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Listening in Community

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Western culture places great emphasis on the individual. In sports we call out and praise individual performance, giving little more than lip service to how well a team plays. (Just look at baseball: nine players on the field, but only the pitcher is said to have won or lost the game.)

In school, each student is given a grade the she alone has worked for. Team projects are the exception, and a dreaded one at that.

Even in the Christian faith we stress the individual’s responsibility to accept or reject Jesus Christ. (I’ve written about this twice before, based on my first experience in Ethiopia. You can read those posts from 2015 and from 2008 if you want.)

But there is power in community, especially when it comes to making decisions. I recall a scene in a documentary from many years ago: the elders of an African tribe sitting in a circle discussing the appropriate marriage dowry for one of the girls in the tribe. Even as I write that i struggle with how wrong everything about it sounds – but only because it is foreign to me; I also see great wisdom.

Imagine if we were to harness the power and wisdom of collected minds for such things as job changes and career moves; for engagements (or divorces!); for discerning God’s call on our lives.

My parents recently gave me a number of books they’ve read over the years; the one at the top of this post among the titles. I just started reading it but wish I’d read it six months ago. Or three years ago. or twenty years ago. Listening Hearts: Discerning God’s Call in Community provides sound biblical and practical wisdom for a community of Christ-followers to listen for and to God’s call. The authors and a team of researchers combed through centuries of Christian literature to learn how previous generations and various traditions defined and discerned God’s call – for the community and for individuals within the community. Here are just a few tidbits that have stuck out to me:

Call may be emphatic and unmistakable, or it may be obscure and subtle. (p. 7)

We often find our calls in the facts, circumstances, and concrete experiences of life. … A call may not be so much a call to “do” as to “be.” (p. 9)

Discernment requires our willingness to act in faith on our sense of what God wants us to do. (p. 27)

If you are wondering what you should be doing; if you are facing a decision about a career change or a cross-country move or whether God is calling you to be in full-time ministry, then I want you to do this: read this book, get a small community of people around you (who should also read it), then listen together for to discern God’s call.

God as Dentist

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dentist-toolsSince I was a boy, I’ve had an aversion to dental work. I have avoided dentists as much as possible—probably why I need to see them more than I do. My last couple visits were beyond my control: one was to replace a twenty-year-old crown that broke, and the most recent was to repair a tooth that had chipped.

As the doctor explored that great chasm that is my mouth, his light, mirror, and pick inspecting each stalactite and stalagmite of my upper and lower jaws, he would occasionally stop to tug at some sharp edge. Sometimes the tugging was so fierce I thought he might pull loose an old crown or filling. Other times I figured he’d found some natural jag—like the nooks and crannies in a cave’s walls—that I would need to remember to floss better.

But those weren’t jags weren’t natural, and they weren’t rough edges left by some previous oral explorer. No, they were deposits of calcium or plaque that had attached since my last cleaning—”like barnacles,” my dentist said, graphically. And they needed to be removed.

Some of my barnacles broke off easily. Some needed more coaxing and a bit of filing. But some took a lot more work, more care, more powerful tools, and that dreaded whirring noise.

This morning I was praying a dangerous prayer: that God would transform me; that he would conform me into the image of Christ. As I prayed, I thought about my time in the dentist’s chair as a lesson for my spiritual life.

God and dentists do two types of work: they transform us and they conform us.

Spiritually, God transforms us by cleaning our lives, renewing our minds (to borrow Paul’s words from Romans 12:2). He picks off the plaque and files down or grinds off the rough edges – the barnacles, as my dentist called them. He finds the cavities, then cleans and fills them. (Let’s not even get into root canals here!)

Conforming is different. It’s a reshaping of our lives; it’s the process of molding, shaping, sanding, and polishing – like the dentist did when he had to build up and shape the enamel he used to repair my chipped tooth. Just as our teeth were once new and beautifully formed, so our lives were once an exquisite “image of God.” And just as years of eating and drinking not always healthy foods wears down, discolors, and damages our teeth, so our sin nature and the unhealthy choices we make mar that original holy image. God wants to restore it.

When I was looking for an image to accompany this post, I noticed that all the patients in the dentists’ chairs had beautiful looking teeth! I would love to have such a perfect mouth, I’m just not as excited about the work it would take to get there.

I also want to look like Jesus, but that, too, takes hard, slow, sometimes painful, work as God patiently conforms us to the image of Christ. The results will be worth every moment.

Just Listen

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© Steven Secon, Architect

Words cannot express the tragedy that has torn at our nation in the past few days.

We have watched a distraught Diamond Reynolds pleading with God for the life of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, who had just been shot multiple times by a police officer.

We have witnessed a desperate struggle between black Alton Sterling and two white officers, ending with Sterling’s point-blank shooting death.

We have seen five Dallas police officers gunned down by snipers during a Black Lives Matter protest.

And these are, we know, not isolated incidents. We have seen too many black men killed by officers sworn to keep the peace, and too often for reasons that seem to be little more than the color of their skin. We have seen too many police killed, apparently for no other reason than that they wore a uniform.

It seems almost impossible to write of these tragedies—this national tragedy—in words that are balanced and avoid assumption. Indeed, perhaps the most accurate assumption any of us can and should make is that in most cases (not all) there is both guilt and innocence on all sides. Yet even that statement seems to be a desperate stretch for balance in those instances where balance is clearly lacking.

In the midst of all this, social media lights up with hashtags and memes, opinions and arguments; some crying out for the innocents on their side and others shouting for judgment for the guilty on the other side. Pastors call for peace, politicians call for prayer or gun reform or immigration laws, mothers call for justice. And some, like me, feel that we ought to say something, do something… and yet we—I—feel helpless, impotent.

Yesterday I sat across a restaurant table from a young black man, just the second time I’ve met him. I realized (among other things) how much I have missed, having relationships almost exclusively with white people like me. And I realized how helpless I feel to do anything that might make a difference to the racial divide in my community, let alone my country.

Several times, as we talked about these killings and what it’s like growing up as a black man in America, my friend apologized for “bringing me down.” He needn’t have; I needed to hear him. It reminded me of my disabled friend, through whose eyes I have begun to see disabilities in a new light.

As I’ve reflected on our conversation, I’ve realized something else: I can do something. I can keep listening to my friend. And in the listening, I will learn, and that may be most important – at least for me. But in the listening I also give my friend a gift: the gift of being heard.

In times like this, it’s easy to jump on the hashtag bandwagon, to spout opinions, to show support for one side or another. But making a real difference isn’t easy, and it’s not accomplished by changing your profile picture.

If you’re wondering how to make a difference, then maybe the best thing is to find someone to talk with, to listen to—someone not like you: someone with different skin, a different religion, different beliefs; someone, perhaps, whom society says you should be at odds with. Go sit at a restaurant, a coffee shop, a park bench, and listen.

Remember

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Memorial StonesRemember. It’s one of my favorite words in Scripture. It shows up 187 times in the Old Testament alone; fifty more in the New Testament. Remembering is central to the Jewish feasts and fasts; it is central to the two ordinances Christians around the world celebrate today: the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.

Remembering is what national holidays are all about, too: Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July here in the US; Tag der deutschen Einheit (Day of German Unity) in Germany; Genocide Memorial Day in Rwanda; others in other nations.

When Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River, he had twelve men each carry a stone from the middle of the now-dry river bed. When the reached the western bank and set up camp, these stones were set in a pile…

6 …so that this will be a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ 7 you should tell them, ‘The waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the Lord’s covenant. When it crossed the Jordan, the Jordan’s waters were cut off.’ Therefore these stones will always be a memorial for the Israelites.” (Joshua 4:6-7)

In the US, today is Memorial Day; it is appropriate to remember the sacrifices made by those men and women who died serving and protecting our nation’s freedoms. But for Christians, it is also—and always—appropriate to remember what God has done for us; not only the sacrifice that Jesus offered to secure our freedom from sin, but the daily provision of God as well as the “big things” He has done just for you:

  • that time God clearly, perhaps immediately, answered a prayer
  • the job you have or promotion you received; your paycheck
  • the food on your table
  • the neighbor who looks out for your kids after school
  • the teacher who inspired you in 5th grade
  • the bed you sleep in, home you have (even if it’s too small, noisy, or in the “wrong” place; check out Jeremiah 29!)

When you’re out and about today, stoop down and pick up a stone and think about one of those times that God showed up for you. Hold onto the stone or put it in your pocket, and every time you feel it, thank God for His presence and work in your life.

Remember.

Thinking Theologically

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Most people agree: the 2016 election season in the U.S. is a little bit crazy, and promises only to get crazier. The most important question for many Christ followers is no longer, Who should I vote for? but rather, How should I even decide who to vote for?

Now, in case you’re about to skip the rest of this post because you don’t want to read one more opinion about politics…don’t. This isn’t about politics, it’s about thinking. It’s about how we think—and specifically, how God, Scripture, and our faith as Christ followers not only inform our thinking, but actually shape it…or ought to shape it. Thinking determines action.

One of my first courses in seminary was called “Thinking Theologically About Ministry.” It was a great title, a great course, and taught by a professor I count as one of the top two I had. It has influenced almost all my ministry, not to mention much of the rest of my life.

Too few Christians think theologically. Whether we consider faith a private thing, segregate it from the rest of life, or simply do not allow our spiritual beliefs to impact our daily choices and activities, most of us do not intentionally reflect on how God and His Word should influence our lives.

I confess, I am given to introspection. Thinking—and thinking deeply—is easy and enjoyable for me; it energizes me. But not everyone is like me. Some are oriented more toward action than reflection; some feel deeply, moved by emotion and empathy. Thinkers, doers, and feelers are all good, strong, God-given types. But just as I need to learn to act and not only think; just as I need to work hard to learn, hear, and express the language of emotions; so others need to grow in the thinking realm—especially about the congruence of faith and life.

Thinking theologically does not end with doctrine, it begins there. Thinking theologically asks, “so what?” and answers, “therefore….”
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Here are some examples:

  • Creation: Christians generally believe that the three Persons of the trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—each participated in creation. But so what? What impact does that truth have on how we as Christians view, treat, and live as part of that creation? If God created everything and mankind inherited Adam and Eve’s stewardship of creation, then perhaps Christians ought to be leading the way in environmental matters.
  • Career: There is much in the Bible about work—about being diligent and hard-working, showing integrity as both employer and employed, paying honest wages, not being lazy, providing for one’s family. There is also much about “ministry”—that is, about serving others, showing grace, introducing people to Jesus, loving both neighbor and enemy. What isn’t there is a dichotomy between work and ministry; Christians are all called to minister (i.e., serve). So what? So however God has gifted you, whatever passions and skills he has blessed you with, use them to both earn a living and serve others.
  • Voting: The Bible says that all authority comes from God. Governors, queens, and presidents all are given those positions, ultimately, by God. And God has often used even wicked rulers to achieve his purposes So what? As Christians, we shouldn’t live in fear of those who are—or might be—ruling over us. But where we have choice, we are responsible for choosing wisely, and for choosing those who will humble themselves before God.

We live in two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of earth. But those are not two separate entities; they overlap, and one will always and necessarily influence the other. As Christ followers, we must not withdraw from the world, but rather connect the dots of faith and family, marriage and ministry, Savior and struggle.

We must draw a line from Word to work, from God to humanity. We must think theologically.