Col 2:13-3:4
So I ran track in HS. Really it was just something to do to keep in shape for soccer, but it was fun, and we had some of NY state’s best sprinters, so I make the varsity team as a freshman (and won the only league title of my athletic career) just because they needed some warm bodies to throw at the distance events. But we had a rule. We wouldn’t train outdoors if the temperature fell below zero…F. Unfortunately, in upstate NY, it could stay below zero for long enough to totally fall out of shape.
So when I got my license I started making the 30 minute drive into the nearest town several days a week to run at a gym. Then, I’d go to the public library to work on my homework. But usually, at some point, I’d take a break and do one of two things…I’d either read a chess book or flip through runners world. (Yes, ‘study breaks’ looked different before facebook….or maybe that is just what they looked like for social tweeners who couldn’t decide if they were a jock or a nerd…which I’ve found describes the HS years of a surprising number of UCD students). Anyway, that first winter was just before the Barcelona Olympics and runner’s world began covering a building story that we started just calling “Dan vs Dave”.
The gist was that the two best decathletes in the world were both Americans. They excelled at different events, Dan was young, cool and sleek (you know, much like our Dan), and Dave was older, pasty, and had creepy 80’s hair (which wasn’t as big a deal since the 80’s had only been over for a year or so)…but my allegiance was obvious. It was a classic youth culture vs old school conflict that made my generation youth culture which had been defined by MTV and Nirvana, tick…I was a Dan guy.
But both these guys were beasts. Everyone agreed and they were going gold and silver…the only question was in which order. I got obsessed with this matchup and started reading everything I could get my hands on. And this was the first and only time I was “into something before it was cool.” You could say I a proto-hipster…I was into being into something before it was cool before it was cool to be into something before it was cool. In other news, I was a nerd before it was cool. Seriously, it used to be a lot harder to be a nerd. People actually did beat you up and take your lunch money…but I digress. Because Rebook, who at the time was Nike’s only real competitor, caught wind of the story and built a multi-million dollar marketing campaign out of the building competition. Check out a few of the micro-commercials they started running: (I’m planning to cut this down to 3):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKJkfE1M9wA (and yes, I’m old – that is what commercials looked like when I was in HS)
But then several months before the actual Olympics the commercials which had become ubiquitous just suddenly stopped. It was curious…but you have to try to imagine a world in which google didn’t exist (I mean, think about what that would be like for a second)…there was a pop culture event that occurred and I had no idea why and I had no way to find out…I had to wait for the next issue of runner’s world to come out….I had to wait a month for a periodical to be published…on paper…and sure enough the next issue covered the US Olympic trials had a inset box article on how Dan led the field after the first day…but then in the second day…during the pole vault...he triple faulted.
Dan had been disqualified.
He wouldn’t be going to the Olympics. All of the training, all the hype, a multi-million dollar marketing campaign and a great showing in all the other events…simply didn’t matter. He was disqualified. When I read that article audibly gasped there in the Watertown library…20 years later I remember exactly where I was sitting. But you see for track people, that is the great fear. We feared that we would open the newspaper (which, for those of you who don’t know, is another quaint artifact of my 20th century childhood) the next day and find three dreaded letters next to our name DNF…Did Not Finish.
We were haunted by the fear that all of our training, all of our effort…in the end it just won’t matter…that it would all be rendered irrelevant because of a tactical error…that we would be disqualified.
And that is the picture that Paul uses at the front end of the Bible’s most comprehensive and practical passage on ‘How to Change.” Look with me in 2:18. He says:
“Let no on disqualify you…”
Paul, like a good track coach, says, before we talk about how to do this thing…before I tell you how you need to train and compete…before I lay out all of the work it is going to take to do this thing right. Before we go into training “to become God’s best version of yourself” let’s make sure you understand how to avoid the DNF…Lets make sure you don’t get yourself disqualified.
In the last two weeks, Dan (our Dan) has made a case (a theological case in week 1 and a pragmatic case in week 2) for why we should be serious about change…call it by whichever biblical, sociological or theological term you’d like: transformation, growth, sanctification, holiness, human flourishing, or one of Paul’s favorites that we have chosen for this series ‘recovering the image of God.’ Dan answered the Why question…now in the next 4 weeks, we are going to turn to the central passage on this topic, and ask the question…How? How do we change? Well Paul has organized the series for us by using 4 simple verbs In Colossians 2&3 that can be classified into direct and indirect methods for the process of becoming the best version of you: (put passage up and highlight them)
Indirect:
Don’t Let
Let
Direct
Put Off
Put On.
But before he tells us to “put on” new habits that restore God’s image in us, stuff like “compassionate hearts, kindness and humility” (which Dan will talk about in 3 weeks).
And Before he tells us to “Put off” the stuff that is corroding our affections, capacities and relationship – which he describes as a kind of “sanctification street fight” (which I will talk about 2 weeks).
And Before he tells us to “Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly”, which Dan will talk about next week…
Before he tells us to put on or put off or let…he starts with an admonition…“Don’t let” - “Don’t let anyone disqualify you.” Don’t put in all that effort and training without understanding the parameters of what you are trying to accomplish and how God’s transforming work and human effort fundamentally interact. “Don’t let anyone disqualify you.” And so in the final 7 verses of chapter 2 he lays out two methods of change that frankly, just don’t work. And then in the first 4 verses of chapter 3 he lays down the foundational principles and the first step of the one that will. So let’s get started with:
1. Avoiding the DNF: Two Approaches that Don’t Work
Paul starts out his discussion of how to change…with some pointed words about how not to change. He looks around him at the religious and moral landscape, both in the church and outside, and sees some methods that he describes like this:
2:23 “These have indeed, an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion…but they ARE OF NO VALUE in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”
He seems to be legitimately concerned that there are a range of unhelpful, illicit approaches out there. He describes them as having… “the appearance of wisdom”…but being “without value” to actually affect change.
Do you follow his concern? Not everything you hear about how to change is helpful, true or useful. Some of it is counterproductive. Some methods will take all the effort you sink into them and use that effort against you. And he warns us against two approaches in particular: which we’ll call Moralism and Mysticism.
You see as Dan framed in the first message…the real paradox of Christian transformation….of becoming the best version of you…is the question, how much of it is human effort and how much is just flat God’s job. Getting the balance of human effort and divine help right is the key to avoiding the DNF.
And Paul suggests that you can err in either direction. And unsurprisingly, Paul’s two[2] methods that don’t work [3] include one that stresses human effort too much and one that stresses it too little.
And these are the pitfalls of moralism and mysticism.
-Moralism – (Col 2:16-17) underrates God’s transforming action
-Mysticism – (Col 2:18-17) underrates the importance of human cooperation
And both have proof texts (that aren’t in the Bible)
Moralism – “God helps those who help themselves”
-I think I remember what verse that is sqrt(-1)
But Mysticism (underrating human cooperation) has a proof text of its own that doesn’t exist. At the heart of mysticism is the sentimental advice to:
Mysticism – “Let go and let God” [4]
And Paul rejects them both as “without value”
Moralism
In v 16-17 Paul dismisses moralism – “Let no one pass judgment in questions of food and drink, or with regard to new moon festivals.
Paul is warning us about trying to change by compulsive rule following or by lining up the right religious tricks. And he is warning us about assigning ourselves value by a religious or moral check list.
And s o he says: “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why AS IF YOU WERE STILL ALIVE in the world, do you submit to regulations…” 2:20
The first phrase that jumps out at me in that passage is “Elemental Spirits”…it makes me think of this:
Throughout chapter 2 Paul builds a complicated argument against moralism and mysticism (the greek in this part of this passage is netoriously tough sleding). Here is a text map that shows where he hits them.
Now I don’t have time to walk through each occurrence, put them in their historical context, and make a connection to a modern equivalent…
That is something you could dig into with your growth groups this week if you like…
But his basic argument is that some people underrate God’s role in our transformation, chasing morality or lining up the right religious tricks and others underrate our role, by chasing spiritual experiences and thinking that if they accumulate enough mystical street cred they’ll advance to a higher spiritual plane and their behavior will automatically change.
And he summarizes this idea in verse 20
“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why AS IF YOU WERE STILL ALIVE in the world, do you submit to regulations…” 2:20
But this is the core of Paul’s argument in chapter 2. When he looks around at the moral and religious landscape of his day, he sees a lot of people trying a lot of stuff that has no real correlation with reclaiming the image of God.
And some of the particulars are different in our time (there isn’t a lot of call for new moon festivals (well, at least untilthis happened),
...but the elemental spirits are the same. For example, Paul deals mainly with religious moralism…trying to check off the right religious check boxes to become good. And that is still something we struggle with…but in our culture, there is also a powerful secular version of moralism. Most people I know are really committed to this kind of vague notion of “being a good person.”
They will try to change their behavior or to change their definition of “good” until they can convince themselves and others that they are “a good person.” The social pressure to be and be seen as a “good person” is an extremely powerful psychological and sociological force in our culture. And advertisers and politicians manipulate us based on the guilt we feel about being good…or not. But it is still a kind of sentimental moralism…a quest to feel value because you are good enough…because of your moral performance…and Paul warns us it is “of no value” in the actual process of image recovery.
Illustration: Sanctification Zombie
V 20 –
Do you fallow what Paul is doing. He is saying dude, you died to the standard forms of human valuation and moralism, you should not be poking around where you used to live...you know what we call dead people who wander around where they used to live...ZOMBIES...Paul is saying that if you don't move from faith to change you are a spiritual zombie. – And Zombies are awkward – they don’t belong in this world or the next…they are kind of hanging on to an expired existence like that high school football player who never left town. Paul is saying, don’t be like that. Don’t evaluate with the criteria of your old life – a religious check list or moral comparison. Don’t be a moralist. Don’t be a Sanctification Zombie. Don’t be disqualified.
Mysticism
But in v 18 he talks about those who make vague mystical experiences the focus of their spirituality…people who focus on “angels” and “visions”. And then he gets at the problem with both of these approaches…they make us “puffed up without reason.” Thy mystic isn’t really interested in character development, but chases the supernatural…underemphasizing not only their role in growth, but the centrality of growth to Christianity.
But Paul says you have to be careful of both Mysticism and Moralism, both hyper-spirituality and rigorous rule following, can make you proud…and put you more in slavery to your ”flesh” than the sin you were trying to target. They “pander to your pride” (HM Carson) You trade whatever brokenness you are after for pride.
He uses the phrase ‘puffed up.’ Both moralism and mysticism can disqualify you because they “puff you up” - they are pride inducing – pride is like gas – painful to you an d unpleasant for those around you.
But that is the problem, collecting ‘spiritual merit badges’ to impress God and others or collecting ‘spiritual experiences’ both have the same result.
The irony here is that they mystic and the moralist don’t generally get along. The person who puts too much emphasis on human agency and the one who puts to little generally don’t like each other. But they are doing essentially the same thing. Evaluating their value by collecting religious stuff: just in one case its rules and in the other case its experiences.
In fact, Paul says in v 18 they puff up the “sensuous mind.” They are forms of religious sensuality. NT Wright puts it like this. “You will merely be giving up a worldly self-indulgence of a sensual kind for a worldly self indulgence of a spiritual kind.” And, frankly, the worldly kind is more fun, at least on the front end.
And this is why these methods of change disqualify. We exchange a hedonistic sensuality for a religious sensuality. But it is still about us.
Paul argues that a strict Christian moralism or a sentimental Christian mysticism won’t cut it
They have “the appearance of wisdom” but “are of no value”. They disqualify. They end with the DNF. And that is because they are results of the thing, not the thing in itself.
To wrap up this point I am just going to let Paul illustrate this himself.
You see, we’ve already observed that Paul uses a sports illustration (he is an urban guy – and Roman urban life was obsessed with sport – sports illustrations may be Paul’s favorite kind…So Zach is in good company) – and tells us “let no one disqualify you…”
But he decides this idea is important enough that a second illustration is in order (so I’m going to follow his lead):
A couple months ago a friend of mine that doesn’t post a lot of images on facebook put this one up. I thought, wow, that is a very ‘middle eastern’ scene of camels in the desert, but I kind of wondered what attracted him to this image enough to warrant posting it.
I actually stared at it for a while to try to figure out why he was so taken by this image…Do you see it?
It actually had to show up in my feed a couple times before I realized, my eyes had fooled me. I had mistaken the camel’s shadows for the camels themselves. I had mistaken shadow for substance. And this is what Paul is getting at:
Not everything that looks like wisdom is wisdom…sometimes it’s a shadow
“These (illicit forms pursuits of change) are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.”
You know who mistakes shadows for the real… the world’s most ridiculous creatures…cats.
When I was writing this talk (which I am happy to report, is the first time I used the internet for one of its most common purposes…looking at cat pictures).
Visual gag: ‘is there an alternate universe where cats look at pics of us’ meme
Yes…Yes it is totally normal… because it’s a cat…and cat’s are ridiculous creatures…they are pumas with 100% of the things that makes a puma cool bread out of them…and Paul is saying don’t be like that. Don’t chase the shadow…chase the real thing…don’t start by chasing the experience or the behavior…start with Jesus.
Pauls says…Don’t make that mistake…don’t disqualify yourself…don’t start by chasing the experience or the behavior…start with Jesus.
At first sight, we might mistake the shadow for the real thing. Because, here’s the thing. Behavior change and mystical experience are the results of Christianity. They are real things that we experience. But they are EFFECTS of something more REAL. They are SHADOWS of a truer SUBSTANCE. If we chase behavior change or spiritual experience for their own sake…which is the error of moralism and mysticism, (which Paul calls ‘self-made religion’) we are going after the effect of the thing, not the thing itself. We are chasing shadows.
You want to avoid the DNF…you want to start out by following Paul’s advice to “Let no one disqualify you…” you have to learn to distinguish “Shadows” from “substance”.
And Paul says, behavior change and experiences…they are shadows…projected from something more Substantive. Jesus. Which leads us to the first principle of image recovery. How do we avoid the DNF…how do we ‘get out of the blocks clean’…we start With Christ.
2. Getting out of the Blocks Clean: ‘With Christ’
He contrasts those things with someone who “grows with a growth that is from God”. But that has always been a little hollow for me. So I’ve been a Christian a long time…and I’ve been in a lot of Bible discussions. And it seems like a lot of them go the same way. Just about the time we are starting to get practical…just about the time we are getting to some verbs…some thoughts on what we can do…someone will sit back, and using their most pious voice, say “well you know, its not something we can do, God has to do it.” And that stops the conversation. Because it argues that ‘a growth from God’ is independent of us. But that’s not what Paul believes. He ties our actions to a ‘Growth that is from God.’ And the action he offers: is “Hold onto the Head” – his metaphore for Jesus
Illustration: This reminded me of the only Hitchcock film I’ve ever seen…North by northwest. In the climax of NbN Carey Grant and (famous 60’s blonde) are being chased and end up inexplicably in one of the facial orify of the Mount Rushmore statues (like the gecko in that Geicho commercial). And then of course, they slip. And the only thing between them and their destruction, is to “hole fast to the head”.
But this is a helpful illustration. Because, they are not doing much…but they are not doing nothing. They are just holding on as hard as the can.
It starts with us holding on to Jesus.
You see, the reason that it has to start with Jesus is that the stuff that degrades you, the brokenness that keeps you from reflecting the image of God (mirror image) has power over you. You are not strong enough. But Jesus is. And so listen to how Paul describes what Jesus does to start this process off for us.
“If then you have been raised with Christ.” – if you aren’t in on new life in Jesus, we don’t have much to offer you. -there are some things you can learn about monitoring glucose levels and being careful of ‘ego depletion’ – but you will have to be content with self management and it is likely that you will exchange success for pride.
Look at how he describes these attempts to approach the Christian life by following an arbitrary set of rules or by collecting supernatural experiences:
Jesus had defeated (not only defeated, but flat humiliated) those ‘powers and authorities’ that are dehumanizing you
The cross is a victory over those things with power over you.
Your pursuit of restoring god’s image has to start there.
And so we have to ‘hold fast to the head’…
But Paul actually gets more practical than that in the opening verses of chapter 3:
“seek” (3:1) –“set your minds”
“One of the main things that Paul longs for new Christians to realize is what is already true of them ‘in Christ.’” –Wright
Change begins with apprehending the new reality of who you became, are and will be in Christ, and then focusing your attention on these realities rather than the shadows of this world. And that is called worship.
Change begins with new wanting, new desires, new mediations. It starts with seeking and thinking. It doesn’t start with visible action.[6] It starts with what you “Let in”. And a good place to start that thinking is the sublime theological foundation for change that Paul starts this whole passage out with.
Do you understand what he is saying? The cross is a victory over those things with power over you. Jesus had defeated (not only defeated, flat humiliated) those ‘powers and authorities’ that are dehumanizing you.
Your sin has been defanged. Your brokenness has been declawed. The things you are battling have been disarmed. So hold on to Jesus
But now we come to an awkward part of my talk…you see, the best illustration I could find of this comes from a movie that I was effectively and happily pretending didn’t exist…you see, I think a really good illustration of Colossians 2:25 is the most disappointing creature in the star wars universe: I am talking, of course, about Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar appeared in the first prequel…and he was annoying, useless, dim witted and entirely without narrative value. And those are the nicest things people say about him. But at near the end of that first movie, everyone’s least favorite Gungan finds himself in the midst great climactic battle against an army of droids…and there is Jar Jar just totally hapless…he has no skills or talants or tactics to offer …anything good he may add is the unintended consequence of a bad choice…he is basically without value in the conflict …until, someone blows up the droid control ship (or something like that, I refused to go re-watch the movie to get the facts right). But anyway, this leads to a scene, where the droids have all stopped working.
The menacing droid army that had been bearing down on them suddenly froze…without power. And then, Jar Jar finds that even he can take on disarmed droids…he turns to the droid next to him and goes to town, knocking it over…that someone else had actually defeated. And that is what it takes for someone as ineffective and absurd as jar jar to be effective in battle. A total disarmament of the enemy. Once the enemy was disarmed, Jar Jar’s efforts were effective.
That is the picture that Paul is painting here. We are absurd and ineffective against our sin and brokenness. We are the spiritual equivalent of Jar Jar Binks.
But when our enemy is disarmed, even our flailing efforts can be effective. That is why we have to start with holding on to Jesus…
We have to claim the victory Jesus on and then partner with him to carry it out…in actually knocking over those disarmed droids. Or as Paul puts it
The first front on the battle for your behaviors is on the level of your affection and meditations. It is the level of stirving and wanting and thinking. And this is the space of worship. That is why, once you make sure your car is pointed the right way, the first verb of change, the first thing that you need to do, is seek Jesus. And we call that worship.
Dan will take this up the details of this next week.
But to get out of the blocks cleanly, to avoid the DNF, to not be disqualified…we need to hold fast to the head…we need to actively press into Jesus. This doesn’t preclude stratagies. Method of change is very important and we are going to get there…but the process starts with motivation and power. And that comes from recalibrating our perspective…aligning our reality with actual reality…that Jesus hasn’t just defeated the things that humiliate us…he has EMBERASSED them. And recalibrating our reality with his, holding fast to him…we call that worship.
Conclusion:
_________
Let me close with a little story
As many of you know, after 34 consecutive years of formal education and 5 degrees, I am in my final quarter of school, wrapping up my ecology thesis with a little bit of hydrodynamic habitat modeling (pic). Now one of the requirements for the Ecology graduate program is a ‘field class’. You see I have a full time job and a family...and this thing I do…whatever we want to call it.[7] Going into work early so I can step out for a 1hr class is one thing, but finding time to do a field class is another. But last spring break, a joint geology and ecology class was offered that was built on a 7 day rafting trip through the grand canyon…well, I guess if it’s a requirement.
The trip was fun (I ended up in the only flipped raft – video pic “my foot”).
Video
I had to lecture that night on sediment transport and joked that I had conducted an experiment on the “Lagrangian turbulent dynamics of large organic particles” – which you will just have to trust me…is hi-larious.
It was, scientifically engaging and was spiritually enobling. But one of the interesting things that happened is I got to know a couple of my classmates REALLY well, particularly during the 35 hours we spent in vans enroute. You can cover a lot of topics in 35 hours – and we did – and by the end, whether I wanted to or not, I was pretty well known.[8]
Near the end of the trip, one of my closer friends in the program, a kind, and thoughtful young woman (who was one only other students I have encountered in the program that you could describe as spiritually curious, and who, for the most part had followed that curiosity into Buddhist thought) started to put the pieces of my world view together and had a question for me. You see, my friend had gathered that my worldview had some major tenets:
1. I am broken. In fact, I am so broken that I do not even have good apparatus for detecting my dysfunction.
2. I expend a lot of thought and effort on becoming less broken…how to exchange dysfunction for flourishing…or in our language, how to recover the image of God.
And as she put this together, she got legitimately concerned. Her question wasn’t an attempt to undermine my worldview or to justify hers…I honestly think it was out of concern for my psychological health. And here it was…she said:
“Honestly, that sounds exhausting. Is it healthy to always be dissatisfied with yourself. Doesn’t that lead to guilt and even self hate.”
And that is the big question with religion isn’t it? Is all this focus on our brokenness and all this talk about change injurious of our self esteem and emotional health. And so I affirmed her question. It is not only a really good question but a really kind one. I said:
“You know, that’s a great question. The big problem with religion is that if we constantly evaluate ourselves value (especially, if the Christian proposition is true that we have a spiritual entropy that draws us simultaneously towards self centeredness and self destruction)
But the story of Jesus has one key feature that makes it different. The Cross. We believe that we have been rescued from our self centeredness and self destruction and that our value and standing with God is not contingent on our behavior. But do you see what that does with respect to behavior.
The cross creates mental and emotional space to fail, and fail catastrophically…without affecting our value or position. And that makes psychological and sociological space to strive and strive vigorously without the emotional baggage of guilt or judgment. The cool thing about Jesus is that because my brokenness does not count against me, I can own up to it, and then go to town on it. If I am not guilty of the crap I am carrying, I can stare it down, I can recognize my sin without it diminishing my value, and I can chase it into every dark corner of my heart it tries to hid in. I can be ruthless in my pursuit of its new hiding spots. Because uncovering new sin is not a liability against my value, its an opportunity to grow.”
Or to use Paul’s language in Colossians…
“God made us alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us…nailing it to the cross. 15 (God) dis-armed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in (Christ)…Your value and standing in God are not in your hands…they are not contingent on your moral performance…but if then, this reality becomes the foundation of real, substantial, efforts to recover the image, which starts with aligning your thoughts and affections with these realities..
“If then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the fight hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
You are hidden in Christ. You are not exposed to judgment. Your failings do not count against you. Your value is in him. You are in a safe emotional and psychological space. But it isn’t just a safe space to stay broken. It is a safe space to go to town on your brokenness with all the vigorous effort you can muster. But only because he has disarmed them.
The first step in recovering the image of God…’Don’t be disqualified’…don’t go in for the twin myths of:
“Let go and let God” or “God helps those who help themselves”
But start with the work of Christ. Start by recalibrating your thoughts and wants with him. Start with what you seek and what you set your minds on. The first step in recovering God’s image is developing a lifestyle [10] of worship.
[1] BTW – the first parking ticket I ever got was because I got so engrossed in a chess strategy book that I forgot to feed the meter…and yes I know that sentence could have started “You know you are a nerd if…”
[2] I think a full taxonomy of this passage would be asceticism/mysticism/legalism – “severity to the body” is a little different than “self made religion” or “do not handle/taste/touch” - but grouping “asceticism” and “legalism” is helpful to contrast with “mysticism”
[3] NT Wright– “what Paul is talking about here is a system imposed by a certain sort of teacher, who goes on an on about visions he or she has had, living in a fantasy world in which only the one type of spiritual experience really ‘counts’. Such people – and they-re as frequent in the modern world as in the ancient – may try to disqualify…others who haven had their type of experience.”
[4] Pushing Tin Illustration http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yfb_usoubg – if you just let go and stop trying to manage your life, the good life will happen to you. This is dumb. And we Christianize it.
[5] And this is the sense in which Paul uses it here. Behavior change and spiritual experiences are not illicit. Sometimes rules and experiences are legitimately helpful. They both have their place in Chrisitainty and God’s restoration of his image in us. But Paul calls them shadows – in a technical sene. They are not the thing in themselves, they are the evidence of something else…something real and with substance. And before we get on with ‘how to change’ Paul wants to make sure we have distinguished between the ‘substance’ and the ‘shadow’…‘the thing’ and ‘the evidence of the thing’… and the “The Thing” is Jesus.
[6] The first thing most Christians change (including me back when this thing started for me) is to stop cussing, because that is an easy, obvious, external change to make. And, I am convinced that this is why so many Christians object so deeply to evocative language…a behavior that, in comparison to the range of diabolical self violence and violence to others we concoct seems astonishingly trivial. It was one of the first identity factors they associated with their new faith…because it was easy.
[7]No one ever really knows. When I visited a former student in Cambodia recently he described me in three different ways to three different people…as “my pastor, a mentor, a friend.” And some mix of that is probably about right. http://stanfordincambodia.blogspot.com/
[8] It is always interesting to be “the Christian.” I mean, I really appreciate being in communities where people don’t unreflectively claim Christianity as a kind of cultural heritage. But in a decidedly post-Christian community, the shock and wonder that friends experience when they put the pieces together is pretty fun. But sometimes I feel like skeptical communities like having a “Christian friend” (as long as he/she votes democrat) in the same way that people like to have a “gay friend” or, in previous generations, a “black friend” as a king of badge of their open mindedness.
[9] It is an art studio. It is a place that you can wreck as many canvases as you need to to recover the image…but it is a studio, where you get up each morning, and try again.
[10] Listen, we are not going to offer you a silver bullet. In your life, you will go through seasons of spiritual laziness where you expect God to do all the work and you will go through seasons of legalism where you are performing for God’s affection
