Tell Your Story

I had the great privilege of speaking at the St. Louis Dream Center this morning. 6am certainly came a bit early, but it was beyond worth it. For those of you unfamiliar with the Dream Center OR any Dream Center across the country, they do an amazing hands on work in the communities around them. They go after the rough and tumble of society-- those who need the most help, both practically and spiritually. Speaking to their interns this morning, I encouraged them to tell their story.

We all have a story to tell, we all have details and secrets to share. Whether they are good, ugly, terrifying, beautiful, we must live from an honest space of our story. It's the only one we are qualified to fully tell, and tell it we must. 

Romans 8 says "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose..." And that, "All things God works for the good" is the juicy part. We can easily identify the good and the bad, we know the ins and outs of our lives like experts, but the working part is the challenge. Coming to terms with the "works for the good" happens with courage and usually a lump in the throat to roughly quote Frost.

It is easy to stand on triumph, we want to tell the world of that, but standing on the dark spots, the failures, the abuse, the tragedy, the ways we have manipulated or perpetrated others is a task we'd rather ignore. Yet, God takes every detail and works it for our good. He makes our story which is ultimately His Story and makes it interesting, stirring, stunning and something to look at and read. But since people cannot read our thoughts, the only way that story is accessed is if we open our mouth and tell it.

Binary Opposition is an interesting theory I've slightly adjusted :) We know something by its opposite. We know Day because we have it's opposite in Night. Male/Female, Ying/Yang, Up/Down and so on. We read in Revelation 12, which is totally not imposing at all (sarcasm), the passage that says, "And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death."

So, if we overcome with the spoken word, it seems its opposite is that we fail when we shut up and keep our stories, our details, to ourselves. 

Frederick Buechner writes, "It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing."

We opt for "the acceptable" rather than "the honest." Sure, we all have chapters in our history that we aren't proud of, but they nonetheless are still there. All things, all things work together. You wouldn't read a book that had zero character development, nothing on the front of exciting plot with success and failure, so why do we expect that the acceptable is going to be treated any differently?

If we want to be the salt and light of the world, we ought to expect the flavors are going to be diverse, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. Sometimes savory, sometimes bland. At times bold and other times subtle. 

Whether we realize it or not, we are in fact telling the same Story even though we use different details.

To sum it up, Colossians 1 says it this way:

"You yourselves are a case study of what he does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don't walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message."

DO LATER, NOW

Do now how you’d feel about it later.

If you’d feel bad about it later- then don’t do it now.

If you’ll feel happily worn out and satisfied later- then do that!

We get so caught up in how we feel in the moment that we neglect the eventual.

The best part is, the eventual is where we will eventually live (see how I did that?)

So, build the house now that you want to live in later.

Map out the repercussions now and you won’t feel lost when you get there…

Because, well, you won’t end up there- you’ll detour to the higher ground.

Afraid something you’ll say will hurt feelings later once it gets back to them?

Then say it to them now and save yourself some time. Either way you’re going to hurt them. 

Wait a second! That’s terrible advice!

Is it? If you’re so concerned with hurting them, then don’t.

Find the words to say it another way.

Speak the truth, but do that thing we so often decide to leave out—love!

But the singers say love hurts, it stinks, it caused me to lie.

Hard to digest, but 1 Peter (take that 2 Peter- winning!) says something about love too.

He says it covers a multitude of sins.

You feel intensely about something? Feel intense about love!

It’s all about perspective they say, and this time around, they are actually right.

I won’t suppose that it’s easy.

I won’t presume that it’s always feels good.

But I will propose that it’s right and enduringly noble.

I can’t say it’s something I’ve nailed down

I can’t say it’s something that’s become as elementary as breathing.

But, it has indeed become a worthy everyday challenge.

They (again, here they are) say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The thought is that we are in an ever state of good will without the “to men” part.

We expect it, demand it for ourselves but the thought of reciprocation is absent.

So, let us rebel against our selves, our self wills.

Let us do later now. Let us live the truth and walk out our truths in love.

The Christ Narrative? (A Serious Title Indeed!)

The election in all its stunning fury is over! No more political ads, no more obnoxious phone calls and over 2 billion dollars spent cumulatively between both campaigns. It’s November 8^th and its been decided.  For the sake of time, I won’t comment on the ridiculousness that is the number 2 billion (restraint). What I will comment on is the response of so many Christians. Over the past 48 hours, I have read the most outrageous comments and have been privileged (sarcasm) to hear some of the most disgusting and racist words dribble out of people’s mouth—all of them who put themselves in the Christian column. I’ll go out on a limb here, but I assume their guy didn’t win.

I’ll do my best to keep this short, but I have a few issues here. Yes, all the obvious ones, but perhaps a view or two that may come from a different slant.

Firstly, I posted the question on Twitter, “I wonder what would happen if Christians prayed as passionately for the President as they did hatefully rant about him on social media?” Although my lovely Calvinist friends responded with “nothing,” I can’t help but agree and disagree. J

For starters, I agree with the idea that nothing is a surprise to God nor is it an infarction on his Supremacy and His Sovereignty. I didn’t mean it in the sense that our prayers trump His plan and force God into immediate action, but rather, that how we respond may be a crucial aspect to his future plan.

My statement flows through the filter of future progressive- how things will be, not how they are right now.  And here is how I connect it to the Sovereignty of God. What if (and I realize that in itself, this is an assumption) this is indeed His plan and apart of that plan for day 2 or week 7 or month 3 or 2 years later is the radical revolution of Christians and how we actively engage and set the social dialogue.

The old adage goes, “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will.”

And people form these stories, these narratives based on the current conversation. What do I currently say or think about one subject, how do I respond to a challenge? These are all used as tools to build the narrative.

And so, what is the story Christians tell? What is our narrative? How do we fit into the current political and social climate? And forgive me if I make the next few points quickly…

Firstly, we are silent for the majority of 4 years, and then around 6 months leading up to the election we all the sudden think, “Oh wait! It’s time to get our boots on and fight this fight! Troops circle up and move out!”  My question is obvious, where have we been all the other time?

Secondly, we have lost the art of losing. We know how to win but we don’t know how to lose. What if the day after the election we came together as the Church or the “group from the losing party” and sent out the following Press Release:

“Dear Mr. President- We wanted to be the first ones to say congratulations on your election win! We honor you, we love you and we will be praying for you. Just like any American should, we will hold you accountable as leader of this country and we will support you on issues we can mutually come together on. Because we love this country, you will garner the unimaginable prayer support that God will help you to lead this great country into its greatest years yet! We will champion the idea of coming together and do whatever we can to help.”

Instead we cloak ourselves in the shadows of social media and spread hatred and further division. Remember, these are the societal components people use to build the narrative of the Church (or Christianity, Religion, etc).

A popular (sarcasm) follow-up to my tweets on the election and whatnot, I sent out this thought:

“Division, gridlock, bickering, racism, secrets, lies, power grabs—and I'm not talking about Washington, I'm talking about the Church.”

For the people who don’t know me, or better still, the ones who think they know me, their first thought was probably, “There he goes after the Church again! Doesn’t he know that the Church is God’s bride and we must not talk bad about her?” And with much respect I acknowledge that point, however, I think it is misguided and slightly immature.

If my wife notices something in my teeth, if something I’ve picked out looks goofy, if I am rude to someone in the drive-thru, she doesn’t just overlook it and ignore it because I am her husband. She confronts me on those items to make me a better person, a better man, a better father and better husband—its all about motive and intention.

I make these comments about the Church because I respect her, I value her, and I refuse to let the parsley in her teeth be the thing that gets talked about the most.

Yet, if you’ve talked to anyone with something in their teeth, its hard to focus and keep the conversation going as long as its there.

“But Matt!” you might say, your list above is not so commonplace as parsley—those are some serious accusations! And do you really think those are the main characteristics of the majority of the Church or just in your experience? Perhaps it’s just “your opinion,” and maybe it is but as I encounter people both inside and outside the church, those who have been in relationship for decades and those new to the body of Christ, those hurt and those helped by her hands, these characteristics and conversations consistently come up. I have to believe it’s more than a coincidence. 

“You’ve got something right there Church,” and whether its big or small, until we talk about it, it will only distract from the radical perception changes need from the Christian social narrative.

U Put the CommUnity In Me (Wait, Huh?)

I recently posted the following comment to Twitter. It has by far resonated the most with folks, so I figured it was interesting enough to squeeze a few more drops out of it. To get this party started, here it is:

“I am convinced now more than ever that it is community that keeps us from going overwhelmingly insane. If you can't laugh, you can't live.”

I am by nature, or by selection, or by environmental factors, a loner. I can go great lengths of time by myself, just ask my wife, it is no doubt obnoxious to a fault.

However, that being said, I still require and long for a sense of community. Without people, without interaction, conversation, folks challenging me, I all but fall apart, in fact (spoiler: soapbox approaching) the one situation that drives me nuts is when people cannot be good friends.

My faults, like the one above, are many, but this is the single aspect I’ve consistently been able to get right. Perhaps it’s my Bingo gimme space—it just is there without a lot of work going into it.

Nonetheless, as annoying as that is, and perhaps other situations related, I still need and have to have relationship, I must have community.

Beyond work, beyond family relationships, there must be a broader sense of community in place- whether that is in church, friendships, under-water basket weaving groups, I have to find myself as one piece of a larger puzzle. I am not the entire alphabet, just the letter….hmmm, I am the letter G. I’m really tempted to take this analogy too far, so I’ll just move away from all the “they all work together to form words and whatnot…”

Yet, it’s true. By ourselves we are boring, we are one-dimensional, we are pieces of cardboard. We are doomed to live an uncomplicated, non-confrontational, isolated life. And if you’re anything like me, it’s a tempting sentence isn’t it?

 Seemingly yes, a life filled without drama and pain and frustrations, but with the same fell swoop that you take out all those players, you also remove joy, laughter, triumph and love.

The Seasons Change

I love it when the seasons change.

This is a theme I come back to now and again.

It may just be one of the more consistent subjects I gravitate towards.

Why am I so drawn to it?

I’d say it’s because I love when environmental changes, change people.

For example, I love it when Fall sets in and the air is brisk and a bit chilling and I see someone walk outside and they clutch their coat, shiver a bit and look around to see what’s going on—like someone has done this to them!

Or more deliciously (ha!) when Halloween ends and the very next day people seem to have the Christmas spirit written all over their face—peace and goodwill to men! And its not just because the “red cups” have made their inaugural appearance at Starbucks. Perhaps a little, but yah, thank God the pumpkin spice latte holds on through the Winter months.

And then there is by far my most favorite moment. When. Snow. Falls.

The earth is beaten down. What we admire and walk through the woods to view, blood orange and bright yellow leaves bursting with vibrancy is actually the tree’s final curtain call. They are giving it all they have in the final stretch.

The earth is tired, it’s muddy, and those same beautiful leaves create an epidermis of muck and mire all around. The air even carries a different scent; the smell of burning embers is long gone, and now there is emptiness. The air is cold and absent.

Then it happens. From the sky tiny, seemingly insignificant pieces of clouds fall. One by one they waltz to the earth. Displaying the best example of strength in numbers, they literally take over everything. They blanket the earth, they cover her as she mourns. They insulate her and give her the chance to take a deep breath and hit the reset button. 

I cannot recall how many times I've stood at a window and stared outside as the snow fell and each time, every-single-time, I say to myself, this is just the blank landscape I needed.