Incremental

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A week ago, years of procrastination came to a head as I finally gave in (or caved in) to the advice of 3 dentists over a 25 year period who assured me that it would be best to have my wisdom teeth extracted.

According to the experts, it was in my best interest to have a man with sharp instruments invade the soft tissue of my gums and cut through bone that had grown over impacted molars in order to avert “problems” in the future. What was described to me as a procedure on friday and back to work on monday routine, became a week long (and counting) relentless pain that has resulted in sleepless nights, multiple missed days at work, and round the clock medicating which itself seems to fall short in its design to numb the throbbing effectively. In spite of having a Florence Nightingale of a wife who was there at every turn, I have not been a beacon of joy this week. I have pushed the boundaries of anyone’s patience for sure.

Healing is coming incrementally but sure. In fact, I hate the word incremental when I come to think of it,because it implies slow and plodding. In fact, It’s hard to imagine  a scenario where incremental is a positive adjective. Positives like pay increases, weight loss, Disney trip countdowns are incremental, while layoffs, car wrecks, and general bad news seem to occur in an unexpected instant. Do you know what else is incremental? Learning and sanctification, which I would make a case are two words almost identical in meaning. What I’ve learned at age 48, where I have endured little pain compared to someone who was born with a debilitating disease from birth, is a difference of infinite increments. And though I’ve been down for the count this week, there are others I know who have been down for years and decades from a physical standpoint.

There is much to be learned with the advent of extended pain, and it’s not just about Dick Van Dyke show binge-watching. Pain has taught me much in a short time. Here are a few things.

1. I’m unsympathetic. – Too often, there is pain all around me with friends and family that has left me unfazed. I haven’t in the words of Bill Clinton, “felt their pain”.

2. My stomach is my god – When you have oral surgery, you miss out on the foods you love and your diet becomes a steady stream of soup, oatmeal, and pudding. Paul wrote in Phillipians 3:19 “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” But in the verse preceding, he classifies these belly worshipers as “enemies of the cross of Christ.” The cross of Christ is all about suffering and pain, and when I set my mind on earthly things, like Tex-mex, I devalue the cross and everything it has accomplished for me.

3. I don’t know much. – Yeah, I can quote scripture I learned when I was five, and I can discuss deep theological subjects, and yet as I learned this week, I don’t know anything really. My throbbing gums are miniscule compared to one lash of a whip across the Lord’s back. I really don’t know the Lord I profess to serve all that much because of the next thing I’ve learned.

4. I’m entitled –  This week I’ve tried to blame everything for my pain including the entire dental industry which deems it best to disturb the peaceful rest of impacted molars. I’ve blamed the pharmaceutical industry for not creating a suitable alternative to ibuprofen (which I’m allergic to). I’ve yet to blame myself for not having the procedure done when i was in my early twenties where by most accounts, the recovery would be much sooner (not to mention I wasn’t allergic to anti-inflammatories back then). The blame game only serves to reveal the entitlement of the heart. And if you believe that God is sovereign over all as I do, then I essentially shake my fist at Him and blame him. “Who are you Oh Sovereign, that I should suffer like this for 6 days!?”

5. I haven’t seen glory –  Paul described his present sufferings, which were far greater and longer than a controlled oral surgery, as nothing to be compared to the glory which will be revealed. God gave Paul enough glimpse of His glory, that he was able to endure great pain, suffering, and persecution for the cause of Christ. His life’s anthem was “to live is Christ, to die is gain”. Me? I have either never seen this great glory, or I haven’t been awakened to it at the level of Paul.

6. To truly follow Christ is to share in his sufferings.- Paul went on to say

“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

 

It’s simple really. To get to Christ, we are going to have to follow him which means the path he has forged. His path was suffering and death. Sure, it doesnt mean our suffering and death will be as great, but the only way to truly know the power of the resurrection, truly know it, is to die. And the  mile markers that lead to death are the increments of pain and suffering.

One day, those of us who are in Christ, will truly say that none of this compares to the Glory that we will see and experience when we finally get to Christ, when we finally get Christ.

As Paul reminds us, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Every pain from stubbing your toe to dying from cancer, whether physical or emotional

is an incremental removal of the veil that blinds us to His Glory. It is but a loose thread in the fabric of santification that he has woven according to His great counsel. A loose thread he mercifully pulls, one increment at a time.

 

To become

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As the modern evangelical voice of reason, draped in right-wing politics, becomes faint to the ears of our evolving culture, the discussion of moral rightness has ironically increased across the board. You see,  those on the right have not cornered the market of claims to what is morally right. The voice from the left has a large bullhorn as well.  Each side believes they are “right” about the issues of the day, and are equally passionate about it. When you consider the post-modern crockpot of relative truth, you end up with a “toxic stew” to borrow language from Apple CEO Tim Cook. 

From a biblical viewpoint, the Genesis 3 account, where the very character of God was first questioned in Eden, has proven at the surface as an overwhelming Satanic success. The Serpent was the first post-modern if you will with questions of “Did God actually say” and “you will not surely die” as he lured them into moving their worship elsewhere. Up until that time, Adam and Eve worshipped only God. They worshipped him by simply fulfilling his purposes for them in cultivating the creation, enjoying creation, and simply enjoying Him.  

We know from other scriptural texts that Lucifer, as the serpent was first called, desired to be worshipped above all, even his own Creator.  This unholy desire got him “kicked out” of heaven and banished to the earth, if you will. So it’s no surprise that he had designs of his own to thwart the worship of God by the viceroys God had created in the form of man and woman. Described as “crafty” and “subtle”, the Serpent set out to divert the eyes of the first married couple away from their Source of Life and it began with his own claims of what was “right”.  Following were lies about the goodness of God and the character of God, which meant, so he reasoned,  they could take their eyes off of the Creator and become what they wanted to be. 

Isn’t that still the prevalent message of the age we live in now? You can become what you want to be by simply turning your attention to whatever it is you deem necessary to accomplish the goal. The result of this philosophy is that you simply become what you worship. This profound truth is something I’ve heard recently and has impacted the way I think about the life I’ve been given. We all worship (turn our gaze toward) the Creator, or we worship ourselves. Self-worship means seeking the approval of others, our own comfort, and the search for purpose and meaning. These play out in the careers we choose, the relationships we form, the causes we champion, the hobbies we engage in, the religious activities we commit to, the foods we eat, the material possessions we acquire, and the entertainment we occupy ourselves with. We are trying to replace God as our life source with things and people in creation that can not fill the demands. That’s why we are all guilty of trying to experience so many things in life. It’s because we view this life, of which we have no idea how long it will last, as the opportunity to find fulfillment. 

The idea for “You become what you worship” was something I recently read in the following Desiring God blog which was about how our smart phones are changing us. I recommend reading it and considering what you really want to become not only in this life, but in the life here-after. Biblical Christianity has often been castrated of it’s power as it has been reduced to the heaven or hell question. Frankly, no one wants to go to hell so I find this gospel reduction rather unhelpful, and even dangerous. But when you begin to see that this whole world and it’s inhabitants have meaning in purpose as worshippers of Someone who is infinitely Good, Just, and Right, then the question of what you do with your life is much closer to Jesus’ question “what does it profit a man who gains the whole world but loses his own soul”.  The soul is not some glowing orb locked in a briefcase (Pulp Fiction reference), but it is your very being. It’s that invisible person hidden in the cocoon. It is what you eventually will be, and there is no turning back at that point. You and I are being formed into something so beautiful mortal minds cannot comprehend it. Image bearers! It doesn’t look pretty for any of us at the moment as we are more larval than lovely. But we were created to be Image Bearers of the most High and Holy God, which can only happen when the mirrors of our souls are pointed straight at him in endless worship. 

In Eden, the mirrors were knocked off-axis resulting in a fractured universe. Since then, all of mankind is inherently unable to bear the image of the Creator as he is unwilling to do so. We can only reflect brokenness because that’s all we can see.  Those glass shards disperse rays of light in a million directions and we spend our lives chasing down every one of them. Solomon called them vanities. Thankfully, our Creator put the plan of restoration and redemption in place immediately with the promise of the Serpent’s crushed head and his endless lies. At first glance, it seems the human experiment was just that. It would seem that God’s attempt to make man in his likeness was a failure, but his designs were not frustrated by our fragmented natures. There was a Man, the promised Seed, who maintained the pristine reflection as the incarnated Deity that he was and still is.  He redeemed broken mirrors and remade them into Holy reflections.  He bruised his heel while becoming sin for us, and crushed the Serpent’s head in order that we might become the Image Bearers we were always meant to be.

2 Old Shoes (part 2)

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I don’t think words in a blog post can properly convey how much I longed to be a worship leader. It was the year 2000 when i realized for the first time that this could be a job that I loved. We had been part of the same church for 11 years and the worship leader at the time left and I felt like this was something I would pursue. Alas, the timing wasn’t right, and the church moved on with someone else. For another 4 years, I burned with a passion to lead worship and actually sent my resume (sparse as it was) to some churches to no avail. Then my opportunity came when the worship leader at the time unexpectedly resigned. My time had come! On my first day of the job, I hit the ground running and I threw myself into the job. I loved going in to work every morning and I honestly didn’t want to leave. I was finally getting the chance to really use my musical gifts and get paid to do it.  It wasn’t a job that made you rich financially, but I didn’t care. I absolutely loved what I got to do everyday, planning worship services, talking theology with the other guys on staff, mentoring young musicians, just everything about it.  

One of my friends on staff used to always talk about this book by John Piper called “Don’t waste your life” and I was mildly interested at the time.  I was reading an author by the name of Dallas Willard, a Christian philosopher, which I know sounds like an oxymoron, but it was in reading his works that I started to develop ways of thinking beyond the box of evangelical cliches that I had grown up around.  Reading Willard spurred me on to think deeply about what biblical Christianity was. He passed away about a year ago, and I thank God for him.  Meanwhile, my friend kept bringing up Piper and this other guy he listened to via podcast, which was a new technological phenomena at the time. This other guy was Matt Chandler, pastor of the Village Church in Highland Village. You remember from my last post that we are members there, but it’s an interesting journey how we got there. I remember listening to Chandler at my friend’s bequest and actually finding him sort of obnoxious and over the top. The depth of his vocal tone was like Howard Stern, and he seemed to be equally shocking in his content.  This guy was preaching, I mean preaching!  Looking back, I realize how far removed I was from hearing this kind of bold presentation, especially the last few years I worked in the church. I gave him a few listens and just basically wrote it off and went back to reading Willard. 

Around the same time, I was starting to podcast John Piper. I was too busy swimming in the philosophical waters of Willard that I didn’t have time to read Piper. So I listened to his sermons. I was a little put off by his style which reminded me of “old timey” preachers, but in spite of that, I couldn’t dismiss the weightiness of the Word he was preaching, especially when it came to the Sovereignty of God. While all this is going on, I began reading a blog written by an old school friend. This friend was actually the son of a teacher I had in high school who I was basically in awe of and had the deepest respect and admiration for. It seems he was the only one who could ever get me to study and in turn aim to please the teacher.  As a high schooler, I knew this teacher was a Calvinist and I was fascinated to hear him talk about it.  My earliest exposure to Calvinism was a younger child when my parents told me about it. But all I really knew about it was pre-destination, which is pretty much the extent of what every non-calvinist a.k.a Arminian knows about it.  So I began to comment on his blog (my teacher’s son) who was a Calvinist himself and it’s during this period of time that I began to learn of Reformed Theology. I was being bombarded from all sides, blogs, sermons, books, and let me tell you, I argued with him constantly through the comments I made on his posts. But there was something always gnawing at my soul in the debates with him. I was fighting a losing battle because I was trying to argue against something I knew was true. The truth that God is totally Sovereign over everything and does as pleases, and that what ever pleases him is just, right, and true. I began to see that Calvinism or Reformed Theology was not as minimalistic as the TULIP acronym it’s known for, and that there was more at stake than the doctrine of predestination. It was much bigger. We’re talking the Glory of God kind of big.

A friend of mine chided me the other day about being too theological and said that a theologian is something one becomes after he’s saved and the implication was we don’t need theology to become a Christian. As I replied to him, “everyone’s a theologian” in the strictest meaning of the word, and your theology is a determining factor to you becoming saved in the first place, outside of God’s sovereign grace of course. 

Becoming Reformed in my theology wasn’t instantaneous for me.  It was actually the blooming of a seed that was planted in my heart decades earlier. It was no longer synonymous with fancy theological terms like depravity and perseverance of the saints. No, for the first time, I began connecting this theological system to something more familiar to my brain.  The Gospel.