I want to buy backpacks for crack babies
Teach them E=mc2
Sing them the theme to Fat Albert
Show them the correct dosage of sugar for kick-ass Kool-Aid
Tell them their mothers' addictions
Were not predestination, were not bad luck
But just were
And they are free to be
Someone's solution instead of the symbol
Of someone's problem

I want to host a banquet
For the orphans of Gaza
The widows of Darfur
Pile the tables high with falafel
And kisra with bamia
Fill glasses with crystal water
Mugs with guhwah, chai, and goat's milk
Raise a toast to their fallen loved ones
And send them to down-filled beds
For a night of rest
Without the sound of Kalashnikovs
I want to tell them they are no longer refugees
They are Mustafa and Jamilah
And they can call someplace home again

I want to give prosthetics to the war children
Of Kabul and Mazar and Kandahar
Watch them play soccer and basketball
Their new limbs gracefully awkward
Their war dreams lessening in intensity
Their eyes losing their haunted cast
Their steps unfettered by the fear
of land mines in the sand
I want to tell them they are worth more
Than sodomy and poppy seed
That they can write their own history

I want to comfort everyone everywhere
Share and bear their joys and sorrows
Whisper with prophetic imagination
Of a new world with old roots
A melancholy tale with an uplifting end
When he and she, you and me
Can love with reckless abandon
Others more than ourselves

But today, I drive by the man
With his cardboard sign
My windows rolled up against the sunny day
A dollar bill snugly ensconced
In the folds of my wallet
And I sing with Mahalia,
His eye is on the sparrow

This poem originally appeared here and then here. The author is composing a new poem every day in honor of National Poetry Month.

Before 2004, I had attended church only for funerals and on one occasion, went to a Christmas play with my neighbors. Ah, the memories... But prior to that, I guess the only spiritual notions that crossed my brain where my grandmother's haunted house, my extreme fear of death (at the time), and that my sister was in heaven with God. Nothing to theological. With four years of church-going under my belt I'm a bit more informed than I used to be, but informed in ways that I never thought.

As I'm sitting here, writing this and ignoring the huge amount of finance homework that needs to be done, a rush of my past collides with my own self and it causes my brain to be filled with so many emotions. You see, nowadays, when I ruminate about church and what it means to me, a swarm of pain, joy, confusion, and fleeting happiness comes and hovers over me.

About a year ago, I was involved in a somewhat nasty conflict at my previous church. It turned out to be one of the most painful and bitter experiences I've ever endured. But it opened my eyes to the fact that while churches should be Christ-like, they are still full of humans and thus have the ability to create pain.

I don't know if you've heard, but we Christians haven't been the prettiest thing in America lately. I've read stories about a church that goes to veteran's funerals protesting and holding up signs that say "God hates you." At my college, there's a Christian extremist group who like to terrorize everyone on campus with their signs that say "Islam is not a peaceful religion" and "Halloween is from the devil." After seeing these things, it was like my eyes were opened and God whispered one simple, but powerful concept into my heart: God is love. Period. He always has been and always will be, no matter what the crazies at my school or the extremists protesting with their "God hates you" signs say. I had never understood this before (it seems a little ridiculous because that's what the whole bible is about!). But I do now, and the concept goes even further: this love should always be present in our own lives, as well as the church.

Oh what an epiphany it was, but it's nothing new. God, the one who created Earth and all its inhabitants, has always done nothing but love creation, despite what creation thinks. What we, especially as Christians, considered detestable, untouchable, sinful, and unlovable, God has not. He does not let color, ethnic background, political beliefs, money, sexual orientation, or whatever gets in the way of relationships, get in the way of His love for HIS creation. He's even done something so drastic as to sacrifice his own son, his own self, so that there would no longer be the barrier of guilt or fright standing between Him and people. In a way, God's love for humanity is like the ultimate love story. The Creator, so in love with his creation, took so many measures to make sure that his creation new of his love, and then, he gave his creation the choice to choose for themselves whether they believe in the Creator and his love, or not. Because love isn't love at all if it is forced.

Speaking of choices, I make horrible ones daily. Everyone does, even churches do (big gasp here). Making sure to keep this in mind I'm still pondering the meaning... what does church mean to me? In the dictionary it's defined as "the whole body of Christian believers; Christendom." But I think it's deeper than this. Just because we go to church, doesn't mean that that's all we need to do, and then just live our lives as we please. But we tend to skip right on over this. Churches become institutions instead of sanctuaries. God moves with or without steeples and preachers, because that is who he is. Yet, he has commanded us to be a body, a family. And this family of ours is commanded to bless others (remember Abraham, anybody? "I'm going to bless you so that you may bless others"). Isn't this what it's all about? God is love; so naturally, one would assume that's what a church should represent. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of churches that do such, and then there are plenty that don't. There are plenty that point a finger at those not considered Christians, while saving all their love for themselves (I got sucked into this thought, too)

Yet in all this, I begin to understand what Jesus was doing while he was here on this earth. He took special care to show love to the "outsiders," the "sinners" and what the Jews considered at the time, the "unclean." There are so many who need to be loved outside of our Christian circle.

In the end, it goes as Jesus said, "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone." If we have any condemning to do, then it should be right in the mirror, pulling that plank out of our own eye, because no one is without sin. However, because we are saved doesn't give us the right to use the "holy finger" on those who aren't.

Let's face it, Americans don't really like the church. And let's face it one more time: American churches are starting to become a big, detestable eyesore. We need to be very careful in the direction we're going. We are not out to please anybody, but God. But we should be out to love everybody created by God. Let us not be considered detestable and unloving, but benevolent and loving. I want to be out chasing the world like God chased his own creation: with a feverish, fanatic love that does the most extreme to reach far and wide across uncrossable barriers. For this is what love is, and this is what love does.

Obama, while affirming the tremendous work his church has done in his city and around the nation, has condemned the most controversial remarks of his pastor. But the whole controversy points to the enormous gap in understanding between the mainstream black community in the U.S. and the experience of many white Americans.

How do two groups of Christians living in the same country, reading the same Bible, come to such radically different conclusions?

In David Kelsey's work on biblical hermeneutics he contends that every faith community brings its own particular template or master lens to scriptural interpretation. Our decisions about how to interpret scripture are not based solely on a close study of biblical texts but on a prior decision in which we imaginatively try to grasp the essence of Christianity. The truth is that every culture throughout the history of the church has brought its own unique perspective to scripture and has attempted to contextualize that message back into the culture.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, in fact it is very natural, but it is essential for people to first of all recognize that they are doing this. We must make ourselves as aware as possible of the cultural lenses we are looking through. While God is, by nature, objective truth, God cannot be known through rational objectivity. We all bring a great deal of our own subjectivity to the scripture. We must to go back to the text and allow it to continuously transform and enlarge our vision of God. We must also learn to read scripture from others point of view.

Husto Gonzalez points out that every cultural expression of Christianity has to be in a constant process of purification in relation to the gospel, otherwise it transforms its every expression of the gospel into idols and imposes them upon other peoples as absolutes.

I have always appreciated the power and the passion of black preaching and I had assumed it was just a cultural dynamic at work. However this past year I read a book called The Heart of Black Preaching by Cleophus J. LaRue that changed my perspective. According to LaRue the distinctive power of black preaching lies much deeper, resting in the soul of black Christian experience. The essence of black preaching is not merely rhetorical techniques but extraordinary experiences that have given them a unique understanding of the Bible.

The African-American perspective is past-oriented. Their history is what makes them who they are. Their experiences and the experiences of their ancestors are an essential part of their identity. It is through those experiences that they view their world and it is with those experiences that they approach scripture.

The black church was born in slavery. Thus black preaching originated in a context of marginalization and struggle, and it is to this context that even today it still seeks to be relevant. This is largely due to the continued marginalization and injustices that the black community experiences at the hands of the larger white society, especially on the south side of Chicago, but also because history is so important to how blacks view the world today.

Their history of slavery and injustice gives them very different perspectives on scripture often unavailable to those standing in the center of power. They view scripture through a unique lens.

Blacks tend to believe that scripture demonstrates God's mighty actions on behalf of marginalized and powerless people. The biblical stories and scriptural passages that have historically been used the most in black sermons were those that clearly demonstrated the mighty acts of God on behalf of people who were in situations of powerlessness consistent with, though not the same as, those of the forcibly displaced Africans in America. Stories that spoke of the mighty acts of God on behalf of the marginalized were actually the stories that attracted blacks to the God of the Christian religion during the days of slavery.

The black church pulpit has historically been a place of prophetic truth-telling about the realities that black people experience in their lives. In fact, the black church has often been the only place where such truths are ever told. Black preachers have had the task of encouraging people who feel beaten down week after week. The goal of the black sermon is the creation of a meaningful connection between an all-powerful God and a marginalized and powerless people.

So while I certainly do not condone the angry and divisive rhetoric of Rev. Wright, I think it is important to try to see the world from his perspective - and being a white kid from a middle-class suburb of Des Moines, this will take a little more effort than listening to a twenty second sound bite on Fox News.

But, as I discovered this weekend, there is a problem.

I am afraid.

I am afraid to love myself. I am afraid to love others. I am afraid to admit that I am truly beautiful. I am afraid of the implications of that kind of love. Love begs me to consider the question who would I actually be if I gave myself over to love and to be loved? Love asks why I hold so tightly onto my failings to recall them at a moments notice but fight with every once of energy in me to deny the beauty that lies within.

On some level perhaps, I fear love blinding to me to my own sin and brokenness. The voice in my head says something like if you love THAT much you will just ignore sin, injustices, and brokenness that is all around you. Good point, I think. After all, love is accepting. I think, If the church has that much love it will probably be filled with a bunch of murderers and prostitutes.

And then it hits me.

Why isn't the church filled with more murderers and prostitutes? Why is my church so safe? To what extent am I loving well?

Love scares me because it is unpredictable, risky, and just outright irrational. Love risks creating, giving, and receiving. Love compels one to give his Son to be murdered for the sake of new relationship. Love causes one to give up all to gain all. Love is not safe.

Toward the end of the Apostle Peter's life he wrote a verse saying, Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. He does not say that love ignores a multitude of sins and in the process fails to recognize that we are destroying relationships. That is not love. Love sees sin. Love sacrifices to forgive and overcome sin. And love reaches out to see beauty in the face of sin.

Love covering sins says that I see your brokenness and sin but I choose to forgive because you are more valuable than your mistakes. Covering sins says I value the risk of relationship over the safety of solitude. Covering sins says that I will allow myself to let go of the failings and shortcomings and to see the beauty.

When we choose to celebrate the beauty that is in each other in the face of our brokenness, this, I believe, is being people that love well.

To get a more irenic perspective, I Googled the Day of Silence. Just below the organization's official website listing were hundreds of religious sites, primarily on the offensive and ready to strike.

Is this even worth rattling the sabers? Yes, homosexuality is a topic of a much needed discussion in the Christian community. Yes, more than one book of the Bible expresses that homosexuality is sin; and yes, we should stand against sin, all sin. But Jesus' instruction to love our neighbors as ourselves suggests that we also stand against name-calling, bullying, and the harassment of others, the very thing the Day of Silence is shedding light upon.

It's no surprise that many of my co-workers think Christianity is a religion of hate. It's easy to see why members of my family want nothing to do with Jesus and His people.
How does this look when we remove our biased-colored lenses? A group of organized students, homosexual or not, unite to promote a safer public school environment by bringing attention to the issue of hate, even honoring an 8th grader named Lawrence King who was shot and killed by a fellow student, and the Christians are immediately called to action against this? Are we showing Christ's love or something else? Do we love our neighbors as ourselves even if they're not like us, even if we don't approve of their lifestyle? It's difficult sure, but "love your neighbor as yourself" is Jesus' second greatest commandment (Matt 22:34-40).

As for the Day of Silence, we're faced with many options. We can overreact and show something other than the love of Jesus, which means we take the easy route and simply join the bandwagon. We can do nothing, which means we draw far less attention to the event and we avoid looking like creeps; but by burying our head in the sand, we fail to engage in the communal conversation. Or, we can take a different kind of stand, one of authentic love and openness to reach the greater community.

Personally, I'm all for saying, "Well, Scripture identifies homosexuality as a sin, and I don't condone sin (especially my own). I know God doesn't condone sin; sin's wages are death. But I'm also opposed to name-calling, bullying, and harassment so I stand against that too."

I'd like to believe Jesus would approach this problem a little differently than the e-mail I recently received. I'd also like to believe that we Christians can rise above the political polemic we've grown so fond of.

Never once has my friend forwarded me an urgent call to action to share the gospel with a co-worker or care for widows, orphans, and those in prison. Never has the concern been about the meek within or beyond the borders of the United States. Not one time has he sent me an e-mail about Christ's love and compassion for those outside society's standard of "normal." None of his dispatches have called me to love my neighbor. What a refreshing change that would be!

Anyway, I was intrigued by the notion that supporting issues such as universal healthcare made me a socialist. I was also intrigued by the notion that this is a bad thing. From the American perspective I guess that makes sense, but from the Christian one I am not so sure.

Let me make it clear from the start that I do not believe adopting a universal healthcare system will create a socialist society in America. That, in my opinion, is overly hyped propaganda meant to keep all of us afraid of asking the hard questions. It is quite possible to socialize some aspects of our system without fully identifying ourselves as socialists. In fact, as I will discuss in a moment, we already do that.

But let us pretend, just for a moment, that I am calling for full blown socialism. I don't think I am, but let's just pretend. Is that the worst thing that could happen? Would that be un-American? Unbiblical? Let's think this through a bit. Don't start throwing stones at me or anything, but I would like to respond to some of the most common objections I have received in regard to my current political affiliations. Come on! Just for kicks and giggles.

Objection Number 1: Socialism is of the devil, right?

No more than capitalism.

Objection Number 2: Socialism is a system in which society takes on the responsibility of caring for those who are underprivileged. You are trying to make it so some people can sit back and leech off society!

Might as well jump right to the heart of the matter. Essentially, socialism, in part or in whole, places the responsibility of caring for the underprivileged on society as a whole. If there is a problem of some sort, society must collectively address it. I have been told by some objectors this means an individual is no longer responsible for their own actions. For example, if a man wastes his life doing drugs and chasing women and ends up living on the street, he can blame society for not helping him and absolve himself from all wrongdoing. Supposedly, socializing our government removes individual responsibility from the equation and opens the way for lazy bums to sit back and enjoy the ride. In short, this argument asks, "Why should I take care of a lazy bum?"

First, socialism in itself does not abort personal responsibility. A murderer can blame society all he wants, but he will still end up in prison (which, by the way, is socialized in the United States). Just because we socialize many aspects of our system, it does not mean we do away with the law. Don't get me wrong, the danger does exist. There is a fine line between helping people out of a rough spot and enabling them to continue in their messed up ways. We could very easily slip into a society that ignores personal responsibility altogether and refuses to hold people accountable for their actions. But that is not a result of socialism; it is a result of fallen thinking. Blaming socialism for diminished accountability is like blaming capitalism for greed. Every system has its dangers, and no system by itself is all good. That is why we must put mechanisms in place to counteract the flaws of whichever system we live within.

In some ways, people living under a socialist system would be held to a higher standard. Someone who has been provided with adequate healthcare, education, and opportunity should certainly be expected to become a productive member of society. Anyone who has all the tools but does not do the job is just outright lazy. But in order for this whole thing to work, we must dedicate ourselves to the equitable distribution of resources.

Notice, I said equitable distribution, not equal distribution. To equally distribute resources would mean that everyone gets an identical amount. That means everyone gets five cookies. To equitably distribute resources simply means that we put mechanisms in place to ensure that distribution is fair, that no one experiences extreme poverty or extreme wealth, and that everyone truly does have a fighting chance. This means that we tear down barriers, move obstacles, and regulate travel distance so that everyone has the same opportunity to access the cookies.

(I'll pause for a second because I think some of my readers are cringing at that last statement. We all like to think that equal opportunity already exists here in America. I will have to save this for another time, but I am sad to say that this is not the case. Perhaps some of us can call ourselves "productive" and "successful" simply because we had a head start from the beginning.)

Second, if our position is going to be that socialism is bad because it benefits the lazy, we must be consistent. If socialism itself is the problem, we have some cleaning up to do. Many lazy and unproductive people I know have benefited from the service of the local fire department. How is that fair? If a crack house catches fire, why should we as tax payers be obligated to extinguish it? I also know many deadbeat dads who benefit from the use of our postal service, a highly socialized entity. Why should I pay for them to get the new Sears catalog? Perhaps we should abolish the postal system so that no undeserving people benefit from it.

For that matter, think of education. Every child in America is automatically given access to a public education. Have all of their parents adequately worked to put them there? By putting children in school for free, aren't we allowing their parents to just sit back and enjoy the free ride of education without so much as making them work for that privilege? We don't say such things because we know that education is a right for all citizens, even if their parents were unproductive. (It is interesting to note, however, that children are denied medical treatment every day because their parents are unable or unwilling to pay for it.)

Objection Number 3: Oh come off it! You know that the so-called "underprivileged" are just lazy, unproductive bums. Why should I take care of them?

I know that sounds a bit harsh, but I have heard this argument more than once from some of my more affluent associates. The underlying assumption that still pervades our culture today is that those who are living below the poverty line are somehow at fault. Why should society do for them what they should be doing themselves? We say, "Well, nobody helped me out and I am doing fine. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps in an almost entirely non-socialist society, so clearly, those who have not followed suit have done so by choice." The short version is this: they don't deserve a cookie because they have not already attained it themselves.

There is a psychological tendency that we all have that I feel plays greatly into this situation.

What we have here is an example of a fundamental attribution error. When we see a flaw or deficiency in the life of another person, we automatically attribute it to the person's character. When we see a flaw in our own lives, we automatically attribute it to our environment. Let me give you an example. When you are walking through Wal-mart (that beacon of capitalist integrity), you see a large man screaming at two small children, telling them to be quiet and behave themselves. You think to yourself, "That man is in serious need of anger management counseling! He is very cruel to those children." However, the next day when you are screaming your head off in the toy department, you can only think, "My kids are so unruly!"

This principle translates. Looking at a homeless man, you may think, "That man needs to stop being lazy and do something with his life." But when you lose your job after accruing thousands of dollars in medical debt, the situation looks very different.

You may look at a prostitute and say, "That immoral woman should be ashamed of herself." But when your kids haven't eaten in three days, you begin to understand that there are very real environmental factors in play.

My point is simply this: if we are truly going to build a system that works, we need a fair balance between affirming individual accountability and recognizing the environmental factors and systematic failures that contribute to the plight of the poor. If we give in to the stereotypes and refuse socialism simply because we are convinced that all of the underprivileged "deserve" their circumstances, we are abandoning our responsibility to care for our neighbor.

Besides, just because there are some people who don't deserve help, it does not mean that this is the case for the majority of Americans. Again, mechanisms can be put in place to ensure that we are properly and justly distributing resources. Claiming that the majority of underprivileged families are poor because of some deficiency on their part is just as absurd as claiming that the majority of present-day millionaires deserve their fortune simply because they have it in the bank.

Objection Number 4: You are trying to give the government overlords more control!

I have heard it said that if we socialize areas of our government, they will begin to control us. We will live just like Orwell talked about, with Big Brother watching over us and orchestrating our every move. They will tap our phone lines and listen in on our conversations. They may begin to monitor our internet usage and keep track of everywhere we are going. The government may begin to pry into personal matters and dig up private information to hold against us...oh, wait. I think I was describing the Patriot Act just then.

Come on, Republicans. I'm just messing with you.

Listen, the government is not something to be feared. We are the people, we are in charge. We all tiptoe around afraid that the government is going to do something bad to us. I say we just keep them accountable and make them do what they are supposed to do: protect us.

Objection Number 5: Socializing things is just another step toward Globalism!

Apparently, a lot of conservatives perceive a strong connection between socialism and what some have called Globalism, or the optimistic belief that mankind is progressively getting better. If mankind is evolving into a better state, we can count on society to make things better. One day soon, we will all have cookies because we deserve them!

As we've already pointed out, this is not true. Of course mankind is fallen. On our own, we will always be depraved. It is not as if we will progressively improve until we achieve some form of "better-ness".

But, this objection does not take redemption into account at all. Are we still spinning out of control, or is God at work in the world today to fix everything that got broken? Jesus died to redeem not only individuals but all of creation. You know all those powers and forces that oppress and enslave people? You know those entities that bully people and trap them in twisted, distorted lifestyles that do not at all reflect the image of their Creator? Well, here's the thing about those powers: Jesus disarmed them and made a public example of them, stripping them naked and exposing them for what they really were (take a look at Colossians 2). He initiated their annihilation in His death and resurrection, and some day He will finish them off. Right now, we are His people, living between these times. God presently tabernacles on earth in the midst of His people. We are, at this moment, beginning to usher in His Kingdom. This does not mean that we all just sit around singing hymns until He gets here.

Until Jesus finishes what He started (which He will), we will never see a perfect society. But, He did make it clear to us in His Word that we should live in such a way that people around us experience a little bit of His Kingdom. Our prayer should be that God's will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. We are salt and light sent here to preserve and brighten and expose. This means pursuing peace in all things, loving one another, and being sure that our neighborhoods are marked by justice and equity.

So, is socialism the answer because people are really good at making themselves better? No. But is socialism an answer because it might mean we would do a better job of loving our neighbor? Maybe so. We should at least consider it. Otherwise, we'll just shrug over the brokenness inherent in the system and simply fend for ourselves until Jesus comes back.

Objection Number 6: You are trying to step on my rights as an American!

In a way, yes, I am.

There is always a lot of talk about rights. I am entitled to this, and I am entitled to that. Do not misunderstand what I am saying: I am very grateful to all the men and women who have given their lives to protect the rights I have today. I understand the importance of preserving these rights and I honor those who are currently serving in various capacities to ensure that this preservation continues. Like our forefathers, I believe that all men are created equal and that we all deserve those foundational inalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. But let me pose two questions.

First, supposing all people are entitled to these rights, isn't it true that when one person is denied their rights, it is a miscarriage of the whole system? If all people are not free to exercise their rights, are any of us really free? After all, those famous documents make the provision for all people, not just those who can afford it. Every lifeless, liberty-deprived, happiness chaser is a breach of contract.

When a man who is entitled to Life slowly coughs himself to death in a dark alley, we are reminded that we have not yet attained those lofty principles we outlined all those years ago. When poverty and race divide our cities and separate the haves from the have-nots, all of whom are entitled to Liberty, we must ask ourselves if anyone is truly free. When a child entitled to the pursuit of Happiness is denied the opportunity to attend a university because her family cannot afford tuition, we wonder what we meant when we said she could make her dreams come true.

Let me clarify again: I am not suggesting that everyone should be given equal wealth. I am simply suggesting that many of the things I do as a middle-class white male under the guise of "American rights" are a direct result of my being born into a middle-class white family with a reasonable amount of money. Those born into wealth have many opportunities I will never see, and those born into poverty often don't stand a chance to see the opportunities I have. So, what do we mean when we say equal rights?

Dr. King said it like this: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are obligated to our neighbor; we are obligated to ensure that whatever I am entitled to, he is entitled to. Sometimes, this means we must interact with institutional and systematic failures that keep people from reaching this equitable state. In short, sometimes we must level the playing field. Again, I have not got the time to discuss in depth where I feel the deficiencies fall, but suffice it to say, I do not see equal opportunity for all citizens. We are all pursuing happiness, but only a few of us are in a Ferrari.

My second question is this: just because we can do it, does it mean we should? I've been told repeatedly that it is my right as an American to pursue my own wealth and happiness and that I am in no way obligated to turn back for my brother. I find this answer to be wildly unsatisfying.

And one more side note: do not make the mistake of believing that your current political system "gives" you the rights you have. I have heard it said before, "I am so glad I live in the United States. The government gives certain rights that no one can take away."

God gives humans those rights, not our government. We simply live in a society that does not openly persecute us for our identification with these rights. To give their empire the credit for "allowing" us to do these things, we are forgetting our true identity as Image bearers and buying into their assertion that they own us. To refuse to recognize that some people are being left out in the cold when it comes to equity and justice, we are neglecting our prophetic role in this present age and denying our primary citizenship in the Kingdom of God.

Objection Number 7: So, are you calling for a socialist United States? That will never work.

I was told that some of us fruity liberals like to transcend labels, so let me play that game for a minute. I hesitate to pick one social or economic system and call it "Christian". As I said before, there is no one system that is morally or spiritually superior to the others. What matters is how we operate within that system, and how we interact with the systemic flaws we find. But I do think that certain aspects of some political systems are much closer to the Biblical ideal than others.

So, am I calling for socialism? I don't know exactly. In some areas I certainly am, such as healthcare. But for our entire government? I don't know. I am definitely NOT convinced capitalism is the best possible system. I think I am calling for a sanctified socialism, a holy form that focuses on achieving the fundamental principles without all the baggage. Call it what you will, I just think that we can do better on some things.

I am calling for a lifestyle of community and compassion. I am calling for a society marked by justice and equity. I am calling for a society which recognizes that some of us are born on the starting line while others are born halfway to the finish. While refusing to overlook the weightiness of individual sin, we must go toe to toe with the outside influences and environmental factors that cripple our brothers and sisters and keep them pinned in the gutter.

So, socialism is going to make that happen? No. I never said it was. As many detractors are quick to point out, mankind is inherently sinful. By ourselves, it is impossible for us to build a society like the one I've described.

Am I naive enough to call for such a society? Yes, I am. I know we cannot attain perfection on this side of the final cosmic fireworks. But as "between the times" people of God, we can change the rules by which everyone plays.

When many in our society are trodden underfoot simply because someone else has the "right" to make more money than them; when the top ten percent of the population controls eighty percent of the world's wealth; when people I love are working two and three jobs and are still struggling to survive; when the bootless are called to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; when sinners are held in bondage by principalities and powers that throw sand in their eyes and make daily power plays to keep them from breaking free, shouldn't the people of God be locked in battle? If not, the Old Testament prophets wasted a lot of breath.

And the call goes beyond the church walls. Why wouldn't we engage the governing structures and make them more in tune with what God wants for His people? If it is hurting and oppressing people, let's make it stop. If for no other reason, we all like cookies.

Shiny, happy people make me nervous. They have it together. They know who they are, their role, their position and their place. I cannot keep my temper, keep track of my keys or remember to say hello to my neighbor. Talking with these folks is intimidating. Hey, I dropped the ball on a project at work this week, yelled at my kid and I don't know what I want to be now that I'm grown up. How are you?

In my life, I meet these people every day. Smart professionals with advanced degrees, loving couples with great kids, religious folks who are "centered" and neighbors that are just happy to be alive. Some really seem to have it together. They are comfortable in their skin, they have gracious manners and no vices to speak of. They are the civic leaders in the community, respected members of the local synagogue, employees getting promotions. I am sure their lives are not perfect but, by golly, they're not too shabby, either. Me, I'm hoping the checks clear, praying my kid doesn't get kicked out of school again, and just trying to get off this damn roller coaster.

Dark Secrets.

Now we all know that no one has a perfect life. It is not only impossible, it is probably unwanted. Some of life's greatest joys come from unexpected difficulties, frustrations and unmet expectations. I mean, I love Bob Dylan, but I had to suffer through hours of his nasally singing before I could appreciate his great art. Even so, there seems to be a basic disconnect between me and the happy people.

I came across one writer who describes an ever-so-short conversation with someone who has it all together.

"Tell me your dark secret, and I'll tell you mine.
Oh. Is that your dark secret? Oh well, never mind." - Bill Mallonee

As one person offers to become vulnerable, the response that comes back is so shallow or guarded that the hopeful initiator is left backtracking and looking for an exit from the conversation altogether. This seems to be a common experience for many when they meet someone who projects poise, confidence and competence. Some folks can come away, not inspired but discouraged. My life is so far from "together" that I wouldn't know if I could find all the pieces to even begin trying to put it together. Maybe what I need is a new car, a new career, a new spouse. Maybe I'll take up yoga. Maybe I should see my therapist or my pharmacist.

The Truth.

If there is one bedrock truth that the Christian faith tells us - even preceding the truth of God's love for us - it is that we humans do not have it together. We are not ok. We are a broken, besotted group. The Scriptures record that the whole history of God and humans is a cosmic act of redemption by God, to bring back into companionship wayward creatures.

Yahweh calls to the Hebrews, I would that I could take you under my wings and comfort you, but you would not have me. Jesus proclaims, I have come to seek and to save the lost. Those who are perpetually secure do not need comforting, those who know their position and their place do not need rescue. God's love and mercy are of no use to the self-sufficient.

I heard one of the greatest summaries of the human condition a number of years ago from a Catholic writer in response to Ted Turner's famous quote that Christianity is "for losers." She noted that Ted Turner's mistake was not his assessment that Christianity was for losers, but his assessment that Christianity was not for him. We are all losers. We are all in need of mercy, grace and affirmation.

The Flesh and the Devil.

Part of being broken people is that we not only experience feelings of disconnectedness, displacement and shame, but that as damaged beings, we often fail to follow the better angels of our nature. We act out of fear, selfishness and greed. We swear, we cheat, we gossip and we lie. We cannot set aside our spoiled emotions and flawed motives when we act. In our selfishness or hurt, we hurt others, we take what is not ours, we mock what is good, and we punish what is blameless.

In the Christian world, it is not much different. We often hear personal testimonies from believers about the times before they became Christians. Their lives were in shambles, empty or tedious, but now...! Now, it is an upward path of victories over addictions, depression and personal demons.

Despite thousands of testimonies like this the personal experience of untold millions of believers, the writings of the saints and the Scriptures tell the same story: coming to faith does not magically fix you. David led the Israelites in worship to Yahweh, then stole another man's wife as king and had him killed. Paul was the writer of most of the New Testament and the intellectual force of the burgeoning Christian church, yet amidst communions with God he wrote that in himself he sensed two natures at war - one to do good and the other to do evil. Encountering God, and even walking with Christ during this life, is no cure for a screwed-up life. Jesus himself claims that those who believe in him will be outcasts, hated and reviled. We are not shiny, happy people.

The World.

My wife and I were at an intimate gathering of fellow believers a few months ago. We were new to the group, and did not know many of the people there very well. As we each discussed our faith and our wrestling with the struggles in our lives, one person relayed how she had to admonish her child not to judge a friend too harshly. This friend would frequently use swear words, but the mother proudly explained to her daughter that this friend was "just at a different place in his walk with the Lord, and he just doesn't realize how his bad language hurts his testimony." It seemed that she was honestly trying to teach her daughter about graciousness, but may have also been teaching her about religious legalism and self-righteousness. I wonder if we are aware, as Christians, that our preoccupation with such peccadilloes - which is how they are often perceived by nonbelievers - might have a more wounding effect on the world than the offenses themselves.

Maybe we are projecting such a shiny, happy image to them so as to distinguish us from them, our lives from theirs. Maybe we are attempting to prove that this Jesus-thing "really works." I don't know. Holiness is a very real thing and a command of God. Yet, we are not to be known by our holiness, we are to be known by our love. I hope we are not missing our opportunity to love. If we have no dark secrets to share, I am afraid we cannot comfort those who do. I am not proposing an AA approach to personal interaction with every one we meet, like "Hello, my name is Steve and my besetting sin is [insert here] ." But for those looking to share their dark secret, I should be willing to be honest with my secrets, as well. If we can't bring ourselves to share the dark secret of our inadequacies, at least we should put away the pretense that we are shiny, happy people.

All in all, I guess I'm learning that we are not happy or satisfied sometimes, and maybe we cannot be so no matter what our prayers, beliefs or efforts. I must admit that I am not able to be always gracious, charitable and happy, and I shouldn't pretend to be or be intimidated by people who seem to be. We are a mortally wrecked people. But, we are a wrecked people with an eternal hope. So I will endeavor to turn away from pursuit of "getting it together" and humble myself with David and pray, my hope is in the Lord.

You don't know God. I don't know him either. We think we do, but we don't.

I'm so sure of myself, always. I think I'm right. My set of beliefs triumph over others'. I'm so comfortable in my self-righteousness. Judging others, putting my derogatory, defining statements on others is as natural to me as breathing or taking another bite.

I judge the charismatic and Pentecostal preachers I see on TV. I think "who do they think they are?" I think they mislead their people into believing things that aren't true. They teach the wrong beliefs. They give wrong interpretations of the Bible. They don't understand God right. They've got it all wrong.

I get angry, riled up, pompous, I look down on them almost as if they're immature children who don't know what they're doing.

But you know what my real problem is? It's not whether they're ultimately right or wrong; it's not that they're not speaking the truth. It's that they're not speaking my truth.

They're not agreeing with my beliefs about God. They're not reassuring that God is, or that God does what I believe to be true about him. They don't think God works the way I think he works.

As if I know.

I don't know God. I'm an idiot if I think I know God. The very fabric and being of God encompasses the entire universe. The universe is contained within Him. He exists outside of it as well as inside of it. He is not governed by the rules and laws the universe is governed by. God, in essence, is someone who cannot be fully known because he cannot be fully fathomed.

And I think I know everything. I think all my beliefs are the right ones. I don't believe in healing. I don't believe in tongues. I don't believe many things that other Christians believe. But that doesn't me I believe the right things. They aren't true simply because I believe them to be true. I could easily be just as wrong as them. I probably have as many issues with my beliefs as a mainstream "Evangelical" as the Pentecostals, Catholics, etc.

I think there's something we all need to get off our chests. "We could be wrong."

The best chance we had for understanding God was when he limited himself to a human body and came to earth. Jesus. That's the best chance we had at knowing him. Unfortunately that took place 2,000 years ago, and the only documentation we have of him was written 2,000 years ago, in another language, by people who understood the world completely differently than we did.

Is it possible we can't quite get it right today? Can we be honest? Does the entire basis of Christianity have to fall like Jericho if we fess up to that? I don't think it has to.

We get so angry. We get into arguments that split us about the sacraments, about baptism, the day to worship, divorce, and all the other things we fight about and make people's lives miserable over.

I talked to a pastor at a bar the other day who calls himself annihilistic. He believes the unsaved will simply cease to exist when they die. They might perhaps experience a period of judgment, but then - nothing. He said in most places in the Bible when Jesus talks about hell he's talking about a geographical location called Gehena. And, you know, he's right. But I also think the pastor believes that because he knows that God is a merciful God.

Again, at the church where I was a youth pastor for two years we had to ascribe to a Pre-Trib doctrine in order to become members. I suppose also this stemmed from the church's belief that God was merciful.

But I also know that God ordered people like Moses, Joshua, and King David to slaughter every living thing in certain towns including elderly people, women, and children. He wanted them wiped out.

We have a word to describe when that occurs. It's called genocide. It is the work of terrorists. But God ordered it in the past. (Isn't God also the one who caused the flood that killed almost all of mankind?)

At times God seems as awfully unmerciful as he also seems awesomely merciful.

Is it possible that we don't have a handle on who God is?

Isn't it probable?

Does it ever cross our minds that while we're having heated arguments with fellow Believers about who God is, that God is right there in our presence listening to everything we say, and He know exactly who He is?

We must sound like idiots. And it makes me want to feel sorry for us.

God has let us know a few things about himself. Those things are written in stone. They cannot be questioned. They are the Truth. And those are true for all people in all places in all times. Period.

Among those, Jesus is the only way to God. Apart from him we have no chance.

These few things God let us know about him were the bare minimum for us to find him, or at least to find the path that leads to him. They were trail markers so that we could be with him, and really know him when we've left this place that has become hell-on-earth.

The rest helps. But it doesn't matter as much. I don't think it was ever meant to do anything other than to help.

Believe me, none of this is inspired. It could all be wrong. Some of it most likely is. But it's something I had to get off my chest.

But the possibility is out there. We don't know everything. We're not always right. We don't know God nearly as well as we think we do.

In light of that, how can we judge?

Today I saw on television a televangelist preaching a charismatic sermon in front of thousands. My immediate reaction was to judge him.

"Oh, I bet he just loves all the power and admiration he gets from his congregation. I wonder how much money he receives monthly. What kind of car does he drive?"

Later he stepped off the stage and began laying his hands on the members of the congregation who came forward for the altar call. My judgment increased.

But then this angry looking man punched the pastor in the eye without warning.

The pastor walked away back on to the stage, and with blood seeping down the side of his face he blessed the man who had been one of several people the church had had bussed to the service. He forgave the man and had the entire congregation pray for him. And he taught forgiveness.

It was one of the most Christ-like things I have ever witnessed.

We all need to emerge.

Part II: Focus

I have such a huge burden for the church today. I feel like we've all been so damaged, and certainly seen many of our non-Christian friends damaged by the church over the years. And now all of us who have grown to find ourselves in a position to shape the way the church is going are feeling the call for change. Change or die. The church can't keep going the way it's been going.

But here's what I see happening. We're throwing everything out. Everything that resembles the traditional church is being seen as negative. Certainly some of it is. But in throwing it all away, we're throwing away centuries of progressive thinking, of learning from mistakes, of hours and hours of people praying and weeping about what God wants us to do, and having felt his answer, going in a certain direction. I feel like we're just scrapping the whole thing and starting over from scratch. And while we're ridding ourselves of several mistakes, we are only starting to make more.

We don't want to be close-minded anymore. We want to accept more. Just because the Bible doesn't talk about a certain thing, the traditional church has a tendency to ignore or reject it, and ward off any type of logical discussion, or view any evidences that it might be true.

We don't want to be like that anymore. We want to have discussions. We want to ask ourselves questions like, "Is there really no room in a biblical worldview for some aspects of evolution? Do we have to blind ourselves to the fact that the earth and the universe appear extremely old?"

Questions like these are questions the church hasn't been brave enough to ask because they fear that if anything outside their worldview ends up being true, then that puts their whole belief system in trauma. It might all come tumbling down.

I believe the Bible doesn't mention everything that happens to be true. There are things out there that are true that aren't in the Bible. But God authored this universe and everything in it. Everything that's true is written by God. "All truth is God's truth."

The traditional church needs to accept more things. The new church, or emerging church, hates that the traditional church doesn't do this. They've seemed to make a vow to correct this problem.

I feel like we're overcompensating. The new way is to accept almost anything. There's a pastor that I've been talking with a lot. I like talking with him. He makes me think about my faith. The reason why he makes me think about my faith is because he questions just about everything about it. Even he admits his theological views are not mainstream. He doesn't believe a lot of things that other Christians believe. He believes that the unsaved will probably not go to hell. He believes the Gospel writers embellished a lot of things about Christ's life. Sometimes I'm not sure if he really believes all those things, or if he's trying to get one of us young whipper-snappers to stand up to him and tell him that he might be wrong.

Or maybe he's like a lot of other people who are impacting the church today who spend a lot of time with people who do not believe in God, and have realized that a lot of Christianity's beliefs are not "seeker-friendly". In other words, our beliefs are really hard to believe, and a lot of people who are not Christians probably won't become Christians because our beliefs are, for a lack of a better word, insane. (See I Corinthians 2:18-28 to see what I mean.) And so some of the new ideas they're picking up is more palatable to the unsaved. It's watered down. Easier to swallow. Easier to believe. And I'm not trying to judge whether they're right or wrong, I'm just trying to make one or two points here.

When Christ was here he didn't accept everything. He didn't think everything was okay. He was sharply opposed to sin. He was allied with finding what is really true, and what reality really is regardless of whether it was popular or easy to swallow. He didn't try to attract tons of people to follow him by watering down his message. He told people that he was the Son of God even though he knew it would piss a lot of people off. At the Sermon on the Mount, he didn't make the Jewish laws easier to follow, he made them harder. When people were just really starting to follow him he told them that none of them could follow him unless they ate his flesh and drank his blood, and he didn't bother to follow that up with an explanation of how he might have meant that in a figurative way. Even his own disciples were about to ditch him after that.

Jesus didn't change himself to be more "seeker-friendly". All at the same time he collided purposely with people who were mucking up their lives and made them feel loved out of this world.

I don't think I want the emerging church to throw everything familiar and traditional out and start doing things differently just because they're different. I don't think I want us t to pick up new ideas just because they're interesting and seem to fit our idea of God, and might be more "seeker-friendly". Otherwise we'll be nothing but a pendulum swinging side-to-side, shifting ideology every other generation because we don't have it right. There's no doubt in my mind that our grandchildren will view us as having lost our souls, and will be tempted to swing the church back to tradition.

We can't keep swinging back and forth. We've got to move on to the next level. We've got to move forward in becoming everything God wants the church to be.

I think a lot of things need to be changed about the church. We need a new kind of Reformation. But the new things we pick up need to be much more than just different and interesting. They need to be true. We've got to wrestle, examine, bleed sweat and tears, and then find peace in the things that are God's Truths.

God's Truths are the only thing that will get us through.

We have got to emerge but with focus.

Deep inside every breathing, eating, and sleeping human being is more than a simple want for something more, but a need for the answers to the deepest and most pressing questions addressing the meaning of our existence. This kind of need is not like our need for food to survive. When we are going to sleep at night on an empty stomach, it is easy to will ourselves to sleep when we know that we can fix ourselves a bowl of cereal in the morning. When we are lying in our beds at night and we are thirsty, we can allow ourselves to rest knowing that we can fix ourselves a cup of water when we wake up. Our inherent search for something more than surface level interest is different. Sometimes we toss and turn at four A.M. because we have internally asked ourselves questions like, "Why were we born into our current situation while others were born into worse situations?" It is a whole lot harder to go to sleep knowing that the answers to our questions do not necessarily come in the morning like a bowl of cereal or a cup of water.

What does knowing about this inherent need mean for the mass population of the global community? For followers of Jesus, it means that there is a greater call to provide the hope that we have as an answer to the wrenching longing in the souls of the searching. This means moving conversations beyond corny pornographic novels and topics of bickering politicians and fancy cars towards providing the fulfilling message to those in need of the answer to the question that everyone is feeling and some are verbally asking..."Why are we here?"

The Jewish historian Josephus suggests that Pilate was probably an Italian born Roman citizen and most likely held certain military posts before the Roman Emperor Tiberius appointed him prefect or governor in 26 A.D. The areas he ruled included Judea, Samaria and the area south as far as the Dead Sea to Gaza.

His duties were primarily military in terms of preventing any uprising by citizens attempting to throw off Roman rule. He was responsible for collecting imperial taxes and had judicial authority. He also had absolute power over the non-Roman citizens of his province.

Most other civil administration matters were in the hands of the local ethnic governments. At that time, in the district of Judea and Jerusalem, the Jewish Sanhedrin and its president, the High Priest, Caiaphas, made most of the decisions regarding the locals.

Another historian, Philo, reports the rule of Pilate consisted of extreme harshness, pride, violence, greed, continual executions without trials and unbearable cruelty. In other words, he was a typical Roman ruler. Even so, Pilate wisely formed a coalition with the local religious leaders which proved an effective strategy for establishing control. Mutual interests of wealth, power and status held this alliance together.

Several incidents are recorded of Pilate's actions that infuriated the Jewish population. These included his hanging banners bearing the likeness of the emperor and placing shields inscribed with the emperor's name inside Herod's palace which was viewed as idolatry by the people. He also used money from the Jewish temple to fund the construction of an aqueduct which created much hostility. Therefore, the alliance with the temple leaders was very instrumental in keeping order.

Considering his usual cruel modus operandi in dealing with his subjects, it seems odd indeed that he would seemingly lose his nerve when confronted with the Jewish leaders and their prisoner, Jesus.

Pilate was in Jerusalem staying in Herod's palace because it was time for the most important Jewish holiday of the year, Passover. If unrest or some kind of insurrection against Roman rule would occur, it would happen during this celebration and he wanted to make sure everything stayed under control. His presence was a not-so-subtle warning to the people that they were expected to behave.

The Gospels tell us that Christ was seized in Gethsemane and taken to the home of Annas, the father-in-law of the high priest, Caiaphas. He was then sent, bound to Caiaphas where he was questioned in a kangaroo court type fashion by the chief priests and the scribes, as well as the high priest himself. Finally, at daybreak, he was taken to Pilate's headquarters.

I've often wondered if Pilate was angry at having to go outside at such an early hour to resolve whatever complaint these Jews had because he didn't seem to want to deal with them. His first attempt to pass the buck was when he asked what the accusation against Jesus was. The leaders told him if He wasn't doing something they considered wrong, they wouldn't have brought Him to be tried. Pilate impatiently retorted, "Take Him yourselves and judge Him by your own law." (John 18:31 ESV) The Jews made it clear they wanted Him crucified and they needed Pilate to issue the sentence, as it wasn't lawful for them to put anyone to death without approval from Roman authorities.

Pilate took Jesus into his quarters and began to question him. When the chief priests and elders made their accusations, Jesus stayed totally silent and did not try to defend himself. Matthew 27:13-14 (ESV) says, "Then Pilate said to Him, 'Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?' But He gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed." It was obvious to Pilate that Jesus was no rebel and was not guilty of the trumped up charges. He realized Jesus' accusers had delivered Him up out of envy. From then on, Pilate tried to free Him.

First, he told the chief priests and elders he found no fault in Him. Since Jesus was from Galilee, he sent Him to Herod to be questioned since Galilee was in his district. This is the second time Pilate tried to pass Jesus off to someone else to judge. This behavior was entirely out of character for this ruler.

Herod was excited to meet Jesus, as he had heard many things about Him and was hoping He would perform some miracle for his amusement. However, Jesus stood silent and refused to answer any of Herod's questions, even as the priests and elders, again, stood around vehemently accusing Him. After mocking Jesus and dressing Him in a fancy robe, Herod sent Him back to Pilate.

Once again, Pilate called His accusers together and told them that neither he nor Herod could find any fault worthy of death. He offered to "punish" or have Jesus scourged, thinking this punishment would be severe enough to satisfy His accusers. They refused his offer and kept calling for His crucifixion. Then Pilate offered to either release a notorious rebel Barabbas or Jesus, as was custom at Passover. He was astonished they chose Barabbas and continued to call for the death of Christ.

Pilate then had Jesus scourged. Afterwards, he presented Him to the crowd and they again demanded his death. Pilate, once again, defended Him saying he found absolutely no reason to put Him to death. According to John 19:7, the Jews yelled, "We have a law, and according that that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God." This made Pilate very fearful, for the Romans were notorious for having literally dozens of gods. For all Pilate knew, Jesus was one of them.

He brought Christ back inside and asked Him where He was from. Jesus did not answer. Pilate was becoming more desperate and said to Him, "You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have the authority to crucify you?" (John 19:10 ESV) Jesus, after being nearly beaten to death and most likely in the beginning stages of hypovolemic shock from severe blood loss, looked at Pilate and calmly answered, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin." (John 19:11 ESV) Now, that's not something Pilate was accustomed to hearing from a prisoner!

This powerful governor with the reputation of being cruel and violent, uncharacteristically squirmed between knowing he would be condemning an innocent man and facing an ever more excitable and riotous crowd who could, at any moment spiral out of control. He could not afford for this to happen.

About this time, as Pilate was seated on the Bema, a seat of judgment on the Gabbatha, a mosaic pavement in front of the palace, he received an urgent message from his wife, Claudia Procula. Matthew 27:19 ESV says she warned, "Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of Him today in a dream." The pressure mounted.

After one last attempt to reason with the crowd, the Jews told him that if he released Jesus, he was not Caesar's friend. This was a veiled threat from the Jewish leaders. In other words, if Pilate did not acquiesce to their demand, they might charge him with treason against Rome. By this time, Pilate had had enough. He called for a bowl of water and symbolically washed his hands before the crowd, announcing that he was innocent of Jesus' blood. He then turned Christ over to the soldiers to be crucified.

As a last act of defiance and control, Pilate had an inscription attached to the cross, printed in Aramaic, Latin and Greek which stated, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." The chief priests, rather emboldened by their new found but temporary power, instructed Pilate to change the wording. Pilate answered, "What I have written, I have written." (John 19:22 ESV)

So who was this man, this normally ruthless, brutal, cold-blooded governor of Judea? When confronted with Jesus, what happened to his customarily unyielding, heavy-handed methods of dealing with accused criminals? Was it the early hour that softened his stance? Was it the unexpected warning from his wife not to deal with, "this righteous man"? Or was it something else? Did he somehow subconsciously recognize the Deity of Christ? I have to wonder which man was the "real" Pilate and if his life was forever changed by his encounter with the Son of God.

The televised minister then continued to explain why we as Christians should have peace in our lives and how it should be calming our nerves and reassuring us in our blessings. This was interesting to me as I had been so little when I sung this particular song that I hadn't really given any thought to their meaning or their implications.

I've got peace like a river,
I've got peace like a river,
I've got peace like a river
In my soul.

Is that really what we have?

I personally have such a hard time with anyone who tries to make following Christ seem so prosperous. What about those who follow Christ in China, Indonesia or Darfur? In the midst of absolute destruction and persecution are they supposed to have peace like a river? As we watch wars, disease, poverty, and indifference tear apart our world; where is this peace like a river? Why would we sing this hymn and why would we ever turn it into a children's song to teach in Sunday school? All in all, it seemed presumptuous at best and at worst, completely false.

What is peace really? Is it the absence of war or bullets? Is it the absence of depression or poverty? Some, like that particular minister, would argue it is the assurance we feel over our lives. But if Christ came to give us peace in that sense, why does it seem our world is on fire? Why do we fear for our lives, health, finances and security?

I like that the writer used the word river to describe the peace we have in Christ. I mean, what's peaceful about rivers? This isn't a creek trickling through the ravine in our backyard. Imagine rafting through the Colorado as it cuts through the Grand Canyon or remember the Mississippi and all the lives that she's claimed. These are unpredictable waters that can destroy homes with floods and take lives with their undercurrents; there is nothing peaceful about them.

So why would the writer use such an ironic metaphor? I think this hymn I sang so blissfully in Sunday school is communicating a far more profound truth than we would first notice. Maybe the writer understood that this life and this walk with Christ would be filled with painful, unpredictable and sometimes crushing experiences and maybe it is in this truth that they wrote those words.

I do not think that Jesus came to give us peace in the world's terms. I don't think He came so that we could hope in the things of this world, whether it means security, financial stability, or health. No, instead I think Jesus came to give us something totally different; an inward peace - a hope in a promise of restoration. And that is something to sing about.

Even Hitler refrained from killing his mother.

Sure, maybe we've told a few lies, maybe we've cursed at our parents, maybe we've flipped off the jerk who cut us off in traffic this morning. But hey, we're only human, right? It's not like we'd ever kill someone. Okay, so Jesus says that hating somebody is the same as murder in his eyes. But you wouldn't ever really kill someone, like, with a gun...Okay, hold that thought, we'll come back to it. It's important.

Shifting gears, if you look at cultures throughout history (Romans, Greeks, English, Spanish) the moral codes they lived by had a lot of similarities. Differ as they may, these similarities are a clue to the point there must be some center of morality. Or beginning. As C.S. Lewis says, "with the possible exception of the equator, everything has a beginning." And reason says anything with a beginning had to have been created. And anything created has a creator. Thus, we can properly infer morality, the curious idea of how we ought to behave, was created. And, considering my demographic, we will assume, safely, that God is that Creator. (All this is Mere Christianity chapter 1 in a nutshell.)

So, what is right and what is wrong? We are all born with an idea of what we should and shouldn't do. We don't need to be told by our parents, though we are again and again. The purpose our parents serve is not so much to teach us right and wrong, but to help us learn what happens when we do wrong. Our parents teach us about consequences. No, we already know, don't we?. In fact, that "knowledge" is the essence of sin.

In Reformed Theology we learn the term "Total Depravity." This refers to the state of sin we are all born into. It is "total" because every part of us...heart, soul, mind, arms, legs, brain...is fallen. Personally, I don't like this phrase. It can be misleading. It makes one think of "utter" depravity. As in, we are all so far gone in our sins everybody is running around raping and killing everybody else. But that's ridiculous. As Sproul points out, "Even Hitler refrained from killing his mother." So Sproul and I prefer the term "Radical Corruption." Our whole person is radically corrupted.

Even Hitler refrained from killing his mother. And he wasn't President of the Restraint Club. But when you think about it...at least when most people think about it...despite all the horrible things you do or are doing, you wouldn't kill someone. That's just way beyond us. If we joined the army or something and got shipped off to Terroristland, then maybe, MAYBE! And then only in self defense.

But what about those people that don't think about it? This world is full of evil and full of people to carry it out without a second thought. One sure thing in life is this world will never run out of Mansons and Bundys. I can't think about these people for more than a minute or so before I get distracted by the urge to sick-up. What a better place this world would be if we could just be rid of all the sicko killers and child pornographer rapists (side note: same thought Hitler had of the Jews, and the elderly, and the gays, and the disabled) (other side note: same thought Osama Laden has about you and me).

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So what if somebody went all "Boondock" on their sorry hind quarters? Of course we could never go the vigilante route ourselves but....we would root for whoever did, right? We might even get a rise out of it. A sense of pleasure or righteous judgment when someone bypasses all the red tape and legal bull-oh-knee and does what we're all thinking. Because we all know, that the justice served by the state apparatus just takes too darn long. Somebody's gotta do something.

Movies like "The Boondock Saints," "Gone Baby Gone," "The Brave One," where the lines of morality are so blurred you can feel dirty rooting for the protagonist, are what stir my mind to think like this. Of course we want the baddies in Sheol ASAP. But, really, we're all just as bad as them. Not one inch of our person is less corrupted and fallen than those whom we believe deserve this swift justice we're talking about. If God created this moral code that we're all born with, then certainly he also created some sort of divine legal system through which they will be processed. But if we're just as fallen as the baddies then why doesn't he just put everybody through the same system? Why don't we all get the same punishment. As Piper once said, "Wonder not that the Towers fell, wonder that the Towers did not fall on you." And Sproul points out that "[in relation to God and our eternal souls] some receive mercy, the rest receive justice."

We all deserve the swiftest harshest justice. And some of us get it. Good. We deserve it. Some of us don't. Praise God! We get mercy. We don't deserve it, but we get it anyways! Why? God knows! Only God knows. I'm sure not complaining though.

One caller shared the story of the time he and his wife had testing done on their unborn baby, revealing a severe disability that would bring about an enormous burden on their family emotionally, physically, and financially.

They chose to terminate the pregnancy. The caller later said that they now have a healthy, happy little girl that was born a short while later.

Children and adults can also have testing done to discover (due to a particular illness common in their family history) whether they will fall victim to a disease or disability similar to their ancestors.

Another caller told of a man who was given a strong, almost definite, likelihood of developing Huntington's Disease. This truth was more than he could handle, so he took his own life. He didn't have an actual diagnosis, mind you.

So is it right for us to know, everything that will go wrong in our future? Is it better to expect or to experience our pain?

Being a boy who loved playing outside and in the woods, I would would sport at least 3-4 band-aids weekly. The thing that scared me the most wasn't the actual cut or even the pain removing the band-aid...it was the mere thought of ripping the band-aid from my skin and the possible pain associated with it. While deep in my 10 year old brain's crisis of how to go about removing the dreaded thing, my mom would come along and RIP! the band aid was gone. And before I could even open my mouth to scream, the pain had vanished. I was too busy expecting the pain to actually experience it. And when it came time to experience the pain, it really wasn't what I had built it up to be.

Now, I know the pain I describe pales in comparison to the pain of losing someone you love to a tragedy or learning from test results that you have a life-threatening illness. But in the end, pain is pain. We've all been dealt our fair share. We experience it, find ways to heal and cope, and do our best to move on and learn from it.

What good does it do me to know that my gene structure says I might develop Alzheimer's late in life? Could I start now by setting up insurance policies and prepare myself to slowly deteriorate and succumb to the disease? Possibly...but how does that make my life any better when, come 50 years from now, the tests turn out to be false, and I'm void of any life-threatening illness?

What if someone told you that on October 17, 2009, you would be inheriting a sum of money that would make you ridiculously wealthy? You would be excited, right? You would prepare yourself and make plans as to what you would purchase with the money. Your life starts to revolve around October 17, 2009. You start to live for that day. What if you died October 16th? All that excitement, all the planning...would be wasted.

It's the same way with pain.

When we expect pain, we live it and it lives within us, bringing us down and keeping us from happiness. But when we experience pain, we learn from it and move on. Suffering is a tool every human needs to use in order for us to grow. The growth in my own life is due, not to my successes, but largely in part to many painful situations, illness, and unanswered prayers.

There is a reason for the trials we go through. There is a reason for suffering. There is a reason for pain.

There was a reason the first caller and his wife were given a baby with a disability. There was a reason the friend of the second caller was a prime candidate for Huntington's disease. It was to make them each stronger. It was to make them realize the frailty of human life and that we must be grateful for the small amount of time we do have here.

We must accept the tragedies that befall us and learn from them.

But we, as a forward-thinking, developing human race, would rather find ways around this experience. We would rather rid our lives of a burdensome baby that could grow to be a blessing to those around her, or we would rather discover we might become sick before it's our time to know, giving us no hope for survival.

Why do you think our prime time TV is saturated with pharmaceutical ads touting a new drug to pull us out of sadness or depression? We don't want to experience it. We want a pill to take the pain away and leave the underlying reason for the sadness, unresolved. But, if we put a blanket over a fire, it appears gone, but it will soon burn through and show itself again.

Human suffering is not a medical condition we can treat. Human suffering is a necessary part of our daily lives. We have to confront it and attempt to heal. For when we avoid it...we miss the opportunity of the beautiful sunrise at the end of a long night.

Norman was praised by Time as "the top solo artist in his field" and in 2001 was inducted, with Elvis Presley, into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. The Gospel Music Association said, "Larry Norman's music - an unlikely mix of love songs, the Gospel message, and wry commentary on American culture - exemplified the goals, ideals, and standards of everything the original architects of contemporary Christian music intended for it to be."

Because of his failing health - a result of an airplane accident at age 31, multiple heart attacks, and congestive heart failure - Norman retired in 2001. He said goodbye to fans during a scattering of U.S. and European concerts the past three years.

In an exclusive, in-depth interview before one of his last U.S. concerts, Norman reflected on his life, music, and ministry.

---

David Sanford: What brought you back for this last show?

Larry Norman: I had not sung for three years after [my 2001 quadruple bypass] heart operation. Most people recuperate and some say they feel better than they'd felt in years. But I was in a retirement home for the elderly and sat in a wheelchair and couldn't even operate the wheelchair. I had no energy to move the wheel.

Then one of my friends said, "Can you come to our church and sing?"

I said, "No, I really can't."

He said, "You could just sing one song. That'd be fun and then you could talk. You could say something if you want. We're inviting the neighborhood to come and have food with us that afternoon. We're making them a big meal and it's free and we just would like to end it up with something special."

I said, "I'll tell you what - I'll think about it and call you tomorrow." I called him back and said, "I think I could do it if I had my brother and my sister with me. That way I wouldn't have to put up so much energy. I could sing and other people could play."

It was three weeks later we did the concert and people flew in from all over the world. I gave away my guitar because I thought I would never sing again after that concert.

This year I thought, maybe I should do a concert. At the time I was really sick but I just had this impression that I should plan it. I'm assuming it's my last concert. I'm starting to feel blind in my right eye and my health - different things aren't working for me; they're getting worse.

How long have you had health problems?

It's not just that I had a heart attack and then I had an operation. I had a heart attack in 1992. I went to the hospital screaming and clutching my chest and they put me in a little room and kept coming in and asking me to stop screaming.

They assumed I had indigestion for some reason. They made a diagnosis just from looking at me. "Well, the guy's got long hair, probably takes drugs, probably it's just indigestion. I mean, he won't stop screaming; maybe he's just neurotic."

They never gave me an EKG. They never gave me an aspirin, anything. It was just a blood clot. I didn't have high cholesterol. I just had a blood clot probably from all the stress of what I had been doing for 35, 40 years, but they left me there for five and a half hours screaming and never once took my temperature or anything. This was the emergency room. Then they found me unconscious and I lost half my heart.

Afterward?

They told me I'd never sing again and I thought, okay, that's alright. I can just talk to people. If I can talk I can still do my ministry. My ministry has never just been on stage. It's also been out in the street before the concert and talking to people after the concert.

I just looked at my life as being one big mess, one thing after another, something always going wrong and it doesn't really matter. That's what I think. When other people complain about something happening in their life, I just think, you've got it so good...
[Weeps.]

What kept you going?

I was in the hospital 13 times in different countries and people would say, "Well, you should stop doing concerts. Doesn't that make sense? What are you trying to do?"

I said, "I can't survive by staying at home. I don't have a ministry in my bedroom. I have to go out to people." I think that God will do everything for us, but in the meantime we're supposed to carry out logically and according to the Spirit [what] seems biblical. We're supposed to try and carry out some activity. It's like a measure of good faith.

So my deal was, "Well, God, here's what I'm going to do: [sarcastic] I'm going to go to the gymnasium. I'm going to baby my health.

"No, my part of the contract is: I'm going to witness to people. It's up to you whether you want me to keep on witnessing or not. If you want me to come home to heaven, that's way better than this. In the meantime, I'm going to take a few people with me because I don't want to come empty-handed."

When did you first feel called to talk to others?

When I was five I started witnessing to people in the street and my dad would talk to people too. I saw him talk to a sailor one day when we were getting ready to cross the street to our house and that really stuck with me. He also went to prisons and hospitals and he memorized Scripture so I wanted to witness to people too and I wanted to memorize the Bible.

So you've memorized a lot of Scripture?

I read great literature and I memorized so much of the Bible. It was helpful to witness to people if you knew Scripture. Sometimes the power that comes from the Scripture is that you're telling them what you believe God has revealed without paraphrasing it and it has magical power to change lives.

How so?

Sometimes I'll be really stressed out about something and my mom will call me up and say, "Larry, here's a Bible verse for you" and she'll just read it off and I'll instantly relax. "Thanks, Mom. I just needed to hear that right now." She is very good at sensing things, too, and she's memorized so much Scripture.

How long have you been writing songs?

I started writing songs and performing them in 1956. I also wrote songs that I would [hide] from my dad because I knew he didn't like most the songs I was writing, but they were good songs. I even recorded some of them years later, like "Moses in the Wilderness." I recorded that in 1969, but I wrote it when I was a kid. I wrote it because of Sunday school and how kids cannot quite understand what's being taught to them.

What opposition have you encountered?

My parents went to another church with some friends of theirs, and they had a guest speaker who led the congregation in a very quiet prayer. Then when he said, "Amen," he pushed the button on a tape recorder which was plugged into the sound system and it blared out one of my songs. He said, "That's Larry Norman and he's leading thousands of young people to hell. If you find a record of his in your house, you need to burn it because it's got demons in it. If your kids ever hear about Larry in concert, you've got to keep them home." His website still explains why I'm not a Christian and why my music is of the devil. So I had that kind of trouble.

Why do you think you've had problems with other Christians?

I tell people stuff they don't want to hear.

[At one of my concerts] I said, "You need to feed the poor. I know you've got money in your pocket because you're not skin and bones so you're eating. Somehow you've got food so you've got money. I know you're going to buy some stuff tonight. You came to this concert. That cost you ten bucks. How many pairs of shoes do you have in your closet? How many Christian albums do you have? So if you're going to feed the poor, I want to thank you for coming tonight and I love you. You're my brothers and my sisters and I'll be with you in heaven. I'll stand next to you and we'll rejoice in the Lord. But if you're not going to feed the poor, please don't give me any money. The poor need it; I don't. So don't buy my records tonight and don't ever come to one of my concerts again unless God tells you to, because you're supposed to feed the poor."

So sometimes I would just say something that God put on my heart at that moment and I lost a lot of audiences.

Over the years, did you become more accepted as a Christian artist?

The Church finally accepted me in 1976, I think it was, and that's just because I had so many songs people knew that the records stores said, "Okay, I'll take a chance." I did In and of the Land, which was such a mellow album. It's really for Christians (none of the other albums were), but what do you say when the concept of the album is eternal life with God in heaven? ... Of course they liked that album and the record stores sold it and it was Album of the Month for Word Record Club and it was the #1 seller for a long time.

So being a Christian doesn't mean everything's perfect?

One time I was talking to Elvis's girlfriend and she was crying. She was at a Christian function and she was in the kitchen of this restaurant. I said, "Are you okay?"

She said, "Yeah, I just thought when I became a Christian everything was going to be better and people were going to be different, but the Christians are just the same as everybody else. I don't know what to do."

I sat down with her and just told her, "You're right. Christians are the same as everybody else. But Jesus is different than anything else you'll ever experience. So don't look at Christians. Don't worry about them. Just be who God wants you to be."

In fact I'm so extreme about feeling that God does everything perfectly within this world that if you look in the mirror and you go, "I hate the way I look," then you're really telling God he made a mistake, and God did not make a mistake.

When you are witnessing, do you usually tell others who you are?

I never told people I did music. I just witnessed to them like a stranger. I tried to have the most casual conversations to take them unaware. I didn't want them to know I was a musician... I just have to be the guy that's just as poor as them, as haggard as them, except there's just one weird difference and that's that I'm happy about where I'm at. It's just because of Jesus.

What do people say when you tell them who you are?

You're not supposed to thrive and benefit from your ministry to the world. You can get cuddles at church, but you're not supposed to get cuddles from people that hate God. That's my goal - to find people that hate God and just talk to them until something happens inside of them, but it has nothing to do with discussing what they believe...

You don't have to educate people; you have to find out where they're at. Some people don't need to hear about hell because they already know there are grave consequences to the life they've been living, and they're so desperately happy to hear that Jesus loves them. Other people say, "Yeah, love. Jesus was the first hippy, man. Rock on." Then you've got to say to them something else that has merit about hell or responsibility. So there are just all kinds of ways to witness. It's really talking to people--and it's mostly shutting up and letting them talk to you.

Do you struggle with fear?

My job as a believer is not to be afraid. My job is also to have faith at each moment... I pray and relax. I find it comforting to just say Bible verses that I've memorized, just passages of Scripture, and meditate upon them and thank God for being who he is and for not being who I thought he was. My life is good and I'm happier and happier. So really these are the best years of my life. I can't do much, but I can still minister.

What message is on your heart these days?

I have one message and that is: Do something with your life and don't expect to enjoy it. Your ministry does not need to fulfill you. You need to fulfill your ministry and be prepared for rejection and be prepared for people not to understand...

Copyright © 2008 David Sanford, author of If God Disappears (Tyndale House, September 2008) and president of Sanford Communications, Inc.

____________________

Fast Facts about Larry Norman
Born: April 8, 1947

Died: February 24, 2008

Grew up: San Francisco, in a mostly African American "ghetto"

Trusted Jesus Christ: Age 5

Started writing music: Age 9

Motivation to start writing music: Norman felt Elvis Presley was stealing the music of the black church, "so I decided to steal it back."

Started performing concerts: Age 16

Landed first professional contract, under Capitol Records: Age 19 (joining the Beach Boys and the Beatles)

First person called: "Jesus freak"

Best known as: "The father of Christian rock"

Trademark: Raising an index finger toward heaven (signifying "One Way")

Largest live audience: 180,000 people

First mainstream top ten hit: "I Love You," 1967

Most famous songs:
* "I Wish We'd All Been Ready"
* "Sweet Song of Salvation"
* "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music"

Started his own label, Solid Rock Records: Age 27

Most recent article: "Is Christian Music Fulfilling Its True Purpose?" (Christian Musician, March/April 2005)

Accomplishments:
* He discovered and helped launch the contemporary Christian music ministries of Randy Stonehill, Steve Camp, Keith Green, Mark Heard, Sheila Walsh, and others
* His songs have been covered by DC Talk, Rebecca St. James, Petula Clark, Frank Black (The Pixies), and more than 350 other artists
* His fans include Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, Van Morrison, U2's Bono and The Edge

Media accolades:
* Billboard called Larry "the poet laureate of the Jesus movement" and "the most important songwriter since Paul Simon"
* CCM Magazine named Larry's Only Visiting This Planet record the "most significant and influential gospel album ever released in the field of contemporary Christian music"

Randy Stonehill quip:
"If not for Larry Norman, we might all be doing Christian polka or something, but not Christian rock."

Notable quotables:
* "Well, people used to tease me and say, 'Oh, you're a Christian Bob Dylan.' And then when Dylan became a Christian in my Bible study, they'd say to him, 'Oh, you're a secular Larry Norman.'"
* "I believe we're supposed to follow Jesus. A lot of people follow the church and then they find themselves unhappy. That's because they don't know Jesus. They don't have a personal relationship with God at all. They just have some kind of relationship with the church."

Favorite authors:
* G. K. Chesterton
* C. S. Lewis

Web site:
www.larrynorman.com

Story on one of his last U.S. concerts:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/news/2005/larrynorman.html

Recently, it has been a struggle for me to place my hope in the resurrection of Jesus. I see his crucifixion and resurrection as making two fundamental claims about the nature of reality/life/the world: one is that this world is a cruel, dark place ruled by Nietzchean principles ("will to power," supremacy of self-interest), and the only choice a righteous person really has is to die at their hands in the pursuit of justice and truth. This is not a very difficult thing to admit to for me. What is more difficult to believe is that God will resurrect the righteous, conquering this cruel world with his power, bringing justice through mercy and never by force of arms.

"In this world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!" ~ John 16:33

It is easy to affirm this doctrinally - the Gospels are clear. But it is something completely different to face the world, and step out in faith, believing that the path of relentless selflessness unto death and resurrection is really a viable one. And this is the position I have found myself in for some time, looking out at the world, wondering what career might suit me, wandering how I might follow Jesus, and discovering that the best path - the only really desirable path - is also the most costly and dangerous. And so at times I have despaired.

But after a couple of good conversations and times in prayer with close friends, I realized that there was something I could do. I have been doing most of my Bible reading in Luke these past couple of months, as before I moved to Tallahassee, I never paid intentionally close attention to the Gospels. But my sense of this world's cruelty continually left me with the impression that all that I was reading merely led up to a very awesome individual's murder at the hands of the empire. True, the gospels have the resurrection narratives, but I was longing to see people living their lives out post-resurrection to see how they emulated Jesus after his death, how what following him might look like in light of his proclaimed victory over hell and death. I realized that for me, for this moment, I was reading in the wrong place. So I turned to the book of Acts.

"So when they had come together, they asked him, 'Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?' He replied, 'It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." ~ Acts 1:6-8

I used to look down on the disciples here. I thought they were really missing it because they hadn't caught on that Jesus hadn't come back to king of Israel and overthrow the Romans. But listening to N.T. Wright (shameless plug: everyone should be exposed to him) has given me a much deeper appreciation for the messianic expectation of first century Jews: they longed not simply to have a kingdom, but justice, deliverance, and peace. Now this question, "Is this time?," gives me a connection with them, because I know that they longed for justice and peace just as I do. I know that, as an occupied people, impoverished by imperial taxation, they longed for just much more deeply than I do. And so now their question makes me sad.

"I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it." ~ Revelation 5:4

Surely, Jesus' response was maddening: "It is not for you to know..." What!? We won't be participating in overthrowing the Roman oppressors? We won't be taking up arms against the pagan villains? Jesus did not offer them deliverance from the cruelty and pain of the world, nor even the hope that that cruelty would come to an end: "you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you..." Jesus offered them and offers us an empowerment - courage, strength, and patience to stand against the evil empire that is the economics and politics of this world, and a spiritual efficacy in proclamation, healing, and acts of service that demonstrated the qualitatively real nature of this crucified messiah these men and women proclaimed.

So these past two weeks I have been steeped in the first few chapters of Acts, where healing, proclamation, and conversion are rampant, yet the apostles and believers remain weak before a powerful authoritarian system, only standing against it because the saving power of the Holy Spirit in winning converts, encouraging their hearts, and strange miraculous events such as shaking buildings and inexplicable jail breaks. The challenge I feel issued is this: where and when are you proclaiming the good news that Jesus is lord and Caesar is not? Where and when are you healing the sick? Working to deliver the oppressed? Meeting the simple needs of those around you? These challenges have dovetailed with exemplary life and actions illustrated and recounted by Shane Claiborne in his book The Irresistible Revolution, which I have on loan from my sister and have been devouring during my downtime at work.

My initial response is sinking helplessness - my heart is stirred, but how can I do any of this? Where do I start? Most of my life is confined to my cubicle, my apartment, and my church: how do I break out of these boxes and into the lives of people who need the touch of God? I still don't know. I am not great at initiating and sustaining new ministry; I certainly have no experience doing it. But I have made a prayer to God: "Lord, open and show me the doors into the lives of those who are ripe to receive from you. Make me aware of the opportunities I have to follow in your serving footsteps, Jesus." So far, this has mostly meant going to church events with a prayerful intentionality, for which I have seen bits and pieces of fruit. But without engaging in the mission of reaching the world outside the church, I imagine that little progress will be made. That's where I imagine Jesus to be, among the leper and tax collector, the homeless addict and the lonely middle-class American, the vulnerable ignorant, desperately needing the knowledge of God yet without any hope or idea of where the solution to their problems lie. Without him, we can do nothing.

It is funny because this search and process has brought me full-circle with my charismatic upbringing. The Holy Spirit is the empowerment we need in order to really follow Jesus, to see mercy and justice reign on the earth. Growing up, I understood the Holy Spirit to be important for convincing us of truth and for saving people in the Puritanical let's-get-to-heaven sense. The book of Acts is giving me a vision for a pursuit of the Spirit (which I have ever longed to do) that dovetails with the sense of mission and justice that has been developing in me since I joined InterVarsity. I don't exactly know what I am doing or how I am going to do it, but I am encouraged in Jesus, the true lord, and more at peace with the idea that while there very much is redemption to be known in the present, that widespread justice may be delayed until that glorious parousia when the good king returns and all wrong things are made right.

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
~ Isaiah 11:1-9