Category Archives: Faith

Losing Faith (Part IV): A Bike and a Breath

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This post is the forth under “Losing Faith”. They can easily be seen together HERE.

china-map303Upon graduation from seminary, my wife and I headed to Central China to be English teachers within a medical college. In retrospect, we have no doubt of the divine designs upon that season of life. Before we even began asking for His leading, God was silently setting a course upon which we were already walking. A one-year adventure evolved into a three-year residency, during which the Middle Kingdom became our training ground on living as residents of the Highest Kingdom. Beyond travel opportunities and delicious (and dirt-cheap) food, the years provided us with a wonderful marriage foundation, as we were forced to bond unusually tightly with home’s support systems and comforts stripped away. What a gift!

The highlight, however, was undoubtedly a special group of friends that developed. We worshiped together and studied together, and both Scripture and spiritual life opened anew for me during this span. We discovered hungry hearts to pour ourselves into, and spend ourselves upon.

By the end of the year two, I recall a real weariness.

Beyond Tired

More than a lack of sleep or energy, it felt deeply spiritual. My soul was tired. My well was drained to such an extent that refreshing seemed like fantasy. So intense was the sensation that I could hardly remember a feeling other than dry. Almost physically, I could perceive a shallowness of breath, a constricted cavity at the core of my being.

Guangxi Province ChinaSeeking rest, we booked ourselves to escape to our favourite Chinese getaway for the one-week May holiday. The countryside of Guangxi brings me pleasure; with its right-out-of-the-paintings hills scattered amongst picturesque rice fields, this countryside of terraced land and winding rivers is unusually beautiful. And there is no better way to get lost in those inviting surroundings than to rent a bicycle and take the first exit off the highway.

Praying Poorly

On this particular day, we departed down a dirt path which was familiar from an earlier trip. The May sun was hot, and I recall a healthy sweat as I exerted myself to pull away from the group of bikers. When the gap was significant, I stopped to wait. With feet on ground and head on handlebars, I prayed. It may have been my tenth prayer or hundredth prayer thousandth prayer. For weeks, I had weakly expressed the weakness in which I found myself. I had asked for life, though my prayers were neither bold nor confident. So on this dusty road, with sweat dripping off my nose, I reservedly placed one more grain of sand on the scales of prayer, a confession that I had no life within myself. Either God would renew me, or I would remain as I was. This had been the prayer on my lips for months, and I was well into wondering whether God was listening at all.

He Was

And that’s when it happened.

There was no warning, no dramatic build. The difference between the previous moment and the upcoming moment was unobservable, but the difference between the two was undeniable.

breatheA breeze.

A gentle breeze.

It cooled my skin, and then it kept going. Penetrating me, the wind appeared to gain access to my depths. Like water through cracks, this breath poured through the gaps of the dry broken shell in which I had been dwelling. Physically, I could perceive a lightening and an expanding. I was breathing more deeply, and my lungs where the least of the participants.

I dared not lift my head or look for my companions. The moment unfolding was clearly sacred, and I would not disturb it.

Recalling the event still ignites the memory with vividness. It was the first time I stared a miracle in the face, and what a faith-damaging miracle it was.

Apparently, the eternal Spirit of God, the same One credited with calming chaos at Creation, was still stirring and breathing in places that were void and empty. And if that were true, then the faith that I had carefully constructed was hopelessly hampering my interactions with Him.

For this fellow, a sweat was the least of what was breaking in the sticks of China that day. A sacred Wind had Jericho-ed my well-constructed walls, and a long-held faith was slipping through my fingers as subtly as its assassin had approached me on that unmapped dirt road.

My faith was being lost.

Losing Faith (Part III): First Cracks

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This post builds upon two earlier posts: Here, then here.

It has been a remarkable decade.

  • the-big-ten-11

    9/11, admittedly more than a decade ago, altered the Western consciousness and global relationships in some profound ways.

  • Most of us looked up Darfur on a world map for the first time.
  • Mexico’s drug war became a fixture in international headlines.
  • Coups toppled leaders in Haiti, Thailand, and Honduras.
  • Chretien became Martin became Harper in my homeland.
  • Bush became Obama in the land below the 49th parallel.
  • A number of larger-than-usual hurricanes and earthquakes destroyed whatever centers were in their paths.
  • Tsunami became a part of everyone’s vocabulary.
  • H1N1 did too.
  • The Euro established itself across most of Europe.
  • Dark matter and “God Particles” confirm that we know a sliver of the world in which we live.
  • Wireless internet arrived, and flat screens–now touch screens–dominate many of our spaces.
  • Social media exploded to change the way both media and society function.

And that is but a scan!

Change Out, Change In

No doubt, the world has changed; no doubt, more personal movements can be measured as well.

Ten years ago, I was on the verge of completing my Masters degree at a local seminary. Even today, I count that three-year opportunity to study Scripture and theology within a tight and meaningful community of Spirit-filled men and women, as hugely significant in my shaping. Ironically, one of my chief memories from that time of construction felt like a wrecking ball. The details around the experience are hazier than I wish, but I do recall feeling an unusual weight of heaviness.

My mind was spinning and my footing was slipping, and I knew I needed to talk to somebody. Knocking on the door of a trusted professor, I entered without any script. And what came out? Mostly tears, mixed with frustrated attempts to give phrase to an inner experience that I could not grasp.

I was coming apart.

Long-held assumptions were dissolving, being replaced with glimpses of a reality too grand and elaborate for my senses to handle. I was learning a new language, hearing a new rhythm to dance by, and I knew neither the steps nor the lingo to participate in this unfolding realm. Like Abraham, I was being called to a land far away, unmarked on all the maps I had ever used. And while willing to follow, my heels were dragging. And the pain of resistance brought tears.

That was one of the first moments when I knew I was losing the faith I had always known.

Losing Faith (Part II): On the Road

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These are unique days.

Between jet-hopping and mouse-clicking, one can interact with every view and value under the sun. Ancestors who were confined to the the village or the house where they existed from conception to death would be stunned. In fact, it is stunning, even to those of us living in this age. Never in history has the human mind had so much to sift and sort. In past days, the avenues for exploration were so inaccessible to the average person that it was simply expected that one’s worldview would remain largely unchallenged by outside voices because such voices may have been a million miles away, even if they were waiting just over the next hill.

These days are not those days.

Beyond the vastness of ideological terrain to explore, there is also a conviction today that the true failure is to not explore. Closed-mindedness is critiqued; narrowness is just plain nasty. And for today’s experience-hound, travel is the trophy to be hoisted. A worn passport is the diploma of choice for many, and I can personally attest to logging miles as one powerful, albeit luxurious, ingredient toward personal growth.

In my previous post, I alluded to the blog of my friend Nic, who has amassed a shocking number of air miles in his young years. He mentioned travel’s enormous impact on his spiritual journey, and I can hardly agree more.

I recall when I returned from Zambia in 1997. At 20 years old, I was living a dream of visiting Africa. After a month in the countrysides of Zambia and Zimbabwe, I returned home to Canada, a week late for my third-year of college. On the first evening home, I was asked to share about my trip at a church’s Young Adult gathering.

disorientationI recall being utterly garbled, hardly able to string two sentences together. So overloaded where my processors by the intensity of that trip, combined with the contrasting deaths of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana that had dominated headlines on our way home, that I could hardly determine which way was up.

This has been travel’s consistent impact upon my life: Disorientation and destablization. At some point, we do reconstruct “life as we know it”, but its design cannot go unaltered. Revision and renovation are forced upon those trained by travel.

Life Magazine coverEven without leaving home, Steve Jobs felt this truth. The cover of Life magazine (July 12, 1968) featured a disturbing photo of two children from a war-torn region of Nigeria. More than one million people died there during that period, from Civil War or famine. At age 13, Steve found it impossible to reconcile the picture with the lessons drawn from his local Lutheran church. Steve’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, describes what happened next:

“Steve took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. ‘If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?’

The pastor answered, ‘Yes, God knows everything.’ Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, ‘Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to these children?’

The answer he received was less than acceptable, and that conversation marked the last time Steve went to church.

What does a story like that tell us?

It tells us that it is possible for an unusually sharp mind to step back from God as a result of his interpretation of new information.

BobPierceBefore Steve Jobs was born, Bob Pierce was in China on an evangelistic effort with Youth for Christ. Witnessing extreme poverty and overt persecution in the late 1940’s, Pierce felt the same weight that Jobs or any traveller today can feel when confronted with such realities. But where Jobs was driven from faith, Pierce was pressed in farther, in the process, birthing the organizations World Vision and Samaritan’s Purse before his death in 1978.

What does a story like that tell us?

It tells us that it is possible for an unusually sharp mind to step toward God as a result of his interpretation of new information.

And you know what? Either movement can feel like the losing of one’s faith.

More on that in the next post.

Losing Faith (I)

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Lost FaithMy friend Nic wrote this post several months back: Losing Faith.

I confess that it’s had me spinning some knotted thoughts in a mental back room since then. A few of them revolve around the lost faith Nic describes.  More of them center upon the faith that I have lost along the way.

So mark this post as a starting point.

If you wonder what one pastor’s faith-losses look like, come on back. If you know of others who are questioning or seeking or searching for how faith ties into real life, send them a link.

Now that I’ve put out the invitation, my back burner has officially been moved to my front burner!

Next post: The Faith I’ve Lost.

Jesus Calls You to Be Selfish

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I confess, that title may be slightly misleading.

But only slightly.

All or Nothing

There is a common belief that anything less than absolute altruism somehow clashes with pure religion. While I understand the sentiment, how is anyone less than Mother Teresa expected to take even a step forward if this is true?

Desiring God (Piper)I believe the answer lies in “Christian hedonism“, a provocative phrase coined by John Piper in his 1986 book “Desiring God”.

If one can get past the shock of binding the terms “Christian” and “hedonism”, a wonderfully disorienting teaching awaits.

In one sentence, Piper lays it out like this: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  Jeremy Taylor, a 17th-century Anglican cleric once said that “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.” The concept has also been linked to Blaise Pascal, C.S. Lewis, and Jonathan Edwards, among others.

Tuck away the historical figures that you may or may not care about. This post’s title suggested that Jesus himself promotes such a teaching. Is that true?

14-biltmoreMusical Chairs

Luke 14 depicts Jesus giving seating advice after observing wedding guests eagerly jockeying for the seats of honour. A surface reading would suggest that Jesus was teaching them how to be more effective in their selfish pursuits, as if to say, “If you really want to sit at the head table, let me show you a trick that you may have missed with your small-scoped view.”

This is where the “purity police” show up. If the driving motive behind an act is a desire to receive reward or get ahead, doesn’t that undercut the act’s honour from the get-go?

I think Jesus would say, “No.”

And here’s why.

“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” (Ps 103:13-14)

stock-footage-old-stopwatch-clock-gears-mechanism-with-tick-tick-soundOur Maker knows how we tick.

He is not shocked to learn that we are hardly altruistic. In fact, I will be hard-pressed to have one such moment this week, maybe even today.  Most would agree that a will to survive or succeed appears to be our first nature.

Even more certain is this fact: God wants to lead me. He wants to direct my life and form me into a man more centered upon Him than upon myself. How to do this?

Harnessing our Selfishness

I believe God taps our self-centeredness as a tool toward redemption. It would not be the first time that God has used something lesser for something greater.

If this rubs you wrong, the key truth to remember here is that this hardly makes obedience any easier.  It is not as if God lowers the bar by allowing us to “function selfishly”.

In treating my self-seeking nature as His classroom, God requires a leap of faith so great that most will never draw near to its edge.

Invisible > Visible

I can only pursue unseen treasure if I am willing to release what appears to be already in my grasp. The promise of rewards for goodness–either in an afterlife or in due time–has no power to motivate those who prefer “living for today”. This is delayed gratification to its max. Putting money away for retirement, saving sex until marriage, reading books rather than watching movies–these, and a thousand other examples, highlight the intense struggle humanity has with delayed gratification. To imagine faith as an ignoble pursuit because it contains offers of unseen and untouched reward–this is out of touch with the challenge of the spiritual life.  Such a critic has never tried to live by faith.

Following Christ’s call requires unbelievable guts. Most cannot muster them. It demands a constant loosening of one’s grip and a willingness to settle on rewards that often uncertain and counter-intuitive.

That is the life of faith: Crushingly costly and richly rewarding all at once.