A Ramble About Percy Jackson

I have a confession to make. I've read every book published by Rick Riordan, and so have my wife and children. It's something of an addiction with us. The Percy Jackson series in particular, both the original “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and the “Heroes of Olympus” series. The latest book, “The House of Hades” was devoured by my whole family in about a week's time give or take a couple of days.

When I first saw them on the shelf several years ago, I didn't think much of them. I thought they were cheap Harry Potter imitations (yet another literary obsession in our family). But when we were living in Tennessee, and shortly after the “Lightning Thief” movie came out I decided to buy one and give it a read. It didn't take long for my wife and daughters to follow suit. My son, initially believing “reading for pleasure” to be an oxymoron, took a little more time, but he eventually got into it as well.

You really have to hand it to Rick Riordan, he does his research on the mythologies he writes about and sets his characters in. From what I've seen in his books, the man must have the equivalent of a Master's Degree in Ancient Religious Studies from the amount of time and research he's put in to write his stories with not only Greek, but Roman and Egyptian mythologies and cultures as well.

One aspectof these mythologies which he illustrates clearly and frequently is the afterlife. This shouldn't be surprising because the afterlife plays a major role in all of the mythologies he sets his characters in. As a student of mythologies and religious studies, and of the New Testament and the Greek language it was written in, seeing these things illustrated in his stories has helped me understand some things about the afterlife as far as the Scriptures are concerned.

The first thing it has helped me to really grasp, is that the afterlife and underworld pictured in the Greek New Testament is in fact the afterlife and underworld understood from Greek mythology. This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, though I know it might even be considered offensive to some. But, like in Greek mythology, you have the underworld, Hades, and it is divided into different sections. You have the place of paradise, Abraham's Bosom in the New Testament and the Elysian Fields in Greek mythology; you have the place of torment, which in Greek mythology was the fields of asphodel, and you have the lake of fire, abyss, and Gehenna which are all referred to in the New Testament and Greek mythology as Tartaros. Further you have the mention of both Hades and Death being thrown into the lake of fire (Tartaros) in the Book of Revelation. In Greek mythology these are the names of the two gods who control and oversee the underworld, Hades and Thanatos.

The truth is that the view which the New Testament and Jesus in particular takes when talking about the underworld and the afterlife is a very Hellenistic view with which all of his listeners would have been very familiar. And this only makes sense because of the culture in which He taught. People in his day weren't merely concerned with death, but with the judgment which followed.

The view of the afterlife in the Old Testament however is almost non-existent. The only word in the Hebrew that you normally get is “she'ol”, meaning “the grave”. You get few if any descriptions of it. And this was probably also descriptive of the worldview of the Hebrew people to whom the Old Testament was largely written where the afterlife was concerned. The problem they were mostly concerned about was death itself, not what happened afterwards. Death was bad enough. This is interesting because you don't see the cultural preoccupation with the afterlife that the Egyptians held, even though the Hebrews spent four hundred years in Egypt and probably adopted at least some of their cultural worldview.

Salvation for them came to mean resurrection and rescue from death, and this carried into the Hellenistic period and became mixed with the understanding of an afterlife that saw people punished or rewarded based on how they lived their lives in this world.

When He teaches, Jesus does little to alter their understanding of the afterlife. He doesn't try to correct them to the absolutely accurate version. Instead He uses their conception and works within it to get His points across. In the end, it doesn't seem to matter what their idea of the afterlife is. He takes it and shapes it so that they are able to understand the truths He is trying to get across.

I think this is a lesson in and of itself that He left for us. More than anyone else alive, Jesus knew what lay in store for us after death and He could have corrected everyone's notions. But that would have required a massive amount of reteaching that would have been resisted, time-consuming and counter-productive. Instead He adapted His teaching, working within the cultural world-view, so that He could get across what needed to be understood, and not a detailed floorplan of the underworld which was, after all, immaterial to the Gospel itself.

When we are teaching and preaching to Gospel to others, we need to keep in mind what is important in our listeners' worldview and what isn't, and adapt our Gospel instruction accordingly. Jesus did so, and so did His Apostles and they were able to spread the Gospel of a resurrected Hellenistic Jewish Messiah crucified for treason from India to Spain, and from Egypt to Rome and beyond.

A Ramble About Faith and Obedience

My wife came to me a few days ago and asked if she could could post a Ramble she had written on my blog. So, here it is...

I usually leave the rambles to my husband, but this morning I felt it was time for me to contribute one as well. This is a subject my husband has covered many times in his rambles, but I think this time I need to share on an even more personal level.

We have both believed for many years that faith and obedience are so linked that they can be covered as a single subject, and yet knowing that and living it out are two totally different things. It's relatively easy to go through and study the Scriptures and then share your thoughts and ideas with others, but truly implementing those thoughts and ideas into your daily life in the way God is calling you individually to do so is far easier said than done. It's a long, slow process that can at times be very confusing and painful.

Why is it so confusing and painful? I don't know about you, but I have never opened my Bible and found a personal note saying, “Heidi Bair, this is what I want you to do with your life and here is how you are to accomplish it in your current circumstances.” That would be wonderful, but it's just not there. And while looking at other people's lives, both past and present, who have followed the Lord and made a difference because of their faith and obedience can be very encouraging, my life and circumstances aren't just like any of theirs either, and I'm not called to exactly the same thing.

By this I don't mean that we aren't all called to love and forgive one another or any of the other specifics that are talked about in Scripture. What I am saying is that none of our lives will look exactly like anyone else's, even if we all followed everything Jesus said without fault, which none of us can do. We are all a part of the Body of Christ, but we're not all the same part.

So how do we know what it is God is calling us as individuals to do? How do we hear His voice in our lives today on decisions that aren't covered specifically in Scripture? What do we do when we know (from Scripture) that God is calling us to serve Him in every area of our lives, but the Bible doesn't tell us directly where we are supposed to live, what job we're supposed to do, who we are supposed to marry (or not marry), or how many kids we're supposed to have? And what about the smaller, day to day decisions of life that also aren't covered in Scripture? How do we know that we're doing what He wants, especially when our lives don't look the way other people think they should look, no matter how hard we try?

The answer to this is both simple and difficult, encouraging and extremely frustrating. The answer is that God works with each one of us in a different way, and communicates His will for our lives in a way that we as individuals can best understand. The way God talks to you will not be the same as the way He talks to me, because we are not the same people. I don't see life in the same way you do, because my experiences and perceptions are different from yours. But there are things we can use as guidelines to make sure that we are truly hearing His voice instead of our own voice (based on our desires) or, even worse, the voice of the enemy.

First, and most important, we need to ask the Lord to guide us in our lives and decisions and then expect that He will actually answer. If we don't believe He will answer, we won't be listening and will always miss His answers. Whether that answer is His still small voice in our hearts, or an unexplained and unexpected circumstance, or a friend coming with a word of wisdom, etc., we will miss it because we aren't listening.

Second, and also extremely important, is that God will not ask you to do something that is contrary to His Word. If you feel like God has asked you to murder, or steal, or gossip, or act maliciously or out of revenge, or anything else that is contrary to what He taught, then that “leading” is not from God, however it is presented.

Third, we need to be spending time with Him. The better we know Him, the better we will recognize His voice. Just as two people who have been happily married for many, many years know each other well enough that a simple look can convey the same message as a whole conversation would have in the beginning of their relationship, so also our relationship with the Lord should be growing closer and more intimate the longer we know Him. If we don't spend any time with Him, we shouldn't be surprised that we aren't hearing His voice. Every relationship takes time and effort, and our relationship with Him is the most important relationship we will ever have.

Fourth, it takes time. No relationship develops overnight. No marriage begins with two people knowing each other as intimately as is possible. Just because you don't yet feel that you've heard God's voice in your life doesn't mean that you won't. It just means that your relationship needs more work to develop to the point where you can hear His voice. If you haven't asked Him and aren't listening, you won't hear His answer. If you don't know His Word and haven't spent time with Him, you won't know if what you are doing is contrary to His Word or to the leading of His Spirit or not. And just because you don't hear in the same way as someone else you know or have read about, doesn't mean you won't hear from Him in a different way. He knows you intimately regardless of how well you know Him, and He will lead you in the best way for you, irregardless of how He leads someone else.

Now for the part where I share on a more personal note. Many people have questioned us on how we are led by the Lord over the years, and more frequently lately we've had friends directly tell us they don't believe we could be hearing from the Lord because our circumstances are too hard for us to have been obedient to Him. My husband has borne the brunt of this because of his seeming inability to find a job over the past 3 years especially. Irregardless of the fact that there are many people in this position in this country right now, there are other reasons in our case that we know about but have previously tried to ignore.

The truth is that while we have tried to be obedient to the Lord in our lives, there have been a couple of areas where we have tried to keep one foot in the world so to speak. We have sold this to ourselves because we thought that being fully obedient could “hurt someone else's faith because it's too different and therefore might not be loving.” But the absolute truth is, we've been afraid. We've been afraid of losing friends that we care about. We've been afraid of acting without the backing of a specific church or denomination. We've been afraid of being fully honest with ourselves or others about what God has called us to do because we don't understand it all right now or know how to do it.

The truth is, three years ago when Allen's last job at a Children's Home in Idaho ended, the Lord let both of us know separately that this would be the last “regular” job either of us were to have. As far as the how, it is hard to explain specifically how either of us hear from Him as it is different for each of us, but we have tried for many years to use the methods I outlined above. For me personally it is often an impression I feel deeply on my heart, and then I have to go through the methods above to try and test what I've gotten and make sure it is actually from the Lord. I can't speak for what Allen hears, but I can say that throughout the years we have more and more often gotten the exact same thing on the exact same day, and it is often something that neither of us would have desired ourselves.

In this case it was certainly not something either of us desired. We wanted to start the Mission for the disabled we had felt for years the Lord had laid on our hearts, but we were waiting for the right circumstances to start it. We felt we needed the backing of a church and full financial support before we could even consider starting it. After all, that is what many overseas mission boards require before a missionary is ever sent to their chosen field. So until that point, we felt that at least one of us needed a regular job so that we wouldn't hurt anyone's faith by needing the assistance of anyone.

So when we both got this from the Lord, and continued to get it after 40 days of prayer and a type of fasting (I'm not physically capable of a full fast, so we have to give up other things that help us more fully focus on Him besides food), we decided to try doing a business from home since that wouldn't be a “regular job” as we saw it. When that didn't go anywhere despite all our efforts, Allen then wrote a book and published it, thinking maybe that would help us support our family. When that brought in even less income then our failed business attempt, Allen started applying little by little to other “regular” jobs as well, despite the fact we both felt that it was wrong for us. We had people (understandably) thinking that we just didn't want to work, and that our problem was laziness and not a lack of available jobs. And even when Allen started trying to find regular work again despite what we had both gotten from the Lord, the accusations continued because for one reason or another none of the jobs Allen applied for would hire him regardless of how qualified he might be for it.

To make a long story as short as possible, from that time on things seemed to look worse and worse. We didn't understand why nothing was working out, and we both started struggling more and more with depression. Allen started having a harder and harder time waking up in the morning, which made him start to feel like people were right and he must just be lazy, and my health and energy started to suffer again despite our diet and lifestyle changes that had been helping so greatly before. Neither of us wanted to see these things however, and we tried to put on a good face for everyone around us. I was still able to do far more than I had been when I first became ill, so I focused on that while talking with friends and family. I left out the fact that I was still barely able to keep up with very basic day to day chores, and that some days I couldn't do them at all. I thought that would just bring more judgment on us, and as we were already feeling worthless and useless ourselves I didn't feel that I could bear the condemnation of others too. So I tried to only talk with people on my good days, which were starting to become few and far between.

After a couple of years of this, the Lord then directed us to move to Arizona. I didn't want to move to Arizona because I've always struggled with a fear of the desert (having grown up in a town where two large rivers meet), and because we still had no guarantee of work. But things had also changed to where we couldn't stay where we were, and Arizona was the only option that opened to us. So we moved to Arizona hoping that things would finally be different. Allen again started looking for work despite the fact that we both again felt that he was not supposed to get a regular job. But people were watching us, and we didn't want to “do nothing” as we saw it and appear lazy. And again, though Allen got several promising interviews, something always happened where he didn't get the job, and the accusations started again even louder.

Then a couple of months into our stay in Arizona, we were given an RV seemingly out of the blue by a couple we had only met once. This threw us for a loop because a little over two years before both Allen and I had felt that the Lord might ask us to go as missionaries around the U.S. in an RV, but as we didn't have an RV at the time it didn't seem very pressing. We agreed that if the Lord gave us an RV without our seeking one, then yes, we would go where He told us when He told us. But who would ever give us an RV? That would certainly not be normal. So guess what?

So despite everything in us screaming that we were crazy, we let people know that we were actually getting started on the Mission that God had asked us to start years before, and that we were going to get in the RV He gave us and start doing research around the country for that purpose.

As a full account of that journey would take way too long here, I'll just say that the Lord again proved Himself over and over again as He led us from place to place with no visible means of support. I'd be lying if I said we weren't scared to death from time to time as the situations we found ourselves in were completely foreign to anything we were used to, but the Lord was faithful. And then suddenly, part way through what we expected to be our return trip to Arizona, we both felt that it was about time for us to stop. But we had nowhere to go, and didn't know why or how we would stop. So we gave it to the Lord and asked Him to let us know where He wanted us and that He would give us a safe place to be. Within just a few days of this we stopped at one of Allen's relatives' places in Arkansas as we had been invited to visit for a few days. Within an hour or two of arriving, when Allen tried to hook up our power to their power pole outlet, all of our wiring suddenly went up in smoke and Allen had to rush to unplug before the whole RV went up in flames. He was just in time to save the RV itself, but all of the wiring that was connected to the batteries was a melted, nasty mess.

Again, long story short, while both Allen and I were very unhappy about the state of our RV (and our only means of transportation), we both also felt that this is where the Lord wanted us and that this time we weren't supposed to try and fix the RV. We both felt that the Lord wanted us to start a smaller scale version of the bigger Mission here, and that it was time to get started. So in some ways we started to get excited, thinking that within a short time the Lord would provide the land and allow us to get to work on building a smaller version of the Ranch for disabled kids. But instead the situation seemed to get harder and harder again, with no income and winter coming on with us still in the RV with a burned out heater and very little propane left even for cooking on our stove. While the Lord did provide for all of these circumstances right when we needed the most help, the voices of condemnation started again, both inside and out, and Allen started looking for work again despite the same message we had gotten before. And again, though there are a couple of chicken plants in this area that will supposedly hire just about anyone immediately, for some reason Allen couldn't get even them to call him back for work. He was hired on as a sub in a school over 30 miles away, but after a couple weeks of encouragement when they called him several times a week, that too seemed to dry up. And when he finally did get a call at the end of January for work, it was the last straw as the phone service went out seconds into the phone call and refused to come back on, and Allen had just been told the evening before by his uncle that the truck he would usually use for getting to work would be unavailable for several days. So not only could he not get to work, he couldn't even call the school back and let them know what was happening or why he couldn't show up for the day. He became almost inconsolable at this point, and it was quite a while before I was able to let him know what I had been getting from the Lord while all of this was happening.

Suddenly things seemed to make sense. I finally realized that the Lord had been disciplining us, but not for being lazy and not wanting to work. He had been disciplining us because He had already given us a job to do, and we weren't doing it. We were waiting for the circumstances to “line up” just right, and we were panicking and being disobedient to Him when things didn't look the way we expected them to look. We were trying to obey people instead of God. We wanted people to see Allen looking for work because we wanted to fit in with what we felt others expected of us, not because we believed it to be right for our family. So while I am certainly not saying that I think someone having a “regular job” is a bad thing, for us it is wrong because we are being disobedient when trying to do it.

The Lord also let me know that we are looking at all of this in the wrong way. What would we be doing if we had been sent to a foreign field? The first thing would be to learn the language and culture of the people we were working with. We feel called to work with the severely disabled here in this country. So in the same way, the first step is not acquiring land, but learning the language of the people we are trying to reach. We need to learn sign language for starters, not just for the deaf, but also for those who cannot communicate in any other way because of physical and/or mental disability, autism, and for those who are both deaf and blind. We have started doing this now with a book we were able to get a couple of days after the Lord got our attention in this way. We will also need to learn the culture of families here in the U.S. that have children with severe disabilities. I had never thought of it in that way before, but the lifestyle of a family with a severely disabled child would have to be different than a family where everyone is “normal” and healthy, and therefore a different “culture” would be shared among those families that have had to adapt to their child's special needs. We don't yet have the resources, like a vehicle, to go visit hospitals and such to start learning that culture yet, but I know the Lord will provide it when it is time.

We know full well that in deciding to be full-time missionaries here in the U.S. without the backing of a specific church or denomination will raise a lot of eyebrows and cause many people to feel justified in their opinion that we are lazy and just want an excuse not to work. And there is no way they could know just how badly we want to get started on the work we are called to, no matter how hard it may be. But we need to make the choice now whether we are going to fully obey what the Lord has called us to do and act in faith, or whether we're going to continue to try and please people instead of God. The truth is, even though we were trying to please people, it wasn't working anyway. And in being afraid that our friends might condemn us, we backed off and allowed our fear and depression to control our lives and in doing so alienated the very friends we were afraid of losing.

Living in faith and obedience isn't easy, and for all of us there will be a cost if we decide to fully give ourselves to God's will for our lives. That cost will be different for each of us just as the things God has called us to are different, but no one who gives themselves fully to God is choosing the easy way. We each have to count the cost for ourselves, and then decide whether we will pick up our crosses and follow Him or not.

As for me and my house, come what may, we will serve the Lord.

A Ramble About Innocence

My wife really enjoys the Animal Planet channel, and when we had access to it, we would watch program after program on every kind of animal you could imagine. A favorite of mine came to be those programs on the great apes, and especially the ones which displayed their intelligence. I remember watching one about an orangutan which had been taught to use and communicate with American Sign Language. It was truly amazing watching the researcher sitting and “talking” with this orangutan about his love life and actually having an intelligent conversation. I have seen other documentaries on the same kind of experiments being undertaken with chimpanzees and gorillas. There can be no doubt about these animals' innate intelligence, problem solving abilities, and yes, where taught, conversational skills.

Be this as it may, as intelligent as they are they are obviously still, like all animals, innocent regardless of their behavior. It isn't hard to recognize that look in an animal's eye that is so very different from a human being's. I see it every day when I look at our dog, Bel, and the three cats we still have. Bel doesn't know when she's done something morally wrong. She only knows when she's done something I don't want her to do. When she disobeys, she does so because her dominance instincts tell her that I'm somehow no longer in charge of the situation, and as a dog she has to take over to keep things under control. At which point in time, I have to disabuse her of that notion. But to look in her eyes, she has no concept that she's done anything wrong or in error. The same is true of our male cat when he slaps her on her hindquarters when she passes by him.

Another example would be predators in the wild like sharks. When sharks attack, they do so because they're hungry and because that's just what sharks do. They do so, generally, without any intended malice towards their target. Tigers in the wild do the same.

The fact of the matter is that even when chimpanzees form murder gangs or rape their females, they do so without any concept of moral right or wrong. When sharks attack swimmers, they do so because that's what their instincts drive them to do. When dogs viciously attack people, it's because their owners somehow didn't understand the dog's nature and instincts, or because the owners twisted the dog to do so. All of this can be observed just by watching the eyes of the animal.

From my reading and study of both Scripture and science, it is obvious that there was a time, hundreds of thousands of years ago, when human beings were much the same. There is evidence of both brutal savagery, and also great feeling and compassion among our innocent Homo Erectus ancestors, and those ancestors of our which reach farther back. They continued in pretty much the same way along their path of evolution for hundreds of thousands of years.

And then something changed between fifty and a hundred thousand years ago. Our ancestors and their cousins, the Neanderthal and others, started to wear clothing. They started to use more than just the basic stone tools of their ancestors. There is evidence they started to murder in cold blood. Our ancestors began to wipe out their cousins over food and resources. Much later on, between ten and five thousand years ago they started to develop agriculture, towns, metal working, and all the fundamental roots of civilization as though almost out of nowhere and very near the ancient headwaters of the Eupharates and the Tigris rivers, along with the Guyhun and the Uizon, in modern Iran and Georgia.

The truth is that Scripture and science don't disagree about what happened to mankind, just the chronology of it, and that's largely due to the interpretation of either or both. But one thing they do certainly agree on is that at one time, Adam (which just means “human being” in Hebrew) was just as innocent as the chimpanzee that rapes and murders, the shark that rips through swimmers, and my little dog that has the intelligence of a three year old but is also, instinctually, a lethal predator.

Innocence doesn't mean “not guilty” as much as it means having no concept of morality. It means to act on one's instincts alone without the voice of conscience telling you to restrain yourself. It means to act in a certain way because that is what you are, not because it is right. It is neither a “good” state of being, nor a “bad” one. The only beings concerned with “good” and “evil” are human beings who are obsessed with these concepts because of what happened to Adam as a whole, twisting the minds of an otherwise innocent species of primate whom God chose to shape into His image and likeness. And image and likeness which, it should be pointed out, never included a distinction between “good” and “evil.”

The animal world is often characterized as savage, and yet this savage equilibrium which lasted for millions if not billions of years was declared “good” by God. The primitive and at times savage amoral behavior of our ancestors was also declared “good” by God for the hundreds of thousands of years in which they retained their amoral innocence. It was only after they developed the sense that some things were “good” and others were “evil” that everything began to fall apart into a downward spiral, and it has done so in less than one tenth the entire time that our hominid race has existed from the time we walked upright on two legs.

I have heard far too many well intentioned Bible preachers speculate on what Biblical innocence meant. Much of the time it sounds more fanciful than many science fiction and fantasy writers I have read. They often make the Biblical Adam sound as self-righteous and as pompous as themselves. What they cannot seem to fathom is that our sense of “right” and “wrong”, far from being the thing which makes us most like the image of God (which was the original lie to begin with), is in fact a kind of mental and spiritual illness or delusion with which all of Adam's descendants are afflicted. There was a reason why we were declared “good” without it, and why it brought the death penalty on Adam and his descendants when we acquired it. It will in fact be the death of Adam and this whole planet with him as we destroy each other, ourselves, and our habitat because of our twisted sense of what is “good” and what is “evil.”

Our only salvation is in fact Jesus Christ and what He taught. Not singing about Him. Not debating about the finer points of Scripture, or ridiculous, ignorant arguments about whether the Earth is 6000 years old or 4 billion years old. It is only in the person, teachings, presence, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. It isn't found in well dressed Sunday preachers teaching someone else's interpretation of Holy Scripture. It isn't found in sitting in a pew on Sundays taking the Sacraments because that's what everyone else is doing. It is in engaging with, experiencing, and obeying Jesus Christ that we may be deified together with Him and escape the self-destruction of Adam.

A Ramble About Self-Pity

I recently watched “G.I. Jane” all the way through. I attempted it once years ago when a buddy of mine and I rented the videotape from Blockbuster (I did say it was years ago), but we got stopped about halfway through, although I don't now remember why. All things considered, I actually enjoyed it. Demi Moore did a great job (in my humble opinion), and I always like Viggo Mortensen. He's a great diverse actor.

For those who don't know, “G.I. Jane” is a movie about a woman who becomes part of a special pilot program for the US Navy to integrate women into combat roles. As part of a scheme to have the first test case fail, the senior members of the Department of the Navy choose to accept a woman into SEAL CRT training, assuming she won't last the first week because it has a 60% dropout rate as it stands (I think the movie quoted the figure a little low. My understanding of SEAL training is that it is much higher, 70-80%.) What they don't count on is the insistence of the woman on no double standards, she competes with the same rules as the men, and that the woman in question refuses to give up and quit. She eventually wins the respect of her hostile male instructors and crewmates and makes it through.

As I watched it through the first time, I kept feeling like I needed to understand something from it. Maybe the Lord doesn't use movies and TV shows to get points across to you, but I'm weird that way. After I finished watching it, I knew there was a lesson I was supposed to get from it, but I couldn't quite put it into words. I felt like I was missing something, so I asked my wife to watch it with me so that I could get her input on it. She enjoyed it too.

I've heard and seen a number of things on Navy SEAL training. I know enough to know I'd never make it through it even on my ridiculously best day. The first week, Hell week, is notoriously, insanely difficult. The candidates aren't allowed to sleep but for a couple of hours the entire week. They're beaten, punished, pushed, shot at, nearly drowned, and frozen. They're made to run obstacle courses with live ammunition and explosives going off around them (yes, people have been killed during SEAL training). They're made to stay awake writing legible essays while listening to music intended to make them fall asleep and punished if their eyes close (remember, they haven't slept in days). The rest of the three months of training isn't much better. It's all done to give them a realistic taste of what it means to be a Navy SEAL and what they can expect in terms of the kinds of missions they're called on to carry out.

The person who goes into it believing that he's going to breeze right through or is only focused on how cool it's going to be to be a SEAL is the person that rings the bell and quits within the first week, and the instructors are happy to have him leave. These instructors are not encouraging. They are not friendly. They are not helpful. They are not trying to get everyone, or even anyone through the course. They are gleeful when someone quits on the first day, because this is the person they don't want as a SEAL. They know that they can't rely on this kind of a person in the extreme conditions of SEAL operations, and they certainly don't want to have to find out that he's going to tuck tail and run when they're under fire.

There's a free verse poem by Emerson that the Command Master Sergeant quotes at the beginning of the movie and you see it again at the very end. It goes something like, “I never saw a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A bird will freeze and fall down to the ground dead without ever feeling sorry for itself.” His point in quoting this, I believe, was that no one could be a SEAL who felt sorry for himself. It was when a person gave in to their self-pity and began feeling sorry for themselves that they went into the downward spiral and quit the program. It is also the person who begins to feel sorry for himself that drags his teammates with him. The person who feels sorry for themselves can't be trusted to see an operation through to its success.

Self-pity also ruins disciples of Jesus Christ. Like any other focus on one's self it blinds the person to Jesus Christ and begins to wither him away from His uncreated energies. It sets the disciple up to quit when things get difficult, and like the Navy SEAL, things are supposed to be difficult for the disciple of Jesus Christ. We are supposed to suffer with Him. We are supposed to be pounded on, punished, rejected, laughed at, and ridiculed by those who aren't. Jesus said as much. It becomes questionable when a disciple isn't treated badly for following Christ. He didn't sugarcoat it. In fact, He was so explicit at times that many of His disciples turned away from Him and stopped following Him, ringing the bell so to speak. Those who didn't, but went on to carry the gospel throughout the known world almost to a man died for it in grotesque ways. St. John wasn't martyred, but it wasn't for lack of trying. They were beaten, stoned, thrown into prison, crucified, beheaded, thrown to lions as a spectator sport, burned like living torches, and underwent other more imaginative tortures. According to ancient writings and eyewitnesses, they did it with songs, praises, and prayers on their lips.

It does no good for the Christian to complain about his suffering. He or she has chosen to follow Jesus Christ. Following Jesus Christ assumes that you will suffer as He suffered. Jesus Himself made no attempt to hide this fact and stated it openly and plainly. He spoke no parable when describing it. When you choose Jesus Christ you choose to pick up the cross, the most painful and humiliating death known, and live as He did.

Anyone who attempts to convince you that Christianity or being a disciple of Jesus is otherwise or means something else has no idea what he's talking about. Anyone who doesn't explain this when evangelizing or trying to disciple new converts is not preaching Jesus but his own misguided error. You cannot attain to the resurrection without the suffering and death of the cross. This is the first and most important principle of discipleship.

This suffering can and will take many different forms as you come under attack from visible and invisible opponents. It may be obvious that you are suffering because of your discipleship. This is the easiest kind of suffering to take. But the more common is when it is less obvious. This is when suffering happens to you that doesn't appear to be directly related to your faith in Christ, or doesn't appear to be because someone is in direct opposition to your faith in Christ. You may suffer because of choices you've made because of your faith. You and those around you may suffer because of unseen enemies playing havoc with your lives to distract you and pull you away from your pursuit of Christ because of the pain the suffering causes. They do not stop. Ever. God pulls them off for a little while when they get to be more than you can handle, but He doesn't keep them off of you forever. That would be counter-productive to His purposes for you.

Suffering itself isn't even the issue. It's our aversion to suffering and attachment to pleasure, or conversely the attachment to suffering and aversion to pleasure, which becomes the problem. Suffering is a normal part of life, and doubly so for the disciple of Jesus Christ. It is what we sign up for. To be averse to it, to complain about it, to run from it does absolutely no good, and can do the greater harm to us and those around us as we avoid obedience to Christ for fear of it. At the same time, inviting suffering or deliberately causing it isn't good either. It will come of its own accord willingly and without effort. Navy SEALs endure immense suffering in order to accomplish their mission objectives, but they don't deliberately seek it when they don't have to. Neither should we. I should here add that pleasure is also a part of life, and it will come of its own accord as well if we are able to recognize it. Deliberately attempting to remain in or remain away from either condition is an extreme which should probably be avoided by Christ's disciples.

Suffering is necessary for the Christian to progress in his discipleship as he learns to identify with Christ through his suffering. Self will rebel hard against it. This is normal. You will grow angry, depressed, resentful, and bitter if you do not accept and hold on to this understanding that identification with Christ through the sufferings that are heaped upon you involuntarily are there to bring you closer to Him and not farther from. Self-indulgence and pleasure-seeking are counter-productive to following Jesus Christ and can open bad gateways to falling away from Him little by little until you and He don't know each other anymore. The mentality which we must maintain is to expect suffering, come to terms with it, and just push through towards Jesus Christ.

SEALS train the way they do because the kind of suffering they experience during their training is at least comparable to what they will experience on their operations, and, like Jesus, their instructors don't hide the suffering from them. They explain it to them as realistically as possible. Jesus Himself gave us the example of His own life and His own torturous death on the cross to contemplate in no uncertain terms. Like the SEALS, we must go into it expecting that suffering is what we signed up for and not be surprised when it comes. There is no such thing as a Navy SEAL who doesn't suffer in some way during his training and during his field operations. In the same way, there's no such thing as a disciple of Jesus Christ who doesn't suffer throughout his or her life just as He did. It's either voluntary or not, but the suffering will be there to mark the disciple. Those who do not suffer, do not follow Christ.

A Ramble about Being Annoying

Have you ever felt like you annoyed people? More to the point, have you ever kept your distance from people to make sure that you didn't annoy them? Most people can pretty much tell when they've outstayed their welcome, and know instinctively when to back off. It's actually quite the gift, in my opinion, to be able to read people in this way, and it's something which the majority of people in this world unjustifiably take for granted.

Having spent the majority of my life living with Asperger's, I've also spent most of my life not being able to instinctively know when my presence is not wanted. After my treatments, it is a gift that I now never take for granted. But throughout most of my life, I just came to assume that my presence wasn't welcome unless it was directly stated, and even then I felt like I could never be certain, and so even when people would encourage me in this way, because I could not read them, after a little while I would try to politely keep my distance in some way.

This morning, as I drifted on the edge between conscious and unconscious thought, I realized I was doing this same thing with God. I had been so conditioned throughout my life to keep my distance and to not be an unintentional nuisance to people that I have been unconsciously doing the same thing with God. Somewhere on the edge of my conscious thought, the enemy has been whispering something like, “don't get too close. You don't want to annoy Him until He tells you to leave.”

The lie to this is that He won't ever tell me to leave if I continuously call on Him, and bug Him, and talk to Him, and so on. It would run completely contrary to His “treatment plan” for not only myself, but everyone. In order for us to achieve union with Him, we must draw closer to Him and stay close to Him, not politely keep our distance. He knows this, and He wants this for everyone, including me. The explicit command of Jesus Christ was “Remain in Me” and He went on to spell out what happened if a person didn't, and what was possible if a person did. I know all these things, but no one gets over decades of conditioning overnight.

Part of my hesitancy to draw closer to Him is also simple, or not so simple fear of relationship because of my Asperger's past. It's nowhere near as apparent or as strong as it was, but I realized today that it is still there. It is a fear of not knowing what to do or how to act. It is a fear of not understanding how to just be around and enjoy someone else's presence. Relationships are awkward and uncomfortable at best, even if they're what you might want most in the world.

As I look back, it has been almost five years now since my treatments. I had thought I was past all of these things, but the truth is that they are still deeply embedded and ingrained into my psyche even if there are no “physical” reasons for them. They're there because they are the ways I was conditioned to think by my disorder and how the people around me reacted to my disorder, and even if they no longer affect my relationships with other people as much, they do still affect my relationship with God more than I realized.

This isn't something which can be fixed overnight, but must be changed through reconditioning, and this takes time. God knows this, and I know He isn't impatient with my apparent lack of progress. As long as I continue to try and make progress He continues to encourage and push me farther. As long as I continue to move towards Him and not away from Him, He's good with it. He knows me. He created me and has intimate knowledge of every particle, pathway, impulse, and dimension of my existence.

But there is always the voice. Not the still, small voice, but either the unconscious whisper or the alarm bell yelling in my mind that continues to tell me lies that I have been conditioned to drift towards my whole life. I consciously or unconsciously expect a certain reality and the demon reinforces it with its lies. As a result, I begin to warp my own reality by my assent to the belief which the demon is reinforcing with its lie. The Fathers of the Philokalia described this as well. Demons will tell you what you want to hear or what you're afraid to hear and you believe it thus making it the reality you experience regardless of actual reality.

I am reminded, in some ways, of the ways in which the “Mist” is described in the recent Rick Riordan book, “The House of Hades.” The easiest and most effective way, this book reveals, to manipulate the Mist (the unseen field which warps the reality of ordinary mortals, demigods, and sometimes immortals so that they don't see the reality of the supernatural world around them), is to try and make someone believe that what they expect to happen, what they want to happen, or what they are afraid will happen is happening.

Fighting this constant manipulation by the unseen, unbalanced, and malevolent powers is long, tiresome, and never ending work. It requires knowing yourself and not being afraid to really examine what you are actually believing, what your actual desires are, and not being afraid to delve into the dark, sometimes very dark parts of who you are because these are the parts of yourself that contain the things you don't want to think about and don't want to believe about yourself and so you ignore them. Don't delude yourself into thinking that the enemy ignores them too. These are the places demons read like best selling novels, and then repeats back to you as “facts”. This is why those same Fathers of the desert were adamant in their admonitions to guard your heart and mind, and to never let down that guard.

Even knowing this, it's ridiculously easy to do. Distractions from prayer and spiritual devotions, mental and emotional exhaustion, and so on all tend to wear you down until you let down your guard and the enemy takes full advantage with little lies, or big ones dressed up as your fondest wishes or worst nightmares. Giving your assent to them warps your reality further until you can no longer sense His presence because you no longer believe He wants anything to do with you and belief (which produces action) is everything in this very high stakes game. Thus the reason why Jesus gave the command “Remain in Me,” and the reason why demons focus all of their attacks on keeping you from doing it.

Always remember what the Apostle John wrote in his first letter. If we make confession, He will forgive. If we turn our movement away from Him around into movement towards Him He will rejoice and run towards us. Be watchful. Be mindful. Stay alert. These are the things the demons don't want you doing.

A Ramble About "I Can't"

Exhausted. That's what I feel right now. That's what we all feel right now. It's been raining on and off for days now, and we've been pretty well confined to the inside of the RV, only running outside when we have to feed the outdoor dogs or check on them. This exhaustion runs deep. It runs down to the very core of my strength, mind, emotions, and spirit.

All of the impossible challenges which have been thrown at us have taken their toll, and my fear reaction is also exhausted to the point where new difficulties and dangers are looked within with a sad calmness because I know deep within myself there's nothing I can do about them.

I am at the point now where “I can't” is becoming ingrained deeply into my psyche. All of my bravado is spent and gone, and any real courage I had before is itself also completely spent. I now understand what Watchman Nee described in The Normal Christian Life with his illustration of the drowning man and the strong swimmer on the shore waiting until he is exhausted from his struggling to save himself before he dives in and pulls him to safety. This is where I'm at right now.

I've known for years, decades, from reading different spiritual and mystic authors that the key to living a “Normal Christian Life” was total surrender and giving up. That is, recognizing that your own strength is totally inadequate and giving up the use of it. But it is one thing to read about it and attempt to put it into practice on your own (which is oxymoronic in and of itself), and quite another for the Lord to drive you there, as He must. I have now learned that you cannot reach this point of exhaustion of your own volition to where you give up on your own. God has to drive you to it. He has to create the conditions of your “drowning” so that you wear yourself out and finally give up. You can't do even this.You can't even come to full surrender on your own no matter how much you think you can or have. All you can do is tell God you're willing, ask Him to do it, and then brace yourself. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I know I've reached the point where I know I can do nothing, absolutely nothing. It's actually kind of funny to see these words as I write them and know that they're true and not just some kind of spiritual hubris. I also know that I can't even keep up in prayer for all the things which need to be done which I can't do. Most days, the prayer which forms in my mind most often is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” or just, “God have mercy.”

There's a certain resentment that builds with this exhaustion. There's a certain bitterness which creeps in. But I know that this bitterness is a fruit of the false prosperity teaching which had infiltrated the beliefs and practices of the Christianity of my youth. It was never so explicit as such, but there was still the idea that if you had chosen to serve the Lord that somehow you would be well taken care of and lead a somewhat middle-class life with good employment. I know better than that now. I've known better than that for a while. But it has also allowed me to identify this lingering lie which lay buried in the back of my mind. Somehow I had expected things to resolve into “better” circumstances than these. But this is not what Jesus taught, nor told us to expect.

It is a fascinating feeling, this calmness of exhaustion. There is an odd sort of peace about it, like accepting and waiting for death. Which, I know, is the whole point of God driving me to it. Acknowledging and accepting my death with Him. I can do so of my own volition a thousand times over, but it doesn't really happen until I am driven to it.

As a final thought on this subject, this is where we all must be driven if we are to be disciples of Jesus Christ. We must all individually be driven to this exhaustion where we accept our death calmly. It is then, and only then, that we stop fighting for our own selves and with our own selves.It is only then that pride and self-esteem cease; when avarice loses its hold on us; and when our facing Him in judgment never leaves our mind's eye.

This exhaustion is a necessary step in the path of Jesus Christ, but it is one which will leave you permanently scarred, and and a step from which you can never recover.

Another Rant

Today, if you will forgive me, I'm going to just rant in a rambling way. This is just some things which I've already talked about before blurted out in no particular coherent way. I will eventually return to coherent, meaningful rambling.

How do you start a church without setting it up in opposition to other churches around it (sheep stealing), without turning it into just another denomination (which no one needs), or without coming under the authority of an existing denomination (which automatically presumes the first problem)? Not too long ago I posted a kind of statement of faith for the pre-Nicene Church gleaned from the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. This was the Church which was the immediate successor to the Apostolic Church and the one which all other Churches and denominations were ultimately born from. If we were to start a church governed by this same statement of faith as this original church, we would likely be be accused of heresy and of starting a cult (something of which one person has already accused me in a separate matter in private) regardless of its original and ancient legitimacy.

The more my wife and I wrestle with these questions, the more my head begins to hurt. How do you make disciples of Jesus Christ, not just pew warmers and lip-servers, but real disciples of Jesus Christ without running into all of this nonsense? How do you teach the primitive faith and discipline of the Church without someone calling you a heretic because it's not “Scriptural” (which definition varies from church to church anyway). And of course, you can't explain to them that this concept of Scripture Only comes from a teaching which is less than five hundred years old and was unknown to the ancient, pre-Nicene Church. They don't want to hear that, and will refuse to listen (many also don't want to hear that the Scriptures were not written in Elizabethan English, but I digress). They certainly don't want to hear that the Bible of the first century and most of the second was the Greek translation of the Old Testament which included all the “Catholic” books not found in their modern Bibles, and the collected writings of Paul and what copies of the gospels they happened to be able to obtain. Many included extra writings in their canon such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. “Scripture Only” under these conditions was neither practical nor possible. I digress further as I rant.

The truth is that we want to practice what Jesus taught, and to teach others to do the same. To be disciples ourselves first, and to disciple others. This is really what He told us, all of us, to do. The more I observe of the Church in the United States, regardless of the denomination, the more I'm coming to believe that it is actually set up in such a way as to try to make this as difficult as possible, if not outright impossible, without causing conflict and damage to people's faith.

Many (if not most) pastors and churches are predominantly concerned with advancing on of three things: their own personal position and power, the amount of money coming into their church, or the position and power of their denomination. Any attempt to bring people together for discipleship automatically draws the suspicion and ire of the existing churches and pastors who believe the person doing so only does so with these motives in mind, and in order to undercut their own positions. The truth is that preachers and pastors can be more ruthless in their pursuit of grandeur than some of the Roman emperors my kids are learning about for their history lessons. It's sick, and it causes all kinds of damage to those who come to them in faith wanting to be discipled and find a real church community. Many leave the churches because of it, disillusioned and more broken than when they came.

Further, starting a single church in a single area doesn't really solve the problem (and in many ways it just contributes to it). The problem itself, among other things, is the sectarianism and denominationalism which divides the Church up into little kingdoms, democracies, or despotisms. It's not about following Jesus Christ as much as it seems to be control and the enforcement of one set of (mostly minor) doctrinal beliefs over another.

Christianity is, must be, more than this. The first priority of a disciple of Jesus Christ is, and must be, following the rule of life which He taught. The truth is that this obedience is the highest form of worship and the only form of worship which really matters in the long view. In many places in the Scriptures, this is what God Himself says, and Jesus says again, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” In the writings of the Prophets, God says again and again that He can't stand it when people come to Him singing songs and offering sacrifices when they refuse to obey and live the way He told them to. He can't stand it. He can't stand the sight or the smell of it. He actually tells them to stop offering the burnt offerings and sacrifices because of it. Wealthy people flaunting their wealth and oppressing the poor who come to “worship” absolutely revolt and disgust Him (not a good position to be in, by the way). He allows nations to collapse and be destroyed because of it.

What is truly the point of participating in the Sacraments if you yourself are not a disciple, baptized or not? Can your faith save you if you refuse to obey and don't take Jesus Christ seriously? Is it really faith at all or just an act? Can your profession of faith hold any salvific value if you treat His teaching cavalierly? Do you really believe that telling everyone that you're saved means anything if you don't do what He said? In what way have you achieved salvation through Jesus Christ if you flaunt your disobedience and deny Him through your actions?

Christianity is not about going to church on Sundays (or Saturdays, depending on your persuasion or schedule). It has nothing to do with it. It has little to do with sitting and listening to a preacher for an hour (or half an hour if you're lucky). It has absolutely nothing to do with arguing someone else into taking or position on a minor theological point. Christianity is, first and foremost, the worship of God through the obedience of faith to Jesus Christ. It is binding yourself as a committed disciple of the practices taught and demonstrated by Jesus Christ. Those who refuse to do this are not disciples. Those who refuse to love are not disciples. Those who refuse to forgive are not disciples. Those who refuse to renounce everything and follow Him are not disciples. In short, those who do not live like disciples of Jesus Christ, are not disciples of Jesus Christ and are therefore not Christians at all.

So, back to my original question. I suppose my real question is “How do we correct this mess?” It is a question which has lain on my heart for a long time in one form or another. I have learned the hard way that no one denomination or church can or will contribute to it without excluding all others and making the problem worse. Another church or denomination can't be started without becoming part of the problem no matter how well intentioned.

As I think about it, perhaps the real problem is that Christians have stopped taking responsibility for their own progress in salvation. They've stopped taking responsibility for their own discipleship and instead have put their faith, not in Jesus Christ and what He taught, but in these pastors, church leaders, denominations, and so on.

Well, I think I'm done ranting for the moment. It's not much that I haven't said before in some way. Unfortunately, I don't think it leads me to a solution any more than I was at when I started. I do know this, however. If we continue down this path, we will, as a Church, grow farther and farther away from our Lord until He no longer knows who we are. The answers to these questions lie in individual responsibility and the willingness to obey Him. Otherwise, it really doesn't matter which church you attend, because it will be self-deceptive and pointless.