What people are saying about

DIVINE INTENTION

Like a gourmet chef, Larry stirs together fiction, Scripture, his real-life vulnerabilities, and thought-provoking questions to create a healthy, hearty stew for those with a passion and angst for the church. I hunger for what God wants for churches today, so I ate it up. You will too!

Joani Schultz, chief creative officer of

Group Publishing, Inc.

The newest generation of Christians is looking more and more to the past, to the first generation of Christians, to how they lived day-to-day life and how they dealt with questions about national identity, politics, and the Christian’s place in this world. Larry Shallenberger has written a book that touches that nerve, and I hope the church will take his words and be reformed.

Jordan Green,

editor of burnsidewriterscollective.com

It is said that history repeats itself. In this book on the early church, Larry gives us the hope that it can. From scholars to contemporary thinkers, he provides a grounded book without being stuffy. This ancient-future look at Acts makes me want to go there in my spiritual life. Bring it on, God!

Alan Nelson, Ed.D.,

executive editor of Rev! Magazine

Having experienced the devastation of a church that fell short of divine intentions and also the healing and consolation of a church that fulfilled their role, I know the importance of this book. I hope it will reach every pastor and church worker, causing us all to conform more and more with God’s true intentions for us as a community of faith and love.

Connie Neal, author of Myspace for Moms and Dads; and Wizards, Wardrobes, and Wookiees

I sat down to skim through this book—but couldn’t do it. The story Larry weaves was my story—a Christian realizing the passion is gone and only the position remains. This book took far longer to read than I expected because it asks all the right questions—and it was worth every minute. Thanks, Larry.

Mikal Keefer, Christian author and editor

DIVINE INTENTION

Published by David C Cook

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David C Cook Distribution Canada

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David C. Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

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are registered trademarks of Cook Communications Ministries.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

without written permission from the publisher.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New

International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible

Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations

marked msg are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson

1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing

Group; NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960,

1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission; and ESV are taken from

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2000; 2001 by Crossway

Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Italics in Scripture quotations have been added by the author for emphasis.

LCCN 2007925284

ISBN 978-0-7814-4389-0

eISBN 978-1-4347-6560-4

© 2007 Larry Shallenberger

First Edition 2007

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

1. Signs of Life

2. An Incomplete History of Suffering

3. “At Least We Aren’t …”

4. The Heart of Change

5. Love without Partitions

6. The Church Chaotic

7. Magic Apples

8. Revolution

9. Friends, Critics, and the Quest for Success

10. Prisons, Earthquakes, and Other Angels

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

About the Author

Foreword

Christendom has developed a reputation of being against things, of which the list is quite long. Add “church” to the list. It’s now hip to be “antichurch.” Often this is warranted. For too many, the experience of “church” has not led to deeper life in God; rather, it has become an adventure in missing the point. Which leads to the question—okay, then what is the point? Or, to put it another way, what are we for?

The conversation of what’s wrong with church and how it has failed has droned on long enough for me. We can criticize and deconstruct modern church and Christianity to the nth degree, but at some point someone’s got to step out and assume the risk of imagining and living an alternative Christian reality. Larry Shallenberger has assumed that risk in the book you now hold, and I want to be the first to thank him.

Having been there himself, Larry understands the dilemma of being disillusioned with church—where people often feel they must choose between abandoning Christian community altogether or resigning themselves to the status quo. Larry offers a third choice—recovering God’s idea of church, which he finds within the story of Jesus Christ and his first followers as told in the book of Acts. It has been pointed out that a “secret message” of sorts may lie within the life and teachings of Jesus while on earth. Larry opens our eyes to the message in Christ’s resurrection relationship through the Spirit with his earliest disciples. He shifts the concept of “church” from a noun, something we “go to,” to a verb, the continuing life of Christ on earth in and through us.

We all instinctively know that our journey with God cannot be reduced to a formula, seven steps, or a fill-in-the-blank outline. The genius of these pages is not that Larry is doling out all the right answers, but that he identifies the necessary questions each of us must wrestle through in order to experience what God most deeply desires for us.

Chapter by chapter the story of the book of Acts is told alongside the fictional account of a group of friends struggling through the questions themselves, which makes the read both enlightening and engaging.

Larry’s book represents in practical terms what Christian living and community could become. There is certainly no lack of people disenchanted with church or those with theories to improve it. We can scramble, poach, boil, or sunny-side up an egg; but in the end it’s still an egg. There are countless ways of “doing church” with all sorts of worship styles, church growth strategies, and cutting-edge programs or campaigns; but in the end it’s still church with the same underlying mentalities. Divine Intention presses deeper and offers a solid and hopeful place for reconstructing a more Christ-centered Christianity. Larry does us a favor by cutting to the chase and delving into the rough-and-tumble topics such as nationalism, cultural wars, and the conflicts Christians have among themselves.

What impacted me most about this book is the motive with which it was written. Larry writes, “My prayer is that this book will be evaluated not on the number of interesting facts unearthed regarding the first-century church, but on its ability to spark small personal reformations in the quality of our love of God and our love for others.” I’ve come to a place on my own spiritual journey where very little, perhaps nothing, is more important than love. Quite frankly, I don’t think it’s possible to construct or imagine a new and alternative way of being the church in the world apart from it. He was right. Divine Intention did in fact deepen within me a love for God and others. That alone gives me hope that what he articulates in the book is possible. For this I owe Larry a great debt of gratitude and will express it by giving this book to others.

Jim Palmer

Author, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the Unlikely People Who Help You)

Introduction

When a group of people practices something for two thousand years, the expectation is that they will eventually get whatever it was that they were committed to doing right. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the church. Two millennia worth of spent energy should have produced answers for individual believers on how to live what Jesus called the “abundant life.” By now local communities of believers should have mastered some competency in “corporate incarnation”—being the embodiment of Christ on earth.

However, a quick survey of church history reminds us that the church has not lived up to its promise and potential: the Crusades, the Inquisition, Luther’s pogroms, the “Protestant Reich Church” in Nazi Germany, etc. Each extreme example warns us that the church has the ability to mutate into something decidedly not God shaped.

Perhaps all you need is your own personal history with church to tell you that something is amiss. You’ve logged in countless pew hours and dutifully captured in your journal the essence of every sermon you’ve ever heard. Each week you’ve collected the preacher’s three to five application points and added them to your spiritual to-do list. This list has now grown from a three-step dance to an impossible ribbon of religious expectations. You signed up for new life and settled for new lists.

Maybe you graduated past pew sitting and signed up to volunteer on a ministry team. The hope of using your spiritual gift to serve the church in a meaningful way prompted you to sacrifice your time and energy. Then church politics pushed you away. You experienced a lack of consistency between the values celebrated on Sunday morning and the way the church truly operated during the Tuesday night board meeting. Love and servanthood are triumphed from the pulpit on Sunday, but the “greatest of these” is a good old-fashioned power play any other day of the week. Now Christian character seems little more than a veneer of politeness used to lubricate the social exchanges that occur before and after worship services. Being a sensible person, you’ve decided to keep those realities at arm’s length.

You’ve learned to live with these disappointments without walking away from church. You echo Peter’s sentiment when Jesus asked if he was going to join the disciples who were abandoning Jesus. Peter’s reply? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Peter was pragmatic. Following Jesus and living in the community of disciples were difficult—and Jesus’ most recent difficult words seemed to further compound the matter, but Peter was savvy enough to see he had no real alternative.

I’ve had my share of ambivalence toward the church. But I also have a singular passion for the church; it’s part of my deepest fiber. I love the church. I was raised in a Christian home and was taken to church whenever the doors were open. Most of my earliest memories are church oriented—Sunday school teachers working flannelgraph boards, spinets with warped soundboards banging out old familiar hymns, and the weekly altar call. My dad informed me that the wooden altar in our church was originally part of the bar at a local tavern. I grew up watching the adults in the church kneel for prayer over the same rail where patrons had once leaned over drinks to forget their long days at the local steel foundry.

Church was my place of refuge during my teen years. I was a socially awkward teen who just didn’t fit in at school. Youth group became my sanctuary. God placed an undeniable call on my life into the pastorate when I was sixteen. Upon graduation, I left Erie, Pennsylvania, for Trinity International University and a degree in biblical studies that would prepare me for a lifetime of serving the local church.

After receiving my degree, I returned to Erie only to find the church of my childhood gridlocked in intractable conflict. Now, barely an adult, I learned that the congregation had been engaged in similar conflicts for more than a decade. However, this fight was different: The senior pastor left in frustration, and I was asked to assume the preaching duties and to help lead the church until a new pastor was hired. Four years of theology and biblical studies did nothing to prepare me for this daunting task. Bill Hybels, senior pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, once said: “There’s nothing like the local church when the local church is functioning right.” Well, I can assure you there’s also nothing like the local church when it’s not functioning right.

I stayed to witness the hiring of my church’s next pastor and shortly thereafter took my first pastorate at a much larger church across town. The interview process was extensive, but I never discovered that I was about to join a congregation reeling from controversies over worship styles and the best way to govern the church. A few heated congregational meetings and an exodus of families fleeing the church oriented me to the church’s crisis in short order.

I will always remember the wounds, the insomnia, the anger, and the stress of those years. I love the church, but at times I’ve felt trapped by it, and I’ve wondered if there is something more.I considered giving up on the church, or at least those local churches. But a reality check had me echoing Peter. “What else is there? Really? What else is there on earth worth pouring my life into?”

Many have faced Peter’s choice and have chosen to distance themselves from the Christ-followers. It’s commonplace for people, Christian or not, to pit religion against spirituality. The church, or at least a church—wherever he or she was “burned”—is viewed as a religious bureaucracy, not a place to nurture the spiritual life God implanted.

Peter, if he were alive, might say that discarding the church, despite its problems, is no choice at all. When Jesus walked the earth, Peter realized that not following Jesus would separate him from eternal life. Today Peter would still point to Jesus as the only source of eternal life, and he would insist that the Jesus community is still the only adequate place to nurture this life.

Abandoning church is no real choice, but neither is a life of just “doing time” with a congregation that has no real chance of being a source of spiritual empowerment. Resignation is not a quality of the abundant life.

There is a third choice, a choice bound up in the narrative of young Samuel. The Old Testament book of 1 Samuel opens with Hannah literally giving her young son to God. As a child, Samuel was surrounded by the trappings of religion. He spent his days dusting the tabernacle furniture and doing odd jobs. He literally polished the machinery of the “organized religion” of his day. His breakthrough came, not by abandoning the congregation, but by learning to hear God’s voice himself. The act of personally hearing from God was the beginning of a personal spiritual awakening for Samuel, and it was the beginning of his role as a spiritual reformer and prophet of Israel.

In Samuel’s day, religion was the enemy of God’s design for an authentic faith community. Samuel was raised in the midst of a corrupt priesthood—a priesthood that created barriers between the common person and God. Today, many of us see church as a barrier, not a bridge to the divine. But God’s divine intent wasn’t the rejection of “organized religion,” but its reformation. What if, like Samuel, we could hear God’s voice and experience personal and church renewal? What if we could learn what it means to be a part of God’s new humanity and his new society?

For centuries the church has turned to the book of Acts to hear God’s voice and to rediscover his divine intentions for the church. Intimate house churches, sprawling megachurches, and churches of every size in between have turned to Acts as a sacred meeting place to encounter God and recapture what it means to be his people.

Acts doesn’t offer seven keys to effective church growth or ten steps to walk in the Spirit. Acts isn’t a volume of systematic theology or a well-organized manual for the business of running a church. Instead Acts is the unsanitized account of Jesus’ followers struggling to follow an absentee Savior. Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, and effectively shattered the alienating effects of sin. The cross created the possibility of humans experiencing spiritual renovation and relationship with God. A different type of community was made possible—one characterized by love, grace, servanthood, and forgiveness. However, Jesus returned to heaven before spending adequate time tutoring his followers in the art of being citizens of this new community. Throughout Acts, the church seems triumphant one moment only to be seen flailing the next as it struggles to live out its new identity. The book of Acts can be seen as God, primarily in the person of the Holy Spirit, making divine interventions in the church in order to reveal his divine intentions. Acts captures human struggle, but it also recounts the process through which God tutored his people to become everything they were meant to be.

This book you are holding is for those who love the church but have been deeply disappointed by it. This book is for those who see the church as boring, lacking nurture and vision, and at times a spiritually noxious environment. This book is for those brave enough to see the church with bald realism but who love the church too much to walk away. This book is for those willing to make Samuel’s choice—to hear from God and then undergo personal and communal reformation.

Now, I understand that not everyone feels as I do, and if you are one of those people, that’s okay. Just put the book down and walk away. But if you in any way reflect what I just described, then by all means read on! But first allow me to walk you through the structure of Divine Intention and disclose some of its limitations …

Each chapter carefully examines one of God’s incursions into the life of the early church. Together we’ll explore in depth how God interrupted human routine in the early church and discover how that intervention reflects his desire for us as his people. Now about the beginning and end of these chapters …

Each chapter opens with a fictional dialogue among Jonah, Alice, and Ron—three friends who’ve reunited for the first time since their collegiate years at an evangelical Bible school. I invite you to eavesdrop around the table as they share their journeys and experiences with congregational life. I’ve chosen to use fiction because of its great power to disarm. Fiction can address the areas of church life where we have the greatest need to hear God’s intentions and still allow us to sidestep our defenses and religious jargon in order to confront reality as it is. The characters you’ll meet are authentic (though not actual) individuals; each possesses a heart and hunger for God but also hang-ups and hurts. Don’t look to any one character for answers. Instead, look to all three of them together to be a source of relevant questions.

Speaking of questions, each chapter ends with a set of questions for further reflection and discussion. If you’re like me, you may be tempted to skip the questions in your rush to dive into the next chapter. I’d like you to treat these questions in a different manner. As far as I’m concerned, this book is not finished, and the questions are my way of inviting you to complete the work by applying the lessons you learn here to both your personal life and your community life. The questions are designed to help you wrestle with the text, to help you hear God’s voice, and to help you set your personal agenda for renewal and reformation. This is your chance to customize this book and discover God’s divine intention for your life.

Finally, let me acknowledge some limitations of this book. We’re not going to cover every significant moment in Acts. There are not enough pages for that. I’ve chosen ten accounts of divine intervention in the early church, ten “divine tutoring moments” that help us get at the core of what it means to be members of a new humanity and a new society. There are other accounts that could have made the list but didn’t. Therefore, Divine Intention makes a better starting block than it does a finish line. It’s my hope that this book will whet your appetite and prompt your own unguided excursions into the book of Acts.

Divine Intention is also limited by its focus. Paul, a major player in Acts, wrote these words about the focus of his teaching: “The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5). Love is the pinnacle of Christian teaching. However, the church has historically evaluated its biblical teachers with a yardstick of doctrinal purity. Little attention has been given to whether or not the teaching inspires greater love in the teaching’s listeners. Historically, heretics have been identified by their corrupted ideas. However, if we take Paul seriously, perhaps heresy should rather be measured in terms of love—“life and doctrine” as Paul elsewhere put it (1 Tim. 4:16). Those who truly love have already gotten the doctrine right. The two cannot be separated.

I’ve admitted two foci in this book. First, we must grasp God’s intentions for living out a “new way to be human” (to steal a phrase from the band Switchfoot). Second, we must understand how to participate in the new community Jesus established through his death, burial, and resurrection. These two foci correlate to the two greatest commandments—loving God with all that we are and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

The musical Rent opens with the question of how we are to measure the quality of our lives … in minutes or seconds elapsed, in cups of coffee consumed, in sunrises witnessed? One of its songs resolves this question with the conclusion: “How about love? How about love? Measure in love.” My prayer is that this book will be evaluated not on the number of interesting facts unearthed regarding the first-century church, but on its ability to spark small personal reformations in the quality of our love for God and our love for others.

Larry Shallenberger

October 2006

Chapter One

Signs of Life

When the Feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. It filled the whole building. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks, and they started speaking in a number of different languages as the Spirit prompted them.

There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongues being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, “Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?

Parthians, Medes, and Elamites;

Visitors from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia,

Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,

Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene;

Immigrants from Rome, both Jews and proselytes;

Even Cretans and Arabs!

“They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!”

Their heads were spinning; they couldn’t make head or tail of any of it. They talked back and forth, confused: “What’s going on here?”

Others joked, “They’re drunk on cheap wine.”

Acts 2:1–13 MSG

I guided my late-model minivan into the crowded pizzeria parking lot and found a spot between two German sports cars. I checked my watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. I inspected my hair in the rearview mirror, stepped out of the van, and gave my middle-aged waistline a disapproving look.

This wasn’t a good idea. It has been twenty years since Alice, Ron, and I last spent any time together. In Bible college, we were inseparable: the three musketeers. We spent late evenings at the all-night coffee shop with biology, Greek, theology, journalism, education theory, and free refills. I was studying to become a pastor. Alice had dreams of a Pulitzer in journalism, and Ron wanted to become a teacher. Bleary-eyed, we each pored over our study notes and chili fries, breaking whenever a wave of giddiness caused by sleep deprivation overcame one of us.

On Friday nights we rode the “L-train” to downtown Chicago in search of Rush Street’s finest deep-dish pizza.

We daydreamed about the future of the church with wide-eyed idealism; we were going to change everything. Ron, Alice, and I were the student leaders at our campus ministry. We struggled to pull our classmates away from their books and stereos long enough to attend our small meeting and listen to our “Acts 2” dreams. We euphorically dreamed of a community of Christ-followers who were “completely sold out for Jesus” and who lived in constant community—praying, eating, and worshipping together. Ron, Alice, and I were either brave or foolish enough to believe that together we could rekindle the embers of this first-century church community and spark a Spirit-filled revival in our own days.

That was twenty years ago. I wonder, all that spiritual power we thought was running through us, was it nothing more than postadolescent hubris? What if we were merely intoxicated on youthful exuberance?

I gave the college-aged hostess my vitals. “Jonah Adams. Party of three.”

I waited for Alice and Ron parked in a corner booth with one eye on the door. How am I going to start this conversation? I’m the pastor in the room. I had found Alice and Ron as a result of idly Googling them on my laptop. The three of us started catching up electronically. Alice had married an artist who built a studio into the house so he could paint and watch their two children while Alice worked in the district attorney’s office. Ron reported that he was divorced but dating again. His only consolation from the first marriage was that he and his ex-wife were unable to have children. None of us had strayed too far from our alma mater; however, the demands of each of our lives had caused us to drift apart. I suggested we meet at our old haunt to catch up.

Ron and Alice entered together. I studied their faces and saw signs of age. Ron sported white-walled temples. Alice’s hair, once shoulder length, was now cropped in a practical bob.

Am I really going to go through with this? I have to tell someone that I feel trapped by church life, but it’s not safe to tell my congregation. My people drive dozens of miles every Sunday to hear my carefully crafted sermons about how to live the Jesus-shaped life under the power of the Spirit. If only my people knew what I was experiencing … I feel like Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring when he tells Gandalf of the effects the magic ring is having on him: “I feel like butter scraped over too much bread.” I am stewarding the Word for God’s people, and the task is turning me into vapor.

I wasn’t honest with Ron and Alice about why I wanted to get together. They didn’t know I was about to unload my neediness on them. I promised a night of laughter and old times, but now I’m about to deliver a confession. And Ron and Alice are going to confess too. I need to know that there’s really something to this “abundant life.” My days are filled with the pressure of cranky church members, sermon deadlines, unscheduled counseling sessions, and contentious church meetings. I can’t remember the last time I felt alive. Ron and Alice are going to confess, and I need to hear that one of them is living out our Acts 2 dream of life in the Spirit.

I rose to embrace them with a smile as they found the table. We placed our order—one extra-large, deep-dish pizza—everything on it.

I looked down and searched the face of my watch for an excuse not to say anything. There was really no good way to start this conversation, so … “Ron. Alice. I need to get something off my chest …”

You’re reading this book with the hope of discovering what it means to be alive to God as an individual and as part of a community. Before Jesus accomplished his mission on earth, he gathered his inner core of followers and began to coach them on what life would be like relating to God after he left them. Jesus would no longer be at their disposal to answer their questions. There would be no more parables or sermons from their rabbi. Jesus’ band of twelve, and every Christ-follower who would ever be added, would need to discover how to maintain a close friendship with God through the person of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus described the quality of life that we could expect as his followers as “abundant.” “Abundant life” is an awkward phrase—it’s as if Jesus was pressing against the limits of language to describe a manner of living that his disciples had never experienced. They had no point of reference to comprehend the intensity of being that comes from a vital relationship with God. Within the confines of the Aramaic language, Jesus spoke in terms of volume to communicate what was coming. In essence he was saying to them: “You’re going to get life, lots of life, life overflowing in buckets. Life force rising over the banks of your personhood.”

Before we dive into Acts 2, I need to borrow a play from our fictional Jonah and blurt out a confession of my own. Experiencing this “abundant life” has been an elusive experience for me. I was raised in a faith tradition that emphasized the importance of Scripture. I was taught to turn to Scripture for guidance and wise principles. However, I’m not as instinctive when it comes to relating to the God of Scripture. Jesus once chided the religious leaders of his day for being fluent in the Scriptures without realizing that the Scriptures were pointing to a person—Jesus himself. I’m afraid that too often describes the quality of my connection with God. I’ve slowly learned, and am still learning, that “abundant life” is a relational term. It’s when I unintentionally substitute my Bible knowledge for a relationship with the Holy Spirit that I get cynical and assume that terms like “abundant“ and “Spirit-filled” are bad punch lines. The truth is that when I feel most spiritually disjointed, it’s usually because I’m attempting a personal relationship with the message and not its author. My wife, Amy, puts it this way: An all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent Being is hard to love. I’ve tended to overcome this difficulty by settling for his literature.

Since you and I are attempting to understand the dynamics of a relationship, let’s agree not to read Acts 2 in search of some behavioral modification program to improve our lives. The relationship between Amy and me can’t be reduced to a collection of formulas, how-tos, or to-do lists. It’s too dynamic for that. But we can describe our relationship through a collection of metaphors: We are dance partners, coservants, one flesh, or even two strings of a tied knot. Amy and I can discuss the health of our marriage in terms of how well these metaphors seem to resonate with our relationship. I know some who describe their marriages in terms of disfunction—they talk about the “ball and chain,” “the split,” or the “breakup.” We can’t quantify our relationships, but when we describe them with metaphors, we know exactly what we are dealing with, don’t we? For example, if a friend tells us that her marriage is “on the rocks,” we don’t need her to give us any specifics to know immediately that she and her husband are not getting along together.

Acts 2 is the account of how God gave his people the gift of a relationship with the Holy Spirit. God’s divine intention is that we have abundant life by experiencing the closeness of the Holy Spirit in our cells, synapses, thoughts, dreams, attitudes, and emotions—in our entire being. Just as in our relationships with our marriage partners, God gave us markers on how to relate to the Holy Spirit; however, it wasn’t in the form of a to-do list. God implanted three unforgettable metaphors that guide us as we attempt a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Breathing God

When God the Father sent the Holy Spirit to the believers at Pentecost, special effects—gale-force winds and firelike lights—accompanied his arrival. God wasn’t engaging in melodramatic showmanship; he was supplying his people with instructive relational word pictures.

Commentator F. F. Bruce sees the galelike sound that filled the disciples’ house as an allusion to Ezekiel 37.[1] Ezekiel’s surreal vision was probably set in Gehenna, a valley outside of Jerusalem that was converted into a garbage dump. The corpses of the criminals and the poor were often discarded at Gehenna. Fires were constantly lit there to burn off the disease and stench. In Ezekiel’s vision God breathed life into a pile of human bones that lay scattered on this heap. The bones sprang to life and regrouped into skeletons. Ezekiel watched in amazement as muscle, sinew, and skin reformed on these once lifeless bones until he saw an army before him.

Ezekiel was comparing sinful Israel to the fire-dried skeletons of Gehenna—Israel’s rebellion against God had drained it of all its life-giving marrow. The nation was without life or hope.

God told Ezekiel: “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’ God, the Master, told the dry bones, ‘Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you and you’ll come to life’” (Ezek. 37:4–5 MSG). Ezekiel spoke to the four winds, and they resuscitated the lifeless corpses and raised them to their feet as a mighty army.

God then turned his attention to lifeless Israel. He promised to revive Israel and fill his people with his breath: “And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live” (Ezek. 37:14 ESV).

F. F. Bruce is hinting that when the highly Scripture-literate believers in the room experienced the sound of the rushing wind, their minds likely made a connection with Ezekiel’s vision and the way God had breathed life into his people. The rushing wind let the first believers know that “breathing in God” was a key to life in the Spirit. This metaphor helps us understand and express our relationship with the Holy Spirit in the language of dependency. The Holy Spirit offers life; we inhale the Spirit as if our spiritual life depended on it. Leonard Sweet, in his book SoulSalsa, writes,

The word spirituality comes from the Latin spiritus, which means “breath of life.” In Hebrew it is ruah; in Greek, pneuma; in English, wind or breath. The body is God-breathed. It cannot help but breathe with regularity. The soul must will itself to breathe and live. It gasps for air until it finds breath.[2]

God animated Adam by breathing into him. Since that day, we stay animated by breathing in God.

Imagine a person in a hospital with a respirator forcing air into her lungs. Every life-giving breath is a gift from the life support machine. If the machine were to become unplugged, the woman lying on the table would die in minutes.

This is the type of dependency you and I need to learn in order to experience the abundant life God desires for us.

We breathe in God’s moral nature because our own goodness is not enough to sustain us.

We breathe in God’s wisdom because our own ideas leave us stifled.

We breathe in God’s strength because our muscles have cramped from living an anaerobic life.

Mike, the pastor who works one office down from me, is the best example I know of a person who strives to breathe in God every moment. Mike knows how many times in the book of Acts it says that the Holy Spirit led or guided someone to do something. Mike reminds me to stop trying to do God’s will without stopping to hear from the Holy Spirit. He is convinced that if he stops and listens, God will breathe a whisper into his heart and tell him what to do next.

I could stand to be more like Mike. We all could.

At this point in the chapter it’s tempting for me to lapse into a behavioral modification program and give you “Nine Steps for a Better Relationship with God.” I could remind you to set your alarm for 6:00 a.m. so you have time to read the Word or keep a prayer journal, etc. The problem is that relationships can’t be reduced to mere checklists. It’s possible for me to buy Amy flowers on the first of the month, have a date with her on the second and fourth Thursdays, and take out the trash faithfully every morning. But our relationship can’t be reduced to the sum of those behaviors. The same is true of our relationship with God.

Instead, we must ask ourselves, does our relationship with the Holy Spirit work like breathing does?

A few years ago, I trained in tae kwon do. There’s so much to think about when learning a martial art—how to stand, the body mechanics of kicking, how to position the arms to protect the torso, the proper footwork—that it’s entirely possible to forget to take in deep, regular breaths. Early in my training I found myself winded because I didn’t remember to breathe. I have a similar experience with my spirituality; I can get so consumed with the mechanics of discipleship—that divine to-do list—that I forget to breathe. You see, we can get so caught up with the “doings” of faith that we forget to just take in God.

Don’t scramble to make an action plan. Just hold this breathing metaphor against your relationship with the Holy Spirit, and test it for fit. Does this word picture resonate with your personal experience, or does it just cause dissonance?

If the metaphor doesn’t fit you well, try asking the Holy Spirit some questions: “Now what?” “Where do I go from here?”

Tell the Holy Spirit how you are feeling about your relationship with him. Ask him for help.

Then trust the Holy Spirit to be your live-giving air supply. Trust him to tell you what he thinks about the relationship, how he would like to guide you, and how he would like to direct your prayers. I guarantee that if you listen, if you breathe him in, he will fill you with his answers.

The Burning Bush

New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce sees another allusion to the Old Testament in the Acts account of Pentecost. Luke wrote that a luminous, firelike object hovered over the head of every believer present (Acts 2:3). Bruce sees God placing these lights over the disciples’ heads as a way to get the eyewitnesses of the event, as well as Luke’s first-century readers, to understand their relationship with the Holy Spirit through the metaphor of Moses’ burning bush.

The burning bush is a symbol to help us understand that the Holy Spirit works through our brokenness. For instance, in Exodus chapter 3, God used a burning bush to end the alienation of Moses from himself, his people, and his God.

Moses fled Egypt because he killed a slave master in a misguided attempt to liberate his people. He fled from Pharaoh and his royal destiny to work as a shepherd and live a peaceful life in exile. God watched Moses languish for forty years and then arrested his attention with a burning bush. Moses took notice of the bush because it was covered in flames but wasn’t consumed by them. God’s voice emanated from the middle of this impossible scene.

This scrawny desert scrub coexisting with fire was a living metaphor of what Moses was about to become as God’s spokesman. Moses was the epitome of human brokenness. He had fallen from his lofty position as an Egyptian prince and had reduced himself to the lowly position of a murderer and a fugitive. Moses’ failures had robbed him of his security and confidence. In Acts 7:22, Stephen reports that “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds” (ESV). Yet at the burning bush, Moses had no confidence in his ability or skills as an orator.

Moses was arguing with God at the scene of his defining life moment—the burning bush. Moses would be broken, like the sun-baked bush with gnarled roots scratching for rumors of water in the surrounding rocks. God would surround him with the blaze of his power and glory. The division of labor between God and Moses was clear: “Moses, you be weak. I’ll be strong.”

Now, millennia later, on the day of Pentecost, God was offering the same division of labor to the men and women in the upper room. The offer was made to individuals like Peter, a man once filled with self-confidence but now broken by the knowledge that he was capable of serial disloyalty toward God’s Son; to the other disciples who had deserted Jesus and hid for their lives; to a crowded room full of people who were now cut off from worshipping in the temple. The “tongues of fire” over their heads were an invitation to become burning bushes. They would be broken; the Holy Spirit would be strong and glorious. They were frail, weak, and flawed people, yet still capable of burning for the Holy Spirit.

When those disciples exited the upper room, stepped into the streets, and began speaking to the multinational crowd in their own languages, God immediately made good on his “burning bush” offer. And the burning bush metaphor defined their relationship with the Holy Spirit throughout the book of Acts. Throughout Acts, ordinary and imperfect men and women were used by God to accomplish his purposes.

The burning bush metaphor continues to define the relationship between Christ-followers and the Holy Spirit. God offers us the same division of labor he offered Moses, Peter, and the other disciples of the upper room. We get to be weak and broken, and he gets to burn through us without destroying us.

This is hard stuff for someone who grew up defining his self-concept by excelling at religion. I once dominated a popular game in evangelical junior high subculture known as “Bible Quizzing.” Bible quizzing worked like a game show. Every year youth group teams would immerse themselves in a prescribed book of the Bible, preparing for the quiz. Once a month rows of adolescents sat in metal folding chairs with electronic pads on them. The quizmaster would read the beginning of a verse. When a quizzer believed he could finish the verse perfectly, he would jump off his pad, breaking the electronic circuit and turning on the light that identified the quizzer as first. If the quizzer could finish the verse without errors, he or she would be awarded points. I almost always ended every quiz night the high point scorer.

Unfortunately, quizzing was the way I related to God well into my adult life. I tried to earn worth before God with my religious performance, my ability to “finish the verse.” Unconsciously, church life became a competitive event. I felt okay before God if I could collect the most religious points.

It has been a long process for me to realize that God has no interest in being my divine Quizmaster. He’s not interested in my compulsive drive to accumulate points in my self-constructed system of invisible pads and circuits. God wants to have a relationship with the real me—the broken bush.

The Holy Spirit is interested in having an authentic relationship with us. He has no interest in interfacing with our religious pretenses and fictions. The Holy Spirit is waiting to meet Christ-followers who are painfully aware of their limits, quirks, and moral shortfalls, so that he can overcome them. He is actively seeking those who will present all of their brokenness to him and allow him to burn a signal fire over it.

The Temple

The final metaphor in Acts 2 that helps us understand what a relationship with the Holy Spirit is like is “the temple.” This metaphor explains how special and valuable we are in the Holy Spirit’s eyes.

In Judaism, the Jerusalem temple was the geographic center of worship. The temple was lavish and ornate. In fact, when Solomon built the temple, he underestimated the cost of construction and had to give King Hiram of Tyre several cities on the Israeli frontier to cover the construction cost overages. During the dedication ceremony of the original temple, God told Solomon:

I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. (1 Kings 9:3)

Worship at the temple was the centerpiece of Judaism. And now, during the Feast of Pentecost, Jerusalem swelled as Jewish pilgrims from all over the known world returned to their holy city so they could present their offerings there. The whole nation came to worship at the temple.

However, the roughly 120 believers wedged into the house, waiting for the Holy Spirit, were unwelcome to worship in their beloved temple, just blocks away from their covert gathering. They had been ostracized as a result of following Jesus. They were pariahs, cut off from God’s meeting place of choice, divorced from their religious heritage. The priest viewed them as perverse heretics, not fit for worshipping God at the sacred temple.

The Holy Spirit responded by taking up residence in the believers themselves. Instead of God’s glory lighting the Jerusalem temple, the Holy Spirit claimed the bodies of Jesus’ followers as the place he would fill with his presence. These so-called pariahs were worthy of so much more than outward worship—they were worthy of the inward presence of God. God’s eyes and heart would permanently belong to this band of believers who chose to follow his Son.

Having a relationship with the Holy Spirit is like being a temple, the locus of God’s love, presence, and attention. No longer must we go somewhere or do something to meet God. In the chambers of our thoughts, emotions, and personality—this is where God wants to hear our prayers, dreams, confessions, and worship. If we are Christ-followers, then we are living temples, the recipients of divine attention. We are the objects of God’s focus and people in whom God invests his passions and love. We may have earned other labels over the course of our lives—outcasts, losers, trash—but to God, we are a temple, the place in which he chooses to dwell. It is in us and through us that he intends to make known his presence to the world.

If you’ve spent any time in the church, you’re probably reminded of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthians had become tolerant of sexually immoral relationships in their midst, so Paul wrote to remind them that they were God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwelled in them. Paul was appealing to their temple status as the basis to clean up their acts. You may be thinking, Aha, this is where relationship ends, and Christianity as a behavioral modification program begins. Paul had his checklist; faith isn’t about grace after all, but performance.

That isn’t what Paul was driving at. Let me explain. Recently, I noticed that a coworker was making subtle changes to her appearance. She started styling her hair differently and using more makeup. She changed the way she dressed. New sweaters were added to her wardrobe. When I saw her, I could tell something was different, but I couldn’t place it. (I’m not the most perceptive male in the world.) But then it dawned on me; she was in love. There was a man out there somewhere (actually, he worked part-time at the church—I told you, I’m not very perceptive) who began to tell this woman how special and loved she was. And she responded to that message by beginning to treat herself with an increased sense of value.

You see, if we’re truly in love with someone and we know that person loves us, our lives will start to reflect that fact. This is what Paul was driving at. He was reminding the Corinthians that God was crazy about them, that it was within them that he wanted to meet with them and be worshipped by them. Paul sensed that they had forgotten their value in God’s eyes, and he was attempting to help them recapture that realization.

Yes, having a relationship with the Holy Spirit involves moral change. However, that change should stem from knowing how much God values us, not from a lifetime of jumping to the verbal promptings of some religious quizmaster.

Formula or Life?

An Indian mystic once likened spiritual life to a bird. We can examine a bird, count its feathers, and even dissect it in an attempt to understand it. However, this reductionism kills the bird. The same is true of the abundant life. We mistakenly assume that if we can reduce spiritual life to a list of behaviors, or formulas, that somehow we will gain control of it. But all we end up doing is stifling new life—one that is lived in relationship with the Holy Spirit—in favor of enslaving ourselves to our own disciplines.

In Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller describes this new relationship:

I have this suspicion, however, that if we are going to get to know God, it is going to be a little more like getting to know a person than practicing voodoo. And I suppose that means we are going to have to get over this fear of intimacy, or whatever you want to call it, in order to have an ancient sort of faith, the faith shared by all the dead apostles.[3]

We don’t need religious voodoo to help us navigate a relationship with the Holy Spirit. We are trying to befriend an invisible, all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent Spirit; and while that seems to be a formidable task, remember that this Spirit is more committed than we are to the relationship. In his commitment to us, he defined our friendship with three markers in Acts 2: dependency, authenticity, and value. Now go forth and live! Strive for that genuine relationship with the Holy Spirit, and all else will fall into place.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Do you feel as though you’ve been missing out on the abundant life that God has in store for you? What do you feel is holding you back? What did you see in this reading that can help you break free from this slump?

2. Acts 2 offers three metaphors for understanding a relationship with the Holy Spirit—breathing, a burning bush, and a temple. Which of these metaphors best describes your relationship with the Holy Spirit? Where could you use some improvement? What do you think can help you attain that? How often do you have conversations with the Holy Spirit?

3. What do you think would happen if you started asking the Holy Spirit, “Now what?” and “Where do I go from here?”

4. The burning bush metaphor seems to imply that we must be honest with God about who we truly are. How easy or hard is that for you? Why?

5. Take some time in prayer to ask God how he thinks you’re doing in your relationship with him. Now simply be silent and listen to God’s response, taking note of the things he brings to mind and heart.

Chapter Two

An Incomplete History of Suffering

At that point they went wild, a rioting mob of catcalls and whistles and invective. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, hardly noticed—he only had eyes for God, whom he saw in all his glory with Jesus standing at his side. He said, “Oh! I see heaven wide open and the Son of Man standing at God’s side!”

Yelling and hissing, the mob drowned him out. Now in full stampede, they dragged him out of town and pelted him with rocks. The ringleaders took off their coats and asked a young man named Saul to watch them.

As the rocks rained down, Stephen prayed, “Master Jesus, take my life.” Then he knelt down, praying loud enough for everyone to hear, “Master, don’t blame them for this sin”—his last words. Then he died.

Saul was right there, congratulating the killers.

Acts 7:54—8:1 MSG

November 13

I swung the door open to the restaurant. Alice and Ron were already waiting for me at our booth. Last month’s conversation was a breath of fresh air. I had been lost in the busyness of church work. Sermon preparations kept me close to the Word, but I had been focusing on packaging truths for others. I hadn’t spent time befriending the God who wanted to meet with me face-to-face in my everyday life.

Over the last month I started to feel the awkwardness of returning to a friendship that had suffered from my neglect. The last time we met, dinner ended with the three of us deciding that we had neglected our friendship long enough. Dinner at Geno’s was now a standing monthly appointment.

I slid into the booth as Ron informed me that he had taken the liberty of ordering the pie and that this was Alice’s turn to confess. I studied Alice’s face; her high cheekbones were trembling. Her eyes flashed with anger as tears began to blur her vision.

Alice explained that a verdict had been handed down on a case in which the district attorney’s office had invested countless hours of energy. The prosecution was trying to convict a man accused of breaking into an apartment, beating and raping a single mother, and then stripping the house of everything of value. During the process of building the case and preparing the woman for the trauma of taking the witness stand, Alice had developed a strong empathy for the victim. She began to see the woman more as a person and less as a client. Her skills as a lawyer couldn’t take away the violation the single mother experienced, but Alice was determined to give her client the gift of justice. Alice was the first in the office and the last to leave, struggling with an armload of files.

Although Alice entered the hearing thinking this was a slam-dunk case, the defense countered with accusations of sloppy police work and mishandling of evidence. Reasonable doubt split the jury, and the rapist walked away a free man.

Alice seethed. “He’s guilty.”

“I know. A criminal got off free,” Ron replied in a low tone.

“I’m not talking about the rapist. He won’t be able to help himself. Sooner or later he’ll violate some other innocent woman, and when he’s caught, I’m going to take the case and make sure he never sees sunlight again.” Alice furrowed her brows together. “God’s the one who’s guilty. He could have stopped this, but he didn’t. And he’s walking away from the crime scot free.”

I grasped for a pastoral response. “Alice—”

“Don’t, Jonah,” Alice warned. “I don’t want to hear that God works everything for good. That’s a junk defense. So God sticks around to mop up the scene of the crime; it’s still his mess.”

“Alice, you know God doesn’t commit evil. He gives us a free will and allows us to make moral choices.”

Alice’s napkin disappeared into her tight fist. “You make a better theologian than a lawyer, Jonah. God giving us free will is like a teacher giving a room full of preschoolers a loaded gun. It’s criminal neglect. I’d win that case every time.”

Ron took a deep breath. “Alice, God can lead this whole situation—the attack, the trial, the scumbag—to good; he can make good from it, so unexpected and so wonderful, that people will notice God and worship him.”

“Okay, we’re not dealing with neglect anymore. You’ve just assigned motive. You’re describing a God who would allow a single mom to be raped for the sake of his personal gain and glory. I don’t want any part of that God.”

A waiter appeared at the table and dropped an iron skillet filled with steaming pizza into the middle of our silence. The once-inviting thought of pizza was suddenly out of place and only heightened the strain of the moment.

We sat in silence, eyes lowered, without appetite or answers.

One of the earliest and most poignant issues that any community of Jesus has to face is the realization that participation in said community offers no visible protection from pain, evil, or suffering. Coming to this realization today is particularly surprising, I believe, because we clergy tend to oversell the benefits of faith. Sermons market how being faithful to God leads to improved results in parenting, marriage, business, and even sex. Certainly, we can reduce some of the stresses of life by not continually rubbing against the invisible grain of God’s moral order in the universe. The authors of Proverbs call this skill “wisdom.” But there’s a world of difference between living life skillfully and living it pain free.

When we figure that out, we’re less likely to be disappointed in God when we encounter low-grade frustrations and minor inconveniences. However, I’ve come to believe that having a relationship with God can create more crisis than comfort when we experience significant trauma and loss. When we believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and omniscient, and we are confronted with soul-destroying suffering—some major injury or the death of a loved one—we have to ask ourselves the questions: “Is God caring? Is God good?”

Our fictional Alice understands the problem. It’s impossible to exonerate God from the problem of evil. If evil is an inescapable by-product of free will, then why did a loving God create free will at all? The suggestion that God allows human suffering and atrocities because he is able to ultimately convert these horrors into grounds for his worship exposes God as being morally cruel. It reveals him as a deity who passively observes horrors like the Holocaust, the genocides in Sudan, planes filled with innocent people being used as missiles to take down the Twin Towers, child abuse, domestic violence—and a host of other unthinkable evils—all for the sake of personal gratification.

God’s divine intention for us is that we love, trust, and depend on him—even when we are unable to understand his reason for allowing our suffering. How can we have a relationship with the Holy Spirit characterized by the dependence of “breathing” when we have questions about God’s goodness and character? These issues, which we commonly describe as “the problem of evil,” aren’t just theological matters; they control our ability to love and trust God. It’s one thing for us to recognize God as the biggest Being in the cosmos—someone with whom we have to contend. It’s another thing to believe that he is good and someone with whom we would like to have a relationship. God’s brute force isn’t sufficient grounds for loving him. He also needs to be good. So how do we love a God if we have questions about his moral nature?

That’s a rough way to frame the question, I know. I’m not saying that there isn’t a way to explain the problem, but I’m convinced that God hasn’t shared the explanation with us. So please, don’t expect me to be the first person to balance the equation and offer definitive answers. I don’t believe that God has offered them to us. Just look at the book of Job. Throughout the book, Job and his friends struggle to understand why Job is experiencing catastrophic personal suffering. In spite of his friends’ accusations, Job insists that his suffering is not divine punishment; he is a righteous man. Job knows there’s only one person to blame, and he rails at God for his lack of justice. Job is doing nothing less than placing God on trial. Finally, after thirty-seven chapters of questions and recrimination, God arrives to add his perspective. But instead of offering an answer that will exonerate himself, God asks Job forty-three questions concerning creation that Job has no hope of answering. For example:

“Where were you at creation?” (Job 38:4).

“On what were the earth’s foundations secured?” (Job 38:6).

“Have you ever commanded the sun to rise?” (Job 38:12).

“Have you ever been to my warehouses where I store the snow and hail?” (Job 38:22).

“Can you create lightning?” (Job 38:25).

God goes on and on, breaking down Job’s insistence that he should understand the why behind his suffering. God doesn’t offer Job a single explanation for his suffering. Instead, God reminds Job of his relative ignorance. The presence of evil is just one of many things about the universe that Job doesn’t understand—and neither do we.

You and I don’t know how to reconcile God’s morality with the presence of evil. And even though God is present at the scene of every crime in history, watching, we need to get to the place where we can love and trust him despite his silence and lack of intervention. But how?

These questions surfaced in Job, but we see them again in the pages of Acts. In Acts 21:8–9 Paul and Philip enjoyed an unlikely reunion toward the end of Paul’s career. The last time their paths had crossed was at Stephen’s execution. Philip was Stephen’s close friend and coworker as one of the seven original deacons. Paul, then known as Saul, was aligned with Stephen’s killers. Since that time, Paul had become a Christ-follower and the church’s prototypical missionary. Two men who had once been separated by Stephen’s death were now united under one banner. I wonder if that dirty day was ever brought up during Paul’s stay at Philip’s house. I wonder if Paul and Philip asked Alice’s big questions during Paul’s extended port call.

Why didn’t God rescue Stephen?

Stephen’s death precipitated the persecution of the Jerusalem church, which led to faith in Jesus taking root in Samaria and Antioch. In God’s eyes, were Stephen’s death and the harassment of the church “acceptable” losses to gain more worshippers? Does God collect followers only to passively watch them suffer so he can collect even more followers?

Is God Good?

I’m afraid if I were Philip, witnessing Stephen’s death might have smothered my ability to love and serve God with any degree of enthusiasm. I have this fear because I’ve seen myself pull back from God when I’ve witnessed others suffer. Part of my problem is my tendency to process the concepts of good and evil as I did when I was nine years old.

When I was a child, playing superheroes with the neighborhood kids was my favorite pastime. On Saturdays we would watch the latest episode of the Super Friends cartoon and get caught up with the exploits of Batman and Robin, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. And then we would run up and down the block, good guys chasing bad guys, every supervillain imprisoned underneath the picnic table by the time of Mom’s dinner call.

And life went on happily ever after.

The world according to my nine-year-old self was rattled about six years ago. This was the moment when the problem of evil stopped being an academic issue and started being a matter that interfered with my capacity to love God.

It started with an e-mail from one of my editors, Chris. Chris asked several of her contributing authors to pray for the life of Craig, her staff photographer. Craig had been mountain climbing and, due to a miscommunication with his partner, fell fifty feet off the face of a cliff. A tree somehow broke his fall. His broken and comatose body lay in a hospital.

Would we please pray that God would save Craig? For the sake of his wife and children, would we please pray?

We prayed, and God responded. After months of rehab, Craig returned to his job. Now Craig is there for his wife and children as a provider and nurturing father. He is back at work taking pictures. For that we praise God.[1]

However, a few months later I received an e-mail from another editor at the same publishing house:

“Larry, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Chris was celebrating her fifteenth wedding anniversary with her husband, Mike, in Alaska. They were snowmobiling. Mike made a wrong turn and drove his snowmobile off the side of a cliff. He was dead before the rescuers could lift him out of the ravine.”

This made no sense. Chris loved God and was passionate about ministry. Chris gave me my first magazine assignment. To my nine-year-old thinking she was one of the caped good guys. This shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t fair.

I became angry with God. The anger surprised me a bit; Chris is a professional acquaintance—not a close friend. But I had labeled her a “good guy” and expected God to treat her accordingly. God wasn’t playing fair. He wasn’t playing by the rules, my rules, and I was mad at him. I had no interest in praying to a God who couldn’t distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys. Shoot, any cartoon-watching child could figure that out. Worse, if God could distinguish the heroes from the villains but was indifferent to the fate of the good guys—well, who wants someone like that on the team?

My low-grade anger simmered at God for about three months. Mentally, I threw accusing questions at God:

Why?

Why did Craig live and Chris’s husband die? Both are your servants.

What about Chris’s children?

Why did you do this, God? This is certainly something you did—because you could have prevented it—if you had chosen to do so.

For three months I was standoffish with God. I really didn’t want to pray, read Scripture, or do anything that might result in spending any significant amount of time with God. That’s not a great place for a pastor to be, but that’s where I was, willing to serve God, but avoiding personal contact with him at any cost.

I can’t muster the energy to sustain a proper grudge. I have tried and have found myself to be a bit of a wuss. On several occasions I have tried holding a grudge against my wife after a perceived offense, but I always collapse. I didn’t fare any better with God. I caved in, not because I had forged some new understanding with him, but because I just didn’t have the fortitude to execute a proper emotional siege. I’m pathetic that way.

Still, I managed to hold out with God for three months over the injustice of someone else’s loss. What if that loss had been mine? What would it have done to my friendship with God? Would I still be willing and able to “breathe in” God? Would I let myself be the minor, dependent partner in a relationship with a God who could have prevented my hurt? Could I stomach his unwillingness to answer my questions? If the pain were great enough, I’m sure I would struggle. And you?

You and I need to figure out how to love the God who has been spotted at the scene of all life’s crimes. And we need to do so with limited information at hand. We can see God’s economy in some circumstances—his ability to extract beauty from ashes (Isa. 61:3). But that isn’t the same as understanding God’s motives.

The harder you and I push for why, the more we realize we are like Job; we just don’t know much about how the universe is ordered, physically or morally.

An Abbreviated History of Suffering

God doesn’t gift us with the why of suffering. Perhaps our finite minds can’t comprehend this knowledge. Maybe in heaven God will reveal some of the facts. Perhaps we’ll all let out a collective “aha!” and sigh with relief and say, “Okay, God is good. We understand now, and we’ll give him our love without reservation.”

If that’s how it works out in heaven, well, that’s fantastic. But how do we love God in this life—an existence filled with suffering that tells us to draw back from God? How do we love God when he doesn’t offer an alibi, an excuse, or even a reason? The answer, I think, is contained in the final sermon Stephen offered in his defense just moments before he was dragged outside of town, thrown in a pit, and crushed to death with stones.

Let me acknowledge, up front, that Stephen’s defense (Acts 7:1–53) wasn’t a treatise on suffering. Stephen’s sermon was his attempt to reverse the tables on his accusers and place them on trial by showing their historic opposition to God’s plans. Another purpose of his sermon was to demonstrate that Israel’s borders didn’t act like invisible fencing for God: God graces any locale he wishes. These two themes, Israel’s guilt and God’s freedom, are the two main points of Stephen’s sermon.

However, Stephen’s defense was also an abridged catalog of the suffering of God’s people. Stephen’s scan through Israel’s history allows us to watch the drama of human suffering unfold. The characters Stephen chose for his sermon had two things in common—they loved God, and they suffered. Take a look at the depth and breadth of the suffering God’s people have endured.

1. Abraham suffered from God’s promises being unfulfilled (Acts 7:5).

Abraham made it to the Promised Land but didn’t own an inch of it. He lived as a nomad on the very land God had promised him, knowing that his descendants would have to suffer as slaves for four hundred years before they could enjoy their new home.

2. Joseph suffered because of evil in his family system (Acts 7:9).

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. However, we see God’s hand in turning his brothers’ evil into their salvation. Through a torturous series of events Joseph ascended from slave to second in command. God was with Joseph in his suffering.

3. Moses suffered in an age of social injustice (Acts 7:19–37).

Moses was born into a ghetto of slaves. His parents attempted to hide him because Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew babies were to die by exposure. Moses survived his parents’ forced abandonment and was raised as an Egyptian noble. Moses was self-exiled after killing an Egyptian slave master for beating a Hebrew slave. Forty years later, God used Moses to liberate his countrymen from their oppression.

4. Israel suffered as a consequence of its own sinful abuse of free will (Acts 7:39–43).

Stephen artfully combined two ignoble periods of Israel’s history—the wandering in the wilderness and the exile. In each instance, God’s judgment separated his people from their Promised Land. During the wilderness wanderings, the nation circled the desert until the rebellious generation died. Centuries later, God allowed the king of Babylon to carry his people into exile as a punishment for idolatry.

Loving a Good God in an Evil World

Let’s break from Stephen’s history for a moment to make a few observations that might help us with this matter of loving a good God in a world filled with evil. First, God is there in the middle of his people’s suffering. He is present in human suffering. God leads Abraham, guides Joseph, empowers Moses, and convicts and comforts Israel. God isn’t offering any “whys.” Again, God isn’t explaining himself; we still have no alibis, excuses, or even reasons. But God is there, comforting and strengthening. This has to count for something as we decide whether or not to entrust ourselves to God and love him without reservation.

Second, each of these people who suffered deeply is a uniquely qualified character reference for God. Evil invaded their personal routines—they knew pain—and still they valued God as someone worthy of their worship, love, and trust. When Abraham approached the end of his life, he demonstrated confidence in God’s still unfulfilled promise by insisting that his servant never take his son Isaac away from the Promised Land back to Ur. Even though Abraham died with unfulfilled hope, he had enough history with God to trust him through this disappointment. The book of Genesis concludes with Joseph vouching for God’s ability to extract good from evil. Moses witnessed systemic injustice waged against Israel, but he experienced enough of God to say:

I will proclaim the name of the LORD.

Oh, praise the greatness of our God!

He is the Rock, his works are perfect,

and all his ways are just.

A faithful God who does no wrong,

upright and just is he. (Deut. 32:3–4)

The prophets who foretold that God would discipline the people of Israel because of their sins didn’t view God as arbitrary or cruel. One of these prophets, Jeremiah, personally witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem but was able to write:

Because of the LORD’S great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness. (Lam. 3:22–23)

These are not the testimonials of people who viewed God as a cosmic alcoholic or an abusive father who is sometimes loving and sometimes violent. God didn’t leave these individuals in guarded, hypervigilant states, always guessing when God’s invisible hand would slap them next. Instead, these were individuals who, even though they had experienced deep personal suffering, maintained a strong sense of God’s goodness. God had been there for them, and they had found him faithful. Hebrews 11 boasts a similar collection of character references. We can’t explain God’s role in suffering, but history gives us a countless line of people who lived hard lives, leaned on God, and found him to be good. This is a positive sign.

This leads us to one final point regarding Stephen’s speech: Jesus didn’t come to earth to offer some emotionally detached explanation for human suffering. He didn’t offer flowcharts or outlines to rationalize the existence of misery on God’s shift. Jesus wasn’t a workshop speaker. Jesus offered no answers through thoughtful debate.

Jesus gave us something more powerful than that.

He gave us a solution. He gave us life change.

Jesus Participates in Our Suffering

At the end of Stephen’s abridged history of suffering, we see God the Son, Jesus, joining us in our suffering. Jesus’ suffering was unjust; Stephen called him “the Righteous One” (Acts 7:52). Jesus was sinless, but he chose to bear humanity’s sins (Isa. 53:3–12).

Jesus’ personal experience with suffering offers us two reassurances. First, suffering can challenge our confidence in God’s power. Perhaps God isn’t able to resolve our situation and relieve our suffering. However, Jesus’ death and resurrection provide all the reassurance we need. Christ has power over suffering caused by sin and death. Jesus has broken the power of the curse. Ultimately, someday, we will be free of suffering. God’s clout isn’t an issue.

The second reassurance Jesus’ suffering offers concerns God’s moral goodness. Not even the fact of Jesus’ incarnation and intimacy with human suffering explains why God would offer his children free will—the loaded gun that fatally wounded humanity. However, God’s goodness is presented like a diamond contrasted against the velvety cloth of suffering beneath it. God’s goodness sent Jesus to earth. Jesus’ goodness made his sacrifice on the cross adequate to take away the sins of the world.

The history of suffering concludes, but the why remains out of reach. Instead, we are offered Jesus. Jesus is proof of God’s goodness, proof of God’s power, and proof of God’s intimacy with our pain.

The Unspeakable Consequences of Free Will

Suppose you drop in on your best friend on a whim. The front door is ajar, so you push it open. You see your friend standing over a dead body, clutching a knife, his hands covered in blood. Your friend looks at you in the eyes and insists that he is innocent of any crime.

You have a choice. You can look at the body and knife and blood and conclude that he is guilty. Or you can remember your personal history with your friend and conclude that he has to be innocent—your knowledge of his moral goodness doesn’t allow you to draw any other conclusion. This knowledge will allow you to trust your friend and stay connected to him no matter how bad the situation looks.

This is how it is with God. We’ve seen the unspeakable consequences of free will. However, God looks us in the eyes and insists that he is morally innocent—so innocent that we can’t comprehend it. We can look at God’s long line of character references and conclude that God is trustworthy. We can look to Jesus for proof that God is good and that there is an explanation for this mess that we just don’t understand. There can’t be any other way. We can breathe in God without fear. We can inhale him deeply and trust him explicitly.

During the last moments of Stephen’s life, he demonstrated this type of confidence in God, even as he was being executed. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59).

Stephen spoke these words to ask Jesus to quickly end his life so he could escape the pain of his torturous death. This is the prayer of anyone who chooses to breathe in God even when suffering threatens to suffocate.

This should be our prayer: “Jesus, here is my life—it’s yours. I live in a horrifying world filled with suffering, pain, and evil. Every day newspapers, radio and TV, and the Internet remind me that this world can be ugly and unsafe. I don’t understand why you allow this pain, and I probably never will. But I trust you. You are good. You are powerful. So, Lord, receive my spirit. Today, I place my life in your hands, whatever good or evil comes into my path. My welfare and the welfare of my loved ones are your responsibility—they’re in your hands. I don’t understand you, but I trust you. Through Jesus, you prove your love and power. That’s enough … even when it’s not enough. Amen.”

This Too Shall Pass Away

I end with one final thought about my nine-year-old worldview. My friends and I played superheroes and chased each other from backyard to backyard, hiding behind bushes and fences. Each day justice reigned by sundown. When I look back at it, it seems utterly simplistic … until I realize that we were acting out a memory of Eden.

Our childhood dream was an unconscious yearning for a time before suffering and evil corrupted the world. It only seems juvenile because we can’t duplicate the same results in our adult world. We were acting out a memory of a time that is no more … but one day it will come again.

Listen to the final words of the history of suffering:

I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Rev. 21:3–4)

God is trustworthy. We can love him.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. What impact do you think Stephen’s death had on the early church? How do you think you would have reacted if you were in his situation? What areas of your life can you carry that attitude into today?

2. How has experiencing personal suffering or witnessing the suffering of others impacted your relationship with God? Does experiencing suffering tend to draw you closer to God or cause you to become guarded with him? Why?

3. Why do you think God doesn’t supply us with the answer to why he allows evil in the world?

4. Do you have any moments in your life that could serve as a “moral character reference” for God if you knew someone who was having difficulty trusting him? Describe them.

5 Take some time in prayer to share with God some of the sufferings you have dealt with in your life. Now thank him for sending his Son, Jesus, to experience that pain right alongside you.

Chapter Three

“At Least We Aren’t …”

And when the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world.

Acts 1:8 MSG

Stephen prayed, “Master Jesus, take my life.” … Then he died. Saul was right there, congratulating the killers. That set off a terrific persecution of the church in Jerusalem. The believers were all scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.

Acts 7:59—8:1 MSG

December 15

Artificial garlands traced the top of our booth, and strains of Bing Crosby filled Geno’s pizza parlor. Ron’s and Alice’s laughter, strings of blinking lights, and familiar carols all worked in unison to lift the holiday pressures off me.

Ron was entertaining us by providing the color commentary on an HBO comedy special. His impersonations were lacking, but he was chortling so hard that he infected us with his laughter anyway. I studied Alice’s eyes. Either she had made peace with God over last month’s court case, or the steady onslaught of new cases had redirected her attention. The mood was light.

“So how’s everyone celebrating Christmas?” Alice questioned.

Shop talk, great. My relaxed nerves contemplated returning to their braided formation. “I’ll be writing a few extra sermons, one for Christmas Eve and one for Christmas Day,” I ventured. “And half the worship team will be traveling over the holidays. Do you still play guitar, Ron?”

“Not well. I’ll be meeting my girlfriend’s parents for the first time.”

“Getting serious?” Alice cracked a wicked grin. “Is Santa giving diamonds this year?”

Ron shifted his weight. “Diane’s dropped enough hints. I’m not quite ready … this is going to be an awkward visit on a lot of levels. It certainly won’t be a traditional ‘Lake Wobegon’ Christmas.” Alice put away her grin, and I leaned forward as Ron continued. “We’re going to worship at her uncle’s church, and well, Diane’s been preparing me. She told me that I probably haven’t experienced anything like this congregation.”

“Well, they probably just worship differently than you’re used to. Diane’s just being sensitive,” I responded.

“It’s more than that. Diane says the pastor has some different ideas. I did some homework. Some of the other pastors in town claim that this guy’s got serious theological problems. They say he’s on the fringe. None of that surprised Diane, but she’s insisting we go to keep peace with the family.”

“What’s wrong with keeping the peace?” Alice probed.

“Nothing … well, the truth is I feel like I’m being disloyal to God. Shouldn’t I be making a stand—”

“—through boycotting the worship service and letting Diane’s uncle become a wedge between you, Diane, and your possible future in-laws?” I finished the question for him.

“Preacher boy, isn’t this the time where you’re supposed to dare me to be a ‘Daniel’ and tell me to take a stand for Jesus no matter the cost?”

“He’s telling you to think about the position you’re putting Diane in, you unfeeling lummox. He’s telling you to make nice. It’s just one night.”

Ron’s frown told us his transformation from comedian to apologist was complete. “Alice, if Christians who know right from wrong, truth from error, don’t take a stand … Well, the way I see it, if I paste a smile on my face and sit through their Christmas service and then drink their cider and eat their doughnuts in the foyer, I’m just endorsing their bad theology.”

Alice smirked. “Okay, preacher boy, which is it? Truth or peace?” I glanced at Ron. He seemed irritated that Alice found his moral dilemma humorous.

“Ron, I’m not going to tell you whether or not you should go to this worship service. That’s between you and God. And I appreciate your concern for truth, really. It’s a rare thing these days—”

“Jonah means that I … I mean … peace wins.” Alice inflated her smirk into a toothy smile.

“Being obsessed with winning. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” I interjected. “We see believers with bad theology, and we try to starve them out by withholding our love.”

“So I’m supposed to nod my head and smile, no matter what nonsense the preacher spews?”

“I didn’t say that either. Ron, think of the first Christmas. Knowing all of the bad theology and bad behavior on the planet, do you think Jesus would have chosen incarnation if he had used your decision-making model?”

Ron leaned forward and asked, “So Jesus wasn’t big on truth?”

I felt my face flush with irritation. Ron’s sarcasm pushed a button he didn’t know about. I’ve faced more angry congregants berating me on Monday morning for something they thought I said from the pulpit than I care to count. Without knowing, Ron just took his place in my personal pantheon of finger-pointers.

I locked eyes with Ron. “No. I’m saying that Jesus was for something much bigger than truth.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Alice study Ron’s down-curled lips and my furrowed brows and then take the last piece of pizza. She leaned back into the padded seat, her face wearing a complete grin.

If a casual observer undertook a study of Christianity in the United States and used only current event sources such as Web sites, magazines, or newspapers, he would come to the inevitable conclusion that Christians disagree and divide. Historically, it’s what we do. Denominations and congregations have divided over the issues of slavery, the ordination of women, the moral status of homosexuals and their eligibility to lead, worship styles, the inerrancy of Scripture, politics, the sanctity of unborn life, interpretive methods for understanding the Bible, the manner in which a church should be governed, the proper method of baptizing a convert, the existence of hell, creationism, theistic evolution, the nature of salvation, divorce, and a host of other doctrinal issues I couldn’t begin to catalog. Adam and Eve went forth and multiplied. We’ve gone forth and divided. We surround ourselves with people with whom we agree and wall ourselves off from those whom we deem to be theological misfits.

Let me assure you, I don’t intend to play my hand regarding any of these issues. Suffice it to say that some of these issues I believe to be peripheral, and it’s hard for them to provoke much of a reaction out of me. On the other hand, I’m convinced that others are central to the Christian faith and that God is not vague in his thoughts on the matter. I’m typically more prone to don my “defender of the faith” hat and attempt to go to war for God concerning the latter. I’m sure you’re the same way—generally an easygoing person until someone challenges those core beliefs with opposing convictions. Hey, we’re both reasonable people, but if you and I were to sit over coffee and discuss these issues long enough, we would probably start arguing about which we believe to be central to Christianity and which we believe to be peripheral.

But fortunately you are not holding a book of apologetics. There is a time and a place to hash out these issues. I’m not minimizing their import; they do matter. But this is a book about love. For two chapters we’ve explored unique relational dynamics related to loving God. Now, for the first time, we’re turning our gaze to the second commandment—love your neighbor as yourself. Our question is this: How do we give familial love to a neighbor with uncommon beliefs—religious convictions that we know (from our perspective) to be weird, wrong, dangerous, and even heretical? What’s more, is there anything we can learn from what the early Christians experienced in the book of Acts?

Absolutely. God teaches how we are to relate to “misfits” in one of the most familiar verses in all of Acts. This verse has launched evangelism campaigns and missionary movements. Countless believers draw courage from this command to share their faith with others. I think, however, we’re missing this verse’s power to teach us how to love those whose beliefs make them hard for us to love. We know this verse as the Great Commission—Jesus’ personal parting words to his followers before ascending into heaven:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

First as a child and then again at Bible college I was taught that the geographic reference points in Acts 1:8—Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and “the ends of the earth”—were used by Jesus to mark off expanding concentric circles that represented the expanding influence of the gospel. Jesus’ followers were to take the good news to every corner of the planet. Luke’s attention to Paul’s journeying throughout the known world, preaching and making converts confirms this intention.

However, I’m convinced that in this verse Jesus was up to something more. When Jesus was choosing a geographic marker to designate the advance of the gospel into northern Israel, he could have chosen a number of points in Galilee—Korazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum—any of them would have done. Instead, Jesus chose to send his followers to Samaria, a region in Israel that suffered the contempt of its Judean counterparts. Samaria and Judea were embroiled in a centuries-old conflict over matters of culture, religion, and ancient offenses. Animosity ran deep and flowed both ways between the two regions.

Can Anything Good Come Out of Samaria?

Just a short time before Jesus’ death, the citizens of a Samaritan village refused to provide provisions for Jesus’ band of travelers because they knew that his destination was Jerusalem. Two of Jesus’ men responded by asking Jesus for permission to summon fire from heaven to destroy the city, Sodom-and-Gomorrah style (Luke 9:51–56). And yet just a short time later Jesus sent his disciples right back into Samaria. This could not have been an accident. Jesus was up to something. Jesus wasn’t merely charting the geographic trajectory of God’s expanding friendships with humanity. Jesus was dictating the demographics of those who should be presented with this friendship. Jesus was aligning himself with the very people his disciples viewed as moral and theological misfits. Jesus came for those living on the fringe of society, and the news must have been an affront to his followers.

A quick historical background will help us appreciate how Jesus’ words must have surprised and disappointed his disciples. Samaria was a stain on Israel’s patriotism and pride. Samaria’s fall from grace began roughly a thousand years earlier, when the tribes that made up Samaria declared their independence from the tribes of Judea and Benjamin (the two tribes that housed Jerusalem—the holy city of Israel).

When the Assyrians invaded the northern tribes, including Samaria, they repopulated the region with their own people while taking the Israelites into captivity. Over time, intermarriage between the nations occurred,[1] a practice that had been forbidden by Moses. Samaria became a “Creole culture,” blending Assyrian cultures and beliefs with Jewish heritage and tradition. The distance between Samaria and Jerusalem grew greater as time passed, and the differences took their toll.

Some of those differences were religious. There arose within Samaria a religious sect known as “the Samaritans” (while the term Samarian simply referred to anyone residing in the region). The Samaritans built their own competing temple at Gerizim.[2] It should be noted that Samaria was a devoutly religious region. The Samaritan sect of Judaism was committed to worshipping God, but only at its temple. The Samaritans, like their brethren to the south, were also waiting for the Messiah, although known by another name.

When Nehemiah returned from the Babylonian captivity to lead the reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple, Samarians opposed him.[3] Judeans didn’t consider Samarians to be “godless,” just unorthodox and deficient in their understanding of God.

The historian Josephus tells of a time when the Samarians aligned themselves with the Greek armies that were menacing Jerusalem around 167–164 BC.[4] This was the last straw. The Judeans bristled at Samaria’s hostility and responded by shunning Samarians. Jewish writings from that time period ceased referring to the Samarians as “countrymen.” New references emerged, such as “No Nation” and “Those foolish people who live in Shechem.”[5]

The Judeans rejected the Samarians as those to be numbered among God’s people. Centuries of disobedience and disdain for God’s community (as well as bigoted, contemptuous thinking on the part of the southern tribes) won the Samarians the labels unloved, unworthy, and unacceptable. Today, the Samarians would be labeled backsliders or apostate—too misfit to enjoy God’s company or the company of his people.

And now, in Acts 1:8 Jesus is telling his followers in clear, unambiguous language that they will go and tell these pariahs that God has taken the initiative to end the estranged relationship between them, that Jesus had laid down his life as a sacrifice for their sins. Jesus gave this command and ascended into heaven. Not surprisingly, his disciples returned to Jerusalem and settled into their routines, neglecting to take Jesus’ tidings to the misfits.

The disciples might never have ventured into Samaria if Stephen’s execution hadn’t provided Saul a template for launching a great persecution against all the Christians in Jerusalem.[6] Stephen, a Hellenistic Christian, had drawn unwelcome attention to the rest of the community in the capital. So Philip and the other Christians fled the capital into Samaria. This flight north is captured in Acts 8:1–25.

Perhaps Philip’s “misfit” status in Jerusalem gave him entrée among the Samaritans as a spiritual teacher. As we saw with the case of Jesus, the Samaritans weren’t open to Judean imports. Philip’s “bad boy” status may have gotten him a foot in the door, but it was God’s power working through him that arrested the Samaritans’ attention. In Acts 8:4–8 Luke is careful to tell us that Philip brought joy to this Samarian city. He cast out demons and healed the paralyzed and the lame through God’s power.

Philip brought joy to Samaria—a region challenged by centuries of defiance, cynicism, and all the discouragement that came with being labeled the black sheep of Israel. The Samarians embraced the cumulative message of Philip’s miracles: that God loved even the crestfallen misfits of Israel. God’s handlers in Jerusalem, the priests and the pious, wanted nothing to do with the Samarians—but God himself was for them.

God poured his love out on this people shamed by a history of idolatry, a people who had divided the Promised Land into two kingdoms (Israel and Judea) and allied themselves with Judea’s enemies. Despite this history and despite Judean bigotry against the Samarians, God orchestrated the arrival of Jesus’ transforming power in Samaria. God had given the Samarians an unbelievable gift.

And therein lies the problem. Who would believe that God loved the Samarians—that a morally perfect God would initiate a loving relationship with the dredges of Israel? Bluntly put, the odds were low that the Judean Christ-followers would accept reports of a Samarian revival. They would write it off as a new form of Samarian mockery and hypocrisy.

There was also a chance that the Samarians might not be able to accept that God was really for them. They had had centuries to conform to the demonizing labels Jerusalem had given them. So how could they believe that a Christ who wept over Jerusalem could also love them? Perhaps Philip was a loose cannon with his own agenda. Perhaps Philip wasn’t authorized by God to work these miracles and to preach Jesus to misfits. Joy might have given way to doubt.

But God made certain that Christians everywhere had no doubt that salvation had come to Samaria. You see, Peter and John—two of the pillars of the Jerusalem church—traveled north on a fact-finding mission to verify that the new life Jesus offered was actually taking root in Samaria. When Peter and John confirmed the sincerity of their faith and laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit, with all of his accompanying spiritual gifts, filled their hearts (Acts 8:14–17). Commentator F. F. Bruce speaks to the significance of Peter and John’s visit:

Some special evidence may have been necessary to assure the Samaritans, so accustomed were they to being despised as outsiders by the people of Jerusalem, that they were fully incorporated into the new community of the people of God. It was one thing to be baptized by a free-lance evangelist like Philip, but not until that had been acknowledged by the leaders of the Jerusalem church did they experience the signs which confirmed and attested their membership in the Spirit-possessed society.[7]

Jesus’ love for the misfits was verified by two members of his personal ministry team. Peter and John’s presence and the imparting of the Holy Spirit placed an authoritative seal on the Samarians’ experience. Neither the self-doubt of the Samarians nor the raised eyebrows of the Jews in Jerusalem could break the apostolic seal of authority.

God Loves Misfits

But isn’t it troubling to realize that it took a citywide persecution in Jerusalem to get the Christ-followers to actually follow Jesus’ command and take the good news to the people of Samaria? It wasn’t until Christians were themselves branded as misfits by Saul and the Jewish authorities that they were willing to take the gospel to Samaria.

The apostles had spent three years watching Jesus aligning himself with those cowering in the margins of society. One of the apostles, Matthew (also known as Levi), had himself earned a place among the misfits through his vocation as a tax collector. Israel was living under Roman occupation. Matthew made his money by collecting receipts from his countrymen and sending the funds overseas to Rome. Tax collectors made their living by adding their own fees to the Roman tax. To the Jews, Matthew was a traitor and a cheat. Even so, Jesus pursued him:

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:27–32)

God’s so-called handlers saw Jesus ally himself with a man without ethics, and they questioned him about it angrily. Jesus didn’t budge with his reply: “I heal the morally sick, not people who misdiagnose themselves with a clean bill of health. I don’t recruit the morally self-assured. I’m collecting misfits.”

Somehow Matthew and the rest of the apostles had forgotten their true status—they were societal castoffs themselves. Before the persecution, the Christians had an uneasy relationship with the religious lawyers and authorities. After Pentecost, the Christians didn’t have to live in hiding, as their numbers were large enough to afford some peace. And although the Christ-followers didn’t enjoy the approval of the Pharisees, the strictest sect of the Jews, and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme council, they could at least tell themselves they weren’t Samaritans.

“At Least We Aren’t …”

Those four little words are the secret reason it’s so hard for us to love those who think and believe differently from us. Nowhere is it written that we will slip into moral relativism if we acknowledge the dignity and worth of people with whom we have disagreements. It’s not our concern for truth that keeps us from loving misfits; it’s our instinct to punch our own ticket to a status of moral acceptability. If we can just identify a group of people we can use as an object in our powerful sentence, “At least I’m not …,” then we can elevate ourselves to a higher perch on humanity’s scale of moral superiority. We can get there, if we’re just willing to put down a few people who are clearly beneath us in the eyes of God.

So what about all those liberals, conservatives, fundamentalists, neognostics, evangelicals, charismatics, prostitutes, prudes, homosexuals, homophobes, etc.? At least we aren’t like them, right?

And we work a type of magic that makes us forget that we’re misfits ourselves. We adopt ritualistic behavior. We abstain from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and gambling. We increase our religious activity. We read the Bible, listen to Christian radio, watch religious TV, attend or teach Sunday school, and give to charities. Anything we can do to differentiate ourselves from “them” strengthens our position. We’re like sorcerers—blessing ourselves, cursing others, pulling all the unseen levers of the universe in an attempt to secure our position on the ladder of morality and to make ourselves “okay.”

The apex of our alchemy is our transformation from humble misfits to the spiritually self-assured. Like the Pharisees, we assume the task of vetting those with whom Jesus might associate. Once we’ve identified who the sinners are, those unworthy of grace, we quarantine those people to our own mental Samaria. This quarantine is accomplished through openly condemning “them” or by passively withholding from “them” Jesus and his love.

And like the original disciples, we do all this at the expense of the Great Commission. We won’t venture into our personal Samarias. Our brand of religious magic demands a religious underclass to rail against. So we don’t go. Like the disciples we retreat into our own circles and seek comfort and affirmation. We stay in our Jerusalems and attempt to hoard Jesus’ love, as if it were a limited resource. All the while, we become deaf to Jesus’ warning that he has nothing to offer moral people; he came for the misfits. Our sorcery gives us religious respectability and influence, but at the price of experiencing and sharing Jesus.

The choice of experiencing God as a misfit or through “magic” is the whole point of Peter’s confrontation with Simon the magician in Acts 8:9–24. Simon had responded to Philip’s message and made a profession of faith in Jesus. However, his attempt to purchase the Holy Spirit’s power from Peter revealed that his understanding of the supernatural was still transactional. Simon practiced a real brand of sorcery and not the metaphoric version that too often characterizes our faith. The spiritual realm was Simon’s metaphysical slot machine; the unseen universe would give him power and status if he could just find and pull the right invisible levers. The apostles’ Holy Spirit was just a new magic to be mastered.

Peter’s response to Simon wasn’t born from frustration or based on hyperbole. Peter knew the purchase price that comes with treating spirituality as a barter system and God’s power as a commodity to be bought and controlled. Eternity in hell was the price for Simon’s request, not a measly bag of silver coins.

Simon’s magic bought him admirers and social standing among his fellow misfits. He purchased the ability to look at his fellow Samarians and say, “At least I’m not …” However, Simon discovered that this way of thinking held no value in God’s economy. God had opened heaven’s vault and was indiscriminately sharing the wealth and catastrophically depreciating Simon’s currency in the process.

As the scene fades to black, we see Simon begging Peter to intercede with God for his life. We don’t know how Peter and John responded to his appeal, and Acts gives us no clues as to whether Simon embraced his status before God. Instead, Luke leaves us with Simon’s choice: Will we allow Jesus to befriend us as the misfits we are? Or will Jesus be just another form of magic that we’ll try to use to elevate ourselves above others?

So, what is God’s divine intention for us in relating to others? Even to those with bad theology, lapsed behavior, or dark pasts? God intends for us to stop labeling them, to stop using them as rungs on our self-important religious ladders, and to stop comparing ourselves to them in order to enhance our own sense of self-righteousness.

God wants us to identify with them. In fact, he even wants us to stop seeing others as “them.” We are all misfits, all desperately in need of Jesus’ salvation, friendship, and leadership. God wants us to bring Jesus and joy to our modern-day Samarias.

As Christ-followers, we each need to ask ourselves: Is there a steady flow of people in my life that “good” Christians tend to brand as misfits? Do I bring joy to these people? Do I share the love of Jesus with them?

We Christians are masterful at exporting rules, expectations, prescriptive lifestyle changes, and disapproving glares to the broken down and to those who disagree with us. Many of us are still figuring out how to share Jesus and his joy.

Perhaps God prods us not just for the Samaritans’ benefit but for ours as well. God knows that you and I are more like Simon the magician than we care to believe. Our theology is straight, we mouth phrases like “grace” and “unmerited favor,” and we opine about how wonderful friendship with Jesus is. However, we slip into our old sorcerer’s habits and frisk Jesus in search of those invisible levers. Like Simon we see spirituality as a meritocratic discipline and rely on our religious prowess for worth before God. We collect onlookers who fawn over us, and we believe we’ve earned our position in God’s family. Jesus stops being a Savior and becomes a machine in need of a skilled operator.

We play at our magic and miss the point. We grope for God’s levers when we should be holding out our hands to receive Jesus’ grace.

In the end, as religious sorcerers we only enchant ourselves. God speaks grace, but we hear the language of performance. God offers us an abundance of love, but we hoard it like misers, wondering if there’s enough to go around.

God drives us to the misfits to break the spell and to remind you and me who we really are—morally broken people collected by Jesus. We awaken from the spell and are surprised again by Jesus. All that is left is for us to share this joy with our fellow misfits, every minute of every hour of every day.

Magician or Christian?

There’s an interesting footnote to the story of Simon. Tradition tells us that he never could give up his magic. Over time Simon relocated to Rome, where he dedicated his life to competing with the power of the Holy Spirit in Peter. If Peter wouldn’t give him this magic, then Simon would have to overpower it. Simon escalated his strange obsession until one day he ordered himself to be buried alive, declaring that he would resurrect himself on the third day. His disciples complied with his wish, and Simon was buried with his magic.

He was unable to keep his promise.[8]

Friend, you and I have a choice. We can bury ourselves under the weight of our own religious self-justification projects. Or we can embrace our misfit status, share Jesus with our fellow misfits, and watch him work resurrections in our lives and the lives of everyone around us. Which do you prefer?

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. What impact does “being religious” have on our ability to bring Jesus to “misfits”?

2. Is it easy or hard to view yourself as a “misfit”? Why?

3. Who are the people in your life whom the religious establishment views as misfits? Do these people see you as someone who brings them the joy of a life filled with Jesus? Why or why not?

4. If you had lived in Samaria and had experienced Philip’s preaching Jesus, you might have suspiciously studied his body language and attitudes for signs that he thought he was somehow better than you. If someone were studying your interactions with others, what kinds of attitudes would that person discover?

5. How can you protect yourself from forgetting that you are a spiritual misfit? How can you celebrate this reality?

Chapter Four

The Heart of Change

All this time Saul was breathing down the necks of the Master’s disciples, out for the kill. He went to the Chief Priest and got arrest warrants to take to the meeting places in Damascus so that if he found anyone there belonging to the Way, whether men or women, he could arrest them and bring them to Jerusalem.

He set off. When he got to the outskirts of Damascus, he was suddenly dazed by a blinding flash of light. As he fell to the ground, he heard a voice: “Saul, Saul, why are you out to get me?”

He said, “Who are you, Master?”

“I am Jesus, the One you’re hunting down. I want you to get up and enter the city. In the city you’ll be told what to do next.”

Acts 9:1–6 MSG

January 5

I glanced down at my list of New Year’s resolutions. I must have written these on a caffeine high. Lose ten pounds, wake up an hour earlier for daily prayer, read through the Bible in a year, and read at least one book a month on church leadership or spirituality. This is already making me tired. I looked up at Alice and Ron, each one poring over their lists. Last month we agreed to share what we thought God wanted us to work on this year. Do I really want to share this list? There’s no way I’m going to accomplish even half of this stuff. It’s time for evasive tactics.

“Ron, before we get started on this, how did that worship service with Diane’s family go?”

Ron’s laugh had bite. “It was the highlight of the trip.”

“So it wasn’t as bad as you imagined?” Alice asked.

“I didn’t say that. The service was weird. The music and the pastor dribbled nonsense that I barely understood. I think the point of his message was that we’re all God and that Jesus was sent to show us that. But the cider afterward was fantastic.”

“And that was the highlight?” Alice raised an eyebrow. “Was she hurt that there was no Christmas proposal?”

“Yeah, the sweater I gave her didn’t really have the same effect as a diamond ring. It’s just as well. I ended things as soon as we got back home.”

“You’re kidding. You had thought she might be ‘Miss Right.’”

Great. I wanted a diversion, but I didn’t want it to come at Ron’s expense.

“More like ‘Miss Get-It-Right,’” Ron said. “Something changed as soon as we got near her family. After one dinner she started scolding me about my humor.”

“Well, Ron,” Alice said, “you can take things too far.”

“Fine. But she was constantly editing everything that came out of my mouth with private warnings, dirty looks, and kicks under the table.”

“There had to be more to it than that,” I said.

“You bet. All of a sudden she started making wardrobe choices for me. Sweaters I’d worn on dates all of a sudden started being too ratty, or they made me look fat.”

“Ron, that’s irritating, but is it worth ending a relationship over?”

“Jonah, the last straw was when her father asked me what I did for a living. Diane was mortified when I told her dad I was a public school teacher. Daddy’s a surgeon, and well, I didn’t measure up. Diane offered that I was considering law school.”

“You never told us that,” Alice said. “We could use a hothead like you.”

“I’ve got no intentions of becoming the punch line of countless lawyer jokes. I’ve told too many of them. But I realized I wasn’t good enough for Diane. I was her fix-it project. Been there, done that in my first marriage. I don’t need a repeat performance.” Ron washed down that thought with a long gulp of cola. “I don’t know if that makes any sense, but that’s where I am. I want to be loved. Not fixed.”

I fingered the list in my hands. “I think I understand perfectly.”

God seems obsessed with fixing us. It doesn’t take a biblical scholar to come to that conclusion. As we thumb through the Bible from cover to cover, we see God everywhere giving commands, making edits, and issuing warnings. One moment Moses is providing God’s people heavenly guidance in the form of the Ten Commandments, and the next he’s giving them helpful tips on where to put the latrines and how to cook a goat. God sent prophets who scolded Israel for not showing concern for the poor and for their corrupt worship habits. Jesus raised the bar and told his followers that it wasn’t good enough anymore to simply avoid sleeping with their neighbor’s spouse; now they couldn’t even fantasize about doing so in the privacy of their minds. And then Paul showed up and wrote thirteen letters filled with God’s expectations to change our minds, attitudes, and behaviors.

God doesn’t seem content with us, which leads us to a few foundational questions. Does God genuinely like us, or does he merely tolerate our company for the time being? Is Christianity simply the process of being subjected to a heavenly to-do list, things we must do to keep God from wanting to get rid of us?

Why Is God So Obsessed with Changing Us?

In the movie Father of the Bride, Martin Short plays Franck Eggelhoffer, a flamboyant wedding coordinator. Franck is hired when a family becomes overwhelmed with the details and volume of work that need to be accomplished to pull off the perfect wedding. Basically, he is brought in to save the day. As Franck enters for the first time, he surveys the scene and exclaims enthusiastically, “This is wonderful! We change everything!” Then he and his assistant leap into action to correct all of the family’s misguided efforts, never stopping to connect with the family to hear their vision for the wedding. I have to admit that sometimes I feel that God is running rampant through my life, changing everything he can get his hands on; I wonder whether he’s interested in me or just the challenge of changing everything about me.

My first job after college was at a residential treatment center for children and youth who suffered from emotional and mental health challenges. The courts had removed many of these children from physically or sexually abusive situations at home. On their long road toward being placed in our care, the children had met with psychiatrists who had applied labels to describe their mental health challenges. I’m certain when children who have been long at odds with their parents, teachers, and peers receive a multisyllabic label like “schizophrenic” or “bipolar,” they translate it into something they can understand like, “I’m bad.”

A large part of the treatment administered in the center involved child development workers following groups of children around with clipboards. Each child had a personal scorecard. Every time a child performed a positive behavior like brushing his teeth, sharing a toy, or expressing his personal feelings, he would earn a point on his scorecard. Whenever a child had a tantrum, hit someone, or ran away from the treatment center, points were deducted from his scorecard. At the end of the day the children could trade in their points at the bank for penny candy or a small toy. Poor scores led to a loss of privileges.

Looking back at those days, I wonder if we didn’t harm the children as much as we helped them. With good intentions we subjected the children to living inside a token economy. Did we teach them that being accepted was directly related to their willingness to change their behavior? Will these children believe that they can be loved for who they are and not for their ability to change when they enter the adult world? And this example makes me think about the change program in which God has placed us. Are theological terms like “sanctification” and “holiness” just shorthand terms for behavior modification?

If we’re to love God despite insecurities etching doubts on the walls of our minds, we need to get a handle on his motives for wanting to make us “new creatures.” Why does God want to make us something fundamentally different from who and what we are? Personally, I don’t want to go through life being anyone’s “pet project,” not even God’s. I want and need to be loved, not fixed. The book of Acts provides us with the most famous spiritual conversion story in history—the narrative of how Saul of Tarsus became Paul the apostle. Everything about this story feels larger than life—bright lights, voices, blindness. Some, I know, are put off by this account—Saul’s experience is so atypical that it’s hard to relate to. However, the exaggerated scale of all God did to arrest Saul allows us to steal glimpses at God’s divine intention for us as his children.

The Conversion of Saul

Paul described his life before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus as one defined by religious achievement. After his conversion, he made note of the currency he had accumulated in his own token economy as Saul of Tarsus:

If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. (Phil. 3:4–6)

If there had been angels following Saul around with clipboards, they would have been awarding him high marks. Saul had attained the highest level of “righteous” behavior.

Further, he identified his persecution of Jesus’ followers as evidence of his enthusiasm for God, though enthusiasm and zeal don’t begin to touch the intensity of the hatred he unleashed on Christians. When Luke wrote the book of Acts, he chose action verbs that painted Saul as a wild beast. Some of those words can be read in the original Greek as “mauled,” “sought to destroy,” and “ravaged” (Acts 9:1–2).

This language makes us question Saul’s mental stability. How can someone so hate filled be calm and calculated enough to hold a respectable religious office? New Testament scholar Richard Longenecker, in his commentary on Acts, suggests that Saul may have belonged to a sect of rabbis who believed that the Messiah would not arrive to rescue Israel until God’s people strictly adhered to the laws of Moses.[1] If Longenecker is correct, then Saul’s persecution wasn’t motivated by insanity but rather by an admirable motivation to usher in the age of the Messiah and rescue Israel from oppression. To him these Christ-followers weren’t some harmless sect. Saul needed to either change the Christians’ behavior or eradicate them. He was convinced that Israel’s future depended on it.

This belief tells us volumes about the way Saul understood God to relate to humanity. The entire nation of Israel needed to earn high marks on its scorecard before God would send a Savior. Until Saul and every person changed, God wouldn’t come close enough to Israel to either love it or save it. Saul believed that God’s love and favor had to be earned through the cleansing of sinful behavior, and the Christians weren’t getting with the program.

But what Saul didn’t seem to realize is that sin can’t be reduced to check boxes on a scorecard. At one time theologians attempted to categorize all sins into one of two types: sins of commission (those things people know they shouldn’t do but do anyway), and sins of omission (moral actions people know they should perform but don’t). But years after becoming a Christ-follower, in the book of Romans, Paul began to describe sin as something much larger than a list of things done or not done.

Sin is something far more insidious; it is a system of thinking that can enslave us and prevent us from wanting to please God. Unfortunately, this system has the ability to override even our best intentions to love and obey God (Rom. 7:17–18). I’ve come to see sin as something like a computer’s operating system. Every program on a computer is governed by an operating system. This operating system controls the behaviors and thought processes of every piece of software installed on the computer.

When you and I behave under the influence of the sin operating system, every behavior, every attitude, every feeling we have is governed by it. Martin Luther described this system as an “inward bent.” Life lived under this code is a life turned back on itself. Actions that would normally be considered moral and good take on a selfish nature. Sexual acts, which God intended as a means for marriage partners to form beautiful bonds and carry on procreation, become just another form of personal pleasure and even perversion. Charitable giving becomes less about meeting human needs and more about wielding power or drawing attention. All religion, even Christianity, when driven by this operating system, becomes a distorted mess. Piety stops being an expression of love for God and others and becomes just another means of self-justification and self-promotion. Christianity becomes a form of magic, and neighbors are reduced to competitors with whom we must strive to be holier than.

This is the problem with any “behavioral modification” or “self-help” approach to spiritual change. No matter how noble the motives, once it’s plugged into a personality controlled by sin, the outcomes will always be distorted. A person controlled by sin is incapable of loving God or receiving unconditional love from God.

Contrary to Saul’s beliefs, God had no intention of withholding his presence until Israel “got it right.” God’s aim is and always has been relationship. But to reach that goal, occasionally God has to reprogram our operating systems, much as he did with Saul. Unfortunately, whatever messages God had been sending to Saul through the Torah and the laws of Moses had become distorted. Saul needed to experience a complete system crash (the death of his old beliefs) and a whole new system installation (the beginning of a new life in Christ), which is what he encountered on the road to Damascus.

You see, Saul was on the hunt. He was armed with extradition papers that would have allowed him to arrest any Christian who had fled the borders of Israel and return them to Jerusalem to stand trial. But Saul was also the prey. God had been pursing him for some time, waiting to ambush him on this road. Near the end of his life Paul recounted to King Agrippa the details of how God ambushed him (Acts 26). In so doing, Paul added a detail not found in the Acts 9 account. Jesus told him, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (26:14). Even when Saul was rejecting Jesus, and in ignorance violating every behavioral expectation God had for him, Jesus was spurring him toward life change. In Romans 7:7, Paul admitted that the law had made him aware of his covetousness—a vice that his strongest efforts couldn’t overcome.

Saul had been a rampaging monster. But the whole time Saul was mauling the church, Jesus was walking alongside him, spurring him toward a place of surrender. Biographer John Pollack, in his book The Apostle: A Life of Paul, attempts to capture the impact of encountering Jesus and Jesus’ love for him by noting how exhausting it must have been for Paul to resist his love:

Then Paul knew. In a second that seemed an eternity he saw the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet, saw the face and knew that he had seen the Lord, that He was alive, as Stephen and others had said, and that He not only loved those whom Paul persecuted but Paul: “It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” Not one word of reproach.

Paul had never admitted to himself that he had felt pricks of a goad as he raged against Stephen and his disciples. But now, instantaneously, he was shatteringly aware that he had been fighting Jesus. And fighting himself, his conscience, his powerlessness, the darkness and chaos in his soul. God hovered over this chaos and brought him to the moment of a new creation. It wanted only his “Yes.”

Paul broke.[2]

Anne Lamott, in her spiritual memoirs, Traveling Mercies, describes how God mercifully spurred her toward a place of surrender. In the days leading up to her surrender to God, Anne was grappling with alcoholism, bulimia, and the demands of her writing career. She looked for meaning in simultaneous relationships with St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and a new man in her life—which eventually led to an abortion.

Anne recounts that for seven days after the abortion she lay in bed and self-medicated the heavy bleeding with Kotex and bottles of booze. In the middle of the night she became aware of a tangible presence in the corner of the room: Jesus. Anne wrote, “I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinted my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.”

Anne’s first response to Jesus was, “I’d rather die,” but a week later at St. Andrew’s, she cursed and said, “All right. You can come in.”[3]

Anne’s story teaches us that Jesus herds us, not domineeringly, but with tenderness; tenderness that, of course, we mistake as barbs and spurs because we have forgotten the feel of love’s touch. And like Paul, Anne wasn’t being paced through a series of moral changes she needed to complete before God would meet her. God wanted to know Paul and Anne and simply overwhelmed them with love irrespective of their destructive lifestyles. This is how he works. He overwhelms us with love until our old operating systems break down.

God’s Obsession with Change

We don’t know the exact moment when Paul’s new life began. There’s no record of Paul saying the “sinner’s prayer” or even muttering the “yes” Pollack wrote about. Sometime during the three days of blindness that began with his vision of Christ, Paul’s system collapsed, and he surrendered to God.

C. S. Lewis captures the beautiful essence of a similar moment of collapse before God in his children’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In the book, Eustace, like Saul, is imprisoned by his sin nature; he cannot overcome his covetousness. Eustace had envied and stolen a bracelet. However, the bracelet Eustace had pilfered was cursed and transformed the boy into a dragon. As a dragon, Eustace found himself alienated from his companions and doomed to live and die utterly alone.

But the Great Lion, Aslan—a character that Lewis created to represent Christ—arrives and tells Eustace that he will have to take off his dragon skin. Eustace would like nothing better and uses his newly formed talons to peel the dragon scales off his body … only to find a new set of scales waiting beneath. Eustace tries again, several times, each time discovering a new layer of tough exterior. Once Eustace reaches a point of despair and realizes he is unable to remove the curse on his own, Aslan says, “You will have to let me undress you.”[4]

Saul had a similar experience on the road to Damascus. It took some convincing to be sure, but he eventually came to the realization that he would have to allow God to undress him of the consequences of his corrupt sin nature. Only then could he be receptive to a love relationship with God. And fortunately he didn’t have to replace his pharisaical lists of expected behaviors with Christian ones. Rather, he was introduced to the one thing that could save him—an intense relationship with the Holy Spirit. Paul wrote about this new scorecard-free existence with Jesus in the book of Philippians:

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness. (3:7–9 MSG)

So, to return to our original question, why is God so consumed with changing us? Is “sanctification” the process of submitting to the demands of a critical God who is constantly finding fault, who is constantly tweaking our behaviors until we get it right? If the answer to that question is yes, then God is someone to be submitted to not because he loves us but because he is the biggest fish in the cosmic pond.

One of the recurring themes of my childhood cartoons involved a good guy coming under a spell through some mind-control device or ray gun. Under the control of the bad guy, the victim was enlisted to harm his friends. And it was up to his friends to find a way to subdue him and return him to his true self. God is in the business of rescuing us—of changing our minds so we can get back to the business of loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He changes us, so we are able to perceive his love as acceptance and not as assault. Our behavior matters, but God is ultimately not concerned with cosmetic change but with complete re-creation.

Recently I attended a special worship service at a prominent Baptist church in Erie. Their residing bishop had served the congregation for eighteen years, so a week of revival meetings was held to celebrate his ministry. One of the speakers emphasized the bishop’s being willing to call his congregation to holy living. The speaker began cataloging the stock list of dos and don’ts: stay away from booze, pot, tobacco, and sex outside of marriage—you know, the works. I became uncomfortable. There had to be more to a vision of holiness than this.

Then another bishop took the pulpit and he explained sanctification—that lifelong process of change that God is leading us through—with a beautiful analogy. God is like a pirate digging for buried treasure. The treasure is our true selves—people designed to worship, love, serve, and befriend God. The treasure is there, but it is buried under a lifetime of choices, habits we formed when we were captive to sin. Conviction is God’s shovel, which he uses to lovingly remove dirt, so our true selves can be exposed once again to his light.

Why is God so obsessed with changing us? In a word: restoration. Remember Franck Eggelhoffer’s opening line? “This is wonderful! We change everything!” When God looks at you and me, he does so without reproach or critical thought. When God looks at us, he says, “You are wonderful. We’ll restore everything.”

Why Don’t We Respond?

During my high school and college years I worked at a summer camp run by good folk who deeply loved God but who also were tied to a rigid legalistic system. They were heavily influenced by a popular Christian conference speaker with an infamous red handbook filled with precise instructions on how to live a God-pleasing life. The red book was filled with a series of steps that needed to be checked off in order to reach new heights of spiritual maturity. The book was comprehensive; there were even a few pages of flowcharts that were helpful for labeling and processing the noncompliant.

The red book fit into my self-styled Tower of Babel project; I worked the system and advanced up imaginary steps in my attempt to scale heaven under my own steam. The trap, of course, was that I became obsessed with the system and my ascent rather than with the God I imagined to be waiting at the top.

Freedom came when I started violating several statutes in the red book. Oh, I didn’t do anything immoral. But as I advanced into adulthood, I began to develop opinions and positions that weren’t compliant. According to the book, I was rebellious and had a wounded and broken spirit, but in actuality I felt more freedom than I had experienced in years!

It has been a long time since I’ve opened that red book. In fact, it’s probably completely decomposed in a landfill in Sandusky by now. However, that red book mentality has followed me throughout my life. As a result, it’s easy for me to view God’s desire for change in my life with skepticism. But I’m slowly learning, like Paul and Anne Lamott, that any change that God has accomplished in me has been the result of his overwhelming me with his love.

There’s a second reason we don’t welcome God’s desire for change in our lives: habit. The camp where I worked was a horse ranch. At the end of the summer, when the children had all gone home, we would take the horses deep into the forest for a long ride. An interesting thing happened when we began to leave the well-worn trail, the small circular path the horses had traveled three times a day as they carried children—the horses resisted. The horses had been expected to stay on the path all summer. The path was all they knew, and they fought our attempts to guide them to the freedom of the hundreds of acres of untouched forest.

We resist God’s bit and bridle because we’ve found security in the well-worn paths we created during our years of being under the control of sin. God is leading us to freedom, and it makes us feel insecure. We don’t know what’s out there. We’re comfortable on the path and resent God’s tugging and spurring. If we only believed God’s motives were for our love and freedom, perhaps we wouldn’t kick against the goad. I think I could love, trust, and yield to a God who had only my welfare in mind. Couldn’t you?

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Think of an authority figure in your life who has been regularly critical of you. How do you feel when you are around that person? How is your relationship to God like or unlike this relationship?

2. What’s the difference between God wanting to change us and other people wanting to change us?

3. If God’s motives for changing us are pure and beautiful, why does it feel like God is dissatisfied with us and critical of us? Why is it so hard to believe that on the other end of the shovel of God’s conviction there are loving hands working for our rescue?

4. The author writes, “I’m slowly learning, like Paul and Anne Lamott, that any change God has accomplished in me has been the result of his overwhelming me with his love.” Does that sentiment resonate with you? Why or why not?

5. Read Jeremiah 31:33–34. What are the relational dynamics involved in God teaching you his ways? How is that similar to or different from your preconceptions of the way God initiates change in you?

Chapter Five

Love without Partitions

No sooner were these words out of Peter’s mouth than the Holy Spirit came on the listeners. The believing Jews who had come with Peter couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on “outsider” non-Jews, but there it was—they heard them speaking in tongues, heard them praising God.

Then Peter said, “Do I hear any objections to baptizing these friends with water? They’ve received the Holy Spirit exactly as we did.” Hearing no objections, he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Then they asked Peter to stay on for a few days.

Acts 10:44–48 MSG

February 21

I looked at the deep-dish pizza in front of me and told myself to be perfectly content with just one slice. I had made a New Year’s resolution to drop ten pounds, and I hadn’t lost one yet.

They say you are what you eat. Well, if they had studied our table, they would have concluded that Ron, Alice, and I were mid-American, middle-class folk in search of comfort food.

Part of me wanted to drown my stress in the yellow, cholesterol-filled sea of cheese sitting in front of me. I had spent the past two weeks attempting to pull together a cooperative effort between several local churches to provide tutoring for inner-city children. Our team had decided to host a banquet and informational meeting to raise awareness among local community leaders. We had moved rapidly through the task list until we got to the seating arrangements.

“It was unbelievable. I tried to seat Pastor Gary next to Alderman Jones, and the entire planning committee pitched a fit,” I said. “Gary’s outspoken about his conservative political leanings—”

“And the alderman is as left wing as they come,” Alice observed. “Of course you couldn’t seat them together. You’d be pouring gas on an open fire.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t a political effort. It’s about the church seeing a need and meeting it.”

“I’ve listened to Pastor Gary on the radio. He’s constantly making digs about the Left,” Ron offered approvingly. “He’s aggressive. Doesn’t mince words.”

“That’s what I hear. In fact, some of the pastors from the black churches downtown bristled when they realized Gary was on the team. I wasn’t halfway home when Pastor Dixon lit up my cell phone. He informed me that several of the ethnic churches in the city are familiar with Gary’s radio show; they consider his politically laced sermons to be thinly veiled racism.”

Ron slipped into his apologist voice. “Come on. That’s a load of garbage. Republicans do a better job of representing God’s vision of society. That’s all Gary’s saying.”

“Really?” Alice lifted herself upright in her seat by the top of her spine. “Enlighten me. How is opposing affirmative action and the minimum-wage law not racist? And how does Pastor Gary manage to attach these positions to any Scripture? I’m dying to know.”

I jumped in before Ron could volley back. “Sounds like you were listening in on my conversation with Pastor Dixon. The whole thing caught me off guard. I got off the phone and called Gary. I thought he should know about the situation, and I wanted to see if he had any insight on how to get past this problem. He lost it. He said that if they were going to play the race card, then he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be a part of the tutoring program.”

Ron remained focused on Alice. “I’m dying to hear how building an entitlement culture is particularly Christian. I’m sure you have chapter and verse for your positions—”

“Stop.” I rapped the table with my clenched fist. “You’re reliving my headache.” I took an extended breath. “Your bickering is exactly why this tutoring program is on the rocks. I can’t seat a pastor next to a political leader because the pastor can’t not push his cultural and political beliefs—”

“Gary’s job is to preserve Christian culture,” Ron interrupted.

Alice took the bait. “How can you marry Christianity with the Republican Party?”

“You seem to have married Christianity with the Democrats.”

I wasn’t feeling particularly pastoral. “You two are an exercise in missing the point. Somehow the church needs to get over its cultural and political biases and serve illiterate children.

“I need you two to help me brainstorm a way to get the city’s finest pastors to see past their own politics, race, and culture so they can see children in need. The banquet is in two weeks. Do either of you have a single idea that might help?”

I was too sharp, but I didn’t care. Ron and Alice sat in stunned silence from hearing good ol’ Pastor Jonah with his doormat tendencies giving them a verbal beat down. No one touched the food.

I knew I needed to calm down and apologize for my intensity, but I didn’t want to. “If a room full of pastors can’t share a meal with people from opposing cultures, how can we expect anyone to put aside their differences and share the love of the Lord?”

I had no idea how to relieve the tension I had just created; so I leaned forward, reached for a second slice of pizza, and attempted to smother my tensions in a blanket of mozzarella.

As I was writing this chapter, I heard on the radio that President George W. Bush had signed a bill that would result in a seven-hundred-mile-long fence being built along the border between the United States and Mexico. The fence was intended to protect our borders from the threat of terror and to stop the free flow of illegal immigrants into our country. I’m already hearing jokes that Americans probably won’t even be the ones building the fence! Seriously, though, I’m not mentioning this incident to make some sort of political statement. What I’m trying to say is that this fence existed in the invisible world of our thoughts and attitudes long before it was ever legislated into existence. Our world is filled with invisible fences.

These fences aren’t all necessarily evil. They narrow the choices we have to make every day. Our fences help us determine what values, preferences, behaviors, foods, music, and holidays are or are not included in our own culture.

Without these fences we would never make it through the day. When I get up in the morning, I don’t need to make decisions about whether I’ll have Grape-Nuts and black coffee, smoked fish and rice, or grits and redeye gravy. My culture has already partitioned out the bulk of the choices, leaving me with a manageable few. This is good, or I’d never get to work on time.

I’ll have the Grape-Nuts and black coffee, thanks.

Culture gives us meaning and can connect us with ultimate truths. Chances are your conceptions of God were shaped, at least initially, by the culture of your childhood. Odds are your culture offered you Christianity and filtered out your having to consider the validity of every other world religion, sect, and cult as you grew up.

These fences shield our minds from an avalanche of infinite choices and allow us to focus on the task of working or pursuing relationships or raising our families. It’s not until we enter someone else’s culture that we begin to get a glimpse of the myriad choices from which we’ve been shielded. Choices are available that we can’t even begin to comprehend without tiring mental exertion. We think other people’s food tastes funny, we think they talk funny, and their beliefs—unbelievable! At the end of the day, most of us are glad we are who we are. Coming from another culture would just be too darn hard!

But with this kind of mentality our culture stops being a way to organize our own values and becomes a way to label and gain leverage over others. We retreat behind our fences and look for others who won’t force us to think too hard. We look for others who will be similarly comfortable with the shelter of their own partitions. We examine clothing brands, music, politics, beliefs, and skin color. And we keep all others a safe distance on the other side. On a subterranean level in our hearts we know this practice isn’t moral, so we dehumanize those on the outside with nationalistic, religious, ethnic, or racist labels. After all, it’s only wrong if we do it to people, right?

Here’s the problem: Jesus’ last instruction was that his followers were to take him throughout the whole world, but the whole world is littered with a complex system of fences designed to divide and alienate people from each other. So how do you and I go about transcending the barriers of our own cultural biases and ignorance, bigotry, prejudices, or even racism?

The Tyranny of Fences

The early church wasn’t immune to the tyranny of fences. We caught a taste of this truth with the church’s avoidance of Samaria. However, the church’s bigotry wasn’t limited to just one region. You see, Christianity began as a sect of Judaism. As such, the vast majority of the first Christ-followers were raised on the rigid partitions of Jewish nationalism. Gentiles suffered the contempt of all God-fearing Jews. Most Gentiles were uncircumcised; they lacked what F. Scott Spencer explains as “the genital-kinship markings that linked Jewish males to the ancient covenant between God and Abraham.”[1] The partition, simply put, was that the Jews were God’s chosen people and that the Gentiles were not.

Consequently, religious Jews refused to even share meals with uncircumcised Gentiles. Shared meals were a symbol of kinship, allegiance, and affinity in first-century Middle Eastern culture. To the Jewish mind, God had declared who was “in” and who was “out.” Gentiles, who didn’t have Moses’ law to tutor them and who were outside of God’s covenantal relationship, were contemptible. Refusing meals with Gentiles was a way to reinforce the Jews’ exclusive claim on God’s love and attention.

There was another practical reason that meals couldn’t be shared between Jews and Gentiles. Pious Jews adhered to complex kosher dietary laws. Kosher laws placed restrictions on what foods could be eaten and how they were to be prepared. For example, a pot that held dairy had to be thoroughly washed before meat could be placed into it. An eating utensil would remain kosher only if it were used exclusively for either dairy or meat throughout an entire meal. Gentiles didn’t adhere to such ceremonial laws; so on a practical level, even if a Jew could overcome his bigotry against a Gentile, a Jew enjoying a meal with a Gentile was next to impossible. Some contemporary Orthodox Jewish commentators suggest that God designed these laws to prevent Jews from socializing with people from outside their religion.

These fences—the issues surrounding circumcision and proper adherence to kosher laws—served to turn Israel into an enclave community. These invisible walls, inherited by the first Christians, made it virtually impossible for them to even desire to carry out the Great Commission. In fact, had these walls continued within the church, they would have changed the course of human history. Christianity would have remained a small Jewish sect in Israel, a country little larger than the state of New Jersey.

But thankfully we see Peter, one of the leaders of the church, as early as Acts 2, preaching the international scope of the gospel’s advance. He quoted the prophet Joel, saying: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people” (Acts 2:17). The church’s “rock” must have been heavily influenced by the Holy Spirit when he quoted that verse, because it’s likely his personal prejudices couldn’t imagine the Holy Spirit moving beyond the confines of the Jewish community.

Clearly God had to intervene in order for the gospel to advance beyond the Jewish nation. Both Peter’s prejudices and his cultural biases needed to be overcome in order for Jesus’ sacrifice and love to be shared with all nations. Jesus was inviting all people of all nations to sit at his table and feast with him, but first Peter’s hate and dietary sensibilities had to be overcome.

Crossing Racial and Cultural Lines

I discovered the hard way that practicing a quality of love that crosses racial and cultural lines is tricky work. Last year a friend of mine, Susanne, asked if I would be willing to join a planning team for her church’s annual abstinence conference. The conference is a huge undertaking. The church reaches hundreds of teens, children, and parents each year by offering guidance in making choices about sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, bullying, and relationship building.

I jumped at Susanne’s invitation for reasons bigger than the conference. My congregation, Grace Church, is nestled in the middle of white, middle-class suburbia. Grace’s racial profile is predominantly Caucasian with pockets of Hispanics and Asians. Susanne’s church, on the other hand, is a predominantly African American congregation anchored in the heart of Erie. Erie is a city in economic transition; it has the most children per capita living under the poverty level of any city in the United States.[2] And her church is there, in the middle of the struggle, bringing Jesus to the places he is needed most. I imagined an ongoing partnership between the two churches that would jar the members of Grace from our middle-class rut and help us grow in our concern for social justice.

The churches worked together like clockwork. Or at least I imagined they did. The day of the conference was a success. And as I drove to an evaluation meeting early one Saturday morning to debrief the experience with the team from our partner church, I expected to hear similar themes from them.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. I needed to leave the meeting early to attend a hiring team session at my church. Just minutes before I left, one of their elders unloaded a litany of concerns about the way our church approached the event. The representatives from Grace did a good job of mobilizing volunteers to help serve at the event, he noted. However, only a trickle of our children and teens attended.

“So the white church came downtown and told the black children to stop having sex. Your children are having sex too.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“And your congregation didn’t join us for worship on Sunday evening after the conference. You can’t worship with us?”

At that moment I was exhausted and seething with anger. I had invested an unbelievable amount of hours in this conference (at the expense of driving my wife crazy). The elder’s implication was clear—my church and I were racist. I listened with disbelief at what I was hearing. I checked my watch and realized I didn’t have time to defend myself—my next appointment was in fifteen minutes on the other side of town. I excused myself and boiled with anger as I hurried to keep my appointment.

Weeks later the elder and I sat down to hash out our differences. I was able to explain that the poor attendance among the teens was due to transitions we were facing on our staff. And the children? I was able to explain that, culturally, in Millcreek where our church is located, Saturday mornings were traditionally a time for parents to hustle their children off to basketball and soccer leagues.

But by listening to this elder, I discovered that we (and especially I) had violated some of their norms as well. I was completely insensitive to the reality that sending adult volunteers but few children and teens could look like racism. I was unaware that several of the African American churches in town showed their affinity for each other by attending each other’s worship services. Not understanding how declining the invitation would be perceived, I had spent the evening at a family event, and I hadn’t instructed the interim youth director to cancel the regularly scheduled youth meeting to get the teens to our partner church’s worship service. I hadn’t encouraged our senior pastor to get directly involved in the conference. In our church culture, sending a trusted “lieutenant” to represent the church is just as meaningful as sending the lead pastor. Not so at Susanne’s church. Our pastor’s absence created the suspicion that the highest levels of leadership at Grace were not truly behind the partnership.

Our two churches are just in the beginning steps of forging a new relationship. I can’t tie a bow on this story and tell you that we’ve arrived at perfect understanding and harmony. At the time of this writing, I’m not sure whether we are going to partner on the conference again or try to partner together on something of a smaller, more manageable scale. This story is just meant to illustrate the reality that attempts at passing Jesus’ love across cultural boundaries are difficult. The bald truth is that it would be easier for each church to retreat into its respective circles of comfort. But if we did withdraw from each other, we would be in danger of missing out on Paul’s vision of a new humanity: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

Invisible Partitions

God’s dealings with Peter in Acts 10 give us some practical relational suggestions for freeing the gospel from our own personal and relational biases. The story suggests that we need to ask God for help. To think that you or I can look inward and root out our own prejudices is naive and simplistic. We were raised with invisible partitions, and they have become a part of who we are. Checklists and religious behavioral modification techniques will be useless to get at these unworthy thoughts. Divine intervention will be required. In the last chapter we discovered that God changes our character to increase our capacity to love. A prayer to be rescued from prejudice is a prayer God will always honor.

God knew that Peter’s own racism was indelibly ingrained in his fiber. In order to get through to Peter with his message of transcending love, God resorted to his now famous rooftop vision. The sky opened up, and a large sheet was lowered from the heavens by its four corners. The sheet was filled with a mixture of animals, some of them “clean” (or kosher) and others “unclean” (forbidden from Jewish consumption). A disembodied voice commanded Peter to slaughter the animals and eat. Peter refused, and the voice challenged him not to label as unclean those things God calls holy. God punctuated the importance of the vision by repeating it twice again. The Gentiles who interrupted Peter’s trance completed God’s revelation. God was declaring diverse peoples of the world as “clean” and acceptable to him. Peter learned that the earth is not just a kosher planet and that all people are precious to God.

Once God had rooted out Peter’s racism, Peter confessed it. Peter offered his unsolicited confession to Cornelius and his family so abruptly it makes us uncomfortable. Peter admitted his guilt of buying into the Jewish laws that forbade him from sharing meals with Gentiles. He confessed to previously viewing his audience as second-class people. Finally, Peter admitted to believing that God chose favorites along the lines of race and nationality. Peter’s tactlessness is of biblical proportions, but perhaps we need to witness this gaucherie to teach us that there’s relational power in confessing our bigotry.

Donald Miller, in Blue Like Jazz, wrote how he and a small group of his friends were planning an outreach event on a college campus known for its pagan morals. The college hosted an annual Ren Fayre Festival, a weekend devoted to music, drugs, and alcohol. After intense brainstorming on how to spark a conversation with students in this environment, Donald and his friends settled on hosting a confession booth with a twist—they would confess their sins to the campus.

Donald recalled the brainstorming session:

All of us sat there in the silence because it was obvious that something beautiful and true had hit the table with a thud. We had all thought the idea was a great idea, and we could see it in each other’s eyes. It would feel so good to apologize for the Crusades, for Columbus and the genocide he committed in the Bahamas in the name of God, apologize for the missionaries who landed in Mexico and came up through the west slaughtering Indians in the name of Christ. I wanted so desperately to apologize for the many ways I had misrepresented the Lord by judging, by not willing to love the people He had loved on and only giving lip service to the issues of human rights.[3]

The confession booth stood in the midst of a carnival of drugs, booze, rave music, and sloppy love. Students would take a breather from their revelry to visit the booth, mostly out of curiosity. And they were confronted, not with angry judgments leveled by the church, but by contrition and apologies.

After that weekend, Donald’s friends discovered that they had greater opportunities to reach their peers. They confessed their fences, and some students responded by leveling theirs. Dialogue took place. Before the confession booth outreach, ten was the highest number in attendance at the group’s events. But after that weekend, dozens of students came to their talks and learned of Christ’s love.

Our world will never want to feast with God as long as his followers are oblivious to the damage that their fences have caused. Because Christians stress the importance of Scripture and divine revelation, the world assumes we believe that God has personally endorsed our racism and bigotry. And the world rightfully wants no part of such a God. However, as you and I ask the Holy Spirit for power to be humble and to admit the ways we’ve hurt others—either through racism or cultural blindness—we can earn the right to share Jesus’ love.

(A note to the reader: I know that the notion that we should apologize for a society filled with racial injustice that we didn’t create seems maddening. You and I didn’t create systemic oppression—we were born into it; we had nothing to do with the three-fifths compromise in the U.S. Constitution, slavery, segregation, white flight, and the rest of the unending list of other societal sins against minorities. It’s not our fault we weren’t born receiving the short lot. The thought of absorbing someone’s anger for the sins of our forefathers seems unjust. I suppose it is. And then I think of Jesus, who unjustly bore the sins of the world on his shoulders. Compared to the miscarriage of justice Jesus endured, the act of listening to and absorbing the hurts and frustrations of those who struggle daily with these unfortunate realities—even when it feels like they are unfairly being aimed at us—and then acknowledging that, no, things are not the way they are supposed to be seems like a minor inconvenience.)

“Where’s the Party?”

We need to realize that God is an intensely social Being. He is constantly working to bring the lost and the least to feast at his table. He is perpetually connecting his followers with those who need to experience his love. He orchestrated the party between Peter and Cornelius’s family. Peter and Cornelius weren’t looking to connect; Jesus had to commandeer each person’s imagination with an extraordinary vision to jump-start the festivities. God is eager to enjoy friendship and fellowship with those who don’t know him. At Cornelius’s home he couldn’t even wait for Peter to wrap up his sermon. God knew that the Gentiles understood Peter’s message of salvation, and so he blessed them with the gift of his Holy Spirit. Peter then stayed at Cornelius’s home for days and enjoyed the finest cuisine a Roman army officer could afford, violating every kosher law in the process.

You and I don’t need to make a list of people with whom we need to meet. We don’t need to set goals to meet with a certain number of people from different cultures each month. Instead, we need to listen to our social God and let him tell us where the party is. In chapter 1 we decided what it means to breathe in God, to engage the Holy Spirit in a conversation by regularly asking the questions “Now what?” and “Where do I go from here?” Another question we need to add to our list is “Where’s the party?”

If you follow the Holy Spirit for any length of time, he will lead you to a number of parties. And along the way to each one of those parties, fences previously hidden deep within you will be exposed. You may be confronted by a vein of racism or a cultural bias that lies hidden beneath your consciousness. A legalistic notion may be presented that prevents you from enjoying people. Or Jesus may lead you to a party where people violate your deepest faith convictions as a matter of routine.

If the Holy Spirit is summoning you, do what Peter did. Don’t hesitate, evaluate, or speculate. Don’t poll your Christian friends to get their approval. Above all, don’t object as Peter did. Run; don’t walk—otherwise, you’ll talk yourself out of it. Simply obey Jesus, even if you don’t know how to deal with the problems your fences are presenting to you. I’m sure by the time you get there Jesus will help you sort it out.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. What challenges are involved in keeping our faith from being confined by our cultural preferences? How can we overcome them?

2. Describe a time when you were on the receiving end of discrimination. How did you feel? How do feelings like these inhibit the spread of the gospel across cultural lines?

3. How did Peter’s actions expose himself to the criticism of the Christian Jews in Jerusalem? What are the dangers of taking Jesus across cultural lines? Why is it worth it?

4. Ask the Holy Spirit, “Where’s the party?” Sit silently with God for ten minutes, and wait for him to answer. Repeat the process daily until he answers you.

5. Peter had to let go of his attachment to Israel’s kosher laws in order to obey God. What cultural preferences might you need to let go of in order to take Jesus across cultural lines?

Chapter Six

The Church Chaotic

First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.

Genesis 1:1–2 MSG

The apostles and leaders called a special meeting to consider the matter. The arguments went on and on, back and forth, getting more and more heated.

Acts 15:6 MSG

March 26

I arrived first this time and settled into the booth. Much had happened since our last meeting. As soon as I got home from our last dinner, I called both Ron and Alice and apologized for taking out my frustrations over the tutoring program on them. Repairing friendships was about the extent of my phone diplomacy skills. I had to cancel the awareness banquet due to the infighting among the pastors. Nothing like the church.

The door swung open, and Alice stormed in. She’s still mad at me, I thought, as she stuffed herself onto the bench.

“No Ron?”

“Not yet. You okay?”

“How do you do it, Jonah? How do you put up with all the politicking and nastiness? How do you slog through all that all week long and then preach the party line of peace and love on Sunday?”

I sipped my water. “It took years to hone that skill.” That didn’t earn a smile. “We’re not talking about my church, are we?”

“A year ago our pastor invited Steve and me to join the church renewal team. We meet with five other couples to catch a vision for what the church should be like. We studied Acts 2; we prayed together; we read books on church growth. We all took vacation time to travel to a conference to hear speakers unload their flowcharts and Power Point presentations on how we could reenergize our dying church.”

“This all sounds like good stuff, Alice. What happened?”

“At the end of our training, we made up a proposal for changes that would turn the church around. We shared it at a congregational meeting, and you would have thought we were adding a fourth person to the Trinity.”

“Were you?”

Alice furrowed her brows. I need to stop trying to extract a smile.

“Part of our proposal involved changing the worship services to make them more welcoming to visitors—”

“And they accused you of ‘dumbing down’ the faith.”

“You’ve gone through this?”

“And nearly lost my job.”

“They fought you over worship style and choosing to cut down on the amount of church jargon you use in the pulpit?”

“That was the fight. My church went through two years of conflict trying to sort out its mission and decide who the church was for.”

I looked up, noticed Ron, and slid over so he could sit.

“Sorry I’m late. The youth team meeting went late. We got into this debate—”

“Then you’re just in time. I’m about to reveal my theory on church fights,” Alice interjected. “Worship styles, small groups, youth team meetings—that’s not the root of the issue; it’s all about who’s got the power. It’s a lot like when I’m in the courtroom; the defense and prosecution wrestle over the source of power in the room: the hearts and minds of the jury. The big ideas—truth and justice—don’t matter, not really. It’s all about the power.”

Ron didn’t bother acclimating himself to the conversation and played the role of restaurant host: “Despair? Table for one for ‘Miss Despair.’ No? Cynic? Table for one …”

Where angels fear to tread, Ron.

Alice remained poised and focused on her closing arguments. “I’m serious, Ron. Church is supposed to be ‘the body of Christ.’ If that’s true, then why does the church’s problem-solving technique look like a courtroom’s. We wrestle for power at the expense of love, grace, and community.”

“That’s not all there is,” I offered. Although you’re making a strong case, Alice.

“I’m not sure, Jonah. If there’s something more to church than fighting for control for six days and pretending to rest on the seventh, I haven’t seen it. And I’m not sure I like what we’re creating.”

I wanted to argue with Alice, but I wasn’t sure I had seen that “something more” either—at least not for more than a few fleeting moments. I’m not sure I like what we’re creating either.

Christianity’s greatest challenge today seems to be that Christians have developed an uneasy relationship with the church. The desire to know and love God hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s just that some Christians aren’t sure that the church is a safe place to explore their faith and to flesh out what it means to live in community with other Christ-followers. Churches are seen by many as the neighborhood epicenters of gossip, strife, conflict, and hypocrisy. And these are just the observations of the faithful. Gandhi said, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Dan Brown, with his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, has created quite a stir in church circles with his alternate history of Christianity. However, our apologists have done a better job of dispatching the Da Vinci heresy than they have of dealing with Da Vinci sociology. Dan Brown sees organized religion as a form of control. In his books, church leaders are empire builders, and religion is their system of control. The conflict that fueled the Da Vinci Code novel was caused by clergy fighting to preserve their empires.

Brown’s target of criticism is the Catholic Church. However those of us who participate in congregational churches have witnessed real-life examples of this sociology as well. We don’t need a novel to tell us things aren’t right.

On Sundays we give a nod to the notion of the Acts 2 church. This was really the golden age of church life. Christians met together daily to worship and pray. They shared their earthly possessions to take care of their brothers and sisters who had little. Even the preaching was of a fine quality—the believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42).

We imagine paradise on Sundays but often settle for the less-than-heavenly the rest of the week. We’ve watched pastors and respected church pillars flash pious looks in the sanctuary only to fight like devils in the relative privacy of church board meetings. James, in his letter to the early church, wrote about the source of such quarrels:

Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. You lust for what you don’t have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn’t yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it.

You wouldn’t think of just asking God for it, would you? And why not? Because you know you’d be asking for what you have no right to. You’re spoiled children, each wanting your own way. (James 4:1–3 MSG)

It’s disturbing to realize that James wasn’t scolding a group of godless pagans; he was scolding the church! And James wasn’t one of the church’s sideline critics. In Acts 15 he was recognized as the senior leader of the Jerusalem church. If James, Dan Brown, and the average churchgoer all see Christian churches as hotbeds of control mongering, we need to ask ourselves whether they are the safest places on the planet to nurture spiritual life. Is belonging to a church worth the effort? Sure, there are dangers in embarking on a more individualized journey of spiritual development, but it would appear that faith communities are filled with peril as well.

So what does Acts say about God’s intention for Christian communities? Is it possible to transcend the confines of religion and increase our capacity to love God and one another through the church? To answer these questions, let’s look at a conflict in the early church that completely engulfed the congregations of two major urban hubs in Israel.

Conflict in the Early Church

Acts 15 describes a situation in which some Pharisees who had converted to Christianity were doing their best to impose their Jewish cultural ideologies on some of the newer Greek believers. These Pharisees insisted that the Gentiles who professed faith in Jesus needed to “repent” from their Greek culture and adopt Jewish ceremonial laws as their own. To them, becoming a Christ-follower included the rite of male circumcision, something that would have been extremely painful for adult males during this time period. Other requirements included following the complex kosher dietary laws and a seemingly endless collection of regulations related to ceremonial cleanness.

This line of thinking became a major source of tension in the early church. The incident at Cornelius’s home proved that these Christian Pharisees were wrong; the Holy Spirit had fallen on a room full of uncircumcised Romans. However, the apostles in Jerusalem couldn’t muster the courage to stand up to the Pharisees. Jewish teachers in the temple had long felt that Jesus was sloppy with their ceremonial laws. The apostles felt political pressure from the Christian Pharisees, as well as those who had not converted not to be too welcoming to Gentile believers. In Galatians Paul recalls confronting Peter for being worried about being seen eating with Gentiles in front of other Jewish Christians.

These tensions simmered in the background until a large Greek congregation of Christians sprung up in Antioch. Greek Christians were no longer an anomaly; if things kept up, they would quickly outnumber the Jewish converts. Christianity was on the verge of losing its Jewish flavor and becoming a predominantly Greek religion.

But didn’t God tell Abraham that Israel would be a blessing to all people? These Jews remembered God’s words to Abraham and assumed that God was promising that Judaism would be exported to all nations. But how could Israel be a blessing to all nations if all nations didn’t want to look and live like God’s chosen people?

The Christian Pharisees must have also realized that their personal influence was slipping away. They enjoyed positional power in a culture that valued the laws of Moses. However, the Pharisees were in danger of losing their influence as the Christian faith grew in Greek communities. So the Pharisees sent a detail of missionaries to Antioch to insist that the Greek Christians adopt Jewish customs in order to be saved. The church in Antioch reeled in under the force of this new revelation. If these missionaries were correct, then was everything they had been taught about Jesus wrong? The prospect of having to conform to foreign customs and dietary rules threatened to estrange these people from their own heritage.

Their champions, Paul and Barnabas, weren’t able to reason with the missionaries; and the congregation was enflamed with debate. The church had hoped to contain the dispute by sending a fact-finding delegation to Jerusalem to get a definitive ruling.

At first it looked like that ruling would not come. The debate spilled into the streets of Jerusalem, which were filled with biases against the Gentiles. The fight was both theological and practical. Jewish Christians were not just questioning how Gentiles could be saved, but perhaps more importantly who would be let in and kept out of their community. The leaders pulled the fight off the streets and into a crowded meeting room to resolve the issue before it ripped the church apart. And the flames of conflict baked the tempers and nerves of everyone in the room.

Conflict in the Local Church

Conflict is a dominant theme in my personal history with church. In the introduction I mentioned that after returning from college, I found my childhood church in turmoil. The congregation was at odds with the pastor over his leadership style and methods. I was enlisted onto a team commissioned to define and manage the conflict. I soon was introduced to a layer of the church I was oblivious to as a child. For decades the church had spiraled through cycles of conflict. Tension would mount until a mass of frustrated leaders quietly bowed under the weight. The church would then enjoy a period of relative peace until new leaders were exposed to some of the disfunctional features of our church. And then they would leave.

This particular cycle ended with the pastor preaching a particularly fiery sermon condemning the leaders of the church by name, me included. The pastor announced that we would never see him again, flung open the nearest fire doors, and stormed off.

I filled the pulpit the following Sunday and for a long string of Sundays after that. I was asked not only to diffuse the verbal bombs the pastor had lobbed into the congregation, but also to work long term with a team to hire the next full-time pastor. I did what I could to lead the congregation to health, but it was the beginning of the end. Two pastors later the church closed its doors.

I left that church to come to Grace, my current church home. Despite my previous experience it never even occurred to me to ask during the interview process about the levels of conflict here. This is a mistake I will never make again. I had exchanged a frying pan for a fire. The rapid growth of the church precipitated debates over how the church should be governed. The staff knew that Grace’s style of congregational rule, a style that developed when the church was a mere two hundred people large, was becoming constricting for the fast-paced growing congregation we were becoming. Older members of the congregation were also concerned by the changes that were being made to the worship style. Traditional hymns yielded to modern praise and worship. Quarrels arose over who church was for—believers or “seekers.”

Speaking of fire, while this battle was waging, a child of one of the staff members committed arson, destroying nearly a third of the church building. The crime added another layer of complexity to a dispute that was already larger than anyone’s ability to manage.

The elders were gridlocked in a battle over whether the senior pastor should stay or go. The associate pastors didn’t know what to do, so we did our jobs the best we could and looked for work elsewhere in the meantime. Some shepherding, huh? Meanwhile hundreds of members fled the church looking for more stable places of worship.

It took a lot of collective change of heart and a Christian conflict mediator, but the church has been rebuilt, both in its brick and mortar as well as in its spiritual fiber. Miraculously, all of the pastors who were on staff during that crucial period weathered those years and remained with us.

Between these two experiences I have encountered more church conflict than I care to remember. I have watched dozens of good people decide that church life is too unsafe and too toxic to be worth it. Some have grown away from the faith; some have just grown away from church. Some of the leaders I have seen struggle through such issues have emerged with new depths of character, usually pretty low. Other leaders, gratefully, have forged a Christlike character that will serve them for a lifetime. I have lived through months of angst, insomnia, anxiety, and stress. I can’t tell you that church is a safe place. But if you want my honest opinion, I can tell you that I am convinced that church is worth it. And the reason is found in a tiny clause in a letter the Jerusalem church sent back to the church in Antioch.

Why Is the Church Worth It?

The meat of the letter that Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Judas (called Barsabbas) took to Antioch contained the terms of peace James had mandated. The Greek Christians were to be considered full members of God’s family, and conversion to Judaism was declared to be decidedly not a prerequisite for salvation. However, James ordered three stipulations that helped keep the peace between the Greek Christians and their Jewish counterparts.

First, they were to refrain from the sexual immorality that was rampant in pagan culture. Apparently the Jewish Christians were concerned that a disregard for Moses’ law would create a slippery slope leading toward immorality. Second, the Gentiles were to be sensitive to Jewish customs and avoid eating food sacrificed to idols. Third, the public reading of the Mosaic laws was to continue to be a part of synagogue worship among the Greek Christians. James assured the Antioch Christians of their spiritual freedom but gave them clear strategies on how they could preserve unity with Jewish Christians by being sensitive to their culture.

But it’s not the terms of peace that encourage me, so much as how this peace came about. Up to now we’ve witnessed cities in uproar, the threat of schism, and pontificating leaders; and God has been conspicuously absent. We would think that with something as near to God’s heart as the future of the church he would do anything to get his misguided followers’ attention. God is on record for producing rushing winds; drawing down the walls of palaces; and sending thunderstorms, earthquakes, or angels to get his people to stop and listen. But as far as we can tell, God was sitting cheerily on the sidelines, hoping his children would figure things out for themselves.

But then we read Acts 15:28, which paints a very different picture. God was in the middle of this conflict, silently creating unity. The Holy Spirit appeared in Scripture at the beginning of time, patrolling the void that preceded creation. Chaos didn’t repel the Holy Spirit. Instead, the Spirit plunged into the disorder and transformed it into something pleasing to God.

Now we realize that the Holy Spirit had been working in the church’s chaos as early as Paul’s confrontation with Peter (Gal. 2:11–14). The Holy Spirit refused to allow the debate to extend into a second decade, worked through the wrongheaded church council led by the Christian Pharisees, and worked in the heated exchanges of the council. The Spirit used the debates to expose the foul attitudes and prejudices that threatened the church’s future.

So why is the church, with its history of distorted truth, worth it? What is it about its injured members; its division, staleness, anemia, and fracases; its legalism, rigidity, and traditionalism that attracts us so? The church is worth it because the Holy Spirit is constantly working to transform it, though we may not always see it.

God’s desire is that we join together in community despite our own personal baggage, hurts, and neuroses. Just as he did at the beginning, anytime we come together to form a quivering glob of relational disorder, the Holy Spirit nestles in our chaos. He silently works his change, planting seeds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in each of us. The Holy Spirit gives us a diversity of spiritual gifts, and the way he distributes these gifts forces us to be interdependent upon each other. We are slowly changed into a new community ordered around God’s kingdom.

Christian community is worth participating in because it is a locus of the Holy Spirit’s creativity. But before I continue, I must make something clear: There are times when it is okay to leave a church. If a church’s leadership is spiritually and emotionally abusive, if a church’s theology deviates from sound biblical doctrine, or if the Holy Spirit is guiding us to another community, then by all means we should go.

Unfortunately, in reality so much of what leads us to leave a church boils down to fear, but courage is defined by our willingness to become burning bushes—people who address their fears and emotional hurts, their congregational miscues and bumblings, their fights and frictions and submit them to the Holy Spirit, allowing him to burn through them. Courage is the art of not running. And so, if we take the sensible option of running away at the first sign of conflict, what’s left?

The Three Compromises

I think it’s important to observe here that the disciples practiced the same disciplines of the Spirit that they practiced in Acts 2 during their time of peace: the teaching of the Word, fellowship and eating together, generosity, and worship. Even when the Holy Spirit appeared absent in the middle of their corporate paroxysms, they committed themselves to the same conduits of grace that served them at the genesis of their community. We see three of these disciplines practiced clearly in Acts 15.

As the disciples worked to preserve unity, they turned to the teachings of the prophets. James based his ruling that the Gentile believers were coparticipants in Abraham’s covenant on his understanding of the prophet Amos.

The three compromises that James required of the Gentiles were given in order to preserve fellowship between the Greek and Jewish believers. James’ foresight in this matter was nothing short of genius. Without these provisions, the two groups would have been irreparably separated by their dietary and worship differences.

James wasn’t content with merely extinguishing the conflict; he was determined to reestablish fellowship within the church as well. Through the letter and the extended stay of his deputies, the prophets Judas and Silas, he made sure that the Antiochans were “encouraged and strengthened” after being dragged into Jerusalem’s unrest.

So Is the Church Really Worth It?

A few weeks ago one of the guys in my 6:00 a.m. mentoring group pulled me aside and remarked on how many things I admitted to being unsure about. I think it bothered him a little that a pastor would admit to so much ignorance. I remarked that it was six o’clock in the morning and that one of the guys in the group had an insatiable interest in end-times prophecy. What I’m about to share with you, however, is something in which I have complete confidence. I mentioned earlier that I spent almost ten uninterrupted years slogging through excruciating church conflict. I am confident that I am still a pastor—strike that—I am confident that I am still a Christian today because I have practiced the disciplines of Acts 2. I have no interest in giving you a to-do list in this book; I’m sure you’ve picked that up by now. But I’ve placed the weight of my life on these Acts 2 practices, and they haven’t failed me yet.

During my times of church conflict, it was very hard for me to turn to the Bible for guidance. I guess part of me was angry with God for leading me into such difficult times. However, during those years I came to understand that many psalms could be templates for my prayers. I learned how to complain to God bitterly, how to beg him for rescue, and how to celebrate when rescue finally came. In the Scriptures I discovered that my communication style in conflict was often cowardly, gossipy, and devoid of grace. The Bible taught me how to trade in cynical lamentation for resolute leadership.

Fellowshipping with people we don’t particularly like at the moment is no picnic. My greatest failures as a leader in church conflict were born out of intentionally building a distance between me and the people with whom I was in disagreement. But I’ve learned that it’s difficult to demonize an opponent when I force myself to be in constant communication with that person.

Worship is also difficult during times of conflict. Church was usually the last place I wanted to be. Singing hymns and praises when I was emotionally hollow felt like hypocrisy. And such circumstances certainly make it easier to carry anger toward God. But I’ve learned that celebrating God’s nature, even when I don’t feel like it, has a restorative power. Somehow my drained reservoirs of love for God and his warped, bickering people are renewed.

Chronic church conflict has the ability to make getting out of bed seem like a herculean challenge. I spent months feeling depressed; I thought if I could just keep plodding along maybe I could outlast my opponents. I made myself practice small acts of generosity toward people I knew were also wounded by the conflict. Sometimes I wrote affirmation cards, and other times I gave token gifts. These small but generous acts reminded me that the conflict was, ultimately, not about me. Other people were equally impacted by the bedlam swirling through our congregation. And I remembered that our quivering little ball of relational chaos grieved God’s heart. That was the greatest hurt of all.

If you are struggling with the choice of staying put in your battle-torn congregation, I wholeheartedly recommend to you these disciplines: worship, fellowship, Bible study, prayer, and encouragement. They will serve you like a root system, bringing renewal during parched times.

Trust me; the church is worth it. Not because of what it is today, but because of what the Holy Spirit is making it.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Is church to you more like a sanctuary or a battleground? What has contributed to that feeling?

2. In this chapter’s fiction piece Alice remarked that the church’s fighting should be different from that found in the courtroom. When a church experiences conflict, how should it be handled?

3. What have been the major sources of conflict in your church? How well has your church dealt with them?

4. What do you think of the compromises that were asked of the church in Antioch? Which of your own passions or personal beliefs do you feel like you could sacrifice for the benefit of another within your congregation?

5. The author suggests that the disciplines of the Acts 2 church are invaluable in managing crises like the one described in Acts 15. How real are these disciplines in your life? Spend some time in conversation with the Holy Spirit on where you can go from here.

Chapter Seven

Magic Apples

They went to Phrygia, and then on through the region of Galatia. Their plan was to turn west into Asia province, but the Holy Spirit blocked that route. So they went to Mysia and tried to go north to Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus wouldn’t let them go there either. Proceeding on through Mysia, they went down to the seaport Troas.

That night Paul had a dream: A Macedonian stood on the far shore and called across the sea, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” The dream gave Paul his map. We went to work at once getting things ready to cross over to Macedonia. All the pieces had come together. We knew now for sure that God had called us to preach the good news to the Europeans.

Acts 16:6–10 MSG

April 15

Finally things were feeling good. No drama and no debates this month: just three friends enjoying a night of laughter. Ron had promised that he would be offering a big announcement. All evening he looked like the cat that swallowed the canary. I was waiting for him to announce that he had gotten back together with Diane.

The waitress returned with fresh drinks and took the empty iron pan from the center of the table.

Alice forced the issue. “Spill it, Ron. You’re torturing us. Personally, I can’t imagine anything in your life that merits a major announcement.”

I swear Alice and Ron are siblings.

“You’re stealing my setup, dearie. That’s exactly my issue. I’m a forty-one-year-old divorcé. My teaching gig is secure. But what do I have to look forward to? Twenty-five more years of disrespectful teens who don’t want to learn, that’s what.”

Alice touched her fingertips together and peered over them. “So you’ve decided on law school after all?”

“I’m guessing Peace Corps,” I added.

“Jonah’s warm … I’ve decided to become a missionary. I’ve sent for applications from a few mission boards. Once I’m in, I’ll raise support and then become a teacher overseas somewhere.”

Alice sat back. “You’re kidding; you can’t just up and leave us!”

“There’s nothing here for me to stay for. You both have careers, marriages, kids. Me? I’m stuck. It’s time to shake things up.”

I double-checked the date display on my watch. “Nice, Ron. April fool. A little late, but you almost had me.”

Ron reached into his jacket and produced full-color brochures from two different mission agencies and set them on the table. “I’m not joking, Jonah. But thanks for the clergy vote of confidence.”

“Don’t you need to be called to become a missionary?” Alice asked. “It seems to me that you need to be more than ‘feeling stuck’ to launch a career as a missionary.” Alice turned to me for support. “Tell him, Jonah; tell him he needs to a have a calling.”

I stumbled. “Well, a lot of missionaries are called. But I’m not sure that Ron needs the sky to part for him to know that this is God’s will.”

Alice glared at me and turned to Ron. “How do you know that this is God’s will, Ron? How do you know that you’re not just running away from your life?”

Ron narrowed his eyes. “What life? That’s my point. And who’s to say I can’t be a missionary. Neither of you seem too confident that I’m cut out for it—”

“Ron, I’ve just never thought of you in this light. You just caught me off guard. I’m sorry,” I offered.

Alice placed both hands palm down on the table. “How do you know this is God’s will? Were you called?”

“What does that even mean—called? God cares about evangelism; it’s his will. I can use my teaching gift overseas. It’s a match. So why overthink this?”

“Jonah …” Alice demanded.

“Sometimes God uses personal frustrations to motivate change,” I responded. “And Ron has a point; there are some parts of God’s will that we just know.”

“Were you called to be a pastor?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“God called me, I think.” That was so long ago, and there have been so many struggles since. I can hardly remember the feeling anymore. “Ron, I think you should pursue this and see how far it takes you. I’m sure if it isn’t God’s will you’ll find out soon enough.”

Ron stuffed the brochures back into his pocket. “Well, that was my big news. I’m going to be a missionary. Isn’t anyone going to congratulate me?”

Yesterday I enjoyed a long-overdue conversation with my administrative assistant, Amelie. “Enjoy” is a euphemism. The conversation was delicate and tender but also healthy and necessary. I enjoy the fact the conversation is behind us and that there’s a chance for a melting of underlying tensions between us.

Amelie’s daughter, Mea, had served on our church’s youth staff for seven years and had assumed the role of interim youth pastor when her predecessor’s tenure ended with difficulty. Mea took on the task of cleaning up the chaos that had settled into the youth ministry. At the same time she applied for the permanent position.

Nine months later the hiring team I led offered the job to someone else. The team had spent countless hours sorting through résumés, screening and interviewing, discussing, and praying who would be our next youth pastor. Without getting into details, I can tell you that, although we had a high opinion of Mea, the team believed it was God’s will that we look outside of the church for our next hire. We believed that our youth ministry’s needs and Mea’s leadership qualities didn’t quite align.

Arriving at God’s will (as best we understood it) was difficult; communicating it to others was torturous. Mea had established herself as a capable leader in many rights. She commanded a pulpit better than I ever will. Her project management skills were impeccable. Moreover, Mea’s leadership assets were no secret to the congregation or even to herself. I was the team’s mouthpiece; and it was my job to communicate our decision to Mea, the youth group, and the congregation. I’ve come to believe that the phrase “I believe it’s God’s will” can be perhaps the most unsatisfying line in the pastor’s lexicon.

“I believe it’s God’s will” certainly did nothing for Mea. The whole experience temporarily rattled her confidence. How could it not? When I broke the news to her, I felt like I was talking out of both sides of my mouth: “Mea, I see profound leadership gifts in your life, and you aren’t getting to use those gifts at Grace any longer.”

“I believe it’s God’s will” was no comfort to the youth group either. I watched as waves of shock, hurt, and anger washed over them as I broke the news. After giving the news, I opened up a time for questions. The teens poured out their hurt and anger and demanded levels of detail regarding our decision making that I couldn’t give them. The only card in my hand was “It’s God’s will,” which I played only to have one particularly intelligent and quick-thinking student call me out. She respectfully but boldly told me that it felt like I was shutting down the conversation by playing the “God card.” In this room filled with unhappy adolescents, “It’s God’s will” was a code phrase for “Because I say so.” That wasn’t my meaning, but I couldn’t deny the effect of my words. I apologized and returned to my prior posture of drowning in the room’s angst.

Months later, Amelie and I had our overdue talk. I had tried to have the conversation months earlier, but Amelie wasn’t ready. We were discussing database issues when the topic of Mea’s not being hired bubbled to the surface. I listened as Amelie shared how she thought the team had mishandled the situation and hurt her daughter in the process. I admitted some clumsy moments and reiterated that I believed the team had acted in God’s will. All we ended up agreeing on concerning God’s will was that God would use the hiring team’s decision, right or wrong, for Mea’s good. I returned to my office and remembered Mea’s and the youth group’s hurt. I “enjoyed” a five-minute cry and returned to the stacks of work that littered my desk.

Seeking God’s Will

Faith communities have struggled with the issue of knowing God’s will together since the beginning of time. The first faith community, Adam and Eve, depended on an ongoing conversation with God to understand his will concerning right and wrong. Satan discontented them with that arrangement and convinced them to rely on “technology” to understand morality. Satan offered access to God’s views on right and wrong through eating a piece of fruit and in the process made direct communication with God superfluous. The truth is, God doesn’t offer magical fruit, never-fail formulas, tarot cards, palm reading, Ouija boards, crystal balls, tea leaves, or other “exact science” methods of knowing his will. God offers a relationship, and we all know how unmanageable that can be.

The root of our problem is that we want God to hand us a magic apple and send us on our way. Meanwhile God wants to be generous and share parts of his will with us in the context of an ongoing, loving dialogue. Our hunger to know God’s will is an invitation, placed deep within us, to encounter God and to know his love.

Too often we don’t see this dialogue between God and his people in our congregations. Instead churches look more like magic apple orchards, places where we can go to pick at formulas and fill-in-the-blank answers to help us navigate our futures as we see fit. With enough careful searching we can find a formula that coincides with whatever it is we wanted to do anyway. Things get complicated because we’re all off collecting our own bushels. When it comes time to compare notes and discern God’s will, all a congregation can do is compare apples with apples. Since God wasn’t invited into the conversation, all that’s left is arguing with each other. “God’s will” becomes a code term for the opinion that won the day when it was put to a vote. One has to wonder, then, if it’s possible to hear from God and, if so, does the local church help or hinder the process. Is it possible to transcend groupthink and truly be led by God?

The early church wrestled in Acts 16 with the same difficulties we experience. Once fast friends, Paul and Barnabas found their friendship derailed as they argued over the wisdom of allowing John Mark to rejoin their company. John Mark had abandoned the team on their last journey when it became too long and hard. Barnabas believed that God would have them restore John Mark into their fellowship, but Paul wouldn’t hear of allowing the coward another chance to leave them. Their team split over the disagreement, and each headed off in different directions. And Paul, normally brimming with decisiveness, found himself flailing for a sense of God’s direction in his life.

I have to confess that my favorite part of this chapter is seeing Paul and his faith community struggle over the issue of hearing from God. Paul is such a heroic figure, the kind of guy who could get a whole island of people to mistake him for a god (Acts 28:1–6). It’s nice to see that a community, even one with Paul in their midst, struggled with knowing God’s will for their future. It makes the whole story so much more real to me.

There have been times when God’s will seemed crystal clear to me. I was sixteen when I first felt the Holy Spirit tell me that I was going to be a pastor. In college I let the demands of Greek, Hebrew, and theology smother that passion until God used a sermon by Bill Hybels to rekindle it. I am unable to forget the enthusiasm and energy the Holy Spirit built in me at the moment of my calling and when he rekindled it. These two points in my personal journey have kept me from walking away from the ministry when times have gotten tough.

However, I’ve made the vast majority of my life decisions without receiving these unambiguous “impressions” from God. Most times when faced with a decision, I collect advice from others, search the Bible for direction, pray, and then “just do it.” I know I’m in God’s “general will” (love, servanthood, evangelism), but I have no real sense of whether I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing at the moment. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Hearing from God is sometimes like trying to talk to my wife during a family trip to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Amy and I attempt conversation over the din of the large animatronic rodent, the voices of children running and playing, and the sounds of video games. When it’s over, I’m not sure whether Amy was really trying to tell me to drop our children off at the dry cleaners or not. It’s like that with God and me. Sometimes I have so much background noise in my life I’m not sure whether I’m really receiving the message God is sending.

And then there are times when I know that my wants and emotions are so much in play that I have to ask God to intervene if I’m moving in the wrong direction. When I was still engaged to Amy, I was so passionately in love with her that I leveled with God: “I’m not strong enough to end this relationship if it’s not in your will. If I’m not supposed to marry Amy, you’re going to have to break us up.” See, I’m not the kind of guy who asks God to open doors of opportunity. My type A personality prefers to be the one opening the doors. And I figure that God’s bigger than I am, so he’ll hold any door shut that I’m not supposed to enter.

I struggle when members of my congregation ask me if I think God has a specific will for each person, like a detailed MapQuest printout that dictates every turn from birth. Perhaps, they wonder, God’s will is more like a fence surrounding a large pasture. We’re free to gallop wherever we like as long as we don’t jump the fence. In my own walk I’ve had those MapQuest moments and times when the best I could do was to stay within the boundaries of God’s already-revealed will. But I’ve also enjoyed moments when God’s will seemed more like that fenced pasture. Now slowly, after decades of being in the faith, I understand that God’s will is like a conversation.

God’s choice to make his will available in an ongoing dialogue with him has serious implications. For starters, local churches that truly wish to discover God’s will need to learn how to cultivate this conversation with God as a corporate body, in unison. It’s difficult enough for one believer to develop this quality of relationship with God, let alone dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of believers working in harmony with each other for this goal. There’s also the matter of truly wanting to hear from God and not merely using God as a cosmic marionette whose hands we move with our own selfish strings. Both Jesus and the apostle John linked this idea of friendship with God and obedience to him. God declared that one of the defining traits of a friendship with him was obeying his will. But perhaps the difficulty in knowing God’s will is that we’re really more interested in searching for it than we are in finding and obeying it. We, both as individuals and as faith communities, are more interested in posturing than we are in actually becoming people capable of hearing the will of God.

Hearing God’s Voice

Last year I bought Amy an iPod for Valentine’s Day. I usually have poor luck when it comes to such gifts. Half of every piece of clothing or jewelry I’ve ever bought her has been exchanged. Not for a lack of effort on my part—I agonize over gift buying. But I bought this iPod for Amy, and she loved it. She quickly transferred the bulk of her CD collection to the iPod’s hard drive so she could listen to her favorite music wherever she goes. But iPods are limited in that they’re unable to pick up even one of the dozens of radio waves that constantly crash against their shells. Ironically, all that’s needed to pick up a radio signal is a cheap radio.

Both Christ-followers and Christ-communities have been designed to behave like radios. Instead our sin natures tempt us to behave more like iPods. God is near and is constantly speaking to us. We’re designed for constant communication with God, but our sin natures have disrupted this communication.

How do we overcome this situation? Part of the answer is that we need to participate in God’s ongoing change process and become people and communities who are interested in and capable of hearing from God. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, outlined the connection between our allowing ourselves to be changed by God and our ability to hear from him:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:1–2)

The link between participating in God’s change and hearing from God is not one of legalism or behavioral modification. The truth is that people who are driven by their inward bent are ultimately not interested in hearing from God—they are just looking for that magic apple. On the other hand, those who seek God’s will with all their hearts will inevitably be made more like Christ.

The process Paul had to go through to discover this truth was herky-jerky. The Greek word used to describe the intensity of Paul and Barnabas’s argument concerning God’s will translates as “paroxysm.”[1] Luke was saying that their anger convulsed out of them. Paul left Antioch wounded by his old friend, and after that his travels seemed listless. Paul needed the Holy Spirit to stop him, redirect him, and ultimately speak to him in a dream. Unfortunately, these misadventures don’t translate well into workshop notes. We crave formulas, but Paul shows us how to dialogue with God.

And although it seems painful, Paul and his team’s lurching was a necessary part of his dialogue with God. Paul’s team proposed a course of action, and God responded negatively. Paul’s team tossed out another plan, and God again declined. This process begins to make more sense when understood as a dialogue between Paul’s group and God rather than some formula the missionaries were using to unlock or decode God’s will.

Even though the team’s “conversation” with God was storied, we can see traits in their lives that resemble a radio more than an iPod. Under close examination we see that the passage identifies some of their “radiolike” tendencies. It’s worth noting that these tendencies didn’t force God to reveal his will, but rather they were a part of how the missionaries presented themselves to God so they could test and approve his will.

Paul’s Team Knew the Scriptures

Long before Paul came to this crossroads, he had learned to listen to God through the Word. Paul was well versed in the Scriptures as a Pharisee even before he became a Christ-follower.

My childhood pastor was a converted Jew. I remember him explaining to the congregation the induction rites for a new Pharisee. A nail would be driven through a scroll of the books of the Law. The nail would be removed from the scroll, and the punctured Scriptures would be handed to the pupil. In order to be accepted as a teacher of the Law, the student had to supply every word missing from the punctured scroll.

Paul knew the Scriptures to the point that he became familiar with God’s thought and actions throughout history. This familiarity made it easier for him to anticipate God’s dealings and expectations in the future.

Now, you and I are probably not going to achieve the level of memorization that Paul did. In fact, I’m grateful that God doesn’t require it. However, God tells us that the Word is an invaluable part of his conversation with us. Consider these passages:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. (Ps. 1:1–3)

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Ps. 119:105)

But don’t let it faze you. Stick with what you learned and believed, sure of the integrity of your teachers—why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk! There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another—showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us. (2 Tim. 3:14–17 MSG)

Becoming fluent in the history of God and his people helps us tune into God’s real-time promptings today. God uses the Word to tune our emotions, thoughts, and desires to his intimations until he gradually erases the inward bent created by our old sin nature and we become more capable of hearing his voice and knowing his will.

Paul Knew He and His Team Had a Unique Purpose

Shortly after Jesus confronted Paul in a blinding light and ended his efforts to destroy the Christ-followers, he gave Paul a new purpose for living. Jesus then told the disciple Ananias of his intentions for Paul’s remaining years: “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel” (Acts 9:15). When Paul was on trial before the Jews, he recounted Ananias’s words:

The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and to see the Righteous One and to hear an utterance from His mouth. For you will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard. (Acts 22:14–15 NASB)

Paul might not have known exactly where he was supposed to go next on his missionary journey, but he knew his life’s purpose. God had called him to tell about his encounter with Jesus to the Jews, to the Gentiles, and even to kings. So Paul’s knowledge of his life’s purpose helped him guide the team assembled around him.

A modern proverb says, “It’s easier to turn the wheel of a moving vehicle than a parked one.” God purposefully uses our motion to steer us.

One way we can replace our iPod tendencies is to replace our personal inertia and self-agenda with a lifestyle of actively working to enable and fulfill God’s purpose in us. But to get started we need to know our unique purpose in God’s kingdom.

This is true of both individuals and congregations. Jesus has empowered every believer and every congregation with a unique purpose. In Lead the Way God Made You, I wrote about how unreasonable we are with ourselves. Instead of realizing that God gave us a unique task to fulfill in the body, we saddle ourselves with unrealistic expectations. We look at the gifts and accomplishments of others and expect the same of ourselves. Churches are under the same curse. So much harm has occurred in the body of Christ because churches have compared themselves to the “teaching churches” instead of learning to dialogue with God about what they are supposed to be doing themselves.

God isn’t cruel. He doesn’t ask his people to accomplish objectives he doesn’t equip them for. God isn’t in the cog business. Churches and individuals are custom-built ministries to accomplish custom-picked missions. As a church examines itself and pays attention to the unique gifts and passions of the members God sends to it, it will begin to perceive and understand its unique mission.

Paul’s Team Moved toward Opportunity

In Journeying through Acts, F. Scott Spencer emphasizes that although “the aura of divine authority” surrounded Paul’s vision, “the vision itself featured a human figure—a Macedonian male—requesting aid, not an angel or the Lord himself mandating ministry.”[2]

Spencer’s point is that, through supernatural means, Paul became aware of an opportunity that lined up with his life’s purpose. The Macedonians were ready and eager to hear the message of Jesus’ love. There was no way for Paul to know this other than through divine intervention. But as soon as Paul was aware of the opportunity, he scrapped his current plans and charted a new course for Europe.

We tune ourselves to hearing God’s specific prompting by moving toward the opportunities God seems to be giving us. This is nothing like science. But the process of hearing God’s voice and determining his will never is.

Paul’s Team Dialogued with Each Other to Determine God’s Will

The moment Paul’s vision concluded, he consulted Silas and Timothy (Acts 16:10). Together they came to the conclusion that, yes, the vision was from God and that they were to set sail for Macedonia.

Paul valued his team. If he hadn’t, the dispute over John Mark’s role on the team wouldn’t have degenerated to such a venomous level. Paul replaced Barnabas with Silas, John Mark with Timothy. The thought of journeying without a team never occurred to him.

Paul knew one of the secrets of determining God’s will was to do so within the context of community. Proverbs 15:22 reads, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”

You and I need a team to help us discern God’s will. Why? We all have blind spots. We all avoid pain and gravitate toward the comfortable. We all have valuable but limited perspectives. Community compensates for our blindness. And sometimes God simply chooses to reveal pieces of his will to different members of the body to foster interdependency among his people.

One of the smartest decisions I ever made as a pastor was to create a team of ministry coaches to help me supervise a department. I chose four of the most seasoned volunteers I could find and asked them to consider stepping away from “frontline” service. They became the circle of leadership in whom I placed my trust.

At first I didn’t know exactly what to do with this team. I had been a pastor for a while, and I felt that I had a handle on what needed to be done. Even so, I began to toss out questions to the team to which I thought I already knew the answers. What I discovered was that my little community often developed better solutions for the ministry challenges I faced than I did when I acted on my own. My team has become an invaluable resource for discovering God’s will.

Consider trying this yourself. Round up a circle of friends, advisers, or mentors, whatever you need; and enlist them to help you know God’s will for your life. I’ve had such circles in my life, off and on, since I was sixteen. And when I look back, I can see that I’ve been more skilled in the ways of God’s love when I’ve enjoyed the scaffolding of good friends. Paul and his team leave us with an agenda for becoming individuals and communities oriented around seeking God’s will. It’s time for us to chop down the apple orchards we’ve built in our churches and to light a bonfire with the wood. By the warm light of this fire, believers will scour Scriptures and examine their callings and gifts. Believers will dance to the prompting of the Spirit and talk with each other about how God is moving his people. By the light of his fire we will rekindle our friendship with God and truly become his people again.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Read James 1:5. How does an awareness of God’s nature change how we should pursue God’s will?

2. Luke never tells us whether Paul or Barnabas was on the right side of their dispute over John Mark. What does this tell us about the difficulty of knowing God’s will? How should we respond to Christians who also believe they have heard from God but who disagree with us?

3. Reflect on your spiritual journey. Describe what your processes have been up until now to understand God’s will. How similar or different is your style of attempting to know God’s will as compared to Paul’s?

4. Why do you think God chooses to hide his will in a relationship with him as opposed to offering his people a “magic apple”?

5. Is your life more iPod shaped or more radio shaped? How can you grow into a person capable of hearing from God and discerning his will?

Chapter Eight

Revolution

They took the road south through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica, where there was a community of Jews. Paul went to their meeting place, as he usually did when he came to a town, and for three Sabbaths running he preached to them from the Scriptures. He opened up the texts so they understood what they’d been reading all their lives: that the Messiah absolutely had to be put to death and raised from the dead—there were no other options—and that “this Jesus I’m introducing you to is that Messiah.”

Some of them were won over and joined ranks with Paul and Silas, among them a great many God-fearing Greeks and a considerable number of women from the aristocracy. But the hard-line Jews became furious over the conversions. Mad with jealousy, they rounded up a bunch of brawlers off the streets and soon had an ugly mob terrorizing the city as they hunted down Paul and Silas.

They broke into Jason’s house, thinking that Paul and Silas were there. When they couldn’t find them, they collared Jason and his friends instead and dragged them before the city fathers, yelling hysterically, “These people are out to destroy the world, and now they’ve shown up on our doorstep, attacking everything we hold dear! And Jason is hiding them, these traitors and turncoats who say Jesus is king and Caesar is nothing!”

The city fathers and the crowd of people were totally alarmed by what they heard. They made Jason and his friends post heavy bail and let them go while they investigated the charges.

That night, under cover of darkness, their friends got Paul and Silas out of town as fast as they could.

Acts 17:1–10 MSG

May 17

“So how’s the missionary thing coming?” I asked Ron. “Have you found any mission boards that seem like a good fit?”

“So are you off to Czechoslovakia or the Congo? Bosnia or Bolivia?” Alice teased. At least she’s trying to be supportive.

Ron chuckled. “It might be a lot closer to home than that. Remember Pastor Gary? His radio ministry is taking off, and he’s getting ready to expand his staff.”

I felt heat in my cheeks. I remembered Pastor Gary. He had used his moral indignation like a wrecking ball and destroyed the coalition of churches I had built for the tutoring program.

“Pastor Gary’s ‘Culture Warrior’ radio segment is going great. The audience is responding to his call to take America back for God. I have a job interview Monday for a position on his research team.”

Alice swallowed and glanced at me. I had called her after our last meeting and challenged her attitude toward Ron becoming a missionary. She’s trying.

“And what would you do as a member of the ‘Culture Warrior’ research team?”

“I’d be monitoring media trends—radio, TV, movies—and I’d be collecting facts for Pastor Gary. My work would keep his show cutting edge. People need help understanding the enemy—”

“Enemy? Who’s the enemy, Ron?” I asked.

“The godless media, those who shove sex and violence down our throats constantly. Parents are busy; they don’t have time to monitor the media by themselves. I’d be helping Pastor Gary arm Christian parents with the information they need to fight.”

Alice kept her eyes down and swirled her straw in her drink. “So you’d be going to the movies and counting swearwords, wardrobe malfunctions, and thrown punches?”

“That’s part of it. I know it seems nitpicky. But like it or not, the church is in a spiritual battle. We need to fight for this generation.”

“We’re fighting Hollywood?”

“Hollywood and the music industry.”

“So our fight is against flesh and blood?” I asked curtly.

“Jonah, you’re still peeved at Pastor Gary over the tutoring thing. You’re not seeing this clearly.”

“Maybe not.” Ron’s hit a nerve, and he knows it. “I’m just not comfortable viewing lost people as enemies, Ron. The whole war metaphor thing—”

“—is right in Scripture, Jonah. You’re the pastor. I don’t understand how it’s possible for you not to see the spiritual warfare. Gary says he’s willing to take the battle wherever it leads him, even to DC.”

Alice made eye contact with Ron. “Gary’s thinking of running for public office?”

“If God leads him. And I’d be on his team and out of my dead-end job. I’d be doing something that makes a kingdom difference.”

Whose kingdom, Ron? Gary’s or God’s?

I glanced at my watch and wished it were an hour later.

As I was writing this chapter, I had to stop and revise it in order to deal with a disturbing revelation. A prominent pastor had just stepped down from his pulpit at a 14,000-member church and from his position as the president of the largest evangelical organization in the United States under allegations of gross moral failures. The story was literally just days old, and the facts hadn’t been established.

Sadly, the notion of a pastor breaking his marital vows isn’t unimaginable these days—even uncommon. What made this news story different is that this particular pastor was actively lobbying for controversial legislation in his home state, legislation that he felt would protect the definition of marriage. Election day was less than a week away, and the political din caused by this flap was deafening. Proponents of the bill pointed to the timing of the accusations and accused their opponents of using the situation for political gain. Meanwhile, opponents of the “marriage protection” bill pointed to the pastor’s hypocrisy as evidence that the church needs to stay out of politics.

I am not mentioning this incident to castigate the pastor or to stake out a position on the marriage bill or other such legislation. By the time this book gets into your hands, the news cycle will have played out, and every pundit and blogger on the planet will have registered their opinions. My concern is to point out how much polarity the culture war metaphor has created in our society.

Culture war rhetoric takes us back to the problem with partitions. War rhetoric requires us to build high walls that delineate and protect “us” from “them.” With military precision we categorize the people we meet into binary categories of “allies” or “hostile combatants.” Those on the wrong side of our wall are considered dangerous people with sinister agendas. Sociologists remind us that during times of war we use labels to dehumanize our opponents to alleviate the discomfort of taking human life. In our metaphoric culture wars, we don’t dialogue with intelligent people who have differing opinions. Instead we fight “godless liberals,” “radical right-wingers,” “ditto heads,” or “pagans.” We imagine “them” to be less loving, less thoughtful, and incapable of morality or spirituality. “They” must be responsible for global warming, reality TV, boy bands, infomercials, and a football season that lasts only a few months. “They” must be stopped.

The church, when caught up in war rhetoric, experiences mission drift. Instead of taking Jesus to those on the other side of our partitions, we content ourselves with launching interpersonal missiles over the wall at our enemies. How quickly we forget that Jesus dined with the very people we war against. The disciples, on the other hand, at times contented themselves with the knowledge that they were on the correct side of the partition, so they commodified God and attempted to stockpile his love on their side of the wall.

The ultimate problem with our war rhetoric is that it only reinforces the prevailing culture of the combatants. We hunker down on our side of the wall and make demands and accusations that force our “enemies” into a defensive posture, and then they regroup and do the same to us. Both sides entrench themselves more deeply in their views. A culture war cannot transform society because it has nothing to do with love, forgiveness, or grace. This is exactly why God has never asked us to wage a culture war. Rather, God requires us to carry Jesus across every gap and to allow him to love people, through us, until culture is transformed person by person.

Paul, perhaps because he experienced both affinity with his Jewish heritage and the benefits of Roman citizenship, wasn’t limited by the nationalism and bigotry that made it difficult for the other apostles to want to take Jesus beyond Jerusalem. The greater part of the book of Acts chronicles Paul freely moving throughout the Mediterranean region and sharing Jesus. Surprisingly, even though Paul didn’t traffic in war rhetoric, many of his visits to the greatest cities of his day weren’t peaceful. Scripture records six of these visits ending in citywide violence, rioting, or spontaneous court hearings. Paul didn’t wage cultural warfare, but revolution seemed to break out wherever he went. The Thessalonians accused Paul and Silas of attempting “to destroy the world” (Acts 17:6 MSG).

Destroying the World or Partitions?

How were Paul and Silas attempting to destroy the world? Through a quick survey of the six urban outbursts we see that the disturbances weren’t resistance to a culture war but to Jesus. At Lystra, Paul presented Jesus forgiving Jews and Greeks alike, effectually destroying the spiritual partitions the Jews had erected (Acts 14:8–19). In Philippi, Paul brought Jesus’ liberation to a slave girl oppressed by a demon and her heartless owners (Acts 16:16–24). In Thessalonica, Paul presented Jesus as the sovereign ruler who demanded allegiance (Acts 17:1–10). In Corinth, Paul demonstrated Jesus as a law unto himself, not bound by the expectations of religion (Acts 18:1–17). In Ephesus, Demetrius initiated Paul’s persecution because he realized that Paul’s Jesus demanded exclusive love (Acts 19:23–41). In Jerusalem, the riot that led to Paul’s trial in Rome was provoked because Paul was presenting a Jesus who gives his love to anyone he wishes (Acts 21:27—22:30).

Paul was met with violence not because he declared a culture war but because he offered Jesus. The person of Jesus—his love, his lordship, his forgiveness—ran contrary to the very fiber of society. Jesus’ presence and intention of establishing a kingdom that embodies his ethos threatened the old order (1 John 2:16–17). The beatings and stonings Paul endured weren’t the result of “godless pagans” in their attempt to silence the mouthpiece of Christianity; they were the result of a war waged against Jesus himself.

Make Love Not War

The accounts of Paul’s travel conflicts are valuable not only because they reveal an absence of war rhetoric on his part, but also because they provide us a positive model of how to engage our society with the message of Jesus:

1. We are not expected to engage in a culture war with a society that hasn’t encountered Jesus.

Paul’s travels led him to share Jesus with pagans whose moral systems didn’t conform to God’s will by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the neighboring religions relied on the use of temple prostitutes to help worshippers experience God through ecstatic means. Idols of a pantheon of gods filled the homes and groves of every urban center Paul visited. The sexual mores of the pagan were looser than the standards of marital purity God had prescribed in his Word.

And despite all this, there is no record of Paul using war rhetoric against any of these cities. Paul didn’t campaign against the Corinthians’ immorality as a threat to traditional marriage. Paul never organized a boycott against Demetrius and his fellow idolaters. There is not one word from Paul that suggests that the godless pagans were a threat to the fledging movement of Christ-followers. There are no letters from Paul complaining to government officials about the dangers of the Cretans always being “liars, evil brutes, [and] lazy gluttons” (Titus 1:12).

Instead, Paul reserved his combative language for two groups. He was ruthless with those of his own Jewish faith who had attempted to add Jewish ceremonies and male circumcision as prerequisites for becoming Christ-followers. Paul once wished out loud that those who had attempted to reduce the abundant life in Christ to a system of rules would emasculate themselves (Gal. 5:1–12).

A second group of people who earned Paul’s disdain was those who willfully attempted to embrace abundant life in Christ and old sinful patterns of behavior that were destructive to the individual and the community of faith.

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.” (1 Cor. 5:9–13)

Paul expressed a clear lack of interest in judging those people who had not yet come to faith. He was obsessed with presenting them with the Jesus who had come into this world, not to condemn, but to save (John 3:17). This focus on Jesus leads us to the second observation:

2. Our mission is to introduce to our culture the author of morality, Jesus.

Paul was consumed with presenting the person of Jesus instead of systems of morality to the Gentile world. In Pisidian Antioch, Paul presented the picture of a man who willingly died to provide for the forgiveness of sins. At Philippi, Paul presented the picture of a man who liberates people from the power of their sins. In Thessalonica, Paul presented Jesus as the leader who would guide his followers out of their moral confusion. In Corinth, Jesus used Paul and Gallio to exert his sovereignty over dead religion and ritualistic systems. In Ephesus, Jesus used Paul to assert his unwavering claim on his followers’ complete love and affection. In Jerusalem, Jesus used Paul to demonstrate that he does not ask anyone for permission regarding whom he will love.

When Jesus was on earth, he summarized morality in relational language, as expressed in the two greatest commandments: “‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29–31).

Paul understood that he had not been tasked with exporting moral systems, even if the systems reflected God’s moral standards. Paul’s mission was to introduce lost people to a relationship with Jesus. Paul trusted Jesus to love and overwhelm individuals along the way, the same way Jesus had ambushed Paul on the road to Damascus.

Thus morality would be born out of new believers attempting to follow Jesus. Donald Miller, in his book Searching for God Knows What, describes the connection between morality and the person of Jesus:

Morality, then, if you think about it, is the way we imitate God. It is the way we imitate the ways of heaven here on earth. Jesus says, after all, to know Him we must follow Him, we must cling to Him, and imitate Him, and many places in Scripture the idea is presented that if we know Him, we will obey Him.

If you look for this relational concept of morality, you see it all through Scripture. Paul connects the idea of morality to Christ in the books of Ephesians and Romans, and the author of Hebrews directly connects our morality to our relationship with God in several places in the text. John the Evangelist, in all three of his short books at the end of the Bible, keeps saying if we know God we will love our brother, and if we know God we will obey.”[1]

Culture will be transformed by sharing Jesus and not by declaring war on those who are not like us, which leads to the third point in reaching others for Christ.

3. Presenting Jesus to our culture will feel more like dying than conquering.

Engaging in a culture war offers the promise of power. Listen to the average culture warrior on the radio, Christian or secular, and you’ll be invited to “take back” America and our families. We’re told we need to “protect” our society from a variety of enemies. Sharing Jesus with someone is nothing like this. It certainly isn’t consistent with Paul’s personal experience. On five occasions Paul provoked citywide violence. Courts ordered him to be beaten publicly. When he received a stoning at Lystra, his attackers didn’t bother to perform the ritual outside of the city limits as was customary; they only dragged Paul outside of the city after they thought he was dead (Acts 14:19).

Many culture warriors cite Paul’s famous passage in Ephesians about the armor of God as a primary text to justify their endeavors. But somehow Paul’s admonition that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood” (Eph. 6:12) is ignored. Instead of warring against spiritual realities, time is spent recasting lost people as enemy combatants. For the sake of argument let’s say that our fight is against flesh and blood. What will this warfare look like?

Pastor D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote what is considered to be one of the classic commentaries on the book of Ephesians. He dedicated two of his five volumes on Ephesians to Paul’s discussion of spiritual warfare. Lloyd-Jones used careful scholarship to make the case that the armor of God is a metaphor for the way Jesus protects us. Jesus is like a helmet that protects our thoughts, like a belt that keeps us from being tangled up in untruths. The armor of God is a brilliant word picture that depicts how our relationship with Jesus is a shield that protects the spiritual life he implanted in us.

If Jesus is our armor and his Word our offensive weapon, then warring against our culture should look like Jesus. And what did Jesus do to war against the forces of hell and death? He humbled himself and assumed the form of a man; he suffered with us and then suffered at our hands. Then he hung on a cross and died.

Spiritual warfare, then, should feel more like dying than conquering. Jesus’ love does something that a culture war can never accomplish—it challenges the sinful order of society. Cultures, like individuals, operate under sinful natures. The warmth of Jesus’ love threatens the inward bent of society, which often provokes a violent reaction from a world untrained in the feel of divine love. When this violent reaction occurs, we have the opportunity to show our world what it might have looked like for Jesus to lay down his life for them.

Cultural Warfare or Self-Sacrifice?

Jesus’ Great Commission did not include cultural warfare; he commanded us to carry his message to those people who are dying on the inside because they are not nourished by his love. Jesus commanded us to teach them how to walk in his ways.

This is how we love our neighbor:

We present a man who generously forgives and overturns tables filled with counterfeit religious currency.

We present a man who liberates a world bound by soulless conformity.

We present a man who moves independently of the machinery of religion when the world only sees hollow traditions and superstitions.

We present a man who wants exclusive rights to our hearts in a world used to hedging its bets—you know, “just in case.”

We present a man who makes his love available to all who seek it in a world that hordes and withholds most everything it has from one another.

We present a man who in the end is the only one capable of starting a truly godly and lasting cultural revolution.

We present Jesus.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Read Matthew 5:38–48. What advice does Jesus offer regarding how we are to love those who haven’t yet met him? How can you act on this advice in your own life?

2. Do you see any evidences of “cultural warfare” in your own spiritual outlook? If so, when and why do you think you developed those ideas? How can you begin to replace those notions with the grace and love of Christ?

3. From the point of view of a person on the receiving end of one of the church’s culture wars, how does this dispute shape one’s view of God?

4. What would presenting Jesus to your workplace or social network look like?

5. Are there any risks in presenting our culture with the person of Jesus instead of a system of morals? Is the risk worth it?

Chapter Nine

Friends, Critics,

and the Quest

for Success

And so, with the tearful good-byes behind us, we were on our way. We made a straight run to Cos, the next day reached Rhodes, and then Patara. There we found a ship going direct to Phoenicia, got on board, and set sail. Cyprus came into view on our left, but was soon out of sight as we kept on course for Syria, and eventually docked in the port of Tyre. While the cargo was being unloaded, we looked up the local disciples and stayed with them seven days. Their message to Paul, from insight given by the Spirit, was “Don’t go to Jerusalem.”

When our time was up, they escorted us out of the city to the docks. Everyone came along—men, women, children. They made a farewell party of the occasion! We all kneeled together on the beach and prayed. Then, after another round of saying good-bye, we climbed on board the ship while they drifted back to their homes.

A short run from Tyre to Ptolemais completed the voyage. We greeted our Christian friends there and stayed with them a day. In the morning we went on to Caesarea and stayed with Philip the Evangelist, one of “the Seven.” Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied.

After several days of visiting, a prophet from Judea by the name of Agabus came down to see us. He went right up to Paul, took Paul’s belt, and, in a dramatic gesture, tied himself up, hands and feet. He said, “This is what the Holy Spirit says: The Jews in Jerusalem are going to tie up the man who owns this belt just like this and hand him over to godless unbelievers.”

When we heard that, we and everyone there that day begged Paul not to be stubborn and persist in going to Jerusalem. But Paul wouldn’t budge: “Why all this hysteria? Why do you insist on making a scene and making it even harder for me? You’re looking at this backward. The issue in Jerusalem is not what they do to me, whether arrest or murder, but what the Master Jesus does through my obedience. Can’t you see that?”

We saw that we weren’t making even a dent in his resolve, and gave up. “It’s in God’s hands now,” we said. “Master, you handle it.”

It wasn’t long before we had our luggage together and were on our way to Jerusalem.

Acts 21:1–15 MSG

When the seven days of their purification were nearly up, some Jews from around Ephesus spotted him [Paul] in the Temple. At once they turned the place upside-down.

Acts 21:27 MSG

June 20

Why didn’t I cancel? I haven’t slept well in a week, and I’ve got no appetite. But I’m here now, and I just need to get through this meal.

I took a sip of Mountain Dew and made an attempt to keep the conversation going. “So, Ron, how did your interview go with Pastor Gary’s staff?”

“The job’s mine for the taking, but I’m not settled. Deep down, I’m a teacher. So I’ve signed up for a short-term mission trip to Poland to get my feet wet. I’ll be teaching summer school to bilingual children.”

Alice studied Ron’s eyes. “And then?”

“I’m not sure. But at least I’ll have a better taste of what missionary work involves.” Ron laughed. “And if that doesn’t work out, I can get back together with Diane and let her mold me into her image.”

“She’ll dig you a new rut, all right,” Alice said and then turned her attention to me. “Spill it, Jonah. You look bad.”

Why didn’t I cancel?

I paused to rein in the tears I felt pressing against my eyes and stole another sip of Mountain Dew. “I’m in trouble with my congregation. I might lose my church.”

Ron’s fork returned to rest on the table. “What kind of trouble? Are you okay?”

I grabbed a napkin and blotted the tears from my eyes. I’m not going to fall apart in a restaurant.

“Apparently my congregation wasn’t as behind my efforts to start the tutoring center as I thought. Half of my elder board believes I spent too much time getting the tutoring center off the ground and not enough time meeting the congregation’s needs.”

“I thought the tutoring project was dead,” Alice said.

“Pastor Gary definitely set the idea back. But I was … I am convinced that God wants me to create a place where area churches can come together to meet real needs in the community. So after I finished licking my wounds, I started working the phones to find different churches to get involved. That’s when my elders started griping about my focus—”

“Your focus? What’s that supposed to mean?” Alice narrowed her eyes.

I speared a defenseless slice of pizza with my fork. “It means that connecting the congregation with the hurt and oppressed is dangerous, or at least a colossal waste of the church’s time and money. That’s why they’re having secret meetings to discuss a change of leadership.”

Silence hung in the air for a moment until Ron asked, “Are you looking for another church?”

“Absolutely not. Last year, when I looked you both up, I felt like I was fighting for my spiritual life. Now I’m digging in and fighting for my faith community. I need to see a place where God’s people live out the dream.”

“Jonah, I don’t know.” Alice leaned forward and massaged each of her temples with two fingers. “You don’t need this. It’s great to be noble. But you could lose your job, your house, your reputation, and put your family in a bad spot. I think you need to update your résumé.”

Ron added, “You’re still marketable. You grew this congregation into what it is. It wouldn’t take long for you to find another church. But having a firing on your résumé … Jonah, that’s quite a black eye.”

Another wave of emotion paralyzed me for the briefest of moments. “Ron, Alice, I appreciate your concern. You’re good friends. But this is what God wants me to do—”

“What is it with you two?” Alice demanded. “‘God wants me to throw away my career and become a missionary,’ ‘God wants me to let my elder board destroy me.’ What if God was okay with either of you two catching a break for once? Could you deal with it?”

Ron and I stole looks at each other before facing our confronter. Without words we told each other that Alice would not be letting us off the hook anytime soon.

Our à la carte culture offers us unlimited definitions of what it means to be successful: a thick money roll, a prestige logo for a hood ornament, vacation spots and summer homes, name recognition and notoriety, a well-feathered nest egg, a connected family, emotional stability, the highest rung atop the corporate ladder, etc. In Christian circles, we use geographical and spatial references to describe spiritual achievement. We coo over “expanded borders” and sprawling ministries. We look for the “next level” or “going deeper” without quite ever being able to define what these terms mean.

There’s a subterranean drive for accomplishment in each of us. The founding fathers of this nation recognized this drive as the “pursuit of happiness” and attempted to safeguard this essence of humanity from the government they were creating. This drive for success is universal, but so is our confusion over defining what success is. Is success getting what we want, or is it just some cosmic medicine we need to choke down for our own good?

Suppose we manage to scrape out an operational definition of success that seems to fit us; that’s when the challenges begin. You see, everyone around us—parents, coworkers, significant others, in-laws—has an opinion of what success should look like for us. Everyone’s favorite break from toiling over his or her own success project is to offer helpful opinions on someone else’s. Well-meaning people look over our shoulder to let us know where we’ve gotten it all wrong and to explain how if we would just listen to them we would succeed.

This confusion is disconcerting for us as Jesus’ followers. In chapter 7 we came to understand that God’s will is revealed through continual dialogue with him. We understand what God expects of us as we breathe in his Spirit. Our problem lies in the fact that we are in conversations with our friends, our critics, and even ourselves. Our friends want to protect us. Our critics want to correct us. And we want to indulge ourselves. There’s a very real danger of hearing God’s voice only to allow that voice to get lost in the din of other conversations.

Paul learned soon after his conversion that God planned for him to share Jesus’ love with the Gentiles, suffer for Jesus’ sake, and proclaim Jesus to kings (Acts 9:15–16). Paul informed the church at Ephesus that through his dialogue with the Holy Spirit he had greater clarity about this mission. Paul discovered he was to go to Jerusalem, where he would experience suffering (Acts 20:22–23). Paul had the certitude of knowing that this information came from a conversation with the Holy Spirit; however, neither his friends nor his critics came to grips with it.

The Problem with Friends

Twice on the journey to Jerusalem, Paul had to deal with friends attempting to dissuade him from being obedient to his calling. At Tyre, the believers misinterpreted the Holy Spirit’s prophecy as a warning for Paul not to go to Jerusalem (Acts 21:1–6). Philip, the evangelist, and his prophetess daughters begged Paul to change course when the prophet Agabus revealed that the Jews would arrest him and turn him over to the Romans (Acts 21:7–14). Paul could set a new course and glorify God with evangelism, preaching, church planting, and epistle writing as he lived out his days.

If left unchecked, love can blind. It can edit divine words and smooth away the rough edges of God’s will. Conversely, love for God directs us on a course that cuts across plots of life filled with pleasure, safety, danger, and discomfort. It’s just too risky.

Don’t get me wrong; friends are wonderful people. A true friend tells us when we’re dating someone wrong for us or if we have an unsightly glob of spinach wedged between our front teeth. My wife and best friend, Amy, routinely protects me from committing fashion disasters. (“You’re wearing that … really?”) A friend, by the very nature of the fact that he or she loves us and wants the best for us, has a bias toward our emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

This is also why our friends’ advice points us toward a path of conformity. There’s safety in numbers; so we can rest assured, if our friends perceive that we are beginning to stray too far from the herd or that we are beginning to “stand out,” they will be there to steer us back to safety.

This bias runs deep in the way I react to people I care about. A friend of mine once asked me to perform her marriage ceremony. I met with her and her fiancé and discovered that the potential groom had a history of walking out on marriages at the first sign of conflict. My friendship bias kicked into gear. Not only did I not agree to perform the marriage ceremony, but I also took an uncharacteristically stern tone with this surprised fellow. (I know that marriage and divorce are very sensitive issues. Please be assured that this man’s cowardice in his previous marriage was exceptional.)

Usually my protective bias and loyalty are a positive trait. However, I’ve noticed at times that I’ve been tempted to protect people from obeying God’s leading. Once over lunch a man told me that he felt that God was leading him into a new career that placed him and his family at serious financial risk. I’m ashamed to admit that my first impulse was to counsel him against what I thought might be an impulsive decision. The question What if God is actually leading him? was the only thing that kept me quiet.

The dilemma lies in the reality that God is constantly guiding his servants into hazardous places like the middle of the Red Sea and the presence of giants and famished lions. People simply aren’t built for this sort of thing. However, when God determines his will for his servants, he doesn’t share our biases toward safety and conformity. And the advice we have for our friends—and they have for us—is often counter to what God would want.

And the More Obvious Problem with Critics …

Paul didn’t have to struggle with the misguided compassion of friends in Jerusalem. Instead, he fielded criticism from the Jerusalem elders. The elders relayed to Paul that both the temple authorities and many believers viewed him as a religious liberal who played fast and loose with Mosaic law. It was rumored that Paul was exempting even Jewish believers from ceremonial Jewish customs, a provision that was not ratified by the Jerusalem council. With Pentecost approaching, Paul’s presence in Jerusalem couldn’t have come at a worse time. Two million Jewish pilgrims were about to swell the streets to celebrate the holy feast, and nationalistic tensions were running high.[1]

Paul returned to Jerusalem to find himself under the suspicion of his peers. F. Scott Spencer comments that the elders’ rhetoric “conveys a mounting distrust of Paul on the part of conservative Christian Jews. From this perspective, Paul has not adequately enforced among his Gentile churches the fundamental taboos agreed on at the first Jerusalem conference; it is as if he had forgotten or disregarded the decision as soon as he heard it.”2 The elders, therefore, ordered Paul to sponsor the Nazirite vows of four apprentices and to participate in the rites himself as a public show of conservatism.[3]

In the eyes of the Jerusalem church, Paul was a failure. He had single-handedly stripped Christianity of its Jewish roots. From their vantage point Paul had violated the terms of the first council by instructing Jewish Christians to abandon their rich heritage. They believed that Paul hadn’t challenged the Gentiles to live lifestyles pleasing to God. They didn’t see Paul as building up the church, but rather as presenting only a parody of it.

Friendly Fire!

Unfortunately, there will come a day when staying faithful to God’s unique calling on you will draw criticism. And odds are that some of the negative criticism you receive will come from friendly sources. At least that’s how it was for me. A few years ago God impressed me to use the Harry Potter books as a tool to reach the children in my community. So I started a summer reading club and designed a curriculum that would use scenes from the Harry Potter books to illustrate Christian truth.

A few area pastors caught wind of the story and ran to the local newspaper and Christian radio station (instead of coming to me) to complain that I was promoting witchcraft in the church. It didn’t help that a pagan Web site picked up the story. My critics viewed all this as somehow being satanically endorsed by me. The incident sparked countless angry phone calls and e-mails chastising me for compromising Christianity and for corrupting the spiritual development of children. The criticism stung. I wasn’t being accused of executing a bad idea but of being a bad person, maybe even an evil person.

I tried to respond by answering every phone call and e-mail I received. I even participated in a radio interview at a sympathetic station, but I couldn’t overcome the volume of complaints.

My only good option was to tune out the condemning voices from the church-at-large and keep the reading club going. I was doing God’s will as best as I understood it. I couldn’t control the pastor down the street who was handing me a scarlet H for my heresy, but I could choose not to sew the letter on my jacket.

Someday, somehow, God’s measure for your success is not going to sit well in the hearts of other believers, some of whom you’ll respect deeply. You’ll be labeled “disobedient” and “unsuccessful.” It will hurt, and there will be little you can do about it. You won’t be able to measure up or change minds. Not if you are at all like Paul.

Paul couldn’t live up to the standards of success of either his friends or his opponents. Paul’s friends defined his success in the language of safety and security. Paul’s detractors defined his success in the language of compliance and conformity. Neither language can manage God’s divine intention for your life.

By any reasonable standard Paul ruined his career by returning to Jerusalem. He exposed himself to “friendly fire” from within the church, yet while deferring to his critics, he fell into the hands of his enemies and was imprisoned. One failure seemed to breed another.

But through his outward failure Paul had obeyed God and in so doing had tipped over the first domino of events that would give him the opportunity to speak before kings.

The Art of Silencing Friends and Critics

There’s a moving scene in the 2005 movie release Kingdom of Heaven. The movie is set in twelfth-century Jerusalem during the Crusades. A young, listless widower, Balian, finds himself at the epicenter of the holy wars. Balian must find redemption for both his wife, who committed suicide, and for himself (he murdered a priest in a fit of rage).

Through a whirlwind of events, Balian finds himself a knight standing in front of the king of Jerusalem himself, Baldwin IV. Advanced leprosy is about to take Baldwin’s life, so he passes on an inheritance of wisdom to this unlikely recipient:

When I was sixteen I won a great victory. I thought I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I will not live to be thirty. You see, none of us choose our end really. A king may move a man. A father may claim a son. But even when those who move you be kings or men of power, remember your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say I was told by others to do thus, or the virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice.[4]

Our task is to come to the point where we accept our responsibly to steward our own souls and the way we each, individually, live in relationship to God. At the end of time we will not hear the voices of “kings or men of power” or of critics or of friends. We will not be bothered by our primal drive for acceptance, a drive that is as real as our urges for food, sleep, or sex. Family, allies, friends, and distracters will not tug at us. When God evaluates our fidelity to our individual mission, the appointment will be private. Is there a way to escape the tyranny of other voices now and enjoy the simplicity of an audience of One?

The freedom we crave is bound up in the reality that our individuality is dependent on a relationship with God. Every individual is called to follow Jesus wherever that might lead. So much of what we clergy offer our congregations to promote spiritual growth is institutionally biased; I’m afraid we’re promoting mindless conformity instead of the healthy individuality that comes with following Jesus. I serve at a church centered on the five purposes of worship, fellowship, evangelism, service, and growth. Because we deal with hundreds of adults, youth, and children, we promote the practice of these purposes pragmatically and offer Sunday school classes, small groups, retreats, and worship services that support them. We encourage conformity by motivating our members to take part in these activities. This institutional bias fosters standardization; spiritual growth is measured in class attendance and busyness instead of a context in which each member is simply encouraged to follow Jesus—personally and individually.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the purpose-driven model. However, our institutional orientation can reduce the purposes into religious busyness instead of friendship skills that help us connect with the divine. Rick Warren, in the book that launched this way of doing church, The Purpose-Driven Church, writes that each of the purposes is relational. Each one promotes one of the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

A purpose-driven life should enhance customization and not standardization. God is a master craftsman, and his created beings are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:14). Part of our uniqueness is our specific calling. None of us is a knockoff or a replica. God has called each of us to accomplish a unique mission.

Paul encouraged Timothy’s differentiation by telling him, “Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight” (1 Tim. 1:18 ). God revealed Timothy’s course through prophecies that were to serve as Timothy’s unique yardstick for accomplishment. The principle in this verse is true for each of us, no matter the means of our calling: We are successful if we do whatever it is that God calls us to do.

This is the art of “paying attention to our life.” Like Timothy, we are to remember the moments in which God clearly leads us to stay true to them. It’s only in cultivating this relationship that we find the strength to be faithful to our calling.

Releasing Others from Our Expectations

As I was revising these chapters, I began receiving e-mails from an old college friend who is serving as a missionary in Bolivia. God led Anjelita to take a stand against her village’s lax and corrupt education system, which threatens to rob a new generation of Bolivians of their future. Anjelita doesn’t view herself as an activist, and the stand she took was a seemingly small one. However, she has become the center of a controversy that has consumed the entire village. The teachers and school administrators are making efforts to have Anjelita driven out of town. Yet many parents have become supportive of Anjelita as their children’s advocate. The whole experience has been incredibly stressful on her. I’ve tried to be supportive through multiple e-mails, but her strength has not come from her friends but from God. In a recent e-mail, she wrote:

“Count it all joy whenever you face trials of many kinds …” It’s beginning to happen in me.

We had an “angel” come and visit us here in Yawisla. Mark is a neurologist who is taking a sabbatical. Somehow he ended up in Bolivia (wasn’t his plan to come) and showed up at a Christian bookstore in Potosi asking for Americans. Anyway, he came out here on Monday night. He’s been praying with people and focusing particularly on the area of forgiveness. On Wednesday night we had a time of prayer, seeking God, and looking at Scripture. He also led me in prayers of repentance and of forgiveness. It was just what I needed. Through this I have drawn closer to God. Does it get any better?

The fact is that it doesn’t get any better than connecting with God as the source of strength to stay the course.

Eventually we come to grasp that we are the friends or the critics of those around us with whom we are dealing. We need to release these people from our own sets of expectations. Paul cautioned: “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand” (Rom. 14:4). God is competent to lead each of his own followers to fulfill their mission. This passage affirms that God is sufficiently invested to make sure his people are taken care of properly. There is no need for us to protect our friends from God’s will or to scold those with whom we disagree. God is on top of the situation.

This isn’t to say that God doesn’t use community to give confidence or to adjust the attitudes of his followers. However, so much of what passes for accountability is actually the swapping of legalistic or enabling excuses. We cow each other into security and conventionality at the expense of encouraging each other into actually following the Lord.

Naturally there are tasks that every believer is responsible for—service, worship, and cultivation of the fruit of the Spirit to name a few. However, our times of community would be transformed if we would just ask each other two questions: “What has God asked you to do?” and “What steps are you taking to accomplish this objective?”

This would require that we actually trust each other enough to hear from God and that we trust God to speak if we just listen. If we would just take this risk, we would liberate each other from all other distracting voices. We would become a community familiar with the only voice that can say to each of us individually, “Well done, good and faithful servant! … Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matt. 25:21, 34).

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. How is staying faithful to the unique mission God has given us an expression of our love of God?

2. How do you define success? Don’t worry about the “church” answer. What really matters to you? Does this definition get in the way of breathing in God?

3. God’s measure of success for Paul was that he go to Jerusalem and suffer. How can keeping an “audience of One” help you focus on your personal measure of success.

4. Paul’s friends and critics had a lot of advice for the missionary, and none of it was good. How can trying to appease your friends and critics derail you from living out your life purpose?

5. Paul committed “career suicide” by returning to Jerusalem. Has God ever called you to do something dangerous or potentially disastrous? How did you respond?

Chapter Ten

Prisons, Earthquakes, and Other Angels

And then we came to Rome. Friends in Rome heard we were on the way and came out to meet us. One group got as far as Appian Court; another group met us at Three Taverns—emotion-packed meetings, as you can well imagine. Paul, brimming over with praise, led us in prayers of thanksgiving. When we actually entered Rome, they let Paul live in his own private quarters with a soldier who had been assigned to guard him.

Three days later, Paul called the Jewish leaders together for a meeting at his house. He said, “The Jews in Jerusalem arrested me on trumped-up charges, and I was taken into custody by the Romans. I assure you that I did absolutely nothing against Jewish laws or Jewish customs. After the Romans investigated the charges and found there was nothing to them, they wanted to set me free, but the Jews objected so fiercely that I was forced to appeal to Caesar. I did this not to accuse them of any wrongdoing or to get our people in trouble with Rome. We’ve had enough trouble through the years that way. I did it for Israel. I asked you to come and listen to me today to make it clear that I’m on Israel’s side, not against her. I’m a hostage here for hope, not doom.”

They said, “Nobody wrote warning us about you. And no one has shown up saying anything bad about you. But we would like very much to hear more. The only thing we know about this Christian sect is that nobody seems to have anything good to say about it.”

They agreed on a time. When the day arrived, they came back to his home with a number of their friends. Paul talked to them all day, from morning to evening, explaining everything involved in the kingdom of God, and trying to persuade them all about Jesus by pointing out what Moses and the prophets had written about him.

Some of them were persuaded by what he said, but others refused to believe a word of it. When the unbelievers got cantankerous and started bickering with each other, Paul interrupted: “I have just one more thing to say to you. The Holy Spirit sure knew what he was talking about when he addressed our ancestors through Isaiah the prophet:

Go to this people and tell them this:

“You’re going to listen with your ears,

but you won’t hear a word;

You’re going to stare with your eyes,

but you won’t see a thing.

These people are blockheads!

They stick their fingers in their ears

so they won’t have to listen;

They screw their eyes shut

so they won’t have to look,

so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face

and let me heal them.”

“You’ve had your chance. The non-Jewish outsiders are next on the list. And believe me, they’re going to receive it with open arms!”

Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.

Acts 28:14–31 MSG

July 22

The highway caught my minivan and added it to a ribbon of cars, taxicabs, and trucks as I pulled away from O’Hare International Airport. Ron was on his way to New York City, then Krakow. Boxed airline meals, in-flight movies, customs, and two weeks of teaching English as a second language awaited Ron.

The future of our monthly meetings depended on Ron’s next move. Alice and I wouldn’t be able to continue as a duo; even with the best intentions such things can be misconstrued, especially when involving a pastor.

Actually, my elder board has more control over the future of my social life than I’d care to admit. The debate over my continued tenure as pastor had spread from leadership circles to the congregation. I was driving home to pick up my wife. We were heading to a congregational meeting that would end with a vote of confidence. Anything less than 60 percent and I would no longer be the pastor of Fellowship Church.

A ring tone interrupted my thoughts. It was Alice. “Well, Ron’s as free as a bird now.”

I’d give anything to be on that plane.

“I suppose he is.”

“Jonah, no matter what happens tonight, you’ll be a free man when it’s over. You’ll either be free to lead your congregation or free to lead elsewhere as God intended you to …”

Hurt and exhaustion attempted to escape my tear ducts. I restrained both so I could focus on the three lanes of traffic surrounding me.

“Freedom, Alice? I don’t see freedom ahead of me, just prisons. On one hand, I could be sentenced to leading a congregation crippled by this fight. If the vote goes in my favor, dozens of families will leave. It’ll take years to rebuild.

“If I’m fired, I’ll have to uproot my kids from school, move my family, and start over. It doesn’t feel like freedom, Alice.”

There was a slight pause in the conversation as Alice searched for the proper response.

“Jonah?”

“Yeah?”

“You are free. You chose not to run when you could have.”

My mind drifted to what was awaiting me. The worship center would be filled with agitated church members—friends with whom I had enjoyed barbecues and movies, friends whom I had visited in the hospital and counseled when their marriages were disintegrating. Tonight I would address these friends with one final defense and then leave as they argue my fate.

“Jonah? Are you there?”

“Yeah, Alice, freedom is ahead.”

So why do I feel so trapped?

When Amy and I were engaged, I took her to my ten-year high school reunion. The whole reunion experience, I think, is something worth enduring once. The band was oppressively loud, but somehow everyone still managed to organize themselves into the old social pecking order that had dominated our adolescent years. After ten years everyone still remembered where those old partitions belonged—the ones that defined who was “in,” who was “out,” and who didn’t matter—and we all obediently returned to our old places.

As old friends caught up, the music forced everyone to shout their current station in life: married, divorced, thriving career, children, or going nowhere fast. The unofficial entertainment for the evening involved everyone evaluating each other to see who had made something of themselves and who was stuck in life. I have to admit, I suppressed a few wicked grins when an old nemesis showed up bald, rotund, and stuck in a dead-end career. Even I am not immune from that old “At least I’m not …” game.

Back in high school we wrote down our future life coordinates in the margins of our yearbooks. I wonder if part of the draw of a class reunion is the chance to evaluate our own progress against those of our peers. Perhaps we haven’t made it yet, but all’s well if we’re doing better than most everyone else …

“Stuck”

But “stuck” happens to the best of us. It even happened to Paul, a man of God who was driven like no other to accomplish his life’s mission of spreading the gospel throughout the known world. Paul’s passport was filled with stamps, but in the final chapter of Acts we find that Paul’s world had shrunk to less than an acre. After his arrest in Jerusalem and two subsequent Roman trials, Paul was transported to Rome for his final appeal to Caesar, and there he stayed for two more years.

Of course, Paul was no stranger to arrest and confinement. In Philippi he and Silas had been held in a maximum-security dungeon. Local authorities had flogged and beaten the missionaries and locked them in the innermost cell of the local dungeon. Stocks held Paul’s and Silas’s feet as an extra security measure.

Yet that very same evening God orchestrated their release. An earthquake shook every padlocked cell door open. That cell hadn’t slowed down Paul for even a full day. God intervened so his message could escape into the community.

But now Paul was under house arrest in a modest apartment. There were no mason walls, bars, stocks, or locks. An earthquake would have been more than enough to overcome this small obstacle. In fact, a strong wind probably would have done the trick. But rescue never came. Paul remained in that flimsy apartment for two years until his execution at the hand of the Roman Caesar Nero.

You see, God sometimes chooses chains over earthquakes. The Author of freedom, the rescuer of slaves in Egypt, he who promised to set captives free, tolerated Paul’s captivity.

This story should trouble us deeply as Christ-followers who pursue quality of love and life characterized in Scripture as freedom. Over the course of the past nine chapters we have explored how the Holy Spirit empowers us to love God and each other, and here we are at the last chapter only to be reminded that God’s people everywhere live incarcerated in flimsy cells—prisons that God could flatten with a single breath: dead-end jobs, stale marriages, mountains of debt, unemployment, illness, depression, and the list goes on and on and on.

Jesus said that he came to set us free, yet these prisons are real and debilitating. Our best efforts rarely result in a jailbreak. However, we trust in God’s strength and wait for him to break our shackles as we have seen him do so many times before.

The earthquake never comes for most of us, and we have to ask ourselves, “How can we be free to practice the two great loves when life has us trapped?”

I wonder if, during the time he spent chained to a Roman soldier, Paul wasn’t looking for a sturdy corner to hide in when the earthquake came. But after three days Paul understood the earthquake wasn’t coming and took matters into his own hands. He couldn’t preach in Rome’s synagogues, so he brought the synagogues to himself.

Paul summoned the local Jewish leaders and clarified the nature of the charges against him. He assured them that he had not violated any Jewish ceremonial laws. He was on trial for proclaiming Jesus as Messiah. Paul’s audience needed these assurances. The previous Caesar, Claudius, had expelled all Jews from Rome in AD 49 or 50. Claudius had learned that Roman Jews were arguing over whether Jesus was their rightful king, and he feared rebellion. It wasn’t until AD 54 that the next Caesar was convinced that revolt was not imminent and allowed the Jews to return to Rome. Seven years later, the banishment was still fresh in the minds of the Jews, and they weren’t interested in provoking a second exile.[1]

Paul’s explanation assuaged his skittish audience, and on the agreed-upon date they returned with a large crowd and piled into Paul’s apartment in the early morning hours. Paul spent the day leading a discussion, in rabbinic fashion, demonstrating that the Law and the Prophets pointed to Jesus being the hope of Israel. When dusk fell, many in the room were convinced that Jesus was their Savior. But most were not.

The apostle explained that the gospel was going to the Gentiles because of the wide-scale unbelief of God’s chosen people. Nothing, not even his beloved people’s lack of faith, would detain God’s love.

Content in Every Situation

Elsewhere Paul had claimed that he had learned to be content in every situation (Phil. 4:11). As the book of Acts closes, Paul shows us that the freedom of a Christ-follower isn’t measured by the absence of chains or prisons, but by the capacity to love God and humanity in the face of all resistance. By reasonable human standards Paul wasn’t free; the arc of Paul’s life had come to a jarring stop.

This perspective allowed another religious detainee to maintain his freedom while languishing in a Nazi prison at Berlin-Tegel. Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer openly opposed Adolf Hitler’s agenda and two days after Hitler’s inauguration preached a radio sermon to condemn Nazi policies.

That is, until the transmission was blocked.

Bonhoeffer then shifted his tactics and became the head of an illegal seminary that trained pastors who refused to be cowed into the Nazi-sanctioned church. Of course, the Gestapo shut the seminary down in 1943.

Undeterred, Bonhoeffer continued resisting the dark cloud that was spreading over Europe. He involved himself in the German resistance movement.

In 1942, Bonhoeffer fell in love with Maria von Wedemeyer, and they were engaged in 1943. Resistance and romance powered Bonhoeffer’s drive for expanding liberty in the face of the Third Reich. Unfortunately, Bonhoeffer was arrested just months later for his involvement in a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.

Languishing in a military compound at Berlin-Tegel, Bonhoeffer had been stripped of his freedom. That is how it appeared anyway, until we read Bonhoeffer’s letters to his fiancée. This fragment from a Christmas letter to Maria shows what kind of effect incarceration was really having on Bonhoeffer:

We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of our lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity; we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation that we fail to understand. How hard it is, inwardly to accept what defies our understanding; how great the temptation to feel ourselves at the mercy of blind chance; how sinister the way in which mistrust and resentment steal into our hearts at such times; and how readily we fall prey to the childish notion that the course of our lives reposes in human hands! And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to an extent that we can scarce withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all.[2]

“Our eyes are at fault …” Bonhoeffer knew to trust God’s vision as superior to his own. Bonhoeffer trusted that if God didn’t flatten his jail, it was because cell 92 provided him more freedom to advance God’s love than any other place on earth. The Gestapo was, at best, a pawn in God’s hand, used to make Bonhoeffer’s message more powerful.

Paul shared Bonhoeffer’s perspective on freedom. According to Roman law the prosecution had eighteen months to make its case against the accused. Luke doesn’t explain why the Jews in Jerusalem weren’t eager to press their case, but Acts ends with Paul spreading the gospel “boldly and without hindrance” (28:31). Paul used his freedom, chained to a guard, to advance God’s agenda.

We can turn to other parts of the Bible to get an idea of those whom Paul entertained during his house arrest. Luke and Aristarchus stayed with Paul in Rome to support him throughout his confinement. Tychicus was also a frequent visitor of Paul, until Paul commissioned him to deliver the letter to the Ephesians. Epaphroditus visited from Philippi, bringing with him financial gifts for Paul to distribute to needy believers. Onesimus, a runaway slave, also visited Paul. Paul discipled Onesimus and then sent him back to his master Philemon along with a letter that challenged Philemon to welcome his slave back as a brother in Christ. Mark, the cause of Paul and Silas’s falling out, also visited Paul in chains. We don’t know the details of the visit, but I would like to imagine that they reconciled their differences.

The point is that Paul the inmate lived freely and was still a strong advocate for the church during this time. He also wrote prodigiously to correct and shape the culture of the church throughout the world. The church later recognized these letters as the inspired Word of God.

We’ve already mentioned the letters to Philemon and the believers in Ephesus. Through Ephesians Paul offers us Jesus Christ as the source of our unity. In Philippians we see Jesus Christ as the source of our joy. Paul uses Colossians to offer us Jesus Christ as the exact representation and glory of God the Father. So Paul’s apartment functioned more like the center of Christianity than a prison. Not even the Roman Empire could corral Paul’s influence. Freedom is God’s gift to his change agents. Prisons and earthquakes are merely two rolls of gift wrap that God uses when he delivers freedom to his servants. But freedom can take many forms.

“Our Eyes Are at Fault, That Is All”

These words would be offensive and condescending if they came from anyone other than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. They seem trite at first hearing, but they take on more meaning when we realize that it’s only reasonable for an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing God to have a better vantage point to assess our well-being than we do. Still, emotionally this position is sometimes difficult to embrace.

At least it is for me.

When I graduated from Trinity College, I wanted to cross the street immediately to begin my seminary education. But I had no money, so I returned to Erie and began looking for work. I quickly learned that a degree in biblical studies didn’t open many doors. I ended up finding work at a mental health treatment center for children and adolescents.

The work was brutally hard. The children were wonderful but challenging. Many of them had been physically and sexually abused. All were angry and hurt over having to be placed outside of their home, and they usually took their anger out on the staff through verbal abuse and occasional physical attacks.

I still remember driving a van full of youth back from a hockey game and getting punched in the back of the head while traveling at fifty-five miles per hour. On another occasion, I regained consciousness on the floor outside of a courtroom as sheriffs pulled off the teen who had just decked me for my testimony in court. Most frontline workers lasted two years. The pay was miserable, and the job stress was unbearable.

I felt stuck. I couldn’t afford seminary. Erie’s economy wasn’t booming, and jobs don’t hang on low branches here. God had called me into the pastorate, but there I was, stuck working with troubled children and teens, not any closer to my life’s goal than when I graduated.

I spent seven years “stuck” at the children’s center. At times the cinder block walls felt like prison. I felt that God had shelved me. Perhaps he had forgotten that he had called me into his service during my teen years.

Now, looking back I see those years as a God-designed preparatory school. It wasn’t the seminary education I had scripted for my future, but I learned there. I learned how to carry myself in a non-Christian workplace. I learned compassion for the hard-to-love. I learned endurance. And I learned that only heaven’s agenda is worth that much stress.

I thought I was wasting my best years. But God saw those seven years as necessary preparation for the next phase of my life. Working with children and adolescents led me to become a children’s pastor, which in turn led to me to writing children’s curriculum, which ultimately led me to the freedom to write this book.

My eyes were at fault … that was all.

The Holiest Angels

So how can we train our eyes to see prisons and earthquakes as vehicles of freedom? How can we mature into the perspective that the apostle Paul and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer shared? How can we, with sincerity, reflect the same sentiment that Bonhoeffer had when he wrote these words to Maria on November 21, 1943:

Stifter once put it very beautifully: “Pain is the holiest angel, who reveals the treasures that would otherwise have remained hidden in the depths forever. People have become greater through it than through all the world’s joys.” It is so, as I keep telling myself in my present predicament: the pain of deprivation, which is often physically perceptible, must exist, and we should not and need not argue it away. But it has to be overcome anew every time, so there is an even holier angel, and that is joy in God.[3]

Shortly after 5:00 a.m. on Martin Luther King Day, 2000, a desperate phone call shattered my sleep. “The church is on fire. It’s burning down.” By the time I arrived, the flames claimed the children’s wing. The staff watched from our cars in the subzero temperature as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze. Unable to do anything, we each returned to our homes and waited for our pastor’s instructions.

The instructions came, instead, from ATF agents. In 1999 a rash of church arsons in the South resulted in federal agents being brought in to lead the investigations of future church fires. I was summoned to meet a brawny ATF agent in the early afternoon in the ashy remains of the cinder block children’s church room. I breathed in arctic air and surveyed the scene. Firefighters had ripped the roof open. Plastic seats melted and drooped around their steel chair frames. Black soot covered everything. I found the hideously ugly canvas painting of Jesus and the children, painted in bright rust and oranges, that I had hidden backstage. The painting had been commissioned in the seventies by a generous patron. As such, I’d been denied permission to throw it away. I joked with the agent about my poor luck that the painting survived only to be met by a grim stare. When the agent finally spoke, he asked me questions about the contents of the supply closet and about my whereabouts Sunday afternoon. It was only then that I realized the fire was being considered suspicious and that everyone on staff was a potential suspect.

The staff met in the private room of a nearby all-you-can-eat buffet and mapped out the next several months of activity: how we’d communicate the fire and suspected arson to the church and community, how we’d meet to worship, how we’d rebuild, and how we’d clean up the fine soot that had settled all over the worship center. My responsibilities were to move the children’s ministry into the adult education space and to train the Sunday school teachers on helping the children process the fire. Naturally, my family vacation scheduled for the following week would need to be canceled.

The crisis temporarily diverted everyone’s attention away from the conflict that had been smoldering in the church over worship styles and leadership. Elders, staff, and congregation all rallied around the immediate need to restore the campus. Yet when the children’s wing reopened and the urgency of the moment subsided, discord returned. The elder board began to split over the issue of leadership, and the church spiraled deeper into chaos. Autumn came with its treetop Pentecost and a new revelation: One of the arsonists was the teenage child of a prominent leader. The new information fueled more speculation and gossip in the church. The church’s descent continued for another full year and only revived itself with the help of a Christian conflict mediator, one qualified to mediate union/labor disputes within the United States Postal Service.

The experience forced me to rethink the nature of suffering in the Christian life. The Scriptures are full of references to God using fire to refine and purify his people, to burn away impurities until they look more like Jesus. I mistakenly had assumed the outcome was inevitable; the flames of suffering would subside and, voilà, Jesus’ character would shine.

My own experiences during this time forced me to shed this myth. I was changing, but not in a way that looked anything like Jesus. I was more familiar with anxiety than I was God’s “peace that surpasses understanding.” Insomnia was a regular occurrence. I had little appetite for food and lost weight. I found myself wrestling with feelings of resentment toward my coworkers. I infected my home with a surly disposition. Outbursts of impatience and anger occurred far too often.

Over time I came to understand that both God and Satan use fire for their purposes. God uses fire to refine and strengthen while Satan uses heat to scar and disfigure. Why do both God and Satan value fiery experiences? In the physical realm, fire agitates molecules and speeds up chemical reactions. The same is true spiritually. The fire of suffering is a spiritual accelerant. Suffering speeds up the stuff of our characters and makes us susceptible to change. Our decisions made during a week of suffering yield their consequences more quickly than those made during a year of tranquility.

The issue of whether the fire came from God or Satan was determined by how I used my freedom. Early on during those events I played the victim. I reminded myself that the conflict had been spinning before I arrived at the church, that it was others who complicated matters with the arson, and that I was unable to make a difference since I was relatively new at Grace. I began shopping my résumés around and found a church in Indiana that was excited about the prospect of hiring me. However, after praying and fasting about the decision, I realized that God expected me to stay at Grace and to work through the conflict.

It was about that time that God brought two books into my life to teach me that I am always free to love. The business book The Oz Principle teaches the power of seeing yourself as a responsible change agent no matter what else is going on around you. The second book, Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, was written by Jeremiah Burroughs, a Puritan who experienced religious persecution and exile in England. The Rare Jewel is a masterpiece of Christian spirituality culled from Burroughs’ quest to understand Paul’s claim that he knew the secret of being content in all things.[4] I learned to choose to worship and thank God even when it felt hollow. I began repairing the damage I had done at home by choosing kindness and gentleness even when those impulses ran counter to the stew of emotions inside me. At church I saw occasions to affirm and lead in places where I had previously only seen barriers. Slowly Jesus’ character formed in me.

Grace’s staff reflects back on these years often. We know how each one of us contributed the bricks that built the prison that held us. We know that the price of congregational revival is repentance. Each of the pastors on staff had positions available at more irenic congregations. In every instance, God spoke to us and told us to stay put. And each of us, once we realized that there would be no exodus, made the choice to exercise our personal freedom to practice the great loves. This was the path to our escape.

As I write these closing paragraphs, construction is under way for our new church campus. Grace has outgrown its meager 2.5-acre footprint. By this time next year we will occupy a beautiful campus on over thirty acres. God worked an unimaginable healing in our body. Our experience left us understanding the impermanence of facilities. Love, not steel, will be the foundation of our community as we journey into our second century of existence. The future holds new challenges, new opportunities to reach people with Jesus and, yes, new conflicts. But no matter what we encounter we cherish this power: We are always free to love.

Questions for Further Reflection and Discussion

1. Describe a time when you felt “stuck.” How did you feel about God during this time?

2. In a love letter to his fiancée, Bonhoeffer wrote that he had to fight the temptation of believing that his imprisonment was the result of “blind chance.” Why is it hard to believe that God is in control of our life circumstances?

3. If God is truly in charge of our life’s circumstances, including our moments of being stuck, how does that shape your opinion of God?

4. Bonhoeffer admitted that “our eyes are at fault.” How does our limited perspective make sense of being stuck? How can you cope with your limited perspective?

5. Read Philippians 4:12. From what you know about Paul, what were his discontenting circumstances? How do you think that Paul “learned” this contentment? How can Paul’s example guide you on your spiritual journey?

Epilogue

I would be remiss if I ended our time together without looking back at the way we began it. We entered this study in Acts struggling to understand what the abundant life is and what it has to do with the church. Both our study and the book of Acts end on an unresolved note. Acts doesn’t end with Nero executing Paul, but with Paul advancing God’s message of love despite his chains. Luke leaves us with the knowledge we are always free despite our chains.

Jesus’ two greatest commandments connect our questions to our freedom. We are free to reverse the effects of what theologians call alienation, sin’s power to isolate. Cornelius Plantinga, president of Calvin Theological Seminary, once said that sin is a centrifuge; all of humanity’s relationships were broken apart at the fall in the garden of Eden. Since then, every human has been isolated from God, from community, and from self. Now, through Jesus our broken relationship with God has been restored, and we are once again free to be the people God created us to be. We are also free to begin the delicate work of reconnecting to a community of faith. We will then be free to share Jesus’ love to the world.

I never set out to write a book about love or relationships. In fact, I lived with this manuscript for more than a year before I comprehended where this book was taking me. A series of unexpected events caused me to reexamine the book of Acts and therefore discover what Divine Intention was about. The process of rewriting this book became a personal spiritual journey that forced me to challenge my old conceptions of Christianity and to recast it in the light of relationships. I see more clearly than ever that Christianity is a web of human and spiritual relationships centered on the hub of a triune God.

The struggle of the first believers in the book of Acts is the same as our struggle today: the work of reversing the alienating effects of sin and reconnecting broken relationships. Jesus’ work on the cross makes this project possible. The Holy Spirit equips us with a new quality of life that provides us the desire and the power to reacquaint ourselves with the Father. The Spirit is there to help us discover how to live in unison with other believers. He empowers us to share Jesus with those outside of our comfortable circles.

Jesus’ work destroyed sin’s centrifuge. We are free to work in cooperation with the Trinity to pick up the pieces of severed relationships, to piece them back together, and to experience the wondrous surprises that God intended for us to know as a commonplace.

Much has been written about how the church has become unintelligible to the surrounding world. The church has responded by changing its liturgy, music, and preaching styles. The church has adopted marketing models and business models in an attempt to reinvent itself. These efforts are necessary and frequently positive, but ultimately inadequate. The church is unintelligible to the world because, in the final analysis, it has become unintelligible to its own members. We’ve envisioned the church as everything that it’s not: as a program, a building, an institution, the source of fire insurance, a curriculum dispenser, a moral watchdog, a guardian of heritage, or a self-help group. A self-destructive instinct leads us to conceptualize the church, and ultimately Christianity, as anything other than a relationship with God and his people.

In the introduction I suggested that we needed an alternative to our status quo, one that does not involve succumbing to sin’s power to alienate us from each other, a third way. This path doesn’t involve inventing another method of preparing the proverbial egg that Jim Palmer described in his foreword. Rather, the way out of this confusion is through submission to faith on the grounds that Jesus prescribed, one that is centered upon the two great loves. The first love creates in us a quality of life that can only be described as overflowing. The second love replaces our fragmented society with the body of Christ. Both loves compel Jesus’ followers to present the world with their immaculate Savior. The goal is the Christocentric world that Paul described:

We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross. (Col. 1:15–20 MSG)

The spiritual vitality of every believer and every constellation of relationships within the church is determined by finding its “proper place” in Christ.

The struggles of the early church are evidence enough that those who choose this path will face stiff challenges. Abundant life is not a synonym for an easy life. A life directed by Christ’s Spirit is a life that runs counter to the grain of society and sin nature. The art of conversation with God will need to be rediscovered and passed on to future generations. The ancient spiritual disciplines of prayer and Bible study will need to be practiced without attaching them to self-justification projects. There are bigotry and parochialism to be identified and uprooted. Faith communities will need to learn the art of fighting well, not over simple preferences or personal agendas, but in a way that causes God’s will to boil to the surface even in heated dialogues. The pain and loss will become an inevitable part of each believer’s life. These broken and dislocated places in our lives must be given to Jesus as well so they can be redeemed in his divine economy.

This path is difficult but full of hope. As he did with the first believers, God empowers us with his Spirit. Paul instructed the church at Philippi to work out their salvation with “fear and trembling,” but went on to assure them that God was working in them, bringing about the very things that bring him pleasure (Phil. 2:12–13). God is the energy within us that allows us to walk this path that ends up being a person.

During the Last Supper, Thomas struggled with the practicalities of following Jesus to heaven. “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5).

Instead of offering Thomas a geography lesson explaining the spiritual realm, Jesus offered himself: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Likewise, Jesus offers himself to the church today. Relating to Jesus’ work on the cross, imitating him, and dialoguing with him is the highway that will lead us out of our confusion. Jesus offers himself as the source of truth that will give us wisdom as we wrestle with the task of extracting love from brokenness. Finally, Jesus presents a relationship with him as our lifeblood.

As it was before the fall, we will find our way, not in the orchards, but in a daily walk with God.

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to my wife and friend, Amy. You have a way of asking the hard questions, almost always within a half hour of the end of church when I’m at my lowest brain-wave activity of the week. Your questions rudely crashed through my simplistic thinking and started a thought process that shaped much of this book.

My children: Alex, Nate, and Cole. You shared me with a new child, this book, for a time. Thank you. My prayer for you is that each of you will discover the adventure of breathing in God, becoming a burning bush, and living as God’s temple. There is nothing greater you can do with your lives.

My parents gave me a love for the church from earliest ages. Without your example and commitment to Jesus’ community, I would be … I can’t imagine what I would be. Thank you.

Irene, Kim, Dave, John, and Jim held me up during the more tiring parts of the writing process. Chris Yount-Jones allowed me to share her story, and she didn’t have to do that. She also invited me to write a magazine article years ago. Look what you started. Mikal Keefer believes I can write and straightened out my writing voice a few years ago.

Mike Nappa took a chance on me and started me on this book. Then came Gudmund Lee, who stepped into this process and did a masterful job. Gudmund, you are a master diplomat and a great guide. Thank you to the rest of the team at David C. Cook who made this book a reality.

As I wrote, I read Donald Miller, Anne Rice, Anne Lamott, and Jim Palmer to remind myself that we can’t be spiritual without being human. The music of Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Derek Webb, and the David Crowder Band set the mood as I “worked out my salvation” on my laptop.

Grace Church, in Erie, Pennsylvania, is truly home to me. I love the congregation and the staff I work with deeply. You are truly family.

Notes

Chapter 1: Signs of Life

1. F. F. Bruce, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Book of Acts, revised edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954/1990), 50.

2. Leonard Sweet, SoulSalsa (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 143.

3. Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 17.

Chapter 2: An Incomplete History of Suffering

1. Craig’s story is told in the video After the Fall (Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2004).

Chapter 3: “At Least We Aren’t …”

1. Ezra 9.

2. While working on this book, I discovered that a Samaritan scholar attends Grace Church. Terry Giles’ book on the Samaritans was invaluable in helping me catch up on this rich culture. Anderson and Giles, The Keepers: An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Samaritans (Grand Rapids: Henderson Press, 2002).

3. Nehemiah 2:10—6:14; 13:28. Richard Longenecker, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Acts (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 153.

4. Josephus, Antiq., XII, x2.

5. Longenecker, 153.

6. Bruce suggests that this is why the apostles felt able to stay at Jerusalem during the persecution: “The twelve apostles remained in Jerusalem, partly no doubt because they conceived it to be their duty to stay at their post, and partly, one may gather, because the popular resentment was directed not so much at them as at the leaders of the Hellenists in the church.” Bruce, 162–63.

7. Ibid., 170.

8. Ibid., 166.

Chapter 4: The Heart of Change

1. Longenecker, 164.

2. John Pollack, The Apostle: A Life of Paul (Colorado Springs: Chariot Victor, 1972), 31.

3. Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Anchor, 2000), 50.

4. C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York: Harper Trophy, 1952, 1980), 109–111.

Chapter 5: Love without Partitions

1. F. Scott Spencer, Journeying through Acts (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), 127.

2. U.S. Census.

3. Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003), 118.

Chapter 7: Magic Apples

1. James Strong, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1890), “Greek Dictionary of the New Testament,” 56, entry #3948, paroxusmos, Acts 15:39.

2. Spencer, 172.

Chapter 8: Revolution

1. Miller, 183.

Chapter 9: Friends, Critics, and the Quest for Success

1. G. Campbell Morgan, The Acts of the Apostles (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1924), 483.

2. Spencer writes, “James and the elders virtually ordered Paul (‘do what we tell you,’ 21:13) to pay the Nazirite fees, treating him more like their servant than their patron.” Spencer, 209.

3. Ibid., 210.

4. “At the King’s Table,” Kingdom of Heaven DVD, directed by Ridley Scott (Burbank: 20th Century Fox, 2005), 16.

Chapter 10: Prisons, Earthquakes, and Other Angels

1. Longenecker, 366.

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, Love Letters from Cell 92: The Correspondence between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, 1943–1945, ed. Von Bismark and Kabitz, trans. John Brownjohn (Nashville: Abingdon, US Edition 1995), 113.

3. Ibid.,118.

4. Jeremiah Burroughs, Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace, 2001), 51.

About the Author

Larry Shallenberger is the pastor of children and student ministries at Grace Church in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife and three children. Larry is the author of Lead the Way God Made You and is a monthly columnist at www.churchvolunteercentral.com.