The Story Life

When you think of who you are, what do you think of?

To answer that question, you have to do a few things.  First, you have to think.  This may seem obvious, but it's important to know that each time you establish your own identity, you (and not anyone else) have to come to these conclusions yourself.  Next, you have to bring to mind certain personality traits like; "I'm kind," "I'm generous," or "I'm lazy."

What's tricky about this is that behind each of those personality traits is a story.  It's impossible for someone to just derive from nothing that they are kind or generous or lazy.  We get these ideas from somewhere, and that somewhere is our experience in life.  Essentially, the only reason I know that I'm Matt Culler is because that fact has been reinforced over and over and over and over, etc.  Your life is a story about what you know to be true about you.

If this is true, then we run the risk of problems in our lives when we misunderstand the truth.  Say I've gone for a long time getting A's in all of my classes, but at one point I take a class and fail it.  I see this and feel bad, but understand that this failure is not an intrinsic part of my identity; it's more of the exception than the rule.  But I start telling my friends that I failed a class.  And some other friends see that I got an F, not knowing that I was an A student before.  And my parents start holding that F over my head.  And throughout all this time, it is never mentioned that i got A's in all of my other classes.  Suddenly I care more about that F than those A's; suddenly my idea of myself is that I'm a failure.  Knowing that I am a failure, I start acting like a failure, because that's all I know to be true.  

This happens to us everyday.  Parts of who we are are reinforced by others and ourselves, while other parts of who we are get ignored and eventually forgotten.  If you start saying that you're sick, acting like you're sick, and telling people that you're sick, it's likely that people are going to start treating you like a sick person. 

The important question here is who does God think that you are?  Does this factor into your story at all?  Maybe it does, but the person you think God sees you as is pretty terrible.  Maybe you think God's ashamed of you.  But what if the person who's ashamed of you is you?  What if the idea of yourself as terrible has come from a source other than God?  What if your story life got hijacked midway through?

When you come to conclusions about who you are, whether negative or positive, you're right.  You're constantly constructing this story about you.  While we include information in this story from a bunch of different sources, who you are is up to you in the end.

When you think of who you are, what do you think of?

Making Way

Love creates space.  Love makes way.

A very long time ago God gave the people of Israel Ten Words to follow that they would be set apart from the rest of the world.  They would show that love had created a space for people.  That's what restoration is.  It is people and God occupying the same space.  God has shown Israel and us that in the space He has created, there is pattern to the flow of life.  It was beautiful, but the greatest Word which was given was to Love the Lord God.  Make way for God to make way.  This Word was important because it bound the other Words together. God created and gave for us first, so our response is to let Him continue.  Make space for God to make way.  Righteousness, or justice before God comes when we have the space to receive it from Him.

As I've studied helping skills in the past couple of years, one of the reoccurring trends in practice is the art of submission.  Submission is necessary for counseling on many levels, but here's an example.  Problem solving in client-centered therapy is all about having the client develop a plan which will create positive change in their life.  While the client is to build their plan with as much autonomy as possible, the worker is present with the client in order to gently guide them toward a line of thinking which will begin to break the person away from their current destructive behaviors.  In this exchange, both the client and the worker must submit and create space for the other to bring life.  If one side is dominating, the session will degrade into something less than what it is supposed to be.

Love requires submission because love is not selfish.  Love creates space for another to act.  It is the forfeit of one will for another.  We submit to God to create space for Him, and He, in turn, submits to us to create space for us.  Jesus Himself claimed to be the Way, creating the ultimate space for humanity by submitting Himself to death.  But there's more.

God would also give Israel the command to love the people around them.  Life has always flown through God's created space by people creating ways for that life to flow freely.  Jesus would later tell all those who follow Him to adhere to this command today.  Why, when so often we are right?  So often we desire liberty from those who are wrong.  So often the easiest way to deal with something we disagree with is to destroy it. But this is not what we are called to.  We are called to submit to each other in love.  The question then becomes, what will happen if I create space for someone else?  What if they abuse it?  What if they don't know what they're doing?  What if I don't let my voice be heard?

Making a way for someone else will never be easy because no two people are the same.  But God promises that those who submit will inherit the earth.  It's funny that it is through the resignation of our own will, and not through the forceful propagation of it, that we inherit the earth.  Plans in counseling are built by two people who accept each other for who they are and take a risk by collaboratively making way.  The Kingdom Of God is the same.

The End of the Story Part IV

The resurrection is everything.  It's the end of endings.

The Apostle Paul was a big shot before he was blinded on the road to Damascus; when Paul was still Saul.  He writes to the Philippians that he was a pure blooded Israelite, born to the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, a well trained religious scholar, and had a zeal for righteousness which came from the law.  People respected Saul.

However, in another letter, Paul writes that "his physical presence is weak, and his public speaking is despicable."  Or at least that's what other people were saying about him.  How could a guy who was Pharisee number one; who was constantly taking people to court to kill them; who had one of the best pedigrees in the world be called weak and despicable?

What happened?

The main reason I decided to follow Jesus as closely as I possibly could was hope.  Jesus offered me hope that things were going to be made right and that God would not stand for injustice.  The prophecies in the book of Isaiah, some of which state that the hills will be made low and the valleys will be raised, say to me that if there is inequity, poverty, suffering; it just can't last forever.

Something you should understand about me is that I am naturally skilled at almost nothing.  Some people scoff at me when they hear this, but I have proven it over and over.  I've already commented on my inability to understand math, but my lack of skill extends into areas such as social perception, general physical coordination, and most recently sailing.  I don't intend to turn this blog post into a self depreciating joke fest, but I share these shortcomings with you to demonstrate the reason for my hopefulness.

Later in Paul's letter where he refers to himself as weak and a despicable speaker, he says that there is nothing to boast in unless it is in Christ alone.  In fact, says Paul, he would rather be weak because in his weakness, Christ's power is perfected.  Of course, you already see where I am going with this; because I am weak in many areas, Christ has more opportunities to be glorified in my life.  This is true.  But there is more to it than that.

Because the resurrection is limitlessly deep, the hope we have in Christ should be limitless as well.  Because it's obvious that even the most skilled people have a limit to their skills.  Their skill has an end.  But with God the end of the story isn't really the end.  And so you see people doing things that shouldn't be "possible" on earth.  Blindness being healed.  Limbs growing out.  Diseases being slapped out of people's bodies.  All endings to which Jesus said "there's more."  Because of the resurrection, all sorts of death can not stand.

The only things that are forever are God and His Kingdom.  Paul knew this.  That's why he was gladly imprisoned, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, subjected to robbers, hungry, thirsty, and naked.  Because "to live is Christ and to die is gain."  Because the end of the story is not the end with God.  That's also why Paul's sweaty work clothes and handkerchiefs healed people of diseases.

In all things, God is saying the story is not over.  The question is; do we agree?  If we do then it's time to get busy because there is a movement happening where everything is being restored.  The most definitive endings to people's stories are the most surprising beginnings.  The people who live in the most death are experiencing the greatest resurrections.  Those who are foolish are already leading the wise.  The meek are inheriting the earth, the weak are turning out to be the strongest, and the whole world is coming face to face with the idea that to be a winner you actually have to be a loser.

Jesus is standing at the beginning of it all, ready to run with us.  And that's the end of that.

The End of the Story Part III

For every ending we impose, Jesus says "there's more." So when you think it's over, look again, because it has in fact just begun.

You may be wondering why I've convoluted and drawn out a single subject to the point of, now, three separate blog posts. Allow me to break the fourth wall of blogging for a moment. As Christians, it is of central importance that we look at all Scripture through the lens of resurrection and new beginnings. If we look at Scripture and view Yahweh as a God who ends anything, we are creating God in our own image. Because we are the ones who have endings wrapped up in our very nature. Not God. And when we make God in our own image, we have full permission to boss Him around and support just about anything we want Him to.

So we have arrived at a point in which we can look at Scripture in two different ways. A disjointed set of rules and suggestions which serve as the basis of a selfish morality, or as a sweeping narrative that spills over the pages and seeps into our lives. The Apostle Paul actually covers this in his letters to the churches. He tells us that this difference is really the difference between the law and the Spirit. The law leads only death because it points only to our own accomplishments. And that right there is an ending. We do all that we can to highlight our own stuff. The Bible says pretty clearly that if "our stuff" is good that it comes from God anyway, and if it's bad than it's sin, which has already been defeated. So much for that. Living life in the Spirit over the law, however, lets our lives point to the eternal, or a lack of endings.

What Paul is saying is if you want to align your life to an ending, feel free. God's love is big enough to allow that. But with the Spirit, the end of the story isn't really the end.

From the perspective of early Christians, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was an event that meant everything changed. For them, this was the age old promise of their God being fulfilled. The resurrection was everything. So, of course, this meant that everything had to change. Paul's letters are the best example we have of the early Church wrestling with the concept of being resurrection people. For a long, long time, that's what the story has been.

A good example of this is Paul's exposition to the Corinthian church about giving monetarily. In it, Paul commends the church for giving abundantly, and also states that God loves a cheerful giver. This is the same God who makes grace overflow so that all needs are met.

Do you see the resurrection? The Corinthian church is able to give out of poverty because they know that God does not end and they are the people of this God. Paul says it. Whatever is given will be restored to the point of overflow. That's a characteristic of grace. Resurrection. For Paul and the Corinthians this is more than just a good idea that promotes morality. This is part of the embodiment of the resurrection movement which pulses through nature and is emblematic of Yahweh.

There's more to money than just money.

Even Jesus before He is crucified speaks to people about all kinds of resurrection. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells His disciples that whoever gives up their family or possessions to follow Him will have them restored 100 times over. Because the resurrection is that deep. Because Jesus says "there's more."

The resurrection is everything. It is the end of endings. For everything. The early church grappled with this. They absolutely struggled with how to align with the restoration movement of God in every aspect of life.

Do we grapple with this? Do we see the resurrection in everything? Or do we impose endings where they just don't belong. Because the thing about the early Church is that it was early. There's more to that story.

Once again, things were only just beginning.