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late night ramblings of an insomniac pastor
Several years ago on vacation, a still small voice told me, “Pay attention to what I’m doing among liberals.” Words of that unexpected specificity don’t come often to me, so when they do I pay attention. Thus began a significant shift in my attentiveness. What we pay attention to matters. What we look for matters.
Jesus said, “I only do what I see the Father doing.” By this I infer that it was his practice to look for what he saw the Father doing. The devil of course was at work all around him, but Jesus didn’t go looking for that. It manifested like an unwanted interruption, and when it did, he dealt with it, but he was looking for something else–what the Father was doing. And he saw the Father doing things in and among those who were not supposed to be the site of much God activity beyond wrath and judgment.
He saw God at work among Samaritans, among women, among the unclean, among the sexually broken, among the left behind and disregarded. He regarded God among them.
Many were bothered by what he saw the Father doing, but even more, they were bothered by those among whom he saw the Father doing it, whatever it was.
Over the past four years I believe that I’ve caught a glimpse of what the Father is doing among secular scientists who care about the environment. Oh, I could find much to disagree with in the perspectives and prejudices and opinions of the same scientists, but that’s not what I feel that I’ve been directed to look for.
I see men and women who have reverence for the world of nature–who are humbled by nature. Many of them don’t see it as a creation, but they often respond with more reverence than those who claim faith in a creator. If you were the creator which would you prefer: credit for the creation or care for it?
They are passionate these environmental scientists. In many ways they are like evangelicals. They are vexxed. They are missional. They are frustrated. They are invigorated. They are curious. They have an apocalyptic vision. Above all they care. Ask them a question, show a little interest, give ‘em an opening and their eyes light up as mine do when someone says, “What must I do to be saved?”
I’ve learned from them. I admire what I see in them.
My perspective has shifted.
And I have found that this shift in my perspective has opened up real conversation from time to time about the things I care most deeply about: God, Jesus, the Bible, the work of the Holy Spirit.
I find honest curiosity about these things. Sincere questions.
Looking back on that origional directive, “Pay attention to what I am doing among liberals” I wonder what the director meant by “liberals.” Political liberals? Cultural liberals? Theological liberals? I don’t really know.
I think the director may have meant simply “the others.” Those people who were distrusted by my people.
Since then, I’m bothered by the facile use by believers of these labels, conservative and liberal.
I’ve been accused by a few commenters on this blog of being “liberal.” That makes me laugh. Talk to my kids about that one.
I don’t even know how to respond to that particular, what, charge?
I’m still looking for what the Bible teaches about liberals and conservatives. I can’t find a single word.
I’m wondering why these words mean so much to us who revere the Bible so highly.
Let us lay them down to sleep for a few years, these labels. They’ve been working so hard without a break, chasing after each other.
Why do we identify so closely with words such as these?
Why would we use words like these to describe ourselves as believers?
But I digress, late at night.
What is it in us that inclines to see what the devil is doing?
I think it may be something perverse in us. Is it the devil in us looking for the devil in others?
Who then would it be in us looking for what the Father is doing in others? Especially in “the others.”
Tags: attention deficit disorder, devil, God, insomina, Jesus. Father, late night, ramblings
April 29th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Fear.
We look for the devil in others as a proactive way to avoid the bad things that might happen if the devil gains power.
At least I do.
Looking at history, it seems a lot of evil has happened precisely because of a fear.
Salem witch trials (fear of the devil)
McCarthyism (fear of communists)
Holocaust (fear of Jews)
Some fears were based on truth, but misdirected (Salem), others were based on scapegoating (Holocaust).
My fear of ‘liberals’ (I mean the theological kinds here) is fear of losing connection with the real God and exchanging it for something lesser, a fake. I fear belonging to a church that is Christian only in name, like many main line denomination churches I have seen. I fear becoming a Kiwani’s club type church. Great as an organization to help others, but devoid of true spiritual impact.
That’s my fear.
I just need to balance St.John’s words about perfect love casting out fear with Jesus’s warnings of being wise as serpents.
Any tips? I know I am not unique in this.
April 29th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
joao, I agree that we look for the devil in others as a proactive way to avoid the bad things that might happen if the devil gains power. I just don’t think it’s the way modeled by Jesus. I understand your fear of theological liberals. I just don’t think that fear is what the Spirit is inspiring as a response to theological liberals. I think fear often binds us to the thing feared. So my tip? Stop trusting fear as though it were a Spirit inspired thing. Rather, I think it’s a religious spirit thing, to be ignored not nurtured.
April 29th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Joao, ACtually, I do have a tip inspired by John Wimber. John was gifted at learning from those that others feared. He learned from Pentecostals who were feared by evangelicals. The driving force behind Wimber’s theology–and Vineyard’s theology–was the kingdom of God, a theme that was actually being considered very actively among liberal mainline protestant theologians of his time. [Wimber's main source was George Ladd, who taught at Fuller, but Ladd would have been reading and learning from those who would have been considered liberal theologians of their time, I think--certainly mainline protestants.]
God is the ultimate “other” and we naturally fear “the others” [those unlike us.] But God is also Love who leads us beyond our fears. That’s where the goodies are. Wimber got the goodies because he was not primarily moved by fear, but by the Spirit. No risk, no reward. Play it safe and shrivel in place.
April 29th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Was fear the motivating factor for Christ’s strong words for the churches in Revelation 4 that tolerated false teaching?
He seemed to not want them to do that.
Ken, you did mean give you slack for the last blog and that one topic, right?
April 29th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Brian, No, I don’t think it was fear at work in Him, but I do think fear is often at work in us and is often not of the Spirit. It’s in the nature of fear to be reactive and I think most of us tend to over-rely on fear especially since our current cultural tendencies pump it up. [And yes, I'd love some general blog-wide slack if you have it to give! Thanks for the implied offer!You probably know how it is as a pastor when someone for whatever reason is consistently annoyed with most of what you have to say and freely offers frequent expressions of said annoyance. Yes, you learn to grin and bear it, but you do welcome slack when it's given]
April 29th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Ken, I love this riff – your, “small voice told me, ‘Pay attention to what I’m doing among liberals.’”
Closely related, please see my separate new post under – “Is there an awakening to creation?” – should be number “5,” but is awaiting moderation. The notes about Quakers are relevant here to your theme – listening to liberals.
Too much to say. Don’t want to blow out your forum. I’m a Vineyard (quasi-Quaker) and Apostles’ Creed kind of guy. Who listens to liberals. Deeply. One of the coolest influences in my listening-to-liberals vein came from a Jewish rabbi, Anson Laytner, in his “Arguing with God: A Jewish Tradition.” Rabbi Laytner exegetes the whole Jewish canon of scripture as a mode of argument-with-God in which God responds to prayers as arguments, including God answering dissenting prayers! Ala an open theism. Laytner as a source (could have been many other such sources) combined in me with another generic truth from our Supreme Court, that is, the generic truth that dissenting opinions and minority voices on the Court today can become majority voices tomorrow because of changed and new conditions in our culture and law. For good or ill. Or both simultaneously.
So what?
So listening to dissent (dissent against my evangelical bias would be “liberal” theology) is not an optional move, but instead, listening to dissent and liberal voices is mandatory as a critique and a limit to my evangelical bias. A check on my blindness. Because I say I can see. Better, dissent (liberal theology) may be today’s prophecy about tomorrow’s moves of the Spirit.
Never know. So listen.
It’s not optional but mandatory to listen – because my kind of conservative and evangelical progenitors once held that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the earth was flat, and that slavery was justified on evangelical (good news?) biblical grounds, and that women are chattel and not worthy to vote – that whole ugly list of conservative battles against “liberals” (of their times) goes on and on.
I don’t always know how to listen. I’m too slow. Too fast. Too awkward. Too angry. Too sensitive. Too whatever – in my listening to liberals.
And I agree with you that our labels stink.
But, here we are. In media res …. in media mess … in media insomias …
Until they all be brought together in the unity of the faith …
Cheers,
Jim
April 30th, 2010 at 8:05 am
Jim (Random Arrow), yes! Isn’t it interesting that we want to put people into categories (apply labels). I think when we do that we tend to strip them of their whole personhood. It can almost be an attack on the wholeness and God-inspiredness of another person. I think we often put people into political categories so that we can simplify our responses and feelings toward them. Through categories we sometimes (and may often) try to exclude others from genuine relationship with us. It may also be a way to deny others our whole beings in relationship. And I think it may often deny the Holy Spirit hospitality in us and in our relationships with others.
April 30th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Belfry,
“It can almost be an attack on the wholeness and God-inspiredness of another person.”–Belfry
Editing suggestion: delete “almost”; isn’t that exactly what it is? Never thought of being in the image of God as “God-inspiredness” but it is. And would that we could see each other that way.
Keep letting the bats out!
April 30th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Great comments Ken! I have found that my efforts are more fruitful when I look for what the Father is doing.
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:20 am
Matthew 7:12 In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
I think we should believe the best about others. We would want someone to give us the benefit of the doubt, right?
Phillipians 4:8 For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them]. 9Practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and model your way of living on it, and the God of peace (of untroubled, undisturbed well-being) will be with you.
It seems to me that Phillipians is telling us to think of the GOOD, to think on the GOOD – like meditation.
Corinthians 13:7 Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].
Love chooses to believe the best.
You will know a good tree by it’s fruit – Ken Bears Good Fruit.
Matthew 7:18 A good (healthy) tree cannot bear bad (worthless) fruit, nor can a bad (diseased) tree bear [a]excellent fruit [worthy of admiration].
Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Hosea 10:12 Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.
(Translation is Amplified Bible.)
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Hear ye, hear ye … a liberal vox clamantis in the wildernesses …
Erik Erikson – “Thus, it is part of today’s consolidation that man reinternalizes the eternal Identity whom he had projected on the (now, in principle, conquerable) heavens, and tries to remake himself in the blueprint of a manufactured identity. In conjunction with the fact that man also can now totally unmake himself, however, an all-human identity becomes an inescapable goal. In this, however, revived forms of humanisms and libertarianisms will not do. Their original proponents, we must remember, did not know of the two objects already mentioned, the gigantic bomb and the tiny pill, which, if they do not give man power over life and death, certainly give him the decision as to whose life and death it shall be-decisions which will call for new ‘political’ forms. … Man as a species has survived by being divided into what I have called pseudospecies. First each horde or tribe, class and nation, but then also every religious association has become the human species, considering all the others a freakish and gratuitous invention of some irrelevant deity. To reinforce the illusion of being chosen, every tribe recognizes a creation of its own, a mythology and later a history: thus was loyalty to a particular ecology and morality secured. One never quite knew how all the other tribes came to be, but since they did exist, they were at least useful as a screen of projection for the negative identities which were the necessary, if most uncomfortable, counterpart of the positive ones. This projection, in conjunction with their territoriality, gave men a reason to slaughter one another in majorem gloriam.” (Identity: Youth and Crises, “On God”).
Peace
Jim