew the “correct” answers to these questions, with some small latitude, were predetermined. Similar questions were included on the applications for teachers and for counselors. Any teacher or college student who had been a part of our church tradition for any amount of time and who really wanted to be a teacher or counselor knew how to answer.

These questions served only to separate outsiders (and by that, I mean individuals who knew so little of our tradition that they believed the questions to be actual questions) from insiders. They told us little about the “insider” applicants other than that they were inside enough to know how to answer.

What is most disturbing about this regular “vetting question” occurrence within my tradition is that the tradition itself is based on the premises of non-creedalism and autonomy. So… if there is no creed to read and there is a clear embrace of autonomy among various congregations, then where does this insider knowledge come from? How 22

is it propagated?

The only thing worse than a narrowly-written dogma is a narrowly-unwritten dogma.

Those bitten by the dogma can’t point to the source; it will only be denied. And when they are fired, the articulated reasons will always have to be vague enough to uphold the illusion of non-creedalism ... “we have a difference of vision.”

After being fired by a Christian institution, I was still tenacious enough to pursue work with an actual church ... as a college minister. This led to God’s next grip-loosening lesson.

Movement Two: Questions That Can’t Be Asked I suppose having come out of the inauthenticity of the afore described experience, I was ready to ask actual questions. Having been cut loose in the most painful way (despite having answered the questions “correctly”) I felt somehow comfortable in asking the sort of questions publicly that I have ALWAYS asked privately. These are questions whose answers lead us into growth experiences. These are questions that lay open the world of experience and scripture, and ask the Spirit and the community to enter in.

These are questions whose answers may not come… and if they do, they may lead only more difficult questions.

As a teacher and learner, and now as a teaching minister, I saw these sorts of questions as the most vital vehicles for learning, for maturing. As a minister, I believed that maturing and helping others to mature was my primary calling from God. I could give many examples, but for this article, three general examples will suffice: Example One: diakonos At the small congregation, of which I had been a part for many years, I began a Wednesday night adult class. After looking at the Greek word diakonos, its variations and uses in the New Testament, and a bit of history about the translating of the original King James Version of the Bible and its influences, I asked some of these questions: 

Why do you think the translators working for King James decided to create a new word, “deacon” in the 1st Timothy “deacon qualifications” passage instead of translating diakonos as “servant?” Why might they have added the word “office” to their translation? What about translating gune as “their wives” instead of just “women?”



Have their translation decisions influenced us?

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

How might their translation decisions influence our understanding of servanthood and church leadership?



Are there divisions in churches today because “leaders” forget that they are called to be “servants?”



Can men and women be “leaders” in the church? Can men and women be “servants” in the church? Is there any difference? Was Phoebe in Romans 16:1 a “servant” or a “deacon?”



Are our roles within the body of believers more about “offices” or “functions?”

What might create more division, competition over who is “the greatest” or over “who gets to serve?”



Do “cultural” concerns threaten us in the church today? How might a true understanding of the Biblical concept of diakoneo help?

Example Two: the “church” After reading this particular passage from Acts 5 in the same adult class, I asked the questions that follow: Meanwhile, the apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And the believers were meeting regularly at the Temple in the area known as Solomon's Colonnade. 13No one else dared to join them, though everyone had high regard for them. 14 And more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord--crowds of both men and women.

12

Consider these phrases from verses 12 through 14: 

“the believers...” verse 12



“No one else dared to join them...” verse 13



“more and more people believed and were brought to the Lord...” verse 14

Do you think “the believers,” “them” and those who were “brought to the Lord” all refer to “the church?” If so, how do you explain the fact that “no one else dared to join them...” and in the next verse “more and more...were brought to the Lord?” If these phrases don’t all refer to the church, then what do they refer to? What picture do we get here concerning the structure of this gathering of believers? Their lines of fellowship?

Their assembly habits? The nature of their “outreach” in the community? Are these 24

even valid questions to ask of this passage?

Example Three: conversion In the midst of the Acts study, I showed this table from John Mark Hicks and Greg Taylor’s fine book, Down in the River to Pray: Text Heard Believed Repented Immersed Holy Spirit Saved At Pentecost Immersion “Remission 2:37 2:37 2:38 2:41 of sins” 2:38 Acts 2:14-41 2:38 After Samaria Immersion Not Not 8:12 8:13 8:12-13 mentioned mentioned Acts 8:5-13 8:15-17 Eunuch Not Not “Rejoicing” 8:35 8:36 8:38-39 mentioned mentioned 8:39 Acts 8:35-39 Saul At “Washed Immersion Acts 9:1-18 9:4-6 22:10 9:9 9:18 away sins” 22:16 9:17-18 22:1-16, 26:918 Cornelius Before 10:44 Immersion “Purified 10:43 11:18 10:48 Acts 10:34-48, hearts” 15:9 11:4-18, 15:711:14 10:46-47 11 Lydia Not Not Not 16:14 16:14 16:15 mentioned mentioned mentioned Acts 16:13-15 Jailor Not “Rejoiced” 16:32 16:31 16:33 16:33 mentioned 16:34 Acts 16:30-34 Corinthians Not Not Not 18:8 18:8 18:8 mentioned mentioned mentioned Acts 18:8 Ephesian After Disciples Immersion Not Not 19:2 19:2 19:5 mentioned mentioned Acts 19:1-7 19:6 When we discussed the fact that the Samaritans received the “Gift of the Holy Spirit” only after Peter and John were sent to them, I asked these questions: 25



Why do the Apostles send Peter and John to Samaria?



Were the Samaritan believers “saved” even though they hadn’t received the “Gift of the Holy Spirit” at their baptism?

These were all genuine questions. I have ideas and opinions about some of the answers, but I don’t know that I’ll ever have “answers” to these. However, these do call into questions OTHER assumptions that are often made, and held unquestionable. These questions loosen the soil underneath some of the previous vetting questions, particularly 1-8. They don’t invalidate those questions, they just open up possibilities for fresh perspectives and new growth. That’s uncomfortable, and that’s why a flurry of emails ensued in the midst of our Acts study. That’s also why rumors went out—even across state lines—that I was preaching everything from “baptism isn’t necessary” to “the Bible isn’t inspired.”

I felt honored (sort of) to be seen as an inter-state heretic.

We weren’t fired, but it became clear that I would not be allowed to teach, which is a difficult thing when one is a minister. So we moved out of state, uprooting our youngest daughter once again, and I took a job teaching high school English in Colorado for a year. We worshipped that year with friends who attended a Vineyard church.

We now have moved back to our old town and have a house church in which anyone can ask any question. Open and honest questions are our main driving force as we seek to be aware of God’s constant presence in our lives and in the world around us. We also occasionally attend the local church where I used to be a minister (though I haven’t been asking any questions). We also attend some other churches. We visit, we experience, we interact. We have our home body—the small group of people we “do life” with, but we are also beginning to learn some of the questions other groups are asking. Some of them seem silly—just like questions we used to ask. Some of them are profound. I like dipping into the theological frames that others move in and out of. They are just that— theological frames. God is much bigger than any of them. He’s big enough for all the questions.

But we need to be with people who will allow us to keep asking them and who will help us find new ones to ask.

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A Rock and a Hard Place

by Scott Simpson June, 2012 I was 9 when I was baptized. I’d struggled all Christmas break over the issue, slightly afraid we might have a wreck before I got home to get it done. I almost went forward at my grandparents’ church in Arkansas, but for some reason, I waited until we were back home in Nebraska.

Fortunately, we didn’t have a wreck, lightning didn’t strike me, and I didn’t choke on a turkey leg. I made it home alive in time to put my 9year-old sinful self to death.

My dad laid me under in the East Hill Church of Christ baptistery.

I remember one of the older teens right after my baptism, tussled my damp hair and said, “Hey man… the wet-head’s dead!” I thought he was so theologically clever. I was the center of attention that morning. Even that evening as I went down to the church basement after evening services for the “make-up” communion (my first), I was very special. Everyone was watching.

Because I was so young, I remember realizing that some people might be questioning my readiness. Was he old enough? Did he do it for the right reason? Should he be rebaptized? I wondered these things myself… but the choice was to worry about dying before baptism, or to worry about having gotten baptized for the wrong reason or at the wrong time. If this was being “between a rock and a hard place” then Jesus was the rock and hell was the hard place. Thing was, it was beyond me to know if I’d done the right thing by getting baptized or if I’d jumped the gun out of peer pressure… literally in my mind a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” problem (though, if I thought that at the time, in those words, I’d have felt like I’d blown my baptism with mental cussing).

These questions nagged at me over the next few years. Actually, I knew very few people my age in our church who didn’t either get re-baptized (at least once) or struggle with whether or not their baptism was “valid.” Of course, we pretty much knew that those people who got re-baptized every time a youth rally came along were toast. Like the villagers hearing the boy who cried wolf one too many times, people began to roll their eyes at these habitual baptismal junkies.

Most of us developed what we perceived to be a healthy “emotional detachment” that allowed us to smile at the weekly invitational “Just As I Am” verses, while mentally 27

chanting, “I’m fine, I’m fine… Dad put me under, Joey was only eight when he did it…I was older that THAT… if I give in and run forward… I’ll KNOW it didn’t take the first time….” Interesting, isn’t it, how many Christians I knew who had this struggle, and how the New Testament never addressed it.

Maybe that’s because it wasn’t, and never should have become an issue.

I’ve come to a place now, in my later years, in which I understand that it matters less THAT you have faith than WHOM you place your faith in. You can have faith in almost anything. I had learned to place my faith in carrying out the correct steps in the correct way at the correct time. This required a deep faith in my preacher and my Sunday school teachers (who had taught me all of these correct things) because they were the ones who’d figured this out (or so I thought). Later, I realized that they’d had faith in their Sunday school teachers and preachers before them, and a few brotherhood editors and evangelists. That’s how we’d got the 5-step plan I’d hung everything on.

Now, there’s no denying that baptism’s in the Bible. It’s all over the New Testament. But there are several things that are all over the New Testament, like love, or prayer, or preaching, or singing, or healing, etc… does it follow that FAITH should be placed in the correct doing of any of these things? I’m often unloving, but it doesn’t make me have nightmares about hell. I’ve gotten distracted during the Lord’s Supper before, but I never got scared I’d suddenly lost my salvation.

If some potential omission grabs your brain and makes you wake up with the sweats imagining fire and brimstone, chances are you’ve placed you FAITH in the BELIEF that you haven’t omitted it.

False gods are like that—fueled by fear rather than love.

Faith isn’t something you should place in a process, a system, an act, an understanding or a theology, because, if you do, then you’ll be defending your process, system, act, understanding or theology at every turn (which is really the unfortunate business much of religion seems to be about). My faith has to be in Jesus… NOT in my understanding of Jesus (that could be wrong) not in my process for following Jesus (I could be mistaken) not even on my correct following of one of the things He demonstrated in His own ministry—like baptism (I could have done that at the wrong time, in the wrong way, or with the wrong motive). My faith has to be in the Love-Nature God as demonstrated in 28

the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. I have faith in the God whose nature is THAT (not faith in my clever parsing of some kind of cross-transaction). The cross says there’s NOTHING God wouldn’t do to bring me close to Him. The cross says God would rather die Himself than watch me die. It says all the rotten, mistaken, foolish, selfish, ugly stuff I continue to muck around with is stuff God is willing to bend fully into, and lift me out of. It also says that if I want to know my own true nature—that’s it. Absolute, undiluted love.

Now, admittedly, I could be wrong about all of that too—wrong about God’s absolute and unconditional love, and wrong that my own true nature is that same kind of love.

But I have no interest in living in a universe governed by anything other than Love, so I’ll take my chances. Why? Because I can HEAR that. I can BELIEVE that. It makes me want to TURN away from my practiced disillusionment with humanity’s apparent nature, and CONFESS the incredible loving-goodness of the Creator and His creation.

And doggonit… that makes me want to go jump for joy in the river!

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Intimate Stranger

by Scott Simpson July, 2012 There’s a religious narcissism that makes us feel as though we possess God in some special, unique way. That’s not all bad, but it certainly results in some less than healthy interactions here on this planet.

Twenty years ago, my best friend Kirk was killed in a highway accident.

Talking with all the various mourners after the funeral, I found that each of us had a unique story, a special memory or experience. There were many generations represented, and a number of different backgrounds. Some of us knew each other, some of us did not. But what struck me at the time was this: Every single person here thinks he or she was Kirk’s best friend.

I even noticed the temptation rising up for each Kirk story to be followed by one that was a little better… one that no one else knew about… a demonstration of “Special Kirk Knowledge.”

Kirk WAS my best friend. But I also heard in that circle how many elements of him I had not seen, how many Kirk experiences I had not been there for or yet heard about. Once I got beyond my own small, competitive grief, some of them opened me up to new insights about my friend, new ways of listening to another’s experience of him as a harmony, augmenting my own.

In this way, even strangers became intimate.

When you really love someone, you’re less interested in debating and proving the quality of your knowledge of them to others; you are simply obsessed with any bit of insight that adds another facet to your understanding of that one you love.

God has made himself known to us in Christ (Colossians 1:15-20), and yet there is a still a day coming when we shall know as we are known (I Corinthians 13:12). That day is not yet today. There is a paradoxical mystery in the knowing of God. The knowing is wrapped up in the seeking, and like Jacob’s wrestling match with… with whomever that was (God or angel or whomever Genesis 32:22-32), we can become more fully informed of ourselves in relationto God, but God himself remains, to some degree, unnamed, a stranger with whom we’ve wrestled, however intimately.

Maybe it’s contemporary evangelicalism’s need to package and manage a brand-able god-product, or maybe it’s modernity’s prideful insistence that any god that’s real and available as a topic of discourse must be subject to empirical, systematic, almost scientific ways of knowing, but we seem to think it’s imperative that we compete 30

and win the God-knowledge contest. This competitive nature creates for us some very restrictive filters or lenses that let in only certain things— like the setting on my car airconditioner that circulates only inside air, or a house of mirrors reflecting just what’s already inside.

In sectarian religion, what I breathe, what I see, usually smells and looks a lot like me.

Jesus told the Pharisees and teachers of the Law in John that he not only came so that the blind can see, but also so that those who think they can see can become blinded (John 9:39-41). Knowing that I don’t know is a vital posture if I want to learn. It opens me up to the wonderful experiences of others: their experiences with the God I love and want to know better. Walking with God is not a game of right or wrong, but rather an ever more complex experience of the One who is simply, “I Am.” Like playing music “by ear,” it requires that I listen to the counter-melodies of others and respond, knowing we’ve been promised a Spirit-guide, an along-side advocate who sways and dances along.

Music’s an apt metaphor because words lead so often toward arguments and rebuttals.

Playing by ear places me in the midst of the jam-session, clueless of what might come next, but mindful not only of the Spirit’s presence, but also of the other musicians.

Listening is the goal, not winning. Responding is the dynamic, not fixing. The others sometimes play odd instruments, or have minor or dissonant sensibilities, but as I respond, I find my next note, and the one after that. In this kind of inspired improvisation, my own notes often surprise and then delight me.

But the first teacher is silence. Silence is the unity within the music. It comes between every note and gives significance to each. It’s Elijah’s post-wind-earthquake-fire “still, small voice.”(I Kings 19:11-13) It’s “be still and KNOW that I AM God.” (Psalm 46:10) It’s me, unknowing all that I know, acknowledging that the One I love—intimately—is still a stranger.

THAT’S why I listen—not to be affirmed in my knowledge, but to be still, and KNOW. This is our example—the example displayed in all of creation. A diverse planet unifying, playing by ear the song of its own true Spirit, the Spirit of the Creator, the Intimate Stranger wresting, dancing, breathing, becoming KNOWN.

Stranger

by Thomas Merton When no one listens To the quiet trees When no one notices The sun in the pool.

Where no one feels 31

The first drop of rain Or sees the last star Or hails the first morning Of a giant world Where peace begins And rages end: One bird sits still Watching the work of God: One turning leaf, Two falling blossoms, Ten circles upon the pond.

One cloud upon the hillside, Two shadows in the valley And the light strikes home.

Now dawn commands the capture Of the tallest fortune, The surrender Of no less marvelous prize!

Closer and clearer Than any wordy master, Thou inward Stranger Whom I have never seen, Deeper and cleaner Than the clamorous ocean, Seize up my silence Hold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste And suffering undone Laws become prodigals Limits are torn down For envy has no property And passion is none.

Look, the vast Light stands still Our cleanest Light is One!

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Appearance or Substance?

by Scott Simpson August, 2012 I’m part of a house church, which seems to some an oxymoron. “Is it a house? or is it a church?” And sure, there’s that old saw, “the church is the people not the building” thing that I grew up with. But I think that oversimplifies the confusion. We humans are an “appearance passes for substance” sort. It’s why we don’t feel good unless we think we look good. It’s why our motivational strategies often boil down to “Fake it ‘til you make it.”

It’s why “brand” is a bigger predictor of price than “quality.”

Church is no different. Even though the rag-tag bunch referring to themselves as “the way” and having no more than a house (at best) to meet in got the whole thing got started, there’s a sense that we really “arrived” once we got thoroughly funded, hierarched, membershipped, and buildinged.

That’s “Appearance as Substance,” even when substance is there. We have trouble teasing reality out — differentiating where OUR “markers” end and GOD’s kingdomreality begins. That’s what much of the arguing, even on the New Wineskins discussion threads, amounts to.

The Pharisees would be proud. They were the expert “Appearance Men” and they held the Temple worship within their own very tight grip. Let’s face it, a stone-blocked, location-bound, gold-filled worship structure is a very impressive and manageable thing. It gives one leverage.

But, Jesus had some “woes” for them… seven to be exact (Matthew 23:13-29). And they ALL address their (our) tendency to mistake appearance for substance.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

Institutional churches have lots of “doors” that are opened and closed in particular ways and at particular times. Being allowed in, or kept out gives power to the key-holders… who then, appear to hold the Keys of the Kingdom as well.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

Institutional churches have the advantage of pooling more funds… evangelistic trips to 33

exotic, far-off places are not only possible, but can become preferable. These trips give a lovely appearance on newsletter listings and ministry updates… though they have often amounted to the “transplanting” of a foreign hybrid, shaped in the institutional hothouse, more than the sowing of Kingdom seed, which always finds its native expression in collaboration with local, open hearts.

Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.

And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.

Institutional churches tend to look in the mirror and see OUR structure as GOD’s structure, OUR practice as GOD’s practice, OUR ministries as GOD’s ministries, giving to US as giving to GOD, joining OUR CHURCH as joining GOD’s CHURCH. Seeing one’s own tribe as THE place where God is at work rather than seeing one’s own tribe as a subset of the LARGER WORK that God is doing in the world is mistaking the gold for the temple, mistaking the gift for the altar, mistaking the institution for God Himself.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Institutional churches… actually, you can probably all write your own “connections” here…

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Institutional churches must maintain appearances. Members must be disciplined for representational purposes. They can’t be out there doing THAT with people knowing they are a member HERE at 5th and Whatchamacallit! Inside… people may be dying…people may be killing each other, using each other… but as long as they’re quiet about it… well…

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the 34

outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Institutional churches have a beauty that must be maintained: a building to be façaded, parking lots to be paved, pews to be upholstered, bathrooms to be upgraded, lights to be kept burning, carpets to be cleaned, classrooms to be air-conditioned, lawns to be mowed, baptisteries to be heated and filtered. Sometimes, the maintenance of the building or the campus or the reputation can take so much time, energy and focus, that no one notices a rot spreading at the core.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!

Institutional churches, more than anything else, must feel that they have arrived. We have the history of Christianity spread out behind us for two thousand years… warts and mistakes, bickerings and pettiness, even slaughterings and genocides. But WE are beyond that. WE know better. And especially, if I may as a family member… we in the tradition known as The Restoration, operate (often) under an assumption that ALL who went before us since the First Century have been apostate and fallen… we have NOT reformed… no, we have RESTORED what was nowhere to be found… institutionally speaking. And how did we do it? Well, we distilled the pattern that ALL had missed for centuries, and simply put it into place.

Build it, and He will come… we said, as though seventeen centuries had been filled will willfully obstinate church builders who would not follow the clear pattern.

If WE had lived in the days of THOSE fellows… WE would have done it right!

In an institutional church, humility is difficult; self-promotion is almost synonymous with evangelism because we’ve come to believe that joining US is joining GOD. I’m part of a house church. We are NOT perfect, but we don’t have to be. We come together to find out what God is doing in everyone’s life and to discern how we each might need to join in via prayer, action, money, time, whatever.

We have the luxury of being obsessed with the SUBSTANCE of what God is doing right now because, some time ago, we pretty much gave up the need, the energy and the time it really does take just to keep up appearances.

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A Poem: Remnant Theology

by Scott Simpson August, 2012

A Cautionary Parable of Widening Suspicion & Narrowing Election in Which Selective Patriarchy Generates Limited Atonement & Universal Conscious Torment Sometimes people just want to beat the odds and so they build up altars to the pickiest gods they find and close up big wooden doors, hole-up centuries maybe, writing tracts to be distributed door to door (not that they’d just let anyone in, mind you, only those who know the special handshake and secret passwords—things that aren’t clearly spelled out in tracts because, some things you just know).

This one group, then, gave birth to twin baby boys who almost immediately started evangelizing (some folks are just born to it) and as they preached, the gods were so pleased they got even pickier, and Sunday after Sunday the congregation shrank as old women were found to have committed atrocities with their hairdressers and teens were found cowering under porches with bankers and even the former pastor was sighted off-roading in a Dodge with six-inch lifts and stacks of baseball cards in the back seat.

And when the twins had grown to manhood, one was found by the other to have eaten shellfish with his salad (we don’t know which one) and the gods struck him dead (which gods we don’t know) and no one watched the sole faithful twin (which one this was we know not) airlifted straight to heaven (we’re not sure which heaven; the rest of us were already in hell).

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Ignore the Fine Print

by Scott Simpson September, 2012 Okay. It goes like this: 1. Hi! I’m (your name here) , how are you?

2. Everybody sins—including me—so we all have a sin problem.

3. This sin problem’s got to be paid for—and Jesus paid it!

4. I know there are lots of churches out there with lots of different answers, but OUR church is (your church’s credibility evidence here) .

5. What must you do to be saved? Glad you asked! You must (your group’s doctrinal procedure here) .

6. So, when do you think you might be ready to (your group’s doctrinal procedure here) ?

7. Okay! Let’s (your group’s doctrinal procedure here) right now!

This parallels most of the widely-accepted sales patterns: 1. Introduce Yourself, Then Shut Up and Listen 2. Tell Why the Offer is Important to the Individual Customer 3. Get Confirmation, Then Explain the Details 4. Display Credibility, Show the Customer Why You can be Trusted 5. Emphasize What to Do and What It will Cost 6. Schedule the Next Steps 7. Close the Sale So ... our reason for existing as the church is to get as many people to commit to (your group’s doctrinal procedure here) as possible, right?

Ostensibly, this whole process seems to be about sin-forgiveness. Debt-erasure. Stainremoval. We work to make it immediate and relevant, even “hip,” but we fall just short 37

of claiming our plan of salvation is “New and Improved” because we really need it to have the weight of being an undiluted, original “first century formula.”

Forgiveness, certainly something we need, isn’t only about debt removal. The Greek word connected with the removal of debt or trespasses or blasphemies or lawless deeds is aphiemi, as in “Your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake” -- 1 John 2:12. Aphiemi means put away… permanently. This is the kind of forgiveness that requires only one party to act, the one who is owed. If God in Christ has done all that is needed to bestow that kind of forgiveness of debt on ALL of humanity (and I believe He has) then the work of the church is not the work of debt forgiveness. The work of the church, as Paul put it, is the ministry of reconciliation. Variations on the Greek wordkatalassō are translated "reconciliation" or "reconcile", as in “if you are offering a gift at the altar and remember that your brother or sister has something against you, you should go and first be reconciled before offering your gift” [Matthew 5:24].

Reconciliation isn’t up to God ONLY… it takes two parties to reconcile. My creditor can forgive my debt fully—without me even realizing or acknowledging that he has… but if I’m not interested in coming over to his house to say thanks, to reconnect, to chat about things, then we still have no relationship. God may have exercised charis (grace, unconditional forgiveness) toward me, but if I have not entered into a graceful, loving connection with Him, then I’m still living out in the cold. Having a ledger “in the black” means nothing to me if I don’t hold any charis in my own heart for anyone else, including the one who initiated the unconditional blessing.

So why do Christians persist in making sales pitches for stain removal? I know it’s a bit more theologically complex than this, but they must not realize that there are no more stains. The Creator of the universe has chosen to forgive all debts … that’s the good news! He’s put them away!

If we don’t get this, if we persist in trying to convince people to do this that and the other thing IN ORDER to get sin forgiveness, then we will miss the point of a ministry of reconciliation. The “God” part of the equation is done. What God requires of his people now is NOT something to make the debt forgiveness work (like epoxy glue where you have to combine the contents of two separate tubes before the molecular bonding occurs). God’s gifted us with a clean slate, but God desires MORE than a clean slate. God desires reconciliation, relationship, the loving dance of being in communion with HIS creation, HIS image-bearers, his children.

We have spent so much time and energy over the centuries (and spilt blood as well) in deciphering and arguing the equation of debt removal: How did God do it? What does the cross mean? What actually happens to the sin? How might I lose my forgiveness?

What steps do I have to take to GET the sin removed? How should I treat people who haven’t taken the right steps? What should I do to people who are promoting the WRONG steps?

If reconciliation is what God desires—if relationship is the outcome He’d hoped would come from His choosing to erase any and all debts humanity “owed” Him—then what 38

are we arguing about? If ours is a ministry of reconciliation, then our moment-bymoment responsibility is simply to love and connect … love and connect … love and connect.

Seeing and embracing people as family members NOW will help them feel the warmth of being WITH the family they were created into.

If my theology keeps me from embracing humanity as family, then I need to dump it.

Those who know US as an open-armed family will be more likely to connect with the loving God who animates his body with the very love his body extends.

But those who see US parsing the Contractual Fine Print of stain removal and trying to sell them on it, get them to sign on the line, commit before it’s too late… may think of us and of our God in exactly the same way I’m tempted to think of those poor sales people who come uninvited to my door: “Okay… why is this person disturbing my dinner, and what’s the quickest way I can get rid of him without losing my shirt?”

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The Pro-Choice God 10/09/2012

by Scott Simpson October, 2012 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?

That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion, whoever that may be, will have to pay the penalty. Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 40

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. ~ Galatians 5

What’s the difference between one who is a slave and one who is free? A slave acts out of command, coercion, because to do otherwise might end in punishment or even death. A free human being operates out of personal choice.

Certain things are only attainable by choice; faith and love are chief among them.

Paul makes it clear that he isn’t making an argument to the church in Galatia that uncircumcision is better than circumcision. He makes it clear that, in Christ, neither has any value. Is Paul here trying to drive a final nail in the Judaic coffin? Is Paul trying to establish a new required “sign” that is uniquely Christian instead of Jewish? Is Paul saying, as I’ve heard many in my tradition argue, that the “law” Paul is turning the Galatians away from is simply the “Jewish Law” of the Torah?

For the bulk of the circumcised, circumcision was not a choice. In the typical experience, a boy was circumcised at an age in which he would never remember the occurrence, much less choose it. Women, of course, had no choice in the matter. In the Jewish world of the first century, a woman just hoped she found a man to be attached to and that she had some children (hopefully at least one or two males). For a few male “converts” circumcision was certainly an adult choice— and not an easy one. That’s fine. To choose something difficult in disciplined service to God (even if it’s based on faulty assumptions) is an honorable thing. Paul, however, is addressing an issue of coercion: someone is using fear as leverage to get uncircumcised Greek men who want to follow Christ to go under the knife, and Paul’s downright angry about it: “I wish they’d emasculate themselves.”

What’s he so upset about? He’s convinced that God is adamantly pro-choice.

Oh, he warns them not to make bad choices, to make choices that lead to life, not death.

He knows they know what God’s kingdom looks like, how the people of His kingdom treat each other—they don’t use other people for their own pleasure, they don’t visit their own rage and hatred and violence on others or waste the precious time they have in selfishness or mindlessness. Paul also points out WHY they don’t do these things: they are “led by the Spirit” not operating “under the law.”

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See, laws are made to keep people in line from the outside. Laws keep people in line by threat of punishment or promise of reward. But there’s a real problem with this approach, and Paul addressed it very clearly with the church in Colossi: Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste!

Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. ~ Colossians 2:20-23

Following external rules gives an appearance of wisdom, but it can’t change the inside.

The inside is changed from the inside. Transformation comes from the daily renewing of the mind (Romans 12:1-2) and that happens by choice, not by coercion. It happens because I have chosen submission, not because I am a slave under threat.

Paul is angry in his letter to the Galatians because someone has undercut the freedom and choice that God has given His people. Someone is making God out to be a smallminded taskmaster who wants what He wants and will cut you out of His favor on a technicality (and WHO KNOWS how many of those there might be!)

This is not the image of God displayed in Christ. This is not the image of the God who has sent His very spirit to dwell with and within his people. That God is seen in the fruit that is produced when a willing soul chooses to collaborate with the spirit the father freely pours onto His people. Paul reminds the people of Galatia of that fruit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” and he tells them, “Against such things there is no law.”

What a strange thing to say. “Against such things there is no law.”

Is Paul just stating the utterly obvious? No nation has ever existed on earth that outlawed any of these things. They aren’t things that can be outlawed because they are inner characteristics. Laws address actions and behaviors, not dispositions. And perhaps THAT’S the point Paul is making.

These dispositions are fruit, fruit that comes from a willing soul choosing to align with the spirit of God… the God who IS the very nature of Love, Joy, Peace, Forbearance, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. That’s how Paul knows 42

that God isn’t waiting around the corner to eject Greek males who come to Him for life simply because of a flap of skin. That’s not the God Paul has seen in Christ. That’s not the God who has transformed the holy-war heretic killer, Saul, into the selfless lover of rejects, Paul.

What does this have to do with choice? Paul wraps up this chapter with this strong bit of encouragement: “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

Because God desires love, because God desires faith, God has accorded his people choice. Choice is the only way I can open myself up to the working of the Spirit. Once I begin that journey, then my life is transformed from the inside out. God’s spirit is at work with my own, transforming my mind, reshaping my action, impacting my neighbors, my enemies, the planet. Inside-out. To NOT choose, is to become a slave: the machinations of society twist and discourage my neighbors, myself. I react, defining myself through the darkened eyes of a competitive world, my eyes are darkened, I no longer know who I am or whose I am. Outside-in. I’m a slave, surviving, existing… but not living. The only things that keep me in line? Threat of punishment, promise of reward.

“Kept in line.” What a pitiful thing to aspire to.

God is pro-choice because that’s the only way He can enter into a relationship with us, by wooing us to love Him, wooing us into faith in His loving nature, wooing me to choose Him, because He has already chosen me.

Honoring the choices others make, and honoring their God-given right to make them is central to Paul’s message to the Galatians because those who are not honoring that right to choose are painting an ugly image of God. In fact, they aren’t painting an image of God, they are painting an image of themselves and calling it God. They are so certain they are right about circumcision, about — you name it — that the end of getting others to submit justifies the means of fear, coercion, trickery, badgering.

If we can remember that God’s goal is NOT to get people to DO stuff, but rather to draw people to honestly CHOOSE Him, then that will transform everything: our speech, our actions, our worship, our service. We can move through this world, transformed ourselves from the inside, honoring the transformation that God longs to begin INSIDE all those we meet. We won’t damage that spirit work with mere theological carrots and sticks — that would be “law.” And as Paul says,

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“… you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” ~ Romans 7:4-6 God is pro-choice because He wants us transformed, not kept in line; He wants sons and daughters, not obedient slaves; He wants partners not robots, and the alternative — inhabiting people by force — is simply demonic.

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When Thankfulness Isn’t Helpful

by Scott Simpson November, 2012 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. ~ Colossians 3:15-17 Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. ~ Luke 18:9-14 It’s official: “Tebowing” is now trademarked. What I will assume was originally a posture of humble thanks and supplication, became a national craze, then a national source of skeptical ridicule, then a battle closely akin to the Jesus fish / Darwin fish fiasco, and now finally, a legally protected property.

This isn’t a judgment of Mr. Tebow; in many ways, he is a victim of his own fame, and especially of the fame claimed by the Christian Community when “one of our own” makes it to the big time. It’s not so much what he did that led to the eventual ridicule as it was how much the Christian community loved and hyped it. But there is a larger pattern I think we’ve missed: when the act of “giving thanks” becomes a publically valuable commodity, one begins to question whether or not it continues to actually be thankfulness.

This is the challenge of our American Christian Culture; it has bestowed tangible, transactional value on things like publicly thanking Jesus, praying conspicuously, displaying Christian symbols, or espousing particular Christianized political stances, not to mention actually marketing Christian merchandise and services. Whether in the marketplace, or in our churches or our Christian institutions, there are points to be scored, positions to be gained, perceptions to be 45

leveraged… even big bucks to be earned. 

Deluxe Miracle Jesus Action Figure: “Feeds 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fish!”

“Turns water into wine!” Now available with Glow-in-the-dark Hands!



TestaMints Sugar Free Gum: “Pass the Word!” “Every pack includes a passage from the Scriptures!”



ChristianMingle.com: “Find God’s match for You”

In Jesus’ parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector, the Pharisee is the only one of the two who prayed anything about giving thanks. I’m certain his prayer was genuine.

He was truly thankful to God that he was not like all the sorry, sinful bunch he saw in the broader society. He was truly thankful to God that he was the kind of person who had the personal integrity to engage in fasting and tithing. He was thankful for the community of righteous scholars he was a part of. It surely felt good to him each morning when he opened his eyes to a brand new day and knew, “I am one of God’s very special people.”

It’s a warm and fuzzy thing to be surrounded by self-determined hallmarks of holiness, to have others share and bestow value on those same hallmarks, and especially, to be able to look beyond the pale and see the contrast between me and mine and the darkness of all those others. It’ll bind a community together to say, “Thank-you Jesus.”

But while this Pharisee said, “thanks,” the tax collector was moved to tears by a deep well of GRATITUDE for a God who would actually listen, forgive and even embrace a fumbling screw-up like himself.

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little. (Luke 7:47) My own thankfulness is the only conduit through which I am able to honestly love the world. If I’m not thankful, I’m filled with hate; If I’m thankful over and against others for the things that have to do with my own holiness hallmarks, I may score points within my “holiness tribe,” but these signifiers by their very nature will never lead me into the humble walk of unconditional love for others.

What sort of thankfulness will lead me toward love?

Not thankfulness that I’ve “arrived,” But thankfulness that, today, God gave me something that helped me grow.

Not thankfulness that I’m right, 46

But thankfulness that being wrong can’t halt God’s love.

Not thankfulness that I’ve found a community of “like minds,” But thankfulness that God’s spirit can heal even Grand Canyon-wide divisions.

Not thankfulness that my family and I have stayed “pure,” But thankfulness that God’s love purifies, refines and sets free.

Not thankfulness that I’m not an alcoholic, But thankfulness that God can free us all from our destructive dependencies.

Not thankfulness that I’m a Christian, But thankfulness to the point of joy that I can share in His suffering, Conform to His death.

Paul was telling the church in Colossae (Colossians 3:15-17) that being “thankful,” having “gratitude” and “giving thanks,” are truly possible to the degree we have the peace of Christ in our hearts, His message of unconditional love dwelling within and among us, and wisdom ringing out as a harmonious song we sing rather than an argument we promote, a judgment we pass or a club we wield.

Thankfulness to God must grow out of the blessings God has given. If we don’t understand the nature of how God blesses, then we don’t understand the nature of God. The Pharisee’s god was a god who blessed conditionally. He was a god who hated tax collectors and prostitutes and rewarded certain people based on merit, how often they fasted or how much they gave. To be thankful to that god for those blessings is to practice idolatry and to be misshaped by that thankfulness into a hateful, intolerant judge of the rest of the world.

As good as it feels to stand with those who have their act together; our God is called the “friend of sinners.” As righteous as it seems to rally around a culture-war hero fighting for “Christian values,” our God loved and forgave the soldiers even as they were killing Him. As affirming as it can be to be seen and recognized by the community of believers for our good deeds, our God reminded us that the reward of being seen is a fool’s gold that will lure us away from the reward of simply Being as our Father IS, a conduit of unconditional love.

Be thankful when those considered “outcasts and sinners” call you “friend.” Be thankful when you find yourself rejected yet empowered to respond with blessing. Be thankful when the good you do remains unnoticed.

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Whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:7-8) Paul surrendered all he was thankful for outside of knowing Christ because the cross turns gain into loss and loss into gain. The “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus� redefines our thankfulness, and in so doing, redefines us.

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The Great Escape

by Scott Simpson December, 2012 First of all, then, I ask that requests, prayers, petitions, and thanksgiving be made for all people. Pray for kings and everyone who is in authority so that we can live a quiet and peaceful life in complete godliness and dignity. This is right and it pleases God our savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-4 (CEB) There once was a Craftsman who fashioned a fine ship. It was the largest and most magnificent ship ever built. And he stood back and said, “It is good! It is very good!”

But this Craftsman was no ordinary carpenter; he was able not only to craft the ship, but also to craft all of the crew and every small thing that would be needed for a voyage of the sort that he had envisioned. He wanted a crew that would care for the ship and the voyage as he did, and so he crafted souls to people the ship—along with himself, for he of course intended to make this most wonderful voyage as well.

Why else would he have crafted it?

When he had shaped a crew and all the provisions and equipage needed for the trip, he once again stepped back and took a good look—now at not only a ship, but a crew and provisions aplenty. He said, “This is good! This is very good!”

And he gave them their tasks, each one his or her own. The tasks he’d perfectly suited them for. And they were all of the same mind, set upon working together for the good of crew and ship and voyage. And the Craftsman was there with them the day they set out.

That day the sails filled, the spray came over the bow the sun was bright, and everyone was about his or her calling. It was like a song or a symphony in which every part was perfectly in tune with all the rest, and with the wind, and with the sea itself, and it was, indeed, very good.

But there came a time when a crew member decided he wouldn’t take up his task. He was one of the cooks, and he chose one meal simply to stay in his bunk and let the others carry the slack. It wasn’t long before resentment spread through the crew. Someone didn’t get her proper portion at a meal, and so she let her cleaning tasks slide which, in turn threw off the crew taking care of the rigging, they had to take time to haul trash before setting to work, and so on and so forth until almost no crew members were operating at the tasks they were suited to anymore. They were each arguing with each about who was to do what and who was being cheated by whom.

No one trimmed the sails, no one heeded the course of the ship, everyone fended for 49

themselves and the only skills that were practiced and valued were the skills of argument and manipulation. Those who best argued and manipulated others into working for them, sat in an uneasy comfort while those below groused and murmured.

No one felt fulfilled. They had all forgotten their vocations. They had all forgotten their journey’s purpose, and even that they were on a journey. They just floated about aimlessly.

The Craftsman was there still, though they had all forgotten him. In fact, they no longer heard his voice or saw him as he walked the decks because their heads were always down. He was like a ghost on his own ship. He said, “This ship, this crew… it is all good, but the journey is lost because they no longer know it or know themselves.”

There began a rumor around this time among the people of the ship that their ship was actually sinking, that one day they would all wake up and find themselves under water.

So there began a great contest, the contest of the life-rafts.

There were teams of individuals that bound themselves together to vie for rights to a life-raft. Everyone knew that not everyone could be saved, and so only the best and the most worthy would be allowed to board the life-rafts and escape when the ship went down. Every person on the ship was focused upon a singular goal: How do I secure my place in the Great Escape? And some believed it was every man or woman for himself or herself, and others worked to make alliances because they believed their team would secure them safe passage on a life-raft.

The Craftsman was concerned. He knew the ship was good. He knew the crew was good.

But he knew also that the ship was made for the people and the people for the ship and that the marvelous journey he set about launching could and would be completed if only each and every person could pull together for the sake of the whole.

But they were each thinking only of escape. They were each thinking only of abandoning ship, either alone or with their team, it made no difference. He’d perfectly fitted all the pieces, but until the pieces knew their part, the whole was lost.

And so the Craftsman clothed himself as a crewman. He became one of them to remind them, to show them who they were and that they belonged to each other and to the ship.

He began as a lowly worker, cleaning decks he hadn’t dirtied. He wandered into the kitchen and prepared meals for people who’d not asked him to, but who were nonetheless hungry. He went cabin to cabin helping the old and the feeble, binding up wounds and healing. The ship’s doctor was now only working for those at the top, those who had risen above, but the craftsman, as the lowly crewman, fed and clothed and care for and healed, beginning at the bottom.

He did this to show them that whatever they did for the least, they did for the good of all, for the good of the journey, for the good even of the wind and the sea.

Good is good.

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Of course, the people took notice. Some said he was a god. Some said he was a devil.

Some said he was salvation. Some said he was destruction. Many teams commandeered his ways and even his name, putting them into operation among themselves. They served each other and fed each other and praised each other… but still, they did this over and against all the other teams, they alone would be the ones to make the Great Escape. They still could not see that the ship and the whole of the craftsman’s crew had places and tasks and indeed a song to make for the sake of the whole. In their anticipation of escape, some individuals and even some teams had become almost as enthusiastic about watching the ship and the others sink into the sea as they were about launching their own life raft. The idea of escape had rendered them incapable of ever appreciating anything about the craftsman’s good ship and its good crew. They were no longer anything like the Craftsman.

Many mistakenly believed this lowly crewman’s way was in service to escape, not in service to a ship and its crew that were indeed good and need not sink if only all the parts could be, once and for all, set right. They didn’t understand the love demonstrated in the crewman’s actions. The wise Craftsman knew that the only way things might possibly be set right, would be for him to somehow demonstrate that his love is the kind that does not settle for escape in the face of such a good ship and a fine crew that only has yet to awaken to itself and its purpose. Escape cuts its losses, counts its plan and its children a failure and abandons ship to make all new things. But love, love is patient.

Love is kind. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.

The Craftsman didn’t want to make all new things, because love, instead, makes all things new.

Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look! I’m making all things new.” He also said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:5 (CEB)

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