A Ramble About Unification

Have you ever had one of those eureka moments? One of those moments of insight which seems to bring everything together, and suddenly the problem which you've constantly had in the back of your head churning away just resolves itself, and then you wonder why, when the answer was so simple, that it didn't present itself to you before?

I kind of had a moment like that this morning as I was cooking breakfast. I was frying up some potatoes, onions and eggs in a wok, with the intent of adding rice and diced tomatoes. At the time I was thnking of a conversation I had just had with my daughter the night before. We were discussing a book which had been given to us by the church we had been attending, and now because of what that book revealed about the church's beliefs chose to no longer attend. I had told her that I didn't want her to read that book, and was now having to explain why. I very rarely forbid my kids from reading different books from different faiths, and so my forbidding her to do so was very out of place. As a result, we had a very long conversation.

I had told my kids last night a simple truth; being right isn't nearly as important as being compassionate. Loving one another is what Jesus taught and commanded His disciples to do. Throughout his epistles, St. Paul continuously hammers home the need for fellow disciples to keep their “knowledge” to themselves and be tolerant of differences of practice and opinion and to practice love for one another. One of the worst things in his mind was to see a local church torn apart by sectarianism and factions. “Is Christ divided?” He asks the Corinthians.

A divided church is the norm today. It's the rule and not the exception. In many ways, the rampant factionalism of different sects, denominations, and independent churches is the nightmare which St. Paul was trying to prevent in the Corinthian church. It's an embarrassment to Christ, and no movement, no new church or doctrine or theology has been able to slow it down, but only makes it worse.

The worse part about it is when the different churches and denominations refuse to accept fellow disciples from other churches or denominations as fellow disciples and Christians. It is a mockery of Jesus Christ when a fellow baptized believer comes into a church and is told that, not only may he not take part in the holy communion, but he is forever condemned to hell unless he repents and joins that church, not because of any specific sin or lack of devotion on his part, but because he was not originally baptized in that church. Such was the case with the aforementioned book which I wouldn't allow my daughter to read, and the reason why we no longer attend that church.

Why is the church so divided? In a nutshell, it's so I can be right, and you wrong, or vice-versa. It's because our sin disorder, the spiritual illness (as opposed to mental or physical) which we all share, feeds on “this is right and that is wrong” with those things being designated right and wrong often completely arbitrary and capricious. The most basic proof of this was that the first thing human beings decided was “morally wrong” was being naked in spite of the fact that every other creature on the planet was and remains naked and this is how God, who declared His creation good as it was, created us.

St. Paul wrote that “all things are lawful for me, but not all things are edifying. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” That is, nothing is “wrong” for him to do, but not everything is helpful and there are a great many things which are harmful, both to himself and to others. St. Paul knew and wrote in this passage and in Romans chapter seven that it is when we designate something “right” and something else “wrong” that the sin disorder becomes active. It feeds on it and becomes stronger. When we have to be “right”, we are actually feeding the disorder.

So, what was my eureka moment this morning? It is simply this, denominationalism and sectarianism will themselves cease and fail on their own if we adhere to the principle that being compassionate is more important than being right, and focus on our own discipleship instead of enforcing our theologies on others. When we all only focus on our own practice of faith and relationship with God through Christ, remembering that love is more important than being right, then the Church will be unified, and not before.

Why is this? Because denominationalism and sectarianism can only exist when we keep those barriers and divisions between ourselves. If we count them as no longer important enough to defend, then those borders and barriers will fall and so will the divisions between us if, and only if we place our care, tolerance, and compassion for one another as more important than whether or not we are “right” about things we can neither see nor touch nor hear. And this was exactly what St. Paul himself taught when he wrote to the Corinthians about the schisms which had grown up among them.

The divisions within the Church of Jesus Christ exist only so long as we want them to. When we no longer want them to, then, and only then will the Church be unified.

A Ramble About Jesus Christ

As I was looking at my Facebook news feeds lately, I saw several mentions of a new movie about the life of Christ called “Son of God.” I haven't seen it myself, but from what I've read, it is made up of extended clips from “The Bible” miniseries which aired on The History Channel not that long ago. I have heard this film being accused of everything from New Age teaching to outright heresy by those who haven't bothered to see it (hmm, sounds familiar from a number of things), and I have, myself defended its creators because I don't agree with denouncing something of this nature without at least seeing it for yourself. Personally, I wasn't that impressed with “The Bible” miniseries, and from a cinematic viewpoint don't understand why they thought it was a great idea to put the Gospel section of it into the theaters. I wouldn't have thought it was of sufficient quality to merit a theater release, not like Gibson's “Passion of the Christ” which is the de facto standard par excellence for movies about Jesus as far as I'm concerned. But that's my humble opinion. I suspect that it was because it only took 22 million to make, and even a modest showing in the theaters was guaranteed to make a profit. Yes, I'm just a little cynical when it comes to Hollywood and studio executives.

The chief complaint I saw on Facebook, after the critical parties saw the film in question was that it didn't do enough to evangelize people. That is, it didn't do enough to explain Jesus' death as a propitiary sacrifice for sins. For a Gospel film, it didn't present the Gospel as they understood it, instead only presenting the life, teachings, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

The flaw in this understanding is the belief that the Gospel only entails one aspect of one part of who and what Jesus Christ is. That our whole existence as Christians is limited to a specific doctrine about Him without understanding which we cannot truly be called Christians.

Jesus Christ our Lord does not just play a part in the Gospel. The Gospel is not about Jesus Christ. The Gospel is Jesus Christ. He is our good news, and not just one part of His life. Not just one teaching about Him. All of Him. Everything about Him, and more; the Man Himself. He did not command us to remain or stay put in only one teaching about Him, He commanded us to remain in Him as branches remain on a vine. You cannot dissect Jesus Christ and say that only this part is important, or only that part is truly important. He is one Savior, one Lord, and one God through whom all of heaven and earth was created.

One of the greatest truths I've found whether in writing or preaching a homily is this: if I try to give my opinions on subjects, if I stray off to focus on this specific doctrine or that tidbit of speculation, anything I say loses its power and falls flat. It doesn't matter how well I prepare, or how much I study for it, or how much evidence I have to back up my claims. But if I focus on Jesus Christ, who He is and what He taught and did, then there is power behind it, not mine but His. And this is because the Gospel is the power of God to those who believe, and Jesus Christ Himself is the Gospel.

When we share the Gospel, we share Jesus Christ. When we preach the Gospel, we preach Jesus Christ. When we share or preach Catholic dogma or Reformation dogma or Evangelical Bible dogma we are not sharing or preaching the Gospel. We are not giving Jesus Christ to people. We are trying to make them Catholics or Protestants or Bible Evangelicals. In order to disciple people we must teach them Jesus, we must be Jesus for them, we must be connected to Him and allow Him to flow through us to them. Jesus Himself said as much when He said “without Me you can do nothing,” and “anyone not remaining in Me is cast out... and is dried up and thrown onto the fire where they are burned.”

Jesus Christ is the Gospel. He is the love of God made flesh, and the power of God for salvation to all who believe. Jesus Christ, not our endless speculations and theologies whose only purpose are to give our minds something to latch on to so that we can grasp the ungraspable. And it is all too easy to let go of Him in order to chase down some trivial piece of doctrine which may or may not reflect absolute reality which our human minds can't process to begin with.

Whatever its faults, this latest life of Christ movie has one thing going for it, as I understand it. It does nothing more or less than show the Gospel, Jesus Christ our Lord. And this, ultimately, is the most important thing it can do.

A Ramble About My Religion

When my kids were little and we were living with my mom in Southern California, a couple of Mormon missionaries came to the door one day. It was a really hot day, and they had been out “on patrol” riding their trademark bikes in their trademark white shirts and black ties. Mormons may be accused of many things, but they will always be snappy dressers. They were sweating profusely and obviously hot, so I invited them in for something to drink. I think I gave them either water or lemonade, and if nothing else I figured they could use some time in air conditioning, otherwise they might have dropped from heat exhaustion. After allowing them to give their normal schpiel, and politely refusing to inquire more—I had, by that point in time already, studied out the Book of Mormon and the Mormon Church quite thoroughly—they finished their drinks, cooled down a bit, and we parted on friendly terms.

Does this shock you? Why? This is nothing less than what Jesus taught. In some ways, this action of hospitality to missionaries of a known heretical sect brings us to the core of what Jesus taught and what the path of Jesus Christ is all about. And yet, I know for a fact that my action would be considered both shocking and offensive to many “Christians” and probably denounced as “giving aid to the enemy.” At one time, I would have been the one doing the denouncing.

The word “religion” comes from a Latin word meaning “to bind” and as such can be defined as “that practice of faith with which one binds oneself” regardless of the theology underlying that practice of faith. I have said, or at least inferred before that regardless of the denomination, we as Christians are not all different religions. We are different denominations of the same religion, that which follows Jesus Christ. What I am coming to understand though, is that while we all profess to be Christian, we are not all of the same religion. There are in fact, two distinctly different religions which occur across denominations which lay claim to the name Christian, though it is clear to me that only one can rightfully do so.

In no particular order, the first is a religion to which being right and holding fast to the “truth” is the most important thing. It is a religion which holds fast to its own theologies and liturgical practices and makes the rigid claim that one can only have the hope of heaven through its strictures, and its strictures alone. Those who hold to this religion will go to any lengths to convert people to it, and make strict judgments about those who don't follow it to their specifications. In my experience, this religion destroys all those who either don't make the grade, or challenges the “truths” which it holds so dear. I don't need to mention a denominational name, because there are just as many Baptists as there are Catholics, just as many Evangelicals as there are Church of Christ members, just as many Eastern Orthodox as there are Anglicans who belong to this religion, as I shamefully once did.

The second is a religion which, though holding to its theological principles, is more concerned with being compassionate and showing lovingkindness to others than it is about forcing them to accept its own version of the truth. This religion holds no opinions about who is and who is not going to hell, leaving those judgments to God. This religion is about loving others as Christ loved us and commanded us to do. This religion is willing to accept another professing Christian of a different set of theologies as a brother or sister, even if the person disagrees on many points, based solely on their mutual belief in Jesus Christ and practice of His teachings. This religion refuses to be judgmental. Again, denominational names are not important, as there are just as many of us who belong to this religion in one flavor of Christianity as there are in another.

I suppose I should also throw in a third religion, that of the chronic pew warmer who comes to church, whichever denomination it may be, listens to the sermon, figures he's put in his time and does whatever he likes during the week. No, this person really can't be called “Christian”, but then he can't really be called anything because he doesn't actually bother to learn enough about the teachings of the denomination he's chosen to honestly say he believes it. These tend to make up the bulk of most churches in the United States, and it is largely for these folks that pastors tend to lose heart and leave the ministry, believe it or not.

The fact of the matter is that those who practice the first religion are not in fact practicing the faith of Jesus Christ, but are instead directly disobeying or ignoring what He taught. These cannot be called Christians in any proper sense of the word because they are not Christlike in the slightest. Rather than adding people to the Church and building them up in the faith they are taking those who inquire and either make them twice the sons of hell that they are, or they destroy them as a threat to their own version of the “truth.” Those who practice the second religion are often under attack by those who practice the first as being too liberal or wishy washy. Somehow they are too shallow, or don't really understand the faith at all.

This is nonsense.

The religion with which Jesus taught to bind ourselves is that of voluntary poverty, lovingkindness, self-sacrifice, non-judgment, and compassion for all others. One who binds himself with a religion of defending theologies and liturgical practices is not practicing the religion of Jesus Christ. Theological structures have their place in giving us something to work with in interacting with and experiencing God as He wants to be experienced by us. But they must be approached with the humility which says that the human mind is unable to know things it cannot sense or experience with absolute certainty. They must also be approached with the common sense that says details such as whether or not one uses liturgy, instruments, or acappella singing in worship is of absolutely no consequence to their eternal salvation. Obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His life, teachings, death, resurrection, and ascension, this is what matters to one's eternal salvation; not the structure of his worship service.

I hope that people would be able to say of me that my religion was of the second variety, at least in this latter portion of my life. Those of the first have destroyed too many people, members of my own family included.

A Ramble About the Matrix

I rewatched “Matrix” again tonight. Part of my reasoning was to see if my kids would be able to handle it yet (not yet). As a teaching tool for philosophical and even spiritual concepts, this particular movie is the gift that keeps on giving and wonderfully illustrates even some of the most difficult of such concepts to explain.

For those who have never seen it before, in the movie, human beings are grown in fields of pods from which they are never actually born, but their brains and senses are directly hooked into a computer generated world they believe to be reality. This world is called “the Matrix”. They do not know they are in this computer generated world. Their brains are being directly fed the sensory information which the machines and AI software wants them to experience, and the vast majority of these human beings never wake up to the real world. The exception is a small group of renegade humans who are awake and freed from the pods and the Matrix's control, and who use pirate computers to hack back into the Matrix in order to tell people the truth and wake them up, bringing them back to the all human city deep underground in the real world. (For all those in the know, yes this is an overly simplistic explanation, but it will suffice for now.)

On occasion, I go back through and do rough translations of different books and portions of the New Testament. I don't do it to publish anything, but rather for my own devotional practice. As I was translating through the last supper discourse in the Gospel of John recently, there was one, fairly common, average word which stuck out to me again and again. That word in Greek is “kosmos.” Where Bible translation is concerned, it is normally translated as “world.” But this isn't exactly the best translation. Most translations continue to render it this way because this is how it has been rendered in English since the beginning of English translations from Greek with Tyndale's work..

The word itself actually, literally means “an ordered system.” It can also mean “ornament,” but translating it as “ornament” in the New Testament would usually result in some weird readings. When used in the sense of the world, it means the world-system of people, rules, governments, etc. and how it all works together as an ordered system controlling those living within and under it. As I was doing the translation, and coming up on this word, do you know what it reminded me of this time?

Yep. The Matrix. Right down to the renegades that were woken up and disconnected from the main computers that controlled and policed the Matrix to keep everyone asleep. Jesus said that He was sent “into the world” (“eis ton kosmon”) by the Father. As Jesus was saying to His disciples that once they were “of the world” (“ek tou kosmou”), by analogy, they were once connected to the Matrix like everyone else; but Jesus came and selected them to be “not of the world” just as he was not of the world. He, being originally disconnected from the Matrix entered it in order to disconnect them from the Matrix and turn them into renegades with a mission of disconnecting others from it.

In the Matrix, many of the people who were connected to it were so dependent on it for their reality that they would fight to protect it, right alongside the “agents”, the computer programs that were responsible for rooting out the renegades and deleting them, keeping everyone asleep and oblivious. It was made clear in the movie many times that everyone who was still connected to the Matrix was a potential agent, as they were able to inhabit the conscious presences of those people still dependent on it. This, in many respects, is a good picture of the world-system which Jesus disconnected His disciples from, although He taught us to have a very different response to these potential threats than the violent one the renegades in the movie gave. He taught us to have compassion on them and forgive them for their offenses against us. Like in the movie, most of these still connected people are oblivious to what they're doing, but also like in the movie, each one has the potential to become an unwitting agent for the system they're dependent on.

Unlike in the movie, once disconnected His followers have to really fight to keep from being re-connected. In the movie, once you were out, there was no going back. And while that may be true to a large extent in terms of understanding, there are many professing Christians who act just as connected to the “kosmos” as those who are not professing Christians. There is an underlying observation in that...

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.