Archive for the ‘Lent’ Tag
On Submission
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Christian Living, Jesus, Lent, Perichoresis, Spiritual Disciplines, Trinity
Comments (2) It’s surprising how much good theology you can learn from an atheist.
Case in point: My friend Phil (not his real name), a recovering addict who struggles with Step 2 and 3 of the Twelve Steps: Believing “that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” and making “a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.” What’s a good atheist to do? I asked him about this, and he replied:
“My higher power is my recovery group. I can’t trust my own judgment when it comes to my addiction, so I trust the judgment of my group. Christians say ‘What would Jesus do?’ I say ‘What would my group want me to do?’ If my groups says No, then I don’t do it. They haven’t steered me wrong yet.”
While I would love to see Phil get to know the One True Power who is there for him, I am still happy about this step he’s taken.
He’s stumbled onto a vital practice of the Adopted Life: SUBMISSION.
Submission is a lot like fasting. When I fast, I deny myself something that I want. When I submit, I actively seek what you want. Father, Son, and Spirit have great fun with this. They know submission as an adventure, not a chore. In my experiments with this kind of life, I set aside times where I will ask my wife/kids/friends/pastors: “What can I do for you?” and then I do whatever they ask. It’s fun.
For me, there’s also another side to submission, related to the fact that I’m wise enough to know that I’m not as wise as I think I am.
So I’m taking up the spiritual practice of disobeying myself. So far, the results are pretty good. I submit to Jesus and his Gospel. And as part of that, I also submit to His Community (the church) and to His Community’s Book (the Bible). According to Paul, our submission to Christ has everything to do with our submission to one another (Eph 5.21-24). A life of wisdom is a life of submission (James 3.17). If I am a fool, it is because I have grown blind to my own foolishness. If I am to become wise, my only hope is to submit to what anothers’ eyes see.
So here I’m learning to practice submission in somewhat the same way Phil does. I let some wise people have intimate access to my life. When they see a problem I don’t see, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. And when a bunch of them see the same problem, and I still don’t see it, I know there’s a good chance I’ve discovered one of my blind spots. So if possible, I try to behave as if they are right, and then I step back to see what happens.
All I can say is this: They haven’t steered me wrong yet.
~ by John Stonecypher
On Fasting
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Christianity, Fasting, Gospel, Jesus, Lent, Perichoresis, Salvation, Trinity
Leave a comment In Jesus we meet something unusual – a God who says No to himself.
Jesus desires comfort instead of pain, just like all of us. But he lays aside his desires and says “Not my will, but yours.” Why does Jesus empty himself of his prerogatives and privileges? Philippians 2 says he does it because he is “in nature God.” Why does he give rather than grasp? Because that is simply the way God is.
“Getting what I want” is not a big concern in the divine life.
The Trinity is worlds away from the self-absorbed divine glory hog I believed in as a kid. Jesus, his Dad, and their Spirit abound with glory, not because they’re really good at getting glorified, but because they’re having so much fun giving glory to each other. “Not my will but yours” has been on Jesus’ lips from th days before his name was Jesus.
Being the son of Adam that I am, I am often preoccupied with getting what I want.
Why? Because deep down, I believe that getting what I want is extremely important. Of course, this belief is total crap, and I know that. But my appetite-driven behaviors indicate that I apparently still believe it anyway.
This is where fasting comes in.
Fasting is an exercise that challenges this deeply distorted belief that I just can’t seem to stop believing in. To fast is to leap, by faith, into an experience of not getting what I want, in order to discover reality in a deeper way: First, I learn that not getting what I want (food, TV, sex, chocolate) is really not so bad as I’d thought. Second, I learn that there is Something Better out there which is far more worthy of my desires.
In fasting, I unmask my lying idolatries (things I think I need in addition to God) and discover I don’t need them after all. And when my idols fall, I can see past them to the abundant life of Father, Son and Spirit that has been there all along.
When my rotten bottom-of-the-dumpster pizza is taken away, I discover the Feast that has been laid out for me from before time.
Happy Lent, everybody.
~ by John Stonecypher
On Confession
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Christian Living, Trinity | Tags: Confession, Gospel, Jesus, Lent, repentance, Sin, Trinity, Trinity and Humanity
Leave a comment On some days I miss my old theology, because at least THEN I had some control over things.
I did my thing called “faith,” which obligated God to make my afterlife pleasant by putting me in a nice (non-flaming) neighborhood. But since then I’ve learned that my Papa already loves me, that Jesus has already included me within his forever-life with Papa, and their Spirit is already saturating every moment of my life with experiences of this Truth. I’ve learned that my belief or non-belief doesn’t change any of that.
So why is my life a cauldron of shame?
I can’t blame it on God anymore. Jesus, his Papa, and their Spirit treat me royally; they always have and always will. The problem is not God. The problem is not my location or circumstances. “Going to heaven” won’t make it better. “Going to hell” won’t make it worse. Because the problem isn’t “out there.” The problem is in me; the problem is that I hate the truth.
Don’t get me wrong; I like the idea that God loves me, etc. That part rocks. I am happy to confess that truth. It’s the other part of the truth that I don’t want to confess. The truth about the things I’ve done, the lies I’ve told, the people I’ve hurt. The truth that I’ve loved darkness and still sorta do.
FESS means “to speak.” CON means “with.” To confess is to SPEAK-WITH God. To say what God says, to tell the truth with Him in one voice together. I’ve done plenty of confession in prayer; I’m well aware that my misdeeds are not news to God. And I’ve always tried to be pretty open about being a guy who has an ongoing history of brokenness, just like everybody else.
So why is my shame still here?
Addicts learn a painful lesson in the Twelve Steps, especially Step Five: We discover that we cannot break free from shame without confessing “to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Or, as Brother James puts it: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5.16). When we connect with the truth (with God, with ourselves, and with others), we begin to become unbroken/healed/saved.
Now, if you keep secrets about your past but still feel completely shame-free, that’s wonderful. I don’t know how you manage that, but I’m happy for you. All I know is that I cannot keep secrets if I want to be free from shame. I need to have a small circle of people-my wife and a couple friends-who know everything. The whole list, with all the relevant details. If I withhold relevant facts (about past or present), it is because I believe they will reject me if I tell them. That belief is the voice of shame, and I refuse to listen to it anymore. I am no longer willing to let toxic shame have any place in my life.
If a secret unpleasant truth is poisoning me on the inside, confession is how I expel it from my body. I believe I will survive the process because Jesus has taught me that the truth will set me free. I want freedom more than I want the artificial comfort of keeping my skeletons in my closet. “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception” (2 Cor 4.2).
I am choosing to accept and confess the truth about myself. I am choosing to believe in the ability of God (and His people) to love me anyway. So that “by believing I may have life” (John 20.31).
~ by John Stonecypher
What’s the Deal with the Dot?
Filed under: By John Stonecypher, Evangelism | Tags: Ash Wednesday, Easter, Evangelism, Lent, Perichoresis, repentance, Trinity
Leave a comment A coworker friend of mine practices Jainism, an ancient religion somewhat similar to Hinduism. Over many lunch hours, I’ve learned a lot about her beliefs, and she has grown curious to learn about mine. She was thrilled on Ash Wednesday because, like her, I had a dot on my forehead. So I had the joy of talking with a curious listener about my journey of participation in the Triune Life.
Below, I attempt to re-create that conversation, though you can be assured that in the actual talk, my grammar wasn’t nearly this good:
Surabhi: What does your dot mean?
John: The dot is made with ashes, ashes being an ancient symbol of mourning death and lamenting evil…
Surabhi: I see… You are sad about Jesus dying.
John: Well, that’s part of it…but it’s more about God feeling sad about us. Jesus, his Papa, and their Spirit made you and me and everything; they love us and want us to enjoy life with them. But we don’t know Papa’s love very well, so we’re miserable, and as a result we end up hurting ourselves and each other a lot.
Surabhi: [Nods with understanding and agreement]
John: Jesus and his Papa and their Spirit are heartbroken about how miserable we are and how broken the world is, and they don’t want us to be alone in our sadness. We’re Papa’s babies, and if we’re going to live in sadness, he wants to be with us. Like how when your kids cry at night, you go to be with them and hold them until they calm down.
Surabhi: Of course.
John: And that’s why Jesus came to be a human being, just like us-so that God could be WITH us in our pain. So Jesus suffers with us, but he also shares with us something we don’t have-knowledge of our Papa. Deep down in his soul, the man Jesus knew Papa’s love, and that changed everything for his experience of life. The man Jesus experienced human suffering, but he also experienced divine HOPE, his sure knowledge that Papa is with us, putting right everything that’s gone wrong. And the Holy Spirit is now busy sharing Jesus’ hope with you and me and everyone.
Surabhi: Okay…
John: And that’s where the dot comes in. I put ashes on my head because God is sad about the evil in the world, and so am I. Because Jesus and Papa and their Spirit feel the pain of the world, I feel it too. And that sorrow will come to a sharp point on Good Friday when we remember that our world is so messed up that we killed Jesus, the one decent human being we’ve ever met. But even while we’re grieving over our pain and brokenness, we also know that Easter is coming up in April. We share in Jesus’ sure hope that suffering and death don’t have the last word. That when Jesus rose from the dead, that was the first step of God’s conquest of death, a conquest that will someday be complete.
Surabhi: So you’re sad, but not THAT sad.
John: Yes. Our Scriptures say that “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Surabhi: Hmmm, I like that…Thanks for explaining all that…
John: Sure. I get a lot out of our talks too; thanks for listening… Well, I suppose we should get back to work…
~ by John Stonecypher