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Better Quoted than Created

Sometimes words smack you in your face like a rolled up wet towel and you just have to regurgitate, or retweet in a larger than 140 character format.  I started reading Michael Yaconelli's book Messy Spirituality tonight.  Michael died tragically in a 1 car accident in 2003.   Karla, his wife, writes the  foreword and in it she imagines what he might say to you and what he definitely would say to me.  Here are his words via her imagination:

Take heart, my friends.  You are in good company.  You, with all your faults and imperfections; you, with your defects and failures; you, with your hang-ups and emotional scars; you, with all of your blunders, brokenness, and floundering; you are God's beloved, God's favored, the disciple whose name God calls, the one Jesus prefers to hang with, and laugh with.  You are the one whom the holy God of heaven and earth longs to spend time with.  You are all of this and more.  You always have been. And you always will be.


-Karla Yaconelli (March, 2007)


**God's preference for "screwups" is much more inclusive than this statement may sound, given the fact that we're all pretty much losers.  Some of us are simply more acutely aware of our all-encompassing "messiness" (to use Michael's term) than others.

Wright's Right

NT Wright is one of my favorite biblical scholars.  I refer to him as The Bishop!  He's a genius, but that's not why I like him.  He doesn't write for the sake of publishing or to promote his academic career.  His pieces are not ideology, theology, and theory for the classroom. NT Wright crafts texts of hope, texts which open our eyes to the relevancy of Jesus, not as eternal life insurance, but as the difference-maker for right here and right now!  Here are his words on forgiveness:

Forgiveness, indeed, is a sort of healing.  It removes a burden that can crush and cripple you.  It allows you to stand up straight without pretending.  It spreads out into whole communities... Forgiveness has the claim to be the most powerful thing in the world.  It transforms like nothing else.  It ranges from the top of the scale, 'forgiveness' of massive financial debt, all the way down deep to release from the quiet, secret horror of personal guilt and shame, which can, quite literally, paralyze you.

NT Wright, Simply Jesus

Join Frog

I'm Charlton Taylor and I'm a People-Pleaser.  This week marks two months of being sober, and sobriety is a a necessary step in joining Frog's mission!  I know what you're saying, "There's nothing wrong with doing something to please someone!"  Correct!  There is also nothing wrong with having a beer or two... but 15 beers? Or 15 beers everyday with your oatmeal and fried eggs?  Enough said!

People-Pleasing can quickly turn from serving another for their pleasure to a hunger for affirmation and acceptance. Both affirmation and acceptance, like food, are vital for human life and health, but when you live for the next hit they become destructive.  You find yourself serving, ministering, and giving for yourself - to hear, "Wow, great job!  Thank you SOOOO much! You are so amazing!  I can't believe you did that for me; you really are an incredible person!" A & A addiction moves the focus away from "The Other" and the act itself and places it on yourself!  That's why I want to join Frog.

In Haruki Murakami's short story collection, After the Quake, he shares the tale "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo."  The narrative centers on a middle-aged loan officer, Katagiri, who receives a visit from a 6 foot frog.  Frog invites Katagiri to fight against Worm, who happens to reside deep below Tokyo.  In a few days Worm will become angry, an anger that will cause a fatal earthquake in Tokyo killing over 150,000 people. Worm must be destroyed and Frog says he can only defeat him with Katagiri's help.  Katagir tries to wiggle his way out of the invite but Frog refuses to accept:

No, it is a matter of responsibility and honor. You may not be too crazy about the idea, but we have no choice: you and I must go underground and face Worm.  If we should happen to lose our lives in the process, we will gain no one's sympathy. And even if we manage to defeat Worm, no one will praise us. No one will ever know that such a battle even raged far beneath their feet. Only you and I will know, Mr. Katagiri.  However it turns out, ours will be a lonely battle.

I want to do what is right out of honor and responsibility... and love and genuine compassion and not primarily for affirmation and acceptance. The key is to bring joy to others without them knowing I was the one who brought joy.  They key is to help others without them ever knowing it was me.  Jesus says it this way: But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

So, I'm a recovering People-Pleaser, not because I don't want to serve others, but because I want to serve others for them and not for me, because I want to brave the battle against Worm, to stand victorious over Worm's lifeless corpse while the masses miles above go about their daily lives oblivious to the war that raged below .  So today... give, serve, and minister incognito.

I'm Charlton Taylor and I'm a People-Pleaser. 

ˈôrθəˌdäks

orthodox
adjective
1 (of a person or their views, esp. religious or political ones, or other beliefs or practices) conforming to what is generally or traditionally accepted as right or true; established and approved

I started reading this book by Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God.  He begins the book with a discussion on how we are incapable of saying ANYTHING about God and yet at the same time how we are called to say SOMETHING about God, and that true faith pitches its tent and builds a fire in that beautiful tension.  He ends the chapter by radically tweaking the definition of ORTHODOX.

"I recently heard a well-known speaker say that if faith does not cost something then it is nothing. Only much later could I respond: if faith does not cost everything, it is nothing. Orthodoxy as right belief will cost us little; indeed it will allow us to sit back with our Pharisaic doctrines, guarding the 'truth' with the purity of our interpretations. But orthodoxy, as believing in the right way, as bringing love to the world around us and within us... that will cost everything. For to live by that sword, as we all know, is to die by it."