Genesis Fight Club: Jacob Wrestles with God (Part 2): Three Versions of You

Genesis Fight Club: Jacob Wrestles with God (Part 2) [1]: Three Versions of You
Fight Club Clip

“If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”

Now, those of you who were here a couple weeks ago know I love this film? But why? Why did this film resonate so deeply when it came out? And why does it still resonate with so many, particularly young men and women? Well, what is Fight Club actually about?

It’s a movie about being sick of being you. It is about a boring guy who gets pushed around and whose deepest passions are trivial…who desperately wants to live a different kind of life. It is a story about something we all experience…a deep sense of dissatisfaction with self.

None of us are really who we want to be. And so in the next ten minutes or so I just wanted to revisit the pivotal verse the Jacob story which, as it turns out, poses precisely the same question: What do you do when you are dissatisfied with who you are? You see, Jacob really doesn’t care for being Jacob…he never really did…his story seeths with his dissatisfaction with who he was…and he tries two different ways of dealing with this dissatisfaction which align with two different approaches that are generally on offer in our culture...First he tried to:

1. Be someone else.

I mean, let’s be really honest for a minute…have you ever wished you were someone else?

Well you are not alone. I have. I think we all [2] have.[3]

This is the direction Edward Norton’s character takes this in Fight Club. At one point Brad Pitt’s character tells him…

And this is exactly how Jacob initially tries to deal with his dissatisfaction with who he was…

You see Jacob spends most of his early life trying to be someone else. [4] Jacob’s spent most of his early life trying to be his more impressive older brother…trying to be Esau. We get three stories about their early life and each one is a story of Jacob trying to supplant Esau…trying to be someone else:

i. Jacob’s struggle to be Esau start’s literally at birth. He comes out grabbing his brother’s heal. That is how he gets his name ‘the grasper’. Literally from his first breath he’s not going to be second without a fight. He wants Esau’s position.

ii. In the second story, Jacob shows that his brother may be strong and masculine…but he’s not that bright. So Jacob uses his cleverness and his mad kitchen skills to make a play for Esau’s role.

iii. Then, in the final youth story, Jacob actually puts on an Esau costume. He literally tries to become Esau so he can trick his blind dad into giving him Esau’s stuff…which leads to one of the strangest verses in the Bible:

Two things have always startled me about the Genesis narratives. 1) they are brutal honest with characters that ring true in their complexity and brokenness and 2) these stories resonate with our self understanding and the best insights of human psychology…in these ways, you could say they read like a Dostoevsky novel. Because the characters ring true and the psychology rings true, it is easy to see ourselves in these pages…we are Jacob…we are the struggler. We’ve all wanted to be someone else. And many of us have even tried to pull it off…but it never works…not really.

And we all know that. In fact, it is a relatively ubiquitous insight. Our culture’s poets and story tellers are almost unanimous on the idea that trying to be someone else is a flawed solution to the problem of our dissatisfaction with ourselves. And so they offer the alternate solution

2. Be yourself

I found dozens of quotes that illustrate this but let’s just go with three that capture the phenomenon:

The ubiquity of this idea I think is captured in the fact that it comes to us in mediums as diverse as the wrings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Step it Up 2 (which I feel the need to clarify, I have not seen). [5]

A couple weeks ago, I was exploring this idea I sent an e-mail to a bunch of friends asking them if they could think of cultural artifacts that revolve around this idea of ‘just be yourself’ and they put together a long and diverse list. The list included films from Cool Runnings, to Forest Gump, to Space Jam…it included lyrics from Pink and Audio Slave...

…it included children’s books and of course it included recent inspirational facebook posts. Which was just the tip of the iceberg. I did a image search on “Be yourself” and found page after page of crafted images that package this idea for viral inspiration.

Our cultural teachers and story tellers are unanimous on this one…well almost.

Trying to be someone else is a mistake. The key to a happy and meaningful life is, above all, to ‘be yourself.’ It is to embrace who you are more completely, more authentically and with more abandon.

‘Be yourself’ may be the first commandment of our cultural cannon.

And that is exactly what Jacob does next. After his episodes in trying to be Esau he moves to Haran and undertakes a 20 year experiment in being himself. And he learns something very important…something, I suspect if you’ve given it any thought, you’ve also learned.

‘Being yourself’ is waaay overrated.

Here’s the problem…our cultural obsession with ‘being yourself’ has, frankly, always confused me. I mean what does that even mean? A couple years ago Amanda and I stumbled on a high school drama called My So Called Life. It was a flawed series [6] and only ran for about a dozen episodes…but it had periodic flashes of substantial insight…but my favorite line of the whole thing was

Implicit in the idea that you should ‘be yourself’ is that the self is discovered rather than formed.

It makes the process of character formation a passive rather than an active process…you are at the mercy of the raw materials of ‘you’ placed there by capricious, random biological and cultural processes.

But you are a project not a puzzle. For the most part ‘you’ are something you become not something you find. Christianity uses the metaphor of ‘spiritual formation’ much more than ‘self discovery.’[7]

And that is really good news for most of us, because the person I see when I reflect on my decisions and behavior is not the person I want to be. I am petty, bitter, materialistic, selfish, apathetic, deceitful, lazy, self serving.[8] When someone tells me, ‘just be yourself’ – my response is ‘um, no thank you.’ So the cultural injunction to ‘be myself’ doesn’t make a lot of sense as a solution to the problem that Jacob faced, that Norton’s character in fight club faced and that most of us face…dissatisfaction with self.

You see, dissatisfaction with self is a healthy impulse. The alternative is narcissism. [9]

And Jacob found the same thing. After his attempts to be his brother ended and ended poorly, he moved to Haran for 20 years, where he decided to ‘just be Jacob’ – and you know what, ‘being Jacob,’ got him rich. [10] But his 20 year experiment in ‘being himself’ resulted in hurting not one, but 4 women, raising over a dozen deeply damaged children, and essentially leaving a wake of professional and relational destruction. It turns out, that Jacob wasn’t someone worth being. He spends 20 years ‘finding himself’ on a ranch in Haran, only to not like what he found.

You see, you are not a toaster. If you are going to become someone worth being, you can’t start with trying to be someone else…and you can’t start with something as shadowy and self serving as your whims and desires.

But if we can agree that being someone else is a horrible way to form your identity and that ‘being yourself’ is way overrated…where does that leave us? There has got to be a path that is better than just ‘discovering’ our disappointing selves. Is there a third option? Well, Genesis 32 suggests there is. You can:

3. Become God’s Version of You

Instead of ‘wanting to be someone else’ or ‘just being yourself’…we can cooperate with God to become His version of us.

And so there is this little dialogue after the wrestling match that goes on all night. Jacob says something about as profound as my 4 year old would say…’I won’t let go until you give me something.’ But as I talked about 2 weeks ago something fundamentally changed during the fight. Jacob’s encounter with Jesus changed his character. [11]

And so God looked past the stuff that Jacob thought he needed…and went all the way back, to the thing he wanted most from the very beginning. Jacob wanted to be someone else. He wanted to be someone who mattered. So God asks him:

‘What’s your name?’ [12]

‘Jacob’ comes the reply. And that is more than just his name, for decades it has been his identity: “Grasper, deceiver, betrayer, manipulator…” The smartest guy in the room.

And then God says – no more. You are someone else now. You are my man for my purpose and my covenant. “Your name will no longer be Jacob…but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”

Jacob is stunned. Suddenly he starts to realize that this encounter was much more than he thought. And there is a moment like in the batman films where he asks ‘Who are you?”

The wrestler doesn’t answer…but it is clear. Yahweh himself has given Jacob a glimpse of who he could be…something better than being his brother…and something better than continuing to be himself…he could become Israel…he could become God’s version of him.

The alternative to wanting to be someone else is not to ‘be yourself’…it is to become the you who God sees…to become God’s version of you.

But here is the thing. You can’t do that. And neither could Jacob. By the end of the chapter, Jacob is already back to his old tricks, pulling one over on Esau …there is a lot of Jacob still there and there will be through his entire story.

But do you know what Israel means?

Israel means ‘God strives for him.’ When Jacob surrendered to God, God took the lead in his process of becoming.

You see, this is the turning point of the story not because Jacob magically changes or because he has a new surge of willpower but because he has entered a relationship with a transforming God. This passage is a turning point in Jacob’s identity not because Jacob has changed, but because Jesus has taken his case. And that is what happens when you surrender to Jesus, when you trust him and make that surrender public through baptism…and when you walk with him in the gradual process of becoming his version of you. Jesus takes the lead in establishing your identity and guides you along the uneven but hopeful road of transformation…of becoming his version of you.

Tonight we are going to hear three ‘Jacob stories’ – stories not of wanting to be someone else…and stories that are not satisfied with self discovery…but stories of the uneven road to becoming who God the you God sees.

-3 student testimonies of transformation and becoming – recognizing how god sees them and trying to live in that reality
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[1] I almost always write two talks and then cut one of them…this time Dan and I decided that I should just give them both.
[2] There is a whole commandment that revolves around the assumption that it is a fundamental human impulse…more than one if you include theft as an attempt to assume someone else’s material identity.
[3] AD: When I was a kid I desperately wanted to be an NFL QB, but I was 5’10 and 101 pounds- I just wasn’t an NFL QB Now I want to be Michale Westen- smoother, less flusterable, more of a rule breaker, etc.
[4] I owe this insight to Rob Bell.
[5] I had a much longer list, but went with these three because they represented the range of high brow, middle brow and low brow cultural voices.
[6] It took itself a little too seriously…but, come on, this was the same era in which “Saved by the Bell” ran for like 18 seasons.
[7] Stuff Adam Darbonne Says: There was a fight in college basketball a couple months ago (I think Cincinnati). In the press conference the guy who started fighting said something to the effect of “I’m really sorry. That wasn’t me- it’s not who I am” Whenever I hear something like that I always think, “Apparently that is you. It may not be who you want to be, but it does reveal something about you.”
[8] People say all the time ‘well no one’s perfect’ – but that’s a smokescreen…no one’s close. What they are really saying is, “I grade myself on the curve and I hate other people, so I seem pretty good to me.”
[9] And it is no coincidence that our culture who celebrates ‘be yourself’ as its canonical insight, is also characterized by narcissism.
[10] …and it got him laid…a lot. –yeah, I wrote that…then I cut it. So at least there’s that.
[11] Assault became clinging. And that was God’s plan Jacob. The grasper became the hugger.
[12]AD: There’s a great scene in the movie Miracle that illustrates this perfectly. Early in the movie the coach asks all the players who they are and they say their name and school. Then this clip happens after a terrible game. It’s 8 minutes but it’s worth watching- you could use a piece of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AajQn7b18&feature=related
[13] Alternate ending: Now, the process of becoming Israel doesn’t happen instantaneously. Before the chapter is even over, Jacob is already doing something deceitful. There is still a lot of Jacob there, and there will be throughout his story. But he has been introduced to his true identity…who God sees that he can be. And it is the turning point in his story.
The wrestling match leaves Jacob no longer wanting to be Esau…he doesn’t want someone else’s story…but he also doesn’t want to be satisfied with Jacob…his story of self making…he emerges from that wrestling match, broken, limping, but with a picture of how God sees him.
This passage is a high noon showdown (whistling high noon music) – except it is in the middle of the night - between Jacob and God…Jacob doesn’t survive, but he gets what he always wanted…to be someone else, someone significant. You see it took him longer, but before he could be …he had to become like Abraham in at least one way…he had to become an alter builder…someone who’s best confidence is not in his or her own abilities, but in their alliance with God.
God wants Jacob to give up on being Esau, and to recognize that Jacob is a d-bag not worth being…but that when God sees him, he sees Israel…he sees a better Jacob…a Jacob transformed by wrestling with God and finding love in the face of God…a Jacob that isn’t living for himself but who is part of a mission and a purpose.

Genesis Fight Club: Jacob Wrestles with God (Part 1) -How To Lose a Fight…and Win

Mp3 (here)

I often find it awkward that my favorite movie is a film that I can’t really recommend in this setting. [1] It is full of violence, mayhem, disturbing sex, and all manner of objectionable content. So, you need to know that I do not remotely recommend Fight Club…but it also happens to be my favorite movie. So I guess it makes sense that [2] as I was preparing a two part message on my favorite narrative in Genesis I kept thinking of this film…and so I eventually just went with it and titled the talks:

In two weeks we are going to re-visit this passage and that talk will get its own introductory clip from the movie, but tonight, in part 1 I want to look at what I think is the dominant theme in Genesis 32:

How to Lose a Fight…and Win.

Fight Club Clip – Your Assignment: Start a Fight and Lose

I’m just going to go with the metaphor and organize tonight’s talk like it is a pay per view MMA fight.

I’m going to give you the pre-fight analysis…we are going to tell the back story of the fighters…then we will go to the octagon…we’ll watch the fight unfold…and then we do a little post fight analysis….and tune in for the awarding of the prize purse…so first:

I. Pre-Fight Analysis: Introducing The Fighters

So before we watch at the Fight, I feel like we have to introduce the fighters.

First, we have ‘the challenger’…actually, let’s do this Sports Center style and throw it to our ring side analysts for a bio

Frankly, I think Jacob is the most interesting human character in Genesis…which is probably why this is my favorite passage.

Jacob has been gone for 20 years. That’s longer than some of you have been alive. He never saw his mom again. She’s dead. But in chapter 32 it’s been 20 years and he wants to go home. [3]

This fight will be the climax of Jacob’s story. Up until tonight’s match Jacob has lived a life of oblique, passive aggressive conflict with everyone he encountered, his brother, his family, his wives, his uncle and mostly, his Father’s God…twenty years earlier, as he left the promise land, he had this crazy mystical vision as he left the land of a stairway from heaven…but there is absolutely no evidence in his story to date that he gives any allegiance to Yahweh.

The reason Jacob is my favorite patriarch is because he is easily the most disappointing patriarch. As Alyssa showed us so well last week, he has messy relationship with multiple women, he is pretty much a total failure as a father, and, we have no evidence that he has thought of God in the twenty years since he left home and saw the cosmic vision of the angels from heaven. Basically the story of those twenty years is a story of a man disappointing women, stealing from relatives, cheating employers, and dabbling in Mesopotamian goat sorcery. But now he is scared. He wants to come home…but his brother is waiting for him at the river.

You see Esau is the reason Jacob left in the first place. Jacob had cheated his brother and Esau had vowed to kill him. And you get the sense that this would not have been difficult for Esau. Now maybe the first description of Jacob’s twin brother doesn’t get this across:

25:25 “The first came out red, all his body like a hairy coat, so they called him Esau.

Honestly, red and hairy, four letter name that begins with E…you get the picture that baby Esau looked something like this [4]

But Jacob is picturing something far more imposing. Listen to how the text describes the twins:

25:27 “When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in the tents. [5] Isaac loved Esau…but Rebekah loved Jacob.”

In the original Hebrew this means…Jacob was a bookish mommas boy who liked to cook and stay inside and probably listened to a lot of Taylor Swift…and his brother was more of a monster truck and fire arms guy. You get the sense that if Esau wanted to kill Jacob, it would not be hard. And Jacob’s mama apparently felt that way because when she learned that Esau wanted to kill Jacob her advice to her boy was…”Run away” – Genesis 27:43 (Also Monte Python and the Holy Grail)

Jacob’s memory of Esau is big, strong, and proficient with weapons...[6] (Taylor)

The passage describes Jacob’s response as ‘great fear and distress.’ You see, you get the sense throughout the Jacob story, that his whole life he’s always been the cleverest guy in the room.[7] I mean in some ways, he’s Michael Weston, but with less noble motivations. Like Weston Jacob always had a plan and was always smarter than the other guy…and given the number of cows and goats he owned, he probably ate a lot of yogurt. [8] But there was one way he probably wasn’t like Weston…Jacob never really learned to fight. He was the schemer, his brother was the fighter.

And now, after all he had been through, Jacob was staring across the river at an army that he imagined had been assembled to disassemble him. So Jacob goes into scheming mode. He opens his cleverness bag and hatches a plan to minimize the damage. Commentators go nuts describing the tactics of Jacob’s plan. Everything he does is clever and calculating, the way he divides the party, the way he uses the river, his tactics were flawless…and fundamentally useless. Half way through his planning, he realizes, that his best efforts will not prevail against Esau and 400 of his best men (Sesame Street Monster pic…um I’m not sure that exactly the picture Jacob had in his head…maybe something more like this…that still might not be imposing enough….how about this). Jacob is understandably terrified…Which brings us to verse 9.

9: “Then Jacob prayed.”

You see, up to this point, Jacob lived by cleverness and guile and probably felt like he’d done pretty well for himself. He got himself the woman he wanted…and three others. He had 12 sons. He built a flock through clever selective breeding and shadowy Mesopotamian agri-sorcery.[9] There is no doubt, Jacob had become ‘something’…but in this moment, by the river, it looked like all of that was for nothing. His cleverness and trickery had finally come back to find him…so Jacob does something that we have no record of him ever doing before…

9: “Then Jacob prayed.”

The prayer starts out a little underwhelming… Jacob essentially says…hey God, listen, you were the one who told me I had to come back here…If this goes badly it’s on you…but then we see the first crack in Jacob’s self will and self reliance...and this is how prayer generally goes…it starts out critical of God, but in his Holy presence quickly turns to critical introspection…we often come to God angry about his shortcomings and leave aware of our…and so eventually the prayer gets to a more self aware, vulnerable space…

“I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan [10], and now I have become two camps…”

And that’s one of the remarkable things about prayer, once you get to a space where you are being honest with God, you stop trying to deceive yourself…and you often get to the bottom of the matter…and for Jacob, the bottom of the matter is that he was scared. He goes on:

“Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him…”

This is a really intimate, honest, moment…but it’s brief. Jacob immediately goes back to planning. Only this time, the point of the planning isn’t escape…its damage control. He splits up his family (slide) and then[11] in a phenomenally cowardly act, he sends them ahead of him to face whatever revenge Esau has in mind.

But his plan does something else…it isolates Jacob and leaves us with one of those really poignant moments the Scriptures are full of if you take the time to linger over them…Jacob finds himself standing on the far bank of the river in the middle of the night, his family scattered so in a best case scenario, only half of them would be slaughtered. He is facing an army of 400 ready to inflict a 20 year vendetta on him. He stands on the far side of that river, still cowardly, still bitter, and totally alone. The passage lingers on it…

V24 “So Jacob was left alone…”

There is a volume of poetry and silence that rests in the pause half way through verse 24. Jacob is at the end of himself. He is standing alone in the dark. It is quiet. He might hear the distant sound of his herds across the water, he can probably hear the river eddies bubble and flow past him. It’s a terrible, viscerally, stark, lonely, moment…

V24 “So Jacob was left alone…”

Only he wasn’t. Look at the rest of the verse:

V24 “So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

What? I mean, was he alone or not? And who is the man? Which brings me to the other fighter. So, let’s send it back ringside:

ii. The Champion: ???


Note: The guys assure me that those aren't their bare butts, that they were wearing gold shorts and in the blur it just looks like they were naked. This seems like an odd disclaimer in the middle of a talk. I showed the edited version on Tuesday night. ‘Who is this guy that Jacob wrestles?’ The text frankly is coy. It’s abrupt. Honestly I wish verse 24 was like 5 times longer. The author spends 33 words detailing precisely how many of each ungulate Jacob set aside for his brother. (Shoot, these verses are so detailed you could do a biomass calculation on the gift…X lbs if you are interested). But here it only gives us:

V24 “So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.”

The verse calls him ‘a man’[12] , elsewhere the Scriptures[13] call him ‘an angel’ but neither of those can be the whole story, because at the end of the smack down…when everything is said and done…there is a moment of recognition. It is like those final moments of a movie with a great twist ending, a film like the Sixth Sense of The Usual Suspects where someone we thought we had pegged is actually not even close to who we thought they were.

Jacob realizes that his opponent was not just a man or even a cosmic messenger…at the end of the fight Jacob realizes that he has in a confusing but indisputable way…fought God himself.

V30 “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

You see, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God who in a confusing but indisputable way tends to show up…I mean actually show up…in a corporeal, physical, form, from time to time…usually at the climax of the story.[14] This happens several times in Genesis. It is actually one of the surprising themes of the book but we haven’t really dealt with yet. Theologians call these appearances ‘theophanies’ which essentially is a fancy word for ‘times that God shows up’. Historically, Christians have interpreted these as appearances of the second person of the trinity…previews of the incarnate Word…or, in other words…Jesus shows up.[15] To describe how this works, let’s go back to Fight Club…

In Fight Club, before we meet Brad Pitt’s character, he shows up five times …which is a clue to how the story will play out. Now you probably won’t notice it the first time…most people don’t even notice it the third time. In all but one case he just blips on the screen for a single frame…but if you watch this film as many times as my wife and I have, you eventually notice that Tyler Durden makes shadowy and indisputable appearances before he is introduced as a main character.

(Tyler shows up at 0:17) [16]

That is what I make of these theophanies…the places where God ‘shows up’ in an ambiguous but undeniably corporeal form…it is a preview of the coming main character…it is a hint that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is predisposed to enter time and space as a corporeal human figure at the climax of the story. It foreshadows the incarnation (Caravaggio slide)…it foreshadows the climax of the story (cross slide)…it foreshadows the reality that God will ultimately wrestle with evil and with us in Jesus (gethsemene slide) [17] …and he will win…and if we lose to him, we’ll win to. [18] Which leads me to the fight…

II. The Fight: Now We Take You to the Octagon

And so, Jacob, ‘the grasper’, is a man who has cheated and worked his way to what seems like success, but who has struggled with the God of Abraham and Isaac his whole life…and now its on…he finally throws down with that God.

The way I picture this is like Lieutenant Dan in Forest Gump


Like Lieutenant Dan, Jacob has spent decades struggling with God quietly, it was been a subtle, passive aggressive struggle…but now if finally comes to a head…both of them are sick of the subtle struggle…tension has been building between them for decades…and finally, it’s time do this thing. [19]

But then it gets weirder. They wrestle all night [20]…and Jacob will not be overpowered. He continues to stubbornly resist God. And Jacob continues his assaults. So his opponent does something that changes the nature of the fight and reveals a little of his identity. HE just touches Jacob on the leg, and Jacob is undone. And now the nature of the conflict has changed. Jacob can’t fight any more. The single offensive touch renders him unable to fight.

I imagine a wave of realization crashing over Jacob. He probably thought he was holding his own in the match…

“Are you messing with me…I wanted you to think you were doing well.”

But he suddenly realizes that he is hopelessly overmatched…

“Because I know something you don’t know” “I am not left handed either.”

It is suddenly clear that he cannot win this fight. He is going to lose. At this point he could have done what he had always done[21] …he could have run (or, I guess, limped)…but he could have sulked and retreated in defiance. He could have retreated in terror. But he doesn’t.

But dawn breaks Jacob is still struggling, only he isn’t fighting any more…his leg won’t let him. By the end he’s just holding on as hard as he can.[22] He’s broken, he’s beaten, he’s fought as hard as he can, but he has lost…he’s totally undone by the slightest touch of his opponent…but he won’t let go.

V 26 But Jacob says, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

And, finally, Jacob, wounded, broken, and at the end of himself, has learned how to fight with God. You don’t wrestle with God by assaulting him or by landing blows, you wrestle with God by holding on as tight as you can…and that’s how you lose a fight…and win.

When I was a kid, my parents bought an old farm house with the idea that they would re-do it. Worst decision they ever made. Twenty years later, the house looked great, but their marriage was a catastrophe.

But the living room was the last room they re-did. So when my brother Nic and I were little, there was this raggedy old couch and a piece of stained red shag carpet that only covered about 85% of the plywood floor and had burn marks from a fondue accident. And this is where some of my best childhood memories happened. This is where my brother and I would wrestle my dad.

Now these little matches would always play out the same way. We’d run at him from every direction, and fly through the air at him[23] , trying to knock him over. But it never worked. He’d always catch us flying at him and toss us effortlessly through the air into that old couch, which hadn’t been comfortable since the Nixon era. It was like that scene in Lion King where the hyenas jumping Mufassa and he throws them off practically without effort …or the scene in Jurrasic park where the TREX opened a can on the little velociraptors that had been wreaking havoc the whole movie (xkcd cartoon - reveal shirt).

And so it would go on like this for a while…dozens of times we would come at him, and dozens of times we would end up careening through the air…but it always ended the same way. After we finally got tired of being thrown into the couch Nic and I would each grab one of my Dad’s legs and hold on as tight as we could…and this would somehow always result with my Dad toppling on the couch to our delight and total satisfaction. Now for years, I thought we had used physics and cleverness[24] to beat my dad. And some people read this passage like that.

But I know better now. I’ve been ‘defeated’ by Charis and Aletheia enough times to reinterpret those memories I have of taking my Dad down. I mean they excell at being adorable, but they suck at fighting...they can't take me, unless i let them.

If you wrestle someone out of your weight class but who loves you, you don’t win by landing blows...you win by holding on as tight as you can. You win by holding on and going for the ride. Which leads me to the…

III. Post fight analysis: Awarding the Purse

Verse 26 is actually a pretty comic picture. Jacob and God wrestle. God tries to win Jacob over but he will not be won. Jacob continues to resist God throughout the night with everything in him. So God literally ‘lifts a finger’ in offense…he just touches Jacob and Jacob is totally undone. And so Jacob just holds on and goes for the ride. Day comes and God makes to leave…but Jacob is still clinging to him…he’s beaten but the nature of the conflict has changed. Now he is not trying to beat God…he’s trying to hold on to him to get what he needs. He knows he needs something from God and asks for ‘a blessing.’ Most commentators believe he is asking, in particular, for help with his Esau problem. He asks this powerful opponent who undid defeated him with a touch to save his family and his cowardly butt from the lynch mob waiting for him across the river.

And then something weird happens…God blesses him. He gives Jacob two things.[25] You see here is the cool thing about losing to God, when you wrestle with God, the prize purse goes to the loser. But God doesn’t give Jacob what he is asking for…like God usually does, he gives Jacob something better than Jacob asks for. He goes beyond the immediate need the external circumstance that Jacob sees as his problem…and gets at the fundamental reality of Jacob’s problem…which is Jacob. He offers Jacob a new, God centered, missional identity oozing with meaning and purpose that his life has always lacked. He re-writes Jacob into his story of redemption…Telling him ‘you shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel.”[26] Now there is a lot to say here, so I’ll take up this theme of identity change in two weeks when we re-visit this passage

But I want to wrap up with the second thing God gave Jacob… you see the Belt that is counter-intuitively conferred upon Jacob as the loser of that battle…the greatest spoils of losing to God…is God.

When you lose the struggle against God…you win…you win God.

And if we think about the rest of the story, that shouldn’t surprise us. This is the same wrestler that said “whoever should lose his life for my sake will gain it” (Mark 8:35)…and this is the same wrestler who, when he found himself in a cosmic battle with evil and death himself, lost the fight and won.

And because of the way Jesus lost that battle to win it…surrendering to Jesus, clinging to him and going for the ride, changes everything. Jesus is qualified to accept our unconditional surrender to God, and if we lose, we win, we win God…Jesus immediately turns adversity and enmity into reconciliation and acceptance and we begin to see who God really is. Surrendering to Jesus draws back the shroud covering reality to reveal the face of God which, because of Jesus, is unexpectedly for us.[27]

And this is precisely what Jacob experienced in his surrender. Jacob lost to God and won…and his prize was that he, the most pathetic of the patriarchs, got to do something none of them did in their lives…he got see God and he got to see a God who was unexpectedly for him. And this is precisely what his new name means ‘Israel means ‘God struggles for him.’ But there is more direct evidence in the text.

32:30 “So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel (God’s face), saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

…which I feel like leads to a very obvious question…what does God’s face look like? He doesn’t immediately say…but then we get a really curious verse in the post script. You see, the next day, Jacob still has to get up and face Esau. [28] And he does, only Esau is not interested in killing him…Esau has come to be reconciled to his estranged brother. Verse 4 in the next chapter says:

33:4 But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him.[29] And they wept.

And after their reunion, Jacob tells Esau:

33:10 “For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.”

At first this seems weird…God looks like Esau’s hairy red mug? (back to the elmo well) Probably not. But what is it about Esau that reminds Jacob of the God he just met.’ Forgiveness, reconciliation, and acceptance despite a dark history of offense. He expected violence from Esau and found reconciliation. That is what God’s face looks like. Wrestling with God, struggling with Jesus, throwing down with your creator…it will bring you to the end of yourself. And the only way to win, is to lose.

I was talking to Dan about this passage last week and he said something that stuck with me. He said “one of the really interesting characteristics that emerges from this passage about the God we worship is that, from time to time, he’ll mug you.” And it doesn’t matter if you have known him a long time like Abraham or if you have fought him off most of your life like Jacob, there are times in your life where he’ll come after you and he’ll come hard.

You see the process of spiritual formation is not composed entirely of placid times of quiet reflection…it’s not all stained glass and singing…sometimes spiritual formation takes a violent turn. You can reach a point of stubbornness and self will that Jesus will mug you to foil your self destruction…he’ll throw down. And if Jesus comes after you hard to save you from yourself…you best let him. And then in a counterintuitive plot twist, the final result of God throwing down with you…is that you get to ask for a blessing…but we will take up the topic of the blessing in two weeks.

So your assignment, is if you start a fight with God…lose. Some of you have been wrestling with God for years…and what you really need to do is change your tactics from assault to embrace. Quit trying to beat him…hold on as tight as you can and go for the ride. Some of you may be going through something really difficult right now…and it may be that God has just touched your hip. He wants to use the difficult circumstance to change you from a fighter to a clinger. Lose the fight…and win. You will almost certainly come out of the experience wounded…but you will also come out having ‘seen God face to face’. [30]

________________________
[1] I am also contemplating an intro that revolves around the idea that “I have never won a fight.”
[2]At this point in writing this intro…this exact word…”Where is My Mind?” by Pixies came up on Pandora. If I was just a little more of a mystic I’d consider that Divine sanction for using a fight club metaphor.
[3] He saw a camp of angels twice…once when he left ‘the land’ and once when he re-entered
[4] This is Driscoll’s joke. I stole it.
[5] AD: He was the “artist” of the family…the “sensitive second child”
[6] maybe something like this:
"imposing picture of Aaron in hunting gear holding a weapon"
And, he shows up with an army. Esau shows up with 400 men…and I’m guessing these dudes are more like Esau than Jacob (aaron Beiber – or add Taylor with a gun picture, maybe Kiho with a gun).
[7] I feel like there is a ‘if I only had a wheelbarrow’ joke here….or ’what I would give for a holocaust cloak’
[8] Was a fan of dairy products.
[9] The agri-sourcery is only one indication that Jacob and his family were not exclusive Yahwehists in Haran. The most interesting one is Rachel’s successful attempt to swipe an idol (and then hide it by feigned menstruation – no wonder Jacob loved this woman, or maybe proximity had conformed her character to his) on her way out of town. Feeling like you needed daddy’s household idol for your trip back to the promise land is a sign that your family is not “all in” on the covenant. Actually, in naming Judah “This time I will praise Yahweh,” it is Leah who shows the most devotion to the God of Jacob’s fathers’.
[10] There is something about this stick - Hebrews 11
[11] I want to say “like a little bitch” here.
[12] He may have thought it was Esau.
[13] Hosea
[14] Pearl: JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus
[15] This seems to be John’s assessment when he says: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” Jn 1:18
[16] There is a clip that slows them down here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbFEpFSRHVs
[17] Pearl: “He was with God in the beginning” (John 1)
[19] Zach: This clips covers what you’re talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNzPsfnN3sU
Of course the problem is that it’s another clip…But I happen to love this scene… and it’s action packed and has excellent one-liners 
[20] Stuff Adam Darbonne Says: Usually when a preacher talks to college students about two people wrestling all night it’s not in a positive light
[21] BL: I feel like perhaps you should add a further description of what happens in Jacob's head once his hip is touched. He is not just "undone" (which you mention a few times). At the point of being undone and realizing the TRUE superiority of the one he thought he could defy, he is then faced with another choice - to let go and cower from the mighty One, or to cling to Him. I think his choice to submit rather than just lie there defeated or slink away is noteworthy... for Jacob and in our experience of God too: once we realize who He is, will we walk away in denial? or will we then choose a new way of relating to Him, clinging to him dependently and longing for his blessing?
[22] The grasper learns a new form of grasping.
[23] Back in the day this used to be called ‘Jimmy Superfly Snooka’ style…but I suspect that that is a reference that most college students would miss.
[24] AD ““Because we were nerds, even as 5 year olds…”
[25] And so, Jacob is wounded and helpless, finally overcome, finally beyond his resources…but he holds on to this mysterious figure…beliving that he is the only hope to And so he asks for help…despite his sorry position he asks for a reward…and
[26] Ps 30:5 “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
[27] The Esau narrative below is evidence of this, but so is the name change which I am going to deal with in 2 weeks. Jacob goes from ‘Jacob’ – ‘the grasper’ to ‘Israel’ – ‘Yahweh struggles for him’
[28] This is what Peter Berger calls mysticism’s “morning after problem.” Encountering God changes you, but it doesn’t always change your world, – “even if an angel appeared to me last night…this morning. I get up, I brush my teeth, I have breakfast…and with each of these actions the memory of last night’s angel begins to fade.” –Peter Berger “A Far Glory”
[29] Every commentator, without fail, recognizes the parallels here between this verse and Luke 15 (the prodigal son). It is more than a coincidence. This is what Evans would call an ‘echo’ – Esau’s counterintuitive acceptance when condemnation was expected is the picture Jesus takes up to describe ‘the face of God.’
[30] …you will come out reconciled and accepted…and you will come out a different person. But we’ll take that idea up in two weeks.

Failure Mode Analysis: Disaster Proofing Your Romantic Relationsip

The MP3 of this talk is here

So this is the last night of our relationship series…tonight we move from friendship and family to talk about romantic relationships. And I may strike you as an odd choice for tonight’s topic…but you see…I might not have Christian’s warm family background or Dan’s modeling career (come on, Dan is so good looking that one person who looked like that wasn’t enough)…but I have something to offer that neither of them do…You see, I’m an engineer…



Now, I understand if maybe you don’t immediately connect engineers and romance in your mind.

Yep, that would be understandable…

But here’s the thing… there is a reason societies keep Engineers around despite our famed inability to have a conversation that is not awkward…Engineers figure out how things fail…and the really remarkable thing is that engineers usually figure how things fail BEFORE they fail. And that is why normal, well adjusted people like you keep us around.[1] We are odd, but useful (pic). 

Some failures are pretty obvious and mildly comical.

Others are difficult to predict and have more devastating consequences.

But catastrophic failures like this are relatively rare…because of engineers.

Engineers predict how things fail…before they fail. It’s called ‘Failure Mode Analysis.’

And when it comes to bridges and buildings, we can be happy to outsource failure mode analysis that to a community of superheroes with thick glasses, stained ties, and low social intelligence. But it seems like we could all use a little ‘failure mode analysis’ when it comes to our romantic decisions…because the world of Christian dating and romance is strewn with wreckage. People may not agree on the solution, but most people agree that the failure rate[2] is unacceptable. We do this thing poorly. [3][4] In particular, we spend too much time and energy as a community working through relational wreckage…that someone should have seen coming.

You see, we all eventually learn how relationships fail. [5] But there are two ways to learn this. You can learn it experientially, you can have a careless romantic relationship or four that you end up regretting…or you can learn how things fail before they fail. And you see figuring out the how relationships fail before they fail and then avoiding those regrets is what the Bible calls ‘wisdom’.

Now a dating talk on dating is a little hard to do…because the Bible doesn’t really talk about it. Dating as we think about it didn’t exist when the Bible was written. It’s a novel cultural artifact.

Beth Bailey wrote a scholarly book on the history of dating in the United States…a scholarly book with a fun title. From the Front Porch to the Back Seat: Courtship in 20th Century America – dating and even courtship are historically novel cultural artifacts. We have only been dating as a culture since automobile ownership became prevalent. It’s only been a couple of generations…so in a sense it is a grand social experiment, that, incidentally is not going particularly well. And so it is not surprising that the Bible does not have a lot to say on an obscure cultural practice limited to part of the world for a small fragment of history.[6][7][8]

But what’s another novel cultural artifact that Bible doesn’t talk about? Here’s one…pants. (CLer reading the bible thinking about pants) The Bible is almost entirely silent about pants…but I still need to decide if I’m going to put some on before I leave my house….and in that decision, I am guided by what the Bible calls wisdom. You see, on topics that the Bible does not explicitly speak on, where we have to apply Biblical thinking to novel cultural situations, the Scriptures do not leave us adrift. They tell us again and again and again to seek wisdom. [9]

Proverbs 4

5 Get wisdom; get insight;
do not forget...
6 Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
7 The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.
8 Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.[10]

To kind of bring back the engineering language…modern relationships are prone to failure.[11] But many of us aren’t doing the kind of rigorous assessment of them that comports with the importance of the decision. Many of us are putting more rigorous analysis into that life altering decision between a droid and an iphone.[12] We have bought the cultural falsehood that romance is something that happens to you…that love is something you ‘fall into’…like mordor or that creepy pit creature in Return of the Jedi.[13]

You hear people say all the time ‘you can’t choose who you love.’ Now, there is a mysterious aspect to attraction…BUT…people hide behind that idea to absolve them of the huge responsibility is attached to their romantic choices.

And so I have used the engineering metaphor of ‘failure mode analysis’ to organize this talk. Engineers talk about 'failure' modes, because there are multiple ways that a structure can fail and each possible 'failure mode' requires careful planning, analysis and reflection before you can have confidence in the integrity of the design. And so I am going to assert that contemporary Christian romantic relationships have at least 4 failure modes. You need to assess each of these and make a plan:

Failure Mode 1: Motivation

The first thing you have to get right is the motivation for romance. You absolutely must have a theology of romance and sexuality before you do romance and sexuality. If you don’t understand these aspects of your humanness theologically, you are not likely to experience them the way they were indented. And so let me pose the question: What is Romance For? What Function Does it Perform? What is the Purpose of Romance?

In other words, What is a sound motivation for pursuing or entering into a romantic relationship? If you haven’t given substantial reflection to this question you may need to put the brakes on getting into one. [14]

If you get this wrong, the whole thing is distorted. And it can end up distorted in equal and opposite ways.

Some are too eager for romance and marriage and some of you are too scared of it.

The reason it is hard to write a talk like this is that some of you want marriage too much and others want marriage too little – some of you have a marriage idol and some of you have an independence idol [15] But you see, the person who is too eager for romance and marriage and the person who is too scared of it have something in common. They are both thinking about how romance and marriage will affect their happiness.

I occasionally get questions like ‘how high should my standards be…are my standards too high or too low’ – well, it depends what kind of heart sickness you tend towards. Do you look to marriage to fulfill your longings or do you fear marriage as an obstacle to your longing?

They aren’t actually two separate idolatries…they are two symptoms of the same idolatry. Marriage is perceived as either a means or an obstacle to happiness. It is neither.

Both motivations are consumptive. They ask the question: “How will I benefit from getting into or not getting into a relationship?” How will it augment or detract from my happiness. They are both self involved.

“Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become "whole" and happy.” [16] Hauerwas

Marriage, like the rest of your life, is not fundamentally about your happiness or your misery…it is about Jesus and his Kingdom. [17]

So happiness is a mistaken motivation (though, like so many things in the Christian life, it can be a frequent incidental side effect of a relationship that is built on better things). Viewing romance as a vehicle or obstacle to happiness or fulfillment makes people simultaneously too terrified and too eager. But, what is an appropriate motivation. What is the purpose of romance?

The purpose of romance is to move turn a friendship into a family…it is the process by which we turn a friendship into a (missional) family. (which is the smallest functional unit of that God uses to build his missional community). Genesis tells a story of generations because God tells his story in generations.

The reason we are doing a romance talk in the context of friendship and family talks is that you can only understand romance theologically if you understand friendship and family theologically.

Thesis:
Romance is the means for turning a friendship into a family.

This is the thesis of the whole series.

Romance doesn’t exist for itself or by itself. It has the purpose of family building and is constructed from the raw materials of friendship. If you abstract romance from either friendship or family, If you don’t start with a robust, well developed friendship or have a goal that is something short of a God honoring family that is part of His multi-generational purposes, you distort it.

Because Romance is the means for making a family out of a friendship.

You see, here’s the thing. The whole dating thing, the process by which you choose who you are going to spend your life with…It is a relatively brief life stage (2-4% of your brief life) yet most of our cultural narratives are obsessed with it. Sit coms, film, novels…they all focus on this relatively brief life stage. [18][19][20][21] It needs to be a time when you build something real.

Now, if the purpose of dating is to turn a friendship into a family…then what’s the Goal of dating? Well – friendship and character assessment – It’s the process by which you answer the question ‘do you want to build a community of faith with this person?’ But HOW do you do that? The ‘how’ question leads us to our second ‘failure mode.’

Failure Mode 2: Method

The second way that this can go poorly is method. If you get the motivation right, you have a better shot at getting the method right…but it is not a given. You can understand the why, and still totally blow the how. [22] How do you get there from here?

Now there are some methods that we can dismiss pretty quickly. [23]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7YV3mBo2Bw

I don’t have a lot of time here, so I’m not going to waste a lot of it by telling you that the campus hookup culture is a terrible method. I mean if the purpose of romance is to turn a friendship into a misisonal community, to build something real that will echo for generations, you do not have to wonder very long if getting drunk, having sex with a stranger, having a vague recollection of liking it, doing it a few more times until you develop a kind of complicated sense of obligation to each other end up calling yourself a couple is a successful method for this.

But in evangelical culture the ‘method’ question has become a pretty heated topic of late. There is a bit of a raging debate that pits ‘dating’ against ‘courtship’. Then there are even a few proponents of something called ‘betrothal’ but to be fair, those people are mostly just weird. And there may be a few of you whose parents are mature and admiral Christians of non-Western decent, who have to deal with the fact that ‘arrangement’ is in the mix.[24]




Now, if you are just checking Christianity out, maybe you are a visitor with us tonight, or maybe you are new to Christian community and you hear something like ‘the dating/courtship debate’ and it sounds like something out of the 1920’s…maybe the 1920’s on ANOTEHR PLANET. It just sounds goofy. Here’s the thing. I totally agree. These debates are mostly a matter of semantics.

But here is what they are all essentially getting at.

There has GOT to be a better way to do this thing.

There has got to be a way to move a relationship from a friendship to a family that is not as wrought with spiritual peril…that is more honoring to God and the friend who you have decided is sexy (looking for a synonym-or and enabler). [25]

You cannot just take the sitcom/romcom model of this, Christianize it by subtracting pre-vow sexuality and run with it. You have to forge a counter cultural method that honors God and honor’s the friend who you are auditioning for the role of ‘lifetime companion.’[26] I can’t spell out a method for you. I don’t have enough time and I’m not sure I could if I did. You are going to have to forge it out of the raw materials of respect for your friend and obedience to God. But here are a few things that really need to be part of the package.

i. Your Method has to Include a prominent role for family and community

You see, Christians believe that wisdom requires the practice of ‘self skepticism.’ It requires a cautious distrust of our own motivations. Our hearts are not to be trusted. And if our hearts are not to be trusted in baseline states, it is even more true when they are surging with dopamine and serotonin (comic). Dopamine is not the friends of wisdom. Its purpose is to make you forget how hard it is to raise a child so you will heedlessly engage in the activity required to make one.

Wise friends and ESPECIALLY family are great ‘blind spot mirrors.’ If you let them, they can be really helpful at being skeptical for you when you are not capable of being skeptical about yourself.

You need to outsource some of the authority to assess your relationship to qualified and wise individuals, including some who have been married a long time, whose assessment apparatus has not been chemically compromised.[27][28]

ii. Major on the Friendship.

“Marriage is not basically romance garnished with friendship…it is basically friendship garnished with romance.” Keller[29]

Every married couple eventually figures out the kissing thing. But lots of them never figure out the friendship thing. Romantic exploration has to major on the friendship.

iii. Recognize that life unfolds in season

“A Time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.”

Things are enjoyed in seasons. (Don’t awaken love before its time) which leads to [30]

iv. Avoid dating that is either too casual or too obsessive

– replace these extremes with cautiously purposeful. Don’t leave a wake of flirtation and false hopes…but don’t give yourself too fully too soon.

v. Don’t disappear from Christian community and mission.

It always bothers me when a newly formed couple falls off the map – it is a sign that they are putting too much hope in the connection – and that they misunderstand the purpose of coupling. Because the whole romance thing is the fun but important first step in building a missional community. [31] If you are assessing a partner with which to build a missional community, it seems like community and mission would be a good context to do that assessing. Don’t fall off the map.

Failure Mode 3: Momentum

I have met with a lot of students over the years to talk about relationships. And I have talked with a lot of married couples about how they feel about their dating years looking in retrospect. I have heard a lot of crazy stuff. But there is one thing I’ve never heard. I have never met a couple that said “you know what I regret...going too slow in our physical relationship" [32]

You see, once you DTR you are in a race...it is a race to effectively evaluate if this is a person who you want to build a misisonal community with before physical and emotional intimacy make that evaluation impossible.

Tim Keller, who wrote an excellent new book on marriage and relationships which I highly recommend [33] put it like this:

“Don’t let things get too passionate too quickly….physical exploration can engage romantic obsession…(which ) tends to preclude a realistic assessment of who the person really is.”(Keller)

You need to pace the physical and emotional intimacy. And here is the deal…you are not going to go too slow. So take whatever pace you were planning on…and slow it down…then slow it down again…then slow it down again.

Now, I am going to give you a couple of examples…and they are going to sound absurd.

First: Don’t be in a hurry to give it a label. If the goal of romance is friendship and character assessment…then you can do that pretty effectively as friends…or as friends with a confessed shared interest.

Second: You don’t want to be kissing for more than a year before you can take your clothes off. So if marriage is a couple years off, so is kissing.

Third: The L-bomb. Telling someone ‘I love you’ is a little arbitrary, but it has a ton of cultural power. That thing should be within a couple months of clear dense carbon.

Finally:, everything is better in Christianity is better in community even – especially romance. (I feel like there is a potentially tasteless/dangerous joke here) Friendship and character assessment do not require closed doors, rooms that have beds in them or a lot of intense alone time. In fact, interacting with other people will help with the character assessment.

If public romance doesn’t appeal to you, question your motives

Let me summarize this point for you…SLOW THE FRICK DOWN!

Listen, better men and women than you have failed at this. Many Christians think that as long as they are spiritual enough they won’t be derailed by sexual sin. It is not enough to have passion. [34] Loving Jesus is not enough to avoid sexual entanglement. You have to have a plan. Set your ground rules before you get in a relationship and then call upon your friends to hold you to them.

Failure Mode 4: Materials

But there is one final important failure mode. Method, momentum, and even motivation are meaningless if you aren’t building with the right materials – you can hire the best structural engineer in the world and it won’t matter if you try to build a skyscraper out of jello. You know it would be really convenient and cost effective if we could build bridges out of dog poo [35] – but that doesn’t make it a good idea…I don’t care how much that would delight my 4 year old…or Zach Evans…or the author of my favorite bathroom blog.

And this is why the goal of romance is friendship and character assessment.

The primary building material of a romantic relationship is character.

I pitched the outline of my talk to a friend who is a pastor and his response was, your whole talk should be about that last point. Well, 2 years ago that is exactly what I did. I gave a talk called –“Three things that are more important than hotness”- I’ve burned some CD’s, available in the back and the MP3 link is in your handout…but let me tell you the ONE thing that I think is most important to the long term success of a friendship that elects to transition to a family.

The goal of romance might be friendship development and character assessment…it might be to determine if this person who has caught your attention has the stuff to stand by your side as you try build a family…if this is THE friendship you want to turn into a family. But that is actually not the most important character question in your romantic life.

The most important character question in your romantic life is YOURS.

You see, when it comes to the long term success of your relationship, "who you become is more important than who you marry."

Last year in both fall and spring retreats, we had speakers…Impressive and thoughtful Christian pastors…who both told us stories of their evangelical fairy tale marriages...that went horrifically and catastrophically wrong…both of them coming dangerously close to ending. I think this terrified a number of students. Now, it is only fair to tell you that not all marriages have those kinds of dramatic crises. Amanda and I have never teetered on the edge of divorce…not yet at least. But we’ve had hard times and I don’t know any couples who haven’t. So one of the things a number of students asked Amanda and I after the retreat talks was ‘why is marriage so hard.’ And here’s the answer. It is hard because marriage forces you to face yourself…and what you see is not pretty.

Keller – “the conflict that marriage creates is not conflict with your spouse but with yourself…you cannot run from yourself…in the past if someone revealed your flaws, you could always leave -marriage isn’t hard because it is hard to live with someone else, it’s hard because it is difficult to face your true self”

You want a head start on a successful marriage. You don’t need to learn how to be a good kisser. You need to learn how to face hard truths about yourself and change. You don’t need 10 dating tips, you need spiritual formation.

Both parties need to get really good at two things: -repentance and forgiveness – CH “a marriage is not 50/50…it is 100/100” Marriage requires self-skepticism and self giving grace.

But let me end with the good news. This can be done. I’ve known many couples who transitioned from a rich friendship to a thriving missional family without spiritual wreckage or major regrets. The thing about failure mode analysis, by giving careful consideration to how things fail, you can avoid it. You can turn a rich friendship into a productive missional family that honors God and as a side effect (rather than a goal) provides you a lot of joy. But you are going to have to get the motivation, methods, momentum and materials right. And you all are going to have to help each other do that.

________________

[1] Anecdote about Roman Bridge engineers? - AD comment: Roman bridge engineer anecdote? Say that out loud…. Probably not =)
[2] ‘failure’ is not a relationship ending. It is regretting a relationship.
[3] And, Dan and I are tired of it kicking our collective ass.
[4] Incidentally, this is part of why you never see Dan or I ‘like’ changes in relationship status to dating on Facebook. It doesn’t mean that we don’t like the match, or that we don’t think the people involved are remarkable. More often than not we do. But we know that there is a lot of peril that awaits them and potential spiritual wreckage.
[5] It’s okay if a relationship fails, and that not all relationships can or are supposed to work out, even if your methods, motivations, etc are all right.
[6] you could be led to believe, because it has been this way for a couple of decades – because your parents did it this way and their parents did it this way = that this is normal. Instead, we are the product of a grand (and failing) social experiment. We are just beginning to understand the failure modes.
[7] I mean, just look at your parents. AD “This line is either brilliant or terribly ill advised. I’m leaning towards brilliant…but you should probably ask someone wiser than me.”
[8] ZE “. I think people struggle with physical boundaries even more so BECAUSE of a failure of emotional boundaries. I think the attraction of emotional vulnerability causes clothes to come off in a directly related way”
 [9]“Intelligence and education are only raw materials for good judgment…Wisdom is a reality based phenomenon. To be wise is to know reality, to discern it. A discerning person notices things, attends to things, picks up on things…the wise accommodate themselves to reality.” Plantiga
[10]16:16 How much better to get wisdom than gold!
To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.
[11]And by that I don’t just mean that relationships end. A romantic relationship that ends isn’t necessarily a failure. But one that ends with regret is.
[12] AD: “I think there’s an idea out there that relationships need to start and be “completely organic” for them to be true love or for them to work long term. The irony is that it’s the opposite. That’s probably why arranged marriages work and divorce rates are so high for “organic” marriages” -
[13]I think there’s an idea out there that relationships need to start and be “completely organic” for them to be true love or for them to work long term. The irony is that it’s the opposite. That’s probably why arranged marriages work and divorce rates are so high for “organic” marriages
[14] Or motivation as in, do I just need a significant other as an identity-reinforcer or arm candy to boost the street cred?
[15]“…the same idolatry of marriage that is distorting their single lives will eventually distort their married lives if they find a partner.” Keller
[16]The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.
[17] This is easy to fake and deceive yourself of, especially if you’ve been a Christian for a while and can speak the language well
[18] John Green: “If you spend your life singularly obsessed with romantic love you will miss out on a lot of the things that are fun about being a person.” 
[19] You see, romantic love is fantastic, but it is not fantastic enough to carry the emotional freight of our happiness, or to do the work that platonic friendship and community were intended to do.
[20]Dan: the goal of friendship is, “coming up with imaginative ways to resource our friends for doing the work that God has commissioned them to do.” – when he said that I thought, that’s not a bad definition of the goal of marriage
[21]Ash Quote?
[22]But here is the thing about Christian’s talk about method…how do you go from friends to family…what wisdom and practices do you employ? We talk more about what you don’t do than what you do do?
[23] Big bang theory: The ‘he must be very skilled at coitus’ clip 
[24] The guy who was president of my undergraduate InterVarsity chapter after me eventually married a woman his Christian parents selected for him. At first I really objected to this. But the more I learn about marriage and the Bible, it is certainly fraught with complexity…but not moreso than ‘dating’ or ‘courting’. I don’t find it any more objectionable to how we do it any more.
[25] Forensic analysis of the cultural model many of us are uncritically accepting. Maybe use the forensic analysis of Katrina as an illustration of how this works.
[26]Eph 4:17-20 17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!
[27] I feel like there is a zombie film illustration here. No one can be trusted to assess if they are becoming a zombie…you need a friend to decide if you need your head splattered. Um…or something like that.
[28] (takes time – making out doesn’t help) My brother likes to say that it is easy to predict the benefits of marriage but difficult to predict the liabilities. Conversely, it is easy to see the disadvantages of having kids but almost imposible to predict the benefits. So, you see, the decision to have a baby requires temporary madness. So the stuff that leads up to sex is designed to make you temporarily insane…not a great environment for clear character assessment.
[29] Also, to think you are “good enough” or above falling to the hormones that making out produces, you have an insufficient view of your own depravity
[30] Unusable but Hilarious Stuff AD says: :A time for friendship and a time to f- err, being more than friends”
[31]This is one of the things I have found encouraging about B&A’s relationship.
[32]Stuff Adam Darbonne Says:”If only we had gone faster dating! Our marriage would be so much better! We could’ve had sex a whole year earlier than we did! Which in the context of our 50 year marriage is incredibly significant.”
[33] Now is definitely the right time to read a good book on marriage. A good theology of marriage is one of the best tools you can have in making the transition from friendship to family.
[34] AD: Uhh. Passion is actually the problem =)
[35] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRmko7VxEwo

How to Make a Name That Will Last: The Engineers and The Listener (Gen 11 and 12)

The MP3 of this talk can be found here.

The two most polarizing contemporary comedians right now are Louie CK and Dane Cook. You are not allowed to like both these guys. You are either a CK person or a Dane Cook Person.[1] But they both have bits about naming kids:

Dane Cook – “I want to a bunch of (my kids) after transformers…That would be great just to say Optimous Prime, come hear, you sit next to Megatron, we are going to have a little chit chat.”[2]

Louie CK – “You can name your kid anything you want. There are no laws…there should be a couple of laws.”[3]

And this makes sense because naming kids is way too big a responsibility for most of us to execute appropriately. But, it turns out that in some countries there are laws. Recently Sweden rejected the following names.

Metallica, 4Real, Lego, Google
(pronounced ‘Albin’)

It turns out that Denmark rejects 20% of all names. Sadly, because my name has been in my family for like 8 generations ‘stanford’ would not have been rejected even if it peaked in popularity in 1910 and fell to <1 in one million babies a decade before I was born. [4]


The reason that there is so much pressure in naming a kid is that that name will last a long time. But, will it really. I mean a lifetime is too long to be named ‘Google’ but even these memorable names will be forgotten pretty quickly.

The truth is, that names are exceedingly forgettable. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/brain

No one remembers my great grandparents. No one. When my dad died…they passed from history as if they never existed.

This is part of what makes cemeteries compelling and a little creepy. They are a collection of names without narratives. The names are preserved…but the stories are lost…they are quixotic monuments to our fundamental forgettabilty. Disembodied names floating in granite…futile attempts to be remembered.

http://youtu.be/0X6q7nt15uk




We are haunted by the idea that our names will someday pass into the abyss of obscurity. That no one will remember who we are. [5][6]

Why do you and the people around you work so hard? For some, it is the fear of failure, or the desire to achieve a modicum of comfort or security or power[7] but for some, it is the existential dread that no one will remember my name…that your existence will be unremarkable and that your name will be lost in the relentless march of time…relegated to the abyss of history’s ruthless forgetfulness. So you study calc and write papers and mess around with your organic chemisty playset in the hope that you can do something that will make you memorable. But you won’t.[8]

Genesis 11 and 12 contrasts two possible paths to for a memorable name…two visions to forge a name that will outlast your heartbeat…a you that will last longer than your little carbon collection:

I. A Critical Contrast

The main thing I want to bring out in this text is that Babel and the Call of Abraham demonstrate two approaches to ‘making a name’…two contrasting approaches on how to matter.

Genesis 11:4Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Genesis 12:2And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.


Babel is the last Scene of Act 2 and Abraham’s call is the first scene of Act 3. It is a contrast that straddles the transition from back story to story.[9]


You see Act 2 usually ends really poorly and Act 3 usually provides a glimmer of hope for the final solution. Consider the final moments of the most famous Act 2…the protagonist just had his paw hacked off by his conservatively dressed daddy who he just learned annihilates innocent planets for fun.[10] The story of the Bible really starts with chapter 12 because the rest of the story is about how God brings blessing to all people everywhere for all time all starts with this promise he makes through Abraham.[11]

Four insights emerge from this contrast

1. Choose Venture over Huddling
(What kind of Community?)[12]

So why did the men of Babel really take on this project? They wanted their names to ring out…yes…they wanted to be rememberd…yes…so you could say it was motivated by pride. But look beyond the bravado, and you find something surprising:

“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

They were afraid. And so they looked to technology to give them the means to huddle together with those like them. Look at how this contrasts with God’s promise to renew the world through Abraham.

[13]
You see, the problem here is not urbanization…the Bible is decidedly pro-city. Cities tend to be metropolitan mixtures, hotspots of diversity and because of this the gospel tends to thrive in cities. The Babel project was the opposite, it was an experiment in homogeneity.[14] It was an attempt to undo the fall through technology and social planning. And we still do this. We look for security in technology or visions for social transformation coming from the either the political left or the political right. But God’s plan to restore and renew the fractured social fabric is not in huddling with those like you and trying to implement a technologically or politically driven utopia.[15] It is in trusting him in his risky ventures. It is in a willingness to be dispersed for the good of others and do life with people very different than you.[16]

Application: Be willing to Venture. For some of you, you are still coming to terms with the fact that God has dispersed you to UC Davis…others of you have gotten comfortable here and are looking with nervousness to your next dispersal.

Now it is time for the segment of my talk called:

Stuff Adam Darbonne Says:

But this week it is different – This week we here from ‘serious Adam’ rather than silly Adam.

(I miss) being near family. And being near good friends, and the familiarity of the place I grew up, of the restaurants, and roads, and the culture… its having more than 4 months out of the year where I where I see the sun and its swimming in outdoor pools…being around people I’ve known for more than 3 months and who have known me for more than 3 months…I miss home. But God has been really clear that he has called me to Wisconsin right now and I have no promise that he will bring me back any time soon and so I have to be willing to give all that up. I have to be willing…to love Jesus more than California

Davis and CL can become really comfortable places…but God will send you somewhere[17]…and you best go.[18]

Grad school aps due in January – Missions agency apps due soon

2. Build Alters instead of Ziggurats

(What kind of Religion/Monument?)

The second big contrast between these passages is the kind of religious structures that the men of Babel and Abraham build.

Genesis 11:4 “Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves…” -Charis – ‘touch the sky’ (NIV)

Genesis 12:7-8 “So he built an alter to Yahweh, who had appeared to him…and there he built an alter to Yahweh and called upon the name of Yahweh.”

Most commentators believe that the tower is a Ziggurat which means that it was an elaborate temple that invited god to come and live in the city. Meanwhile, Abraham just piles up a few rocks a couple times. Surely the men of Babel are more religious.

But the contrast between Babel’s impressive ziggurat and Abraham’s modest alters is the contrast between respectable religion and walking with God in faith.

[19][20]

The men of Babel have a closed conversation (‘let us’) and take on their project…and they include a really impressive and prominent feature of their project for God. They figure, if build a sufficient religious infrastructure, God will have to get involved in our project. And this is what religion is all about. It is the idea that if I do enough for God it will put him in our debt and force him to sign off on our personal projects. But here is the thing…Yahweh does not play that game. Throughout the Bible he rejects that kind of religion. He will not be managed as a part of your life or won over by impressive religion. He wants you to listen. And that is why the little alters are more satisfying than the impressive zigeraut…because they are monuments to listening…they are monuments to one who seeks God’s guidance instead of trying to bribe or appease him.[21]

The first alter was a monument of thankfulness that Yahweh had invited him into relationship:

“So he built an alter to Yahweh, who had appeared to him.” 12:7

And the second was a monument of his dependence on his new God for guidance[22]:

“And there he built an alter to Yahweh and called upon the name of Yahweh.” 12:8

The alters are monuments of dependence and a willingness to walk with God in his project of cultural transformation. They are monuments of relationship…like the ring Brant just gave Anda (which incidentally he made…himself…which is pretty great). Brant didn’t give Anda a ring so that she would marry him, but as a recognition of the bond that had grown between them and that was growing deeper.[23] That is the difference between religion and faith.

One of the most important themes of the Bible is that God cannot be impressed. Religion is an attempt to domesticate God…I’ll build him an impressive tower, but he has to stay in it. Yahweh wants us to enter into a loving relationship of worship and listening where everything is on the table.[24][25][26][27][28]

Application: Build alters not ziggurats. God doesn’t need you to build him an impressive religion. He wants you to listen, to engage in relationship with him.[29]

3. Transform from Blessing Consumers to of Blessing Transmitters[30]
(To What End?)

The great irony of this passage is that Abraham’s name does ‘ring out’. He becomes one of the most famous men in history. And the men of Babel are never named. Their names are lost on the scrap heap of history. And that is because making your name is an issue of ‘First and second things.’ The question ‘How do I make my name’ is the wrong question



Why does God say he will make Abraham’s name great?

12:2 “I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of earth shall be blessed.”

God’s care and interest never stop with you. We were not designed to consume blessing…we were designed to transit it. Bronwyn: You are not the final person in God’s receiving line.

“Whenever someone sees God for who he is they loose their consumer mentality…God is a spiritual tornado, he will never bless you except to be a blessing.” -Keller

Consider how similar this is to the passage I taught out of 2 Cor last year:

2 Cor 5:15 “And Jesus died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Application: Leayah is going to talk more about this next quarter, but you have to take note that listening to Yahweh and receiving his blessing ALWAYS leads to passing that on.

4. Consider generational timescales
(What kind of Timetable?)[31]

Notice one final contrast:

Babel Abraham
“our names”. “to your offspring”.

The men of Babel wanted to make their names great. It was all about them and their generation. But one of the themes of Genesis is that God’s plans unfold on multigenerational times scales. Abraham will never get to see most of God’s promises.

12:7 – “to your offspring” – God builds things on generational time scales – you may never see his promises – you are building something bigger than yourselves.

Change your time scale. We want to see all of God’s promises right now. But you might be a mess. I am. Your parents might have really messed you up…because theirs did…because theirs did. And so God’s promises to you might be that he will walk with you through the painful process of redeeming the sin bucket your parents handed you so that your kids and their kids their kids don’t have to deal with that crap and will have more freedom to be conduits of Yahweh’s blessing.

It is not about you…It is about your grandkids.[32] This is hugely counter-cultural. It is why many of you are like I was at your age…unable to even understand why anyone would consider having kids. But God sees your story as a chapter in a story of generations. It is not your story – your actions affect your children and are affected by your parents.[33]

Application: Set yourself up to raise children who are listening venturers. That means you need to marry one. More on that in January.

II. A Confusing Complication
(A Confusing anti-Climax)

So we see in the contrast between Genesis 11 and 12 two paths to an unforgettable name. And it could seem like the point is “Don’t be like the men of Babel, be like Abraham.” It might seem like I am saying “Abraham is the hero of this story, be like him.” And that would make sense, if what came next wasn’t totally deplorable.

You see God’s road to a great name starts out hard and badly – the opening story of Abraham’s new life of purpose is both difficult and tragic. It is a story of hardship and failure. It is our story.

So in the opening verses of chapter 12 God initiates his program of species redemption…his great act of undoing the fall and reclaiming us. And what happens next? Abraham has been God’s point man in his cosmic plan for precisely nine verses, before it gets REALLY hard:

10Now there was a famine in the land.

Really? This is how God rewards Abraham’s venture of faith? Really? This is God’s idea of blessing? Famine? I thought of this a couple weeks ago when Lindsey was sharing her testimony and talked about how her life got really difficult about the time God was calling her to follow him in his project of redemption.

“A loving God would not put this much on the new person.” –Lindsey Valdalez

But apparently when God says he will bless us to be a blessing he does not mean that your life is going to be easy. So then we get the story of how Abraham totally gets it and handles this new challenge really well.

Except we don’t…he handles it terrible. In 9 verses Abraham’s remarkable courage evaporates into a puddle of cowardice and fear. So many people read this opening story of God’s brand new plan of redemption and say…What?!? This is the best God can do?!? This guy horrible! He is pimping out his wife like a high end hooker!! [34]

What happened to the courage we saw 8 verses ago.[35]

But here is what you HAVE TO understand about Abraham if you are going to understand the spiritual life. God may have made Abraham’s name great – but it isn’t because Abraham is great.

This guy is mentioned like 70 times[36] in the NT but within X words of meeting him he is pimping out his wife. If you are going to read Genesis without getting yourself totally confused, you have to come to terms with the idea that these guys are not heroes…they are horrible…just like you and just like me. The Bible only has room for one hero…his name is Jesus.

“The Bible is not about good people and bad people…it is about bad people and Jesus.”

But that is the amazing thing about the Abraham path to greatness…you don’t have to be great. You can be a total shmuck…in fact, failure is required…But God responds to you not in accordance with what your actions deserve…but in accordance with his promise and his purpose.

Illustration
Armegeddon is a horrible movie with one great scene - Armegedon – “And they don’t want to pay taxes…ever.”[37] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0vy33Br_3s




The opening story of Abraham is supposed to serve the same narrative function as this scene in Armegeddon. We are supposed to say ‘the fate of the species is in the hands of these guys? Really? I mean, can’t we do better than that?’

If you look at Abraham and say ‘this is the best God’s got’ – that is exactly the way you are supposed to feel. This is not the story of a string of heroes who each advance God’s purpose. This is a story of God’s cosmic rescue plan in Jesus that he enacts through broken people…but who negotiate that brokenness in relationship with him. Abraham is not a righteous man…he is a man of faith.

You see, the Abraham story is littered with errors and brokenness…but the rest of the Bible still points to him as someone of note…why?

Well it is not because he was righteous. It was because despite his great moments and his deplorable lows, he always came back to a lively attentive trust in Yahweh. He wasn’t a good guy…he was a believer. At the center of Pauline theology is the idea from the Prophets that

“Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

And that's what made Abraham special. Despite the famine, he still believed God. Despite his deplorable actions, he still believed God.

Abraham is nothing special. But Abraham+Jesus is something God could utilize to initiate his story of human redemption.

And likewise, you are nothing special. But You+Jesus is something God can utilize to write the next chapter in his story of human redemption.

The contrast here is not between the bad people of Babel and the righteousness of Abraham. It is between a life of self reliance and a life of faith. It is trusting Jesus that will allow you to be a venture, to build alters instead of ziggerauts, and becoming conduits rather than consumers of blessing.

If you are trying to make your name like the men of Babel…if you are trying to work hard enough to matter…you need to know that you won’t. Give up the tower…build alters. Come into a listening, trusting relationship with God through Jesus. And if you are already trying to be an alter builder but are just sick and tired of the hardship and failure…recognize that God’s promises are stronger than your failures. Trust Jesus again. Build another alter tonight. Call upon the name of Yahweh, re-engage him in relationship, and get back in on being the next flawed but meaningful chapter in the story God started in Genesis 12.



____________________________________

[1] For the record…I am with CK. I love the insight, the honesty, the humility, the real attempt to get into the perspective of people he should hate and humanize them and, frankly, the despair.
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98vZuid_744
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNSf-KQORRk
[4] I thought about expanding my mockery of my name here and do my ‘The Rule of Stan’ bit: You see I have this theory about my name. It is not a very cool name. In fact – it is anti-cool. So, if you are writing a story or script and need a character who is a geek, a nerd, or a tool, don’t have the narrative space or motivation to develop the character, you just name him Stan and the audience will tap into an unspoken cultural expectation that ‘this guy has some glaring personality flaw.’ I have collected evidence for this theory from sources as diverse as Harry Potter, Three’s Company, Sex in the City and Second Hand Lions. But when it came to Gibson boy names…I actually came out the winner. My brother and I were both named after our Grandfathers…I was named after grandpa Stanford…my brother was named after the Italian grandfather…Nicola
[5] Cut a Wire Illustration here: “People do crazy stuff to make their name memorable…for just a little longer. Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell. The compelling antagonists of the first couple seasons of The Wire…They are the perfect team…the business man and the gangster. But then they start to grow apart…Stringer wants to leave the heroin game and make piles of cash in Baltamore real estate…”we could run this town” he tells his friend. But Avon isn’t satisfied being silently wealthy and powerful…he wants a memorable name. Stringer wants to silently control Baltimore…but Avon is content to rule a piece of it, as long as everyone knows whose it is…as stiringer puts it…he wants his name to ‘ring out on some ghetto corners. From Avon’s perspective, his name is going to be lost to the scrap heap of history…at least it is going to ring out now. Russell 'Stringer' Bell: You know, Avon, you gotta think about what we got in this game for, man. Huh? Was it the rep? Was it so our names could ring out on some…ghetto streetcorner, man? Naw, man. There's games beyond the…game.
Avon: Maybe I’m just a dumb gangster…but I want my corners
One of the greatest scenes…If I could only use it…as they reminisce they are planning how they will betray each other: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91CpbRq9Tiw I need to stop wishing I could play wire clips…since it is likely the highest rate of cussing per minute of any show I can think of in recent history.
[6] Unusable clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDMoKfvPe70 Then comes marlo…the coldest, most emotionless villain you will meet…he looses his cool exactly once…when his name is disrespected leading to the chilling ‘my name is my name clip.’
[7] Some of us are like stringer..we want to matter. Others are like Avon…we want people to know we mattered.
[8] “And you are slowly realizing that. And we are very, very pissed off.”
[9] It is the last in the sequence of offense narratives…and shifts into covenant narratives -Walton
[10] Language credit to Klosterman SD&CP
[11] The fall does not culminate in the flood…the pre-flood world is not as bad as things get…Babel is the climax of the fall narrative…Humans seeking greatness through self effort and self made religion is as bad as we get…the desire to create the ideal society has resulted in more human violence against other humans than any other motivation.
[12] Become a venture instead of a huddler.
[13] Jerome – Their scattering is for their own welfare[13] to protect them from their escalating idolatry. Sin has a positive feedback
Both Babel and Abraham are stories of dispersals motivated by grace – The men of Babel are dispersed by grace of protection/preservation from their escalating idolatry and Abram is dispersed by grace of promise/purpose
[14] You could say that Babel was the first suburb…if you wanted to be cheeky.
[15] Attempts a cultural solution to the sin problem – we will build and organize our way out of the brokenness – we will even plan god’s role – optimism of the 1800’s – but it turns out that technology just amplifies our beauty and our brokenness
[16] Bruggerman – Abraham’s multicultural purpose is the immediate response to Babel’s experiment in homogeneous community
[17] 12:1 – Go from your country – for some of you – you are still coming to terms with the terrifying reality that God has scattered you here – others of you are looking forward to another scattering – your 20’s are a gift – you should either put yourself in a position to be a pillar of a church and family – or you should try something crazy –
[18] Walton – be careful of focusing too much on the leaving – “We need to examine the God side of the equation more than the Abram side of the equation.”
[19] Interesting but ambiguous implications wrt technology – hey, the way you are making houses is crazy…lets try this new fired brick thing…then we can finally have some security…we can build a wall to keep our enemies out and build a tower to let the gods in
[20] 11:29 – Family with tragedy – “Haran died in the presence of his Father Terah”
11:30 – Sarah was barren – (with Haran dead and Sarah baren, it seems to a casual reader that this will be a story of Nahor)

[21] “When we treat God as a child to be cajoled or a tyrant to be appeased the Babel syndrome is surging in our veins…it is ‘God abuse’…Needy Gods can only be oppressive Gods.” -Walton
[22] Goldengay – God speaks to Abram about every 25 years – I haven’t even been serving God 25 years – I’m roughly on pace and I’m not even a mystic - ‘God is indeed economic with interventions.’ – says the guy who’s wife has been unable to communicate with him and required constant care for years – God is not chatty – because of the compressed narratives we get the idea that the patriarchs were just chatting it up with God – but only Adam and Eve had that kind of access
[23] I feel like there is a Beyonce joke here about God wanting you to ‘put a ring on it’ -
[24] If we do all this for god he will come down and bless our project. If we build a temple as part of our city, he will be in our debt become part of what we are doing. This is the heart of religion. I am going to live my life with my agenda, but I am going to do these things for God so he owes me and blesses my project…I’ll build him an impressive tower, but he has to stay in it.
[25] If your religious system somehow limits God’s claim on you by compartmentalizing him…it doesn’t matter how elaborate it is…it is offensive to him.
[26] –Walton – Up to chapter 11 humans are morally corrupt – they are violent towards each other and forgetful of God. But now, they have done something new. They have begun to re-create God in their own image. We have the beginnings of idolatry and human effort to ‘achieve’ god’s favor, to domesticate god and put him into our debt. The ziggurat of Babel stand in for all our attempts to domesticate god by instinutionaliszing him and putting him in our debt by rendering impressive acts of self selected devotion.
[27] And here is the thing, the men of Babel were way more impressive than Abraham. They were an impressive team of planners and engineers and God really should have been impressed. I mean they built an enormous ziggurat in the middle of their city so that he would get involved. They made sure god’s part was the most impressive part of their project…surely they deserved his involvement (or at least his disinterest) in their project to make their names great.
[28] They were engineers (which we all know is super impressive)…Abraham was a wandering Mesopotamian herdsman. But one of the most important themes of the Bible is that God cannot be impressed. You cannot earn his favor. You cannot put him in your debt through your efforts. Abraham’s alters were the better monuments because they were monuments to listening. They recognized that God takes the initiative in our relationship with him.
[29] The irony is that the men of Babel thought their god required maintenance and care…The revolutionary idea in this passage is that the true God does not require maintenance, care or appeasement…the true God provides care but requires open listeners. Do your gods require maintenance and care? Consider trading them in for one who will care for you.
[30] Make Others the Focus of Your Quest
[31] I might save this material for the relationship talk
[32] Lilies – Updike’s 4 generations remind me of Genesis
[33] The only story we get about Isacc is that he repeated the habitual sin of his father.
[34] Love the Kidner insight that we think it is weird that Sarah would be so old yet considered hot…but that we are far too preoccupied with the idea that beauty is co-equal with youth while ancient cultures may have been able to see a striking beauty in the stark wisdom and poise of a seasoned matriarch.
[35] I love this clip as an illustration (or attention re-set) for what is going on with Abraham and Pharoh…but I don’t think it has broad enough appeal to warrant the time. Thoughts?
http://a.espnradio.com/espnvideo/maynestreet/com_091102mayneSt_kimmel_revised.mp4
She felt like the only grown up in the room.
[36] I found numbers between 68 and 72
[37] I also like the Decemberist’s Castaways and Cuttouts as a picture of God’s call to unremarkable ‘heroes’ but think I will leave it on the table: “We're calling all bed wetters/And ambulance chasers/We're lining up the light-loafered/And the bored bench warmers/Castaways and cutouts,