articulate

We have trouble expressing how God works in our lives. When the job of explanation gets difficult we like to simply chalk it all up to


God told me...
God gave me...
God led me...


But there is great ambiguity in these type of statements and the language we employ when speaking of God’s work in our lives is open to more than one interpretation. Commonly, our descriptions are unclear and inexact because a choice between alternatives has not been designated. When you say, “God changed this or that,” what do you mean?


Take, for example, popular beliefs surrounding scripture. We say with confidence that the Bible is “God’s word” but what does this gigantic statement intend to convey? When the prophet’s accounts were written were they (themselves) deliriously incoherent, in an acutely ekstasis state? Or think of Paul, orally dictating one of his epistles to an assistant; was he standing completely outside of himself? Was Paul self-transcendent, in a mystical religious trance? When we talk about scripture “coming from God” must one understand the interaction as God overriding humanity?

Or characterized another way, some prefer to defend the Bible as a “divinely inspired” document. Such individuals might defend or express their faith through reliance on a notion that God long ago spoke by seizing some obscure personality, paralyzing his arm, putting a fiery pen in his hand and forcing out the chosen words. One might helpfully insert here a Ghost phenomenon, a kind of Patrick Swayze/ Demi Moore body borrowing episode or something of the like. But it’s interesting to note that early writers (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen) never appealed to this idea of “inspiration” to prove or establish the authority of the text. And it should be relatively obvious for us to understand their hesitance, after all, anyone can say anything by way of claims to divine inspiration, God having told or shown them. And many of us have seen how dicey, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous such claims may be.



The other day a friend asked me how we, as Christians, can put so much trust and emphasis on a [Bible] that has been tampered with by so many humans? It is an excellent question. In fact, it’s connected to a whole series of other questions like: what makes the Bible authoritative, or how do you decide or know what is scripture?

The answer to these questions is not much unlike the question we must all ask ourselves and answering them requires great care in articulating how it is we understand the action and influence of God’s work in our lives.

But Christians are so used to having the Bible around that we tend to speak and behave as though it was written before time. We overlook the fact that centuries and civilizations past lived without written scripture. And we often forget that those authors who's writings are compiled between two covers never knew they'd be contributing to what we call the Bible. They had no idea how widely they'd be read. Their audience, as far as they knew, lived then not now. But we forget these things. It’s a classic case of great familiarity breeding even greater unfamiliarity. Early Christians understood the Bible to be true because it taught them then the rule of faith. It spoke to them about who God is, what God is like and what he did through the life of Jesus. We call these writings our “canon” because they are for us a means of measurement, a standard by which we judge, form opinions, discern meaning, and draw conclusions. So when we talk about the authority of the Bible, what we are really talking about is our acceptance of it’s particular judgments, and those things we believe to be normative to our faith.

Our scriptures are not God-breathed insomuch as God overtook human beings by uncontrollable force. Our scriptures do not have to be imagined as magically appearing like a cat from a hat or mystically arranged in the night out of a cloud of smoke. Rather, we are given the freedom to see it as God acting within our very humanness. The beauty and mystery of our Bible is found not in sanitized scriptures, emptied of all humanness, but in God’s having worked through real, living, cognizant people. The coupling of human words with God's is not a weakness of the scriptures, but a strength. These human/divine words are the expressions we have. These are the truths we hold. And this is the authority we claim. If you believe in the gospels, you must believe the words of the human beings who witnessed the events and believed before you. Their accounts cannot be removed, nor need they be.



At some point in your life, God has worked. Of this you may be confident and secure. But when you say that God told you, showed you, gave you or led you; when you say that God changed your mind, fight aggressively to express what you mean. Did God alter your DNA; did God physically relocate you through teleportation; were your hormones chemically conformed to his? Or did something much more nuanced in the common, and real transpire?

When you put words to your interaction with God you need not feel pressured to overindulge in vague notions of psychological suspension. You need not pretend that God’s action in your life, his quiet voice, touch or calling require circumvention of yourself or a hostile Swayze-like body-swap by God.

For centuries Christians have understood and accounted for the power of God in the midst of all their humanness. The mystery and the ridiculous absurdity of his presence in our lives is that he somehow, in some way, prefers to work with, in, and through people--amidst all our frail and unreliable humanness.

When we talk about scripture coming from God, when we speak of God’s work in our lives, or anytime we think about the mystery of God’s divine interaction with humanity, we need to fight to be articulate and honest (best we can) about what is going on. The human encounter with God--our expressions and those found in the Bible--is mathematically miraculous. One-hundred percent human. One-hundred percent divine.

May we all find words. May we all find freedom; the words and the freedom to express with sincerity and transparency the truth and mystery of God's work in our lives.

epiphany

We have a very limited understanding of faith. We think we know the how, when, and why of where faith begins and we think we know how to reproduce the experience, but we don't: Listen, he’s read the Bible, we raised him in church, he knows the truth--but apparently he’s decided to reject it. What else can be done? He needs to make a decision.

Many a evangelistic tragedies begin here, assuming that faith is merely a decision, something we do-- like choosing a haircut, picking out a new puppy, or voting. Awkwardly impossible though it may be, many Christians purport this strange re-telling of their story that, at the moment they were lost, they went and found themselves. It sounds difficult, I know. And were it true, it would completely screw with a perfectly good song.

Thankfully, In Mark we see something else.



Throughout Mark’s account the reader sees time and time again the thematic persistence of misunderstanding and obtuseness. According to the writer, the people following closest to Jesus don’t quite get him. They don’t understand his odd parables, the implications of his actions, and what his miracles point to. He tells stories and teaches like a prophet. He heals some, but he often demands they keep quiet about it, all-the-while explaining to them what things truly mean in secret. We see in Mark’s narrative the perplexing irony of faith in Jesus Christ, that though intimately guided by him, our ability to understand and to truly follow, is marred by great difficulty and complexity. Mark intentionally crafts his story in such a way that one must patiently wait and read further to see what really is transpiring in the life and events of Jesus.

Today we tend to read Mark as though the disciples are tragically naive. With the gift of hindsight, the scripture story, its meaning, message, and ending provided us, we assume for Mark’s disciples a kind of three stooges/ seven dwarves ignorance. “Oh those ignorant disciples.” we laugh. “Those silly, silly children (This of course is how I talk), how do they not know, how are they misunderstanding this, how do they not realize who He is?”

But imagine you were there. Would you have understood him? If you’d listened to his metaphors, his philosophic ramblings, waded through the crowds and stood on your toes to see this man-- would you have simply arrived at faith? Sure he did miracles, but such things were not completely unheard of. Even the names and labels attributed him were not uncommon: Caesar claimed to be divine, the son of god, the one who brings peace. This complicates things a bit, yes? What about when Jesus was made an enemy of the establishment? What about when he was put to death? Amidst it all, would you have somehow, simply believed?

Acceptance is a difficult and intricate phenomenon.



So look. I don’t claim to have any answers. Nor do I know where with exactitude things begin. But faith, in all its simplicity and in all its complexity, somehow is revealed in our lives. From the profundity of philosophical inquiry to the mysterious (re)awakenings that may only be attributed to unprompted epiphany, our experiences, with great beauty, vary one from another. And they're difficult to explain.

On a recent car ride up the Pacific Coast Highway, A friend told me that he’d always--from the moment he was self-aware--lived with this quiet but persistent awareness of God. Though seemingly incomplete, he could offer little else in explanation for the initiation of his belief. For others of us, faith arrives through a prolonged passion and obstinate desire for truth. These are the readers, the lovers of inquiry, of late night conversation over wine and dinner. C.S. Lewis, after six years of discussion with friends Tolkien, Weldon and Dyson, hopped in a motorcycle sidecar with his unbelief, rode to the zoo and arrived with faith; his encounter capturing the best of both the rational and the enigmatic. Our stories of conversion are large and compelling. Some are mystical. All, in so many ways, are mysterious.

And this is all fine and well, but what happened before faith arrived in your life? And when did the process begin? Did it begin in isolation, in a moment, without precursor? Before faith, in the days and years of your life prior to that moment of awakening, was God distant, unconcerned and ineffectual? Before faith arrived, was God somewhere else?

Or might it be that God has somehow been everywhere, in every moment, present even in your perceived ignorance of him? Could it be that your epiphany actually began long before your cognizant recognition of Jesus? Might, in actuality, your conceptions of the the when, where, how and for how long of faith’s beginnings be dramatically limited?

In the gospels, we find repeatedly Jesus confronting blindness and the deafness. For Mark, it would seem apparent that people around Jesus can neither see nor hear what they need to see and hear. The metaphor here shouldn't be too difficult to grab a'hold of. So in Mark's story, in the lives of these blind and deaf people, what can be done? Is it possible that someone blind might simply make a decision to see again? Can a deaf man recognize his impairment and, by his own effort, will himself to hearing again? Do the blind and deaf need a talking-to, a Tony Robbins who can convince them to just want-it more? Of course not.

What we see in Mark is a humanity consistently unable to help themselves.

And what, on all these occasions, must be done to bring sight and to hearing?


Jesus must act.



For believers it is always this way. No matter how it is construed, it is never we who initiate the cause of faith in our lives. Rather, we first believe because God reaches out to us; we believe because God stirs us; we believe because he touches us and restores us to seeing and hearing those things that we must see and hear. Faith does not begin in an act we do or decide. Faith is not a moral condition or the product of sound judgment. And believing does not come when we finally wise up. No. Faith happens to us. It is given, provided, supplied. In all it’s simplicity and in all its complexity.



How would your judgment of "unbelievers" change were to you see your conversion, not in a isolated moment or through a single event, but as an ever-present current, persisting through your entire life? What would change if you came to understand God's presence, his life-giving power, to be at work in all people at all times in their lives? Have you forgotten that it was not you who brought sight to your eyes and sound to your ears, but God himself? Oh, but that would be too humbling...

Thank God that faith comes when He--not we-- acts. Thank God that it is He who gives us exactly what we must have to believe. Thank God it is he who finds us.


Faith, it’s beauty and mystery, is not ours. Faith begins with, depends on and belongs to God. He acts. And something happens.