Category Archives: faith

The Bible Project, Pt 5: Rescue Begins

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To read The Bible Project, Pt 4 click here. 

To review:

• God created.
• God created humanity in His image, with freedom and authority
• That creation got fractured in a big way, but God responds with mercy and grace

But there’s still a long road ahead, and the central problem is this:

Creation is broken; what is God going to do about it?

From Genesis 3 to Genesis 11, evil and chaos spread over the earth, but then when we get to Genesis 12 something interesting happens:

A man named Abram hears something.

“The LORD said to Abram, ‘Leave your land, your family, and your father’s household for the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, those who curse you I will curse; all the families of earth will be blessed because of you.’

Abram left just as the LORD told him, and Lot went with him.

With those few lines, everything changes, and God reveals His plan:

• Abram is going to have a family/nation
• God is going to “bless” (fix) the earth
• This blessing is going to come through Abram and his family

With that, God’s “rescue project” is underway. His plan is to deal with the fracture of Genesis 3 through a people.

This passage also says two additional things about God and His story:

First, this God calls. The Bible doesn’t tell us how many people God actually spoke to, only that Abram listened. Regardless, God is a god of invitation, of extension, of welcome. We just have to learn to open our ears (or eyes) to hear Him.

Secondly, in the same way that God gave humanity “work” to do in the garden, God gives humanity work to do to help in the rescue of His creation.

(He obviously thinks a lot of us).

Put another way, God seems to be saying, “You were part of this problem (the brokenness); now you’re going to get to be part of the solution.”

Hidden inside this pronouncement is something else that will have a profound impact on the story. As the rescue project moves forward, it will be marked by three characteristics:

  1. It will be a community (“a nation” in v2). The rescue mission involves an invitation to be a part of a people. It is an invitation to connectedness.
  2. It will be marked by purpose (“an agent…”). It exists to be a blessing to the world, to be a part of the rescue project. To that end, to join the family of God is to receive purpose.
  3. It will be marked by holiness (“blessing”). “Holiness” can be a scary word, but in words of Dr. Brian Russell (who pointed out this three-fold framework), “Holiness is just a desire for people to be a little bit better than they are right now.” To join the rescue project is to desire to be a blessing, not a curse, and therefore involves growth in “blessing” things: love, gratitude, joy, generosity, and so on.

Next up: The Mission in Jeopardy

 

God’s Architectural Sensibility

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My family and I just got back from a vacation in London and Paris. My wife and I just celebrated 20 years of marriage, and we decided that rather than get each other gifts, we would instead do something that would involve our kids as well, and so we decided to experience these two great cities for roughly four days each.

We took in museums (The British Museum, Tate Modern, Louvre, Orsay) and historical sites (The Tower of London, Versailles), and in general just soaked up the vibe of both places by walking (a LOT) and eating as much like “the natives” as possible.

Though London and Paris are in ways utterly unique (London has much more modern architecture, to my eye), both cities also feel remarkably similar in a way.

There is a phenomenon in architecture called “Human Scale”, which says essentially that human beings have a natural sense of appropriate building and street size in relation to ourselves. If buildings are too tall and streets are too close or narrow, most of us feel hemmed in and claustrophobic. If they are too low and too far away from the sidewalk (hello, suburban America), we experience a sense of disconnectedness from our immediate environment.

When there is appropriate relationship between humans and their built environment, we feel encouraged to look in windows, to slow down, to interact with each other and the stores, businesses and restaurants around us.

Things feel right.

I think it’s that way with God.

In a couple places in the Bible, we are told that God is a “consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4 and Hegrews 12), and it’s easy to understand that God is transcendant and big, and our “human scale” to Him is way out of wack.

Luckily, God understands architecture.

I think God gives us a spiritual “human scale” in two very profound ways.

First, He provided His people with things like the Ten Commandments. (By the way, the Ten Commandments make up what some of us know as “The Law”, but a better way of understanding the Commandments is to think of them as “The Instruction”; it’s actually a better translation.) Saint Paul says in Galatians that the Law was “our custodian” (3v24).

In other words, the Law—the Ten Commandments and other specific instructions from God—help us “scale down” God’s character to something that we can more easily relate to.

But God goes further.

Paul also writes in Colossians, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the one who is first over all creation” (1v15).

The most “human scale” element of God’s doing is, in fact, Jesus.

In a way, the glory and power of God is simply too much for us to bear; our humanity has no basis for understanding or coping with it.

It is way beyond human scale.

But God—in His great grace and mercy—remakes the spiritual architecture of the universe so that we can better relate to Him.

The temptations are still there: open up the spaces too wide (with no appropriate “confinement”) and we become disconnected to our environment, to the world in which we live and move. Our spirituality becomes abstract and centered around “getting to Heaven” when we die. Shrink the spaces too much and we become focused on “following the rules” and performing for God while ignoring the heart transformation that He offers us.

But when you get it right—when the Human Scale is appropriate—it feels great. You are connected to the environment, and your spiritual life is vitally connected to the world around you. You are in community, relating to the world around you as God works in you and shapes your heart.

Like walking down the Champs Elysses or The Strand.

Moses and Me.

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What does God owe us?

Do you ever think about the way Moses’ story ends? There’s something about it that connects with me on an almost unconscious level, probably due to my attraction to bittersweet, melancholy stories…

Moses took the staff from the LORD’s presence, as the LORD had commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. He said to them, “Listen you rebels! Should we produce water from the rock for you?” Then Moses raised his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice. Out flooded water so that the community and their animals could drink.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you didn’t trust me to show my holiness before the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land that I am giving them.” (Numbers 20:9-12 CEB)

“The LORD was angry with me because of your deeds and swore that I couldn’t cross the Jordan River or enter the wonderful land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance. I will die here in this land. I won’t cross the Jordan River. But you will, and you will take possession of that wonderful land.” (Deuteronomy 4:21-22)

To summarize:

  • God appears to man (Moses) in a burning bush and says, “I want to release my people from slavery, you go do it.
  • Man resists.
  • God insists.
  • Man resists, but hesitantly begins, and courageously speaks “truth to power”.
  • God acts.
  • Man watches miracles happen, culminating with the freeing of Israel.
  • Man faithfully leads nation through the wilderness, interceding for them, judging their disputes, and keeping their complaining in line.
  • Man makes mistake, and God tells him he will not enter the promise land.

For me, I don’t focus on the mistake/punishment part of it; that just doesn’t seem to be part of the equation. What does fascinate me is Moses’ faithfulness to the vision, and then the (apparent) acceptance of the fact that he will not be a part of its completion.

I wonder how easy it was for Moses to release that dream. 

I think a lot of us confuse what God has promised to us with what God has promised.

We like to add pronouns—“I”, “me”, “mine”—then we get very attached to them.

We build whole theologies that say, “God will promise me amazing things.”

But even at the beginning of the whole operation, God doesn’t specifically promise that He will do great things for Moses:

“Now the Israelites’ cries of injustice have reached me. I’ve seen just how much the Egyptians have oppressed them. So get going. I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:9-10)

He does promise to do things through Moses.

God does want freedom for His people, but some of us will be called to be Moses: we may start the journey, and lead people through the wilderness, but our part will be done before the journey is complete.

Of course that doesn’t mean we won’t get to see amazing things: manna, instruction, guidance, flames, and clouds. 

But it does mean we have to get used to surrendering our pronouns.

We are so used to fighting for our dreams and for spiritual “visions”, but that’s not always the point. God may want to indeed do something amazing, but the role we play may not be the one we think.

“Then the LORD said to Moses: “This is the land that I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I promised: ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have shown it to you with your own eyes; however you will not cross over into it.”

Then Moses, the LORD’s servant, died—right there in the land of Moab, according to the LORD’s command. The LORD buried him in a valley in Moabite country across from Beth-peor. Even now, no one knows where Moses’ grave is. (Deuteronomy 34:4-6)

One of the great acts of art in a life is to be able to release our dreams, and be able to throw ourselves into God with no preconceived notions of “crossing into the promise land.” To be able to say, “God there is a great unknown out there, but I will choose life with you—even without any promises of success or “good things”—over anything else. It’s the mark of greatness, of a very high level of surrender and spirituality…

 

 

Science Mike, The Liturgists, and the Silence that is Saving My Life

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Otto Greiner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Otto Greiner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

A good friend of mine sent me a link to something he’s been working on with the folks from the band Gungor. There’s a spoken word piece on the power of prayer, and in particular a practice called “Centering Prayer”. This is an ancient form of prayer practiced by many of the church fathers and desert monks. The spoken word piece talks about prayer from the point-of-view of science, and discusses some of the proven benefits of silence and meditation on our health.

This was so encouraging to encounter, because I had discovered centering prayer about a year ago, and it is a discipline that has taken root in a deep and powerful way in my life, and while I’m not a scientist, this approach to prayer has had profound and significant effects for me.

Mike can explain all of the silence behind praying; for me it has been all about me learning to recognize and quiet the pathology that is inside me. The prayer has helped me begin to recognize the lies that I so easily believe:

+ That I am the center of my world.
+ That I have more to say to God than He could ever possibly say to me.
+ That my words can somehow control or manipulate God.
+ That God—and grace—can be understood and controlled.

All of these ideas—in some circles they are known as “the false self”—and more start to crack and crumble in the face of 20 minutes of absolute silence and a quiet mind and heart. They evaporate in the presence of a God who dwell in “deep darkness” (1 Kings 8:12; 2 Chronicles 6:2; Psalm 97:2, ).

After a while, you can even begin to see that God is working in you to heal you, to grow and transform you in something resembling Jesus Christ.

(This is a good thing.)

If you wanted to get started with the practice of centering prayer, I’d suggest a few things:

  1. Check out The Liturgists: either live or recorded and rest in the peace of what they are doing.
  2. Read Richard Foster’s book Prayer, which has chapters on The Prayer of the Heart, Meditative Prayer, and Contemplative Prayer, which are somewhat related.
  3. Read Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating
  4. Have a conversation with someone who has experience with it. You can sometimes find these folks in monasteries, or in certain local faith communities (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, etc.).

Two brief words in closing:

  1. Gungor/The Liturgists have taken this meditative approach to worship and prayer on the road, and I’ve seen some great responses to it. If they come someplace near you, you should definitely go, but at the same time, keep in mind that experiencing mystery, silence, and contemplation one time in a theatre or arena is not the same as incorporating it into your daily life. If you had to choose between a daily encounter and a one-time tour stop, choose the daily encounter.
  2. There is a certain nervousness in the west (North America) about disciplines like centering prayer and contemplation, and I suppose I can understand this. My response is first, this is not a new (nor a “new age”) practice, but one that has long standing connections to our faith tradition. Just because it is alien to us in our North American mindset does not mean that it is wrong, or something to be feared. Second, this is merely a way for us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” Jesus’ work on the cross was complete and takes care of the brokenness that is inside me. That being said, Jesus (and Paul as well) was also passionate about change and growth and maturity. Prayer is probably the key mechanism for that growth and maturity.

I’ll stay silent, and wait on God.

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Wonder (again)

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Without mentioning any names, I have an acquaintance who plays drums in a pretty well-known and successful rock band. Around 2003/2004, as they were ascending the charts and their popularity was really taking off, they played a concert at the Hard Rock in Chicago, and he gave me a couple passes to the show, which was pretty much sold out. Afterwards, he met me and a buddy down in the lobby to just say, “Hi” and touch base (I hadn’t seen him in a couple years).

As I walked up to him, he just gushed with gratitude and thanks that I’d come, “Wow, it’s so awesome that you came out!”

As I congratulated him on the band’s success he continued to seem almost overwhelmed by everything that was going on, and continued to thank me for coming out to see the show.

Meanwhile, I kept thinking, “This guy is totally ‘living it,’ and just played a sold out show and he is grateful that I came… for free?!??!”

His wonder and gratitude of what was going on in his life was so childlike and innocent. It blew me away, and it continues to haunt me to today. When I think about how ungrateful I am for my “normal” life, I am convicted. When I refuse to see the wonder and beauty of my life… the moments in lifetimes—weddings, funerals, baptisms—I get to share, when I get to see people grow and become more like Christ, when I get to see people find their vocation and then embrace it… all of these things are miracles in and of themselves, yet I choose to overlook them for something else “out there”. 

It’s a rejection of grace, in a way.

One of my favorite—and most convicting—quotes about wonder is from Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”

Which comes first? The success or the wonder? I’m beginning to think that success follows wonder, rather than the other way around.

Is Jesus Cruel?

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“We were always taught that Jesus said these things to remind us of how utterly depraved we are.”

I am journeying through the Sermon on the Mount with some friends of mine, and we spend last Wednesday going through Jesus’ “re-interpretation” of the Torah in Matthew chapter 5. If you haven’t read it, you can see it here, but essentially Jesus selects a few of the Ten Commandments, and takes them to incredibly high levels:

  • He says it’s not enough to “not kill”, but if you’re even angry with someone you’ve broken a commandment.
  • It’s not enough to refrain from committing adultery; if you look at a woman (or a man, for that matter) lustfully you have broken the commandment.
  • Divorce is prohibited except for pretty extreme circumstances (either sexual unfaithfulness or incest, depending on your interpretation of porneia in 5:32).
  • Revenge is ruled out as well, as is swearing allegiance or taking oaths, and an overall rejection of human ideas of honor and humiliation.

It is an incredibly high standard of living; something that seems virtually unattainable.

So the question is, “Did he mean it?”

One school of thought—reflected by my friend’s comment above—is that Jesus never intended for us to be able to live that way. In fact only he could actually do it, and the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is therefore to remind us how awful we are; that we can never live up to this standard, and therefore we just grateful that Jesus would die for us wretched people.

Frankly, I find this image of Jesus cruel, and I just dont’ think that Jesus is in the “cruel” business.

Succinctly, I think:

1. He totally meant it, and furthermore,
2. He thinks we can do it.

Now in no way is it easy; in fact, it IS impossible, but only if we refuse to do the things that he did in order to live the life he lived. 

One way that you can interpret Jesus’ kingdom pronouncement—”The Kingdom of God is here/near/among/within you”—is to hear or read it as, “The eternal life that you will live forever, in God’s presence, is available now.”

Ultimately, what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5 is what the “eternal life”, the kingdom looks like. Obviously Jesus lived this life perfectly, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t begin to experience it for ourselves now as well.

I think this is the point he’s trying to get across.

What’s more, I think that he hints at how to start experiencing this kingdom life in the very structure of the Sermon.

Briefly, he begins the sermon with the Beatitudes. It’s easy to see that these are simply a way to say, “Before anything you are blessed. You don’t have to work for your blessing. You are blessed because of God’s love for the outcast, the outsider, the spiritual losers.” (And by the way, aren’t we all these things?)

After the Torah reinterpretation of Matthew 5, he spends over a chapter talking about working out your spiritual life in humility: away from the expectations (and praises) of others.

+ Praying in private
+ Giving in secret

These things, and others, are simply ways to humbly separate ourselves from the reward systems that our culture so readily gives us, but that ALSO go to reinforce the pathological parts of our existence, the parts that make us demand, and strive…

and fight…

and objectify…

and crave revenge…

(In other words all the things he says we can’t do.)

Ultimately I think the Sermon is a call to live the Kingdom life, and to start doing it now. Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean that Jesus releases us from it, and ultimately it’s not working to be a person who isn’t angry, or lustful, or vengeful, or who swears allegiance to anything or anybody over God.

It’s about wanting to be that kind of person, and then living our lives as radically blessed as God while we intentionally cultivate humility.

That’s not easy, but I think Jesus believes in us.

The Bible Project, Pt 4: Fall (or, “Well that didn’t last long…”)

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God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good.” (Genesis 1:31)

The woman saw that the tree was beautiful with delicious food and that the tree would provide wisdom, so she took some of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then they both saw clearly and knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made garments for themselves. (Genesis 3:6-7)

So there’s this tiny problem…

(Okay, well not really tiny…)

After God creates humanity, the garden is a “supremely good” place, and I can only believe that this is the way God wanted it to be: a place of growth, purpose, and relationship.

Unfortunately, that sublime perfection just doesn’t last long. At all.

There are lots and lots of questions about Genesis 3:

  • Is Adam and Eve’s sin one of pride (“you will be like God”), or is it one of distrust (God places them in the center of the garden, and they lose faith in God’s ability to provide for them in every way)?
  • Who put the snake there in the first place? Is the snake the devil? (The text actually never says that explicitly.)
  • Is Eve more culpable than Adam? Is Adam more culpable than Eve?

There are plenty more books written on questions like these, but I want to focus on the essentials…

… Because something is broken now. 

Something that God created.

What will He do? What would you do?

It’s easy for me to think that if I was a brilliant creator and had crafted a perfect place with and for my highest creations (humanity) that I would be, well, pretty darn angry if they either (a) tried to elevate themselves over me, or (b) mistrusted my ability to provide for them.

I’d be tempted to teach them a lesson. Or to just scrap the whole project.

But I am not this Creator.

Immediately after the man and woman realize that they are naked, and improvise the first fashion show, we are told that they “heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God in the middle of the garden’s trees.” I can’t imagine the fear and hesitation that they were experiencing, but then God does something completely unexpected (as He often does): He asks a question. 

No temper tantrum. No lightning bolts. No annihilation.

A question. 

And not just any question.

“The LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

In other words, this God comes looking for people. Even the ones who “screw everything up.” 

In a bit of an interrogation/interview that follows, God hears the story and, while He pronounces that there will be consequences for this mistake, He still doesn’t “let them have it.” The garden—in fact everything in creation—is certainly now sideways, and in a way they can never go back, but then this God again surprises us.

“The man named his wife Eve because she is the mother of everyone who lives. The LORD God made the man and his wife leather clothes and dressed them” (3:20-21).

Outside of God playing in the mud and breathing into it to bring Adam to life, this may be the most astonishingly intimate portrait of God in the creation story, and it says an awful lot about who this God is. An awful lot. Nakedness in the Ancient Near East was shameful, and emphasized human vulnerability and frailty. In light of this, God “covers” the shame and vulnerability of humanity with clothes that He Himself makes.

That says a lot.

In a way He seems to be saying, “There is something in the world now—a sickness and a brokenness—that can’t be wished away, It is going to affect everything humanity touches or experiences, but there are two things that you need to know:

  1. I’m going to take care of this, and
  2. It’s time to get to work.

Postscript:

Before we leave this story, I want to point out something obvious. If you are a spiritual person who is even a little bit serious about the Jesus and Bible, it makes a lot of difference what your starting point is. To put it succinctly: there is a version of the Christian story that says it all essentially “starts” (or “ends”, depending on your perspective) with Genesis 3:1-7. It says, “We (humanity) ruined everything; see how wicked we are?”

However, if you start (or end) with Genesis 3:8-21, the story is slightly different: “We ruined everything, and God is going to restore it.” 

… And that’s just what’s going to start next.

To see the Part 3 of The Bible Project, click here.

Actually Kids Really LIKE Vegetables

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I remember the first time my wife set some steamed broccoli on my plate.

Our daughter was about a year old, and she was starting to eat regular food.

But broccoli? 

I looked at Shana with my eyebrows raised.

“Our children are going to go up eating healthy, and Emily needs to see us eating vegetables.”

But broccoli?

Like many other kids who grew up in the—oh let’s face it who grew up anytime in the last 50 years—broccoli was the food that we all made fun of.

No one ever actually ate it, did they? 

Well, regardless of my history, I took a bite.

It wasn’t bad.

And so began our long running association with fruits and vegetables.

At one point, things got so bad that we got Emily a “Costco-sized” can of Del Monte Green Beans for her birthday and she acted like we’d just gotten her a car simply because she was so used to eating fresh or frozen green beans that the added preservatives in the can was like eating cake to her. 

Really.

But you know what? Kids really like vegetables.

We think they only like fish sticks and pizza, but when kids get a taste of real food, they tend to want more.

It’s like that with true spirituality.

Last June I went on a mission trip with some folks from my church. We ranged in age from 15 to 45, with most of us (okay: them) in their 20s. We built houses all day, and hung out with some kids in villages around Panajachel, Guatemala. At night we would sit up on the roof of our hotel and just unpack the day.

There was an older gentleman who wasn’t really a part of our church, but he’d traveled with our team to see what Porch de Salomon was up to. This guy—he has since become a spiritual mentor/director to me—would sit with us, and while most of us were just trying to recover from the day or crack bad jokes, he would start to ask us very simple questions:

“So how did you grow spiritually today?”

“Where did you see God today?”

These were not crazy, earth-shattering questions, and yet somehow they were the questions we needed to answer. 

And as we began to answer, the most amazing thing began to happen:

tears were shed…

poignant stories—of vulnerability and roundedness—began to be shared…

fears were exposed…

hopes were laid out…

All from these simple questions, and an older individual who refused to let us stay on the surface, and who was unafraid to lead us to tender places.

Even when what we thought wanted was just a chance to knock back a beer or two and laugh.

What we really needed was to go into our souls.

It revolutionized my understanding of what people are seeking.

I thought people—in particular younger people—were in search of superficial, tepid spirituality. I thought they wanted to work and drink and laugh and then shop and then go home.

But I was wrong.

What I learned is that people are hunger, even desperate for something real and deep and life-changing.

They want to cry. They want to tell their stories. And share their fears. They—we—want to be known.

I see so much in church “discipleship” that is designed to get people serving, and giving, and participating, but I’m not sure I see efforts to cultivate spiritual directors, or mentoring. I’m not sure I hear people relentlessly asking the basic spiritual questions we are all hungry for.

“How have I grown spiritually today?”

“Have I been honest with myself and others?”

“Have I hurt someone today? Do I need to ask forgiveness from someone?”

These are the thoughts that people want to think about.

Sometimes it seems like the church is convinced that people want “Happy Meals” or some kind of GMO perfection, but what we want is something earthy, connected, and trusted.

Like vegetables.

It’s Not About Religion … It’s About (a really crappy) Relationship

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Hope that’s not too crass.

For the past 15-20 years, there’s been a very popular catch phrase amidst my faith tribe:

“It’s’ not about religion; it’s all about relationship.”

(Meaning relationship with Jesus.)

So people say things like, “Well I used to go to a church but it was all about religion and not about relationship, so I left it and now I go someplace else.”

We create sermon/teaching series called, “The End of Religion.”

Mostly, that’s great: we want people to know this Jesus, and to be “in relationship” with him.

But I think there’s another dynamic at work.

At some point, I think what people mean by “all about religion” is that a church is demanding behavior from people. Externalities.

And yes: this is not a great thing.

But what troubles me is how people then try to define “relationship.”

Occasionally, I ask people who are “all about the relationship” how they work on their spiritual lives. What I hear is…

  • “Well, my spiritual life isn’t so great…”
  • “I really don’t have time to pray/read my Bible/meditate…”
  • “I pray when I think about it… (which isn’t often)”

In the end, I’m left wondering if people left churches that were “just about religion” just because they didn’t like being told what to do.

To put it another way, religion is not—in and of itself—a bad thing.

In fact, what if we actually need “religion” of some sort to lead us to “the relationship”?

I need the “religion” of communication to maintain the relationship with my wife. I need the “religion” of coffee with friends to cement and deepen connections with them. I need the “religion” of hearing stories about my childhood from my parents to remind me of who I am at my best and most innocent.

What if it’s not so much a matter of “religion v relationship” as it is “good religion that leads to relationship v bad religion that leads nowhere”?

What religion does at its best is to help lead us to the relationship, and then frame that relationship in the most fully-formed beautiful way. It’s easy to just throw the frame away, but it does no good to substitute a “relationship” that you think makes no demands on your time, your self, your thoughts, your attitudes.

That’s not love.

The Gift of Isolation

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What’s the nature of our life together?

For years, I was under the impression that “community” meant a sort of seamless “inter-meshing” of lives; a true uniting of individuals.

I’ve now come to understand that this belief has caused a tremendous amount of stress and strain in my life.

I was speaking with my counselor this summer (don’t have a counselor? Get one. Trust me.), and I was talking about my dad.

Here’s what you need to know about my dad: he had a big personality. He was a salesman (a really good one), and it showed through in most of the dynamic of our lives. He dominated—albeit benevolently—our family for decades.

Then he had a stroke.

A big one.

He really shouldn’t have survived but he did (and we are grateful). Furthermore, he’s made a remarkable recovery: he gets around, and talks and interacts and everything.

But much of the “largeness” of that personality was taken from him in 2004, AND FROM OUR FAMILY AS WELL.

We were sort of left reeling. There was a void at the center and point of our family, and also in my life as a man. All of a sudden, the man that was supposed to help me navigate fatherhood (not to mention my 40s and 50s) was gone. In its place there was now a wall, a barrier, that was just spray-painted with the word, “Stroke.”

I could no longer get to the man that I’d grown up with. I was left outside. I felt that, deeply.

I felt very alone.

I was relating all that to my counselor (again: don’t have yet? get one. trust me.), and he reflected back that to me: “So what you’re saying is that since your dad’s stroke you feel isolated from him?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “That’s it.”

Then he hit me with the big guns.

“Well, all he’s done is pointed out a central truth of our existence: the truth is, we are all isolated from each other. We can’t know perfect union or relationship in this lifetime. To be human is to be isolated—to some degree or another—from each other.”

.To be human is to be isolated—to one degree or another—from each other.”

That hit me like a ton of bricks.

And then it set me free.

It’s easy to labor under the illusion that we can expect perfection:

  • perfect families
  • perfect jobs
  • perfect community
  • perfect relationships

In actuality, we live in an “in between” world:

  • in between Genesis and Revelation
  • in between brokenness and beauty
  • in between fracture and healing
  • in between isolation and reconciliation

This is the human condition. Freedom comes when we begin to accept it, and release those around from the burden of being perfect.

(Including ourselves.)

It may sound like a sad or depressing to think of ourselves as ultimately isolated from each other, but it really shouldn’t. I think it’s really simply choosing to accept and to live in the reality that God has given us.

The truth of the matter is that we will know this someday.

Just not quite yet.

The exciting part is that it can start now; we can begin to move closer to each other.

But only if we know where we are starting from.

Now we see a reflection in a mirror; then we will see face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I will know completely in the same way that I have been completely known. (1 Corinthians 13v12 CEB)