Category: Religion

What we don’t know…

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I just finished Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs and it was quite a fascinating read. Fortunately, it was an honest take on Jobs’ life and gave readers an extended glimpse into his soul and what made him tick.
Yes, he was a genius in so many ways. He was also a deeply flawed human being, like we all are. Sadly, there is no evidence that Steve Jobs was a follower of Jesus as all the evidence points to the fact that he was not. In fact, besides his Buddhist beliefs and practices, there’s this insight from Jobs in the midst of his fight with cancer. “Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.” Then Isaacson quotes Jobs with this tagline, “Yeah, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone.”

The book also affords details about Jobs’ philosophies and worldview. This blog is not the place to explore them all, but one in particular I find enlightening is his philosophy in the conception and creation of new products. He disavowed market research which seeks to find out what people want in a product, whether that be a computer, music player, or cellphone. Rather, his quest was not to produce a product that people wanted or asked for. His goal was to determine what we, the consumer, wanted before we even knew what we wanted. This idea speaks volumes to his genius as a visionary. But something else struck me. This was a quality that I find very God-like. Although there were dozens of ungodly characteristics that defined Steve Jobs, this one particular quality is one I think brings glory to the Creator of this great inventor.
Jobs’ conviction was that people did not know what they want until he devised a product coupled with intuitive software that would reveal to consumers what they never knew they wanted. Products like the iPod removed the blinding scales from the eyes of future consumers and spawned a new culture as a result.

Often, mainline Christianity paints God as someone who consults market research before He blesses and prospers His children. We hear how God wants to prosper us, in the sense of material luxuries, personal happiness, and fulfillment. So, when life is not going as we hoped, our nature is to blame God and call in to question His unwillingness to grant our desires for a comfortable and painless existence. When our dreams don’t materialize, or we are in the throes of mid-life crisis, we wonder why God didn’t do more to relieve our angst.
But God is not our cosmic butler.  He does not consult Gallup polls to find out what will make us happy. He is not indebted to rain on our famished crops, He is not obliged to cancer-proof our bodies. He does not prosper us according to our definition of prosperity. God is not a mere inventor of human happiness, He is the Visionary of Eternal joy. Foreknowledge is not a crystal ball that equips Him to response, but a ruling scepter by which He sovereignly governs the future. He didn’t merely react to our rebellion, He planned for it from before the foundations of the world. He not only created the Serpent that invaded His holy garden, but He gave him fangs for the expressed purpose of bruising His Son’s heel, the same heel that would crush the Serpent’s head the way God planned.

In a sense, God aims to do the same thing with the Gospel that Steve Jobs did with the iPad. That is to provide something that we could never conceive of, to satisfy a need we were unaware of. Steve Jobs would not allow us to settle for inferior electronics, although most of us would have. Likewise, God will not allow us to settle for inferior glories. He knows that we prefer “making mud-pies in the slums over a holiday at the sea”. (to quote CS Lewis) He knows our heart’s natural desire is to be affirmed, exalted, and appreciated by men. But God’s eternal vision for us has nothing to do with granting us a comfortable life on earth.

He will not let us find satisfaction in His good gifts. He won’t permit us having perfect sex, sports teams that never lose, cars that never malfunction, family members who never die, friends who don’t betray us, or bodies that resist all manners of disease and trauma. He willfully and actively frustrates our good intentions. He regularly thwarts our plans. God is the Visionary that Created us as receptors of His glory. He knows what we ultimately want and will increase our joy for Eternity, even if we don’t know it yet.

Let them fall

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The following lyrics (italicized) from Tenth Avenue North’s “Healing Begins” offer a light to help turn back the darkness of the soul.

So let it fall down
There’s freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground

What are the walls you’ve built which limit your freedom? What is the self-imposed obstruction, the dense buffer between your heart and peace?

For me, it’s the need to lead people to believe that I live a regret-free life. In reality, I have many regrets. I have walked a dirt path marked by regrets. But worse, I am one who daily recounts, relives, and returns to them.

So I build walls. Some walls are designed to hide the fact that I’m self-centered. Some exist to hide secret sins– lust, red-hot envy, bitterness, and anger. Still, there are those which serve to conceal my failures as a husband, a father, and a steward.

Even the last paragraph and the way it’s worded is a capable facade. It’s easier to list shortcomings in generalities because everyone deals with them. However, there is a specificity to these daily struggles, ones where new mercies are daily required before my feet even hit the floor beneath the night stand. So the lyricist corroborates:

So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you’re good
And you can’t believe it’s not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside 

There’s a warring opposition, outward but mostly inward. The devil desires to play his sifting melody, but more often than not, settles for a 2nd-chair-blasting horn of daily introspection. More often than not, his predatory role is hyena, perfectly content to devour what the brooding lion has slaughtered.

I sin. Worse than anyone can imagine. Mostly in heart if not deed. So shine the light in the basement, let the walls come down. The lyricist is relentless:

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

I’m tired of being the hireling of regret, working overtime for slow death pay.  The lyricist consoles:

Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don’t fight
This coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us

Bring on Psalm 51:17! Let it sink in, for I have built walls, but not altars. You won’t require I fall on the sword, yet by the Sword I must die. Tonight the Lyricist reminds:

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

Pressed but not crushed

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20111028-124315.jpgI was 9 years old and I had just been captivated by the miracle working prowess of Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Roger Staubach. I had witnessed him rescue a plodding football team out of a Minnesota muck, and “hail-mary” my beloved team to victory in an NFC divisional playoff game.
Now, it was a few weeks later and the Cowboys were facing the team of the 1970’s, the Pittsburgh Steelers with all of their Hall of Famers. The rebuilding Cowboys with their “dirty dozen” rookies were not even supposed to play in this game. Nevertheless, I was emotionally and, might I say, spiritually invested in their unexpected success. Of course, as NFL Films often reminds us in their documentaries, ultimate success was not obtained this day by my football team and Roger Staubach fell one miracle short of a championship.

I am sure at the time that many fans, while disappointed, were able to reflect on the 1975 football season with a sense of pride and admiration, but as a 9 year old boy, it was not so easy for me, for my captivation had birthed expectation. In short, I had been enthralled by the sports miracle, and when another Staubach miracle fell short in the Super Bowl, I couldn’t soothe the pain with the proper reflection. As it became apparent the Cowboys would lose this game, I began to cry. I was crushed in the moment. My dad, either realizing the absurdity of a 9 year old boy crying over a football game, or as a means of hiding his own tears, sent me to my room and scolded me for taking the loss so hard.
Since then, there has followed 34 years of elations and disappointments while following the journeys of our local sports teams. Everything seemed to come full circle last night in game 6 of the World Series as my beloved Texas Rangers came with one strike of winning it all. Twice, in fact, they came within one strike only to fall prey to a Staubach-esque comeback to the St.Louis Cardinals. The disappointment I felt at game’s end is nothing like I ever felt in all my years of watching sports, but unlike my childhood experience I did not cry even though I wanted to. Perhaps my heart is too hard, or maybe I’ve experienced too much disappointment to be taken by surprise. After watching my team becoming immortalized in the wrong way last night, I have to say that in that moment, I once again was crushed.
Now it’s the morning after, and God’s mercies are new even for sports fans like me. With the proper perspective, I realize I witnessed one of the greatest games in World Series.
It is a realization that sports, while they are to be enjoyed, should never be joy. It is time, I feel, to step back and reflect on what all of last evening’s tense moments, rapid heartbeat inducing, and eventual crushing of spirit have taught me.
I am thankful today because of God’s grace through the consistent Gospel-centered preaching of the Village Church I receive each week, and the community of faith I am experiencing, that I can withstand anything that would try to crush my spirit ultimately. With grace-filled perspective, I see all too clearly that if I embrace this temporal world too tightly, I will fall as flat as the house built on sand. It’s not just the entertainments like sports, art, and music that I should not build my happiness on, but it’s everything that is temporal like career, money, marriage, parenthood, philanthropy, and anything else one can conceive of as being of utmost importance in this world. Everything created is temporal, but it’s also a gift from the Creator, not as a foundation for joy, but as a pointer to the only true Joy.
In the aftermath of disappointment, I am convinced that God gave sports as a gift to us. Its value as a gift however is not derived from its joy making capacities, but rather from its utter inability to sustain joy. Sports, like all temporal creations, are meant to show us that it is itself a dead end and there is only one person where Joy thrives and derives.
Holding on too tight to the temporal will eventually crush your spirit, but holding on the One who was crushed, body, soul, and spirit will provide you with the only foundation that can stand up to an ever increasing Joy that never fades and never disappoints.