Crazy Love – 11-20-09

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Page 16 As Francis so brilliantly illustrates, the life that Jesus calls us to is

absolute craziness to the world.

Pages 20-22 I get nervous when I think of how welve missed who we are sup osed
to be, and sad when I think about how we’r-e missing out on all that God wants

for the people He loved enough to die for … 1 hope reading this book will convince
you of something: that by surrendering yourself totally to God’s purposes, H~

will bring you the most pleasure in this life ,and the next. .. We need to stop giving
peop e excuses not to – erieve In God. You ve pro ably heard the expression II I
believe in God, just not organized religion. II I don’t think people would say that

if the church truly lived like we are called to live. The expression would change
to III can’t deny what the church does, but I don’t believe in their God.^1I At least
then they’d address their rejection of God rather than use the church as a scape-
goat.

Page 28 I sometimes struggle with how to properly respond to God’s magnitude
in a world bent on ignoring or merely tolerating Him.

Pages 41-42 When I am consumed by my problems–stressed out about my life,

My family, and my job–I .actually convey the belief that I think the circumstances
are more important than od’s command to always rejoice. In other words, that I
have a "right" to disobey God because of the magnitude of my responsibilities … ·
Worry implies that we don’t quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough,
or loving enough to take care of what’s happening in our lives … Stress says that

the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack
of grace toward others, or our tight grip of control … Basically, these two behaviors
communicate that it’s okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is
somehow exceptional. Both worry and stress reek of arrogance.

Page 61 The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we \\

Desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time. He treasures us
and anticipates our departure from this earth to be with Him–and we wonder
indifferently, how much we have to do for Him to get by.

Page 65 It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism,
that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is

a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity. I

Page 67 My caution to you is this: Do not assume you are good soil … 1 think most

American church goers are the soi I that chokes the seed because of all the thorns.
Thorns are anything that distracts us from God. .When we want God and a bunch

of other stuff, then that means we have thorns in our soil. A relationship with God
simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions,
or commitments are piled on top of it. .. Has your relationship with God actually
changed the way you live? Do you see evidence of God’s kingdom in your life? Or
are you choking it out slowly by spending too much time, energy, money, and
thought on the things of this world?

Page 70 Lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sins; they want

only to be saved from the penalty of their sin. They don’t genuinely hate sin .

and aren’t truly sorry for it; they’ re merely sorry because God is going to punish
them. Lukewarm people don’t really believe that this new life Jesus offers is better

than the old sinful one., ,

Pages 78-79 Lukewarm do not live by faith; their lives are structured

so they never have to. They don’t have to trust God if something unexpected
happens–they have their savings account. They don’t need God to help them–
they have their retirement in place. They don’t genuinely seek out what life God
would have them live–they have life figured and mapped out. They don’t depend
on God on a daily basis–their refrigerators are full and, for the most part, they
are in good health. The truth is, their lives wouldn’t look much different if they
suddenly stopped believing in God. Lukewarm people probably drink and swear
less than average, but besides that, they really arent very different from your
typical unbeliever. They equate their partially sanitized lives with holiness, but
they couldn’t be more wrong.

I doubt if people even considered these questions back in Jesus’ day! Is this idea
of the non-fruit-bearing Christian something that we have concocted in order to
make Christianity "easier"? So we can follow our own course while still calling
ourselves followers of Christ?

Page 92 "Physical sickness we usually defy. Soul; sickness we often resign ourselves
to. II

Pages 94-95 Following Christ isn’t something that can be done halfl1eartedly or

on the side. It is not a label we can display when it is useful. It must be central

to everything we do and are … 1 f life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires
swimming upstream. When we stop swimming, or actively following Him, we automatically
begin to be swept downstream … 1 believe that much of the American churchgoing
population, whi Ie not specifically swimming downstream, is slowly floating away from
Christ. It isn’t a conscious choice, but it is nonetheless happening because little

in their lives propels them toward Christ.

Page 115 Having faith often means doing what others see as crazy. Something is
wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.

Page 132 The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the
love for the enemy–Iove for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens,

and inflicts pain. The tortured’s Ivoe for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers
the world.

Page 144 God desires true intimacy with each of us, and that comes only when we
trust Him enough to be fully transparent and vulnerable.

Page 174 Now close this book. Get on your knees before our holy, loving God.
And then live the life with your friends, your family, parents, spouse, children,
neighbors, enemies, and strangers that He has created and empowered you through
the Holy Spirit to live.

11-2-09 Crisis of Faith

One of the blessings of being here is that I get to read a lot, and every now and then I read something profound or overwhelming. Something that compels me to put the book down and accept or work through it before moving on. Like this morning. I am reading, ‘Tears In The Darkness: The story of the Bataan death march and its aftermath’. It is about what happened in the hours and months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Most people don’t realize that Japan attacked other cities and islands within hours of attacking Pearl. They captured Guam, Wake island and Hong Kong within weeks of attacking Pearl Harbor and they marched on Singapore and coming ashore on the East Indies within months. During all of this time Japan was invading the Philippines and after a 99 day offensive the U.S. military was forced to surrender. It was the largest surrender of troops in the U.S. History (except the Civil War), over 76,000 troops. But the book is more about the aftermath than the battle itself. The infamous Bataan Death March. I was stationed near Bataan a couple of different times when I was in the Navy (Manila and Olangapo), and I had heard a little about the fight at Bataan. So the book caught my eye. As I read the book I quickly realized that what i had heard was nothing compared to the horrid reality of what actually happened there after the official fighting stopped and the real war for survival began. Suffice it to say that I do not reading a memoir of war, modern or even medieval, wherein I experienced such a visceral sense of hate for the oppressors. More incredulity over their barbaric actions and more empathy with the suffering of the oppressed, in this case the American and Filipino prisoners of war. So this was my emotional state when I tripped over a seemingly innocuous line of text on page 317 of the book. ‘Son, no one is hopeless’. Actually, tripped is too polite, I actually fell flat on my face over this text and the back story of it because it threatened me at the core of my faith. It was at once beautiful and damning. The situation was deplorable and evil. Nothing that I can summarize here would begin to paint the picture, short of reading the book. In the midst of the most heinous atrocities (nice adjectives, huh?) that you can imagine (and some you probably can’t imagine) befalling P.O.W.’s when their captors know that they have lost the battle (and have nothing but contempt for the Geneva Convention). A lone Catholic priest/soldier, Bill Cummings, trying to survive, trying to minister to the living and personally touch and give last rites to the dying (over 1,000 in his section of the prison alone in the last month) was being forced to go to Tokyo as a prisoner. In a conversation he told someone that if he survived there, he planned to stay after the war and continue some type of missionary work among his captors, his torturers. One of the men dying around him made a statement to the affect that the Japanese barbarians were hopeless…beyond hope. To which he replied, ‘Son, no one is hopeless.’ So there I was with a major crisis of faith. I mean I actually hate these people described in the book, I think of my grandfather fighting this war from a different island and my hatred grows more active, more violent… Then I read that line, ‘No one is hopeless.’ and I can’t breathe. The questions that it forces upon me are overwhelming. Do I really believe that no one is without hope? That no one is so lost, so debased and depraved that they are outside of God’s love?

Because that is the core belief of my faith. That no one is outside the love of God. That there is no action, or seemingly endless series of actions, that Jesus’ voluntary love sacrifice can not cover, can not redeem. The entire story is that Christ is offering redemption to anyone and everyone who will accept it…anyone!

 

So when I am filled with hate, when I deem people unworthy of my hope, and thus judging them as unworthy of Christ’s hope, I can not even remotely begin to say that I am living out the faith – No matter what the rest of my life looks like. So, the question that is begged here…

 

If I were there, in Bataan, would I hate or would I love?

 

And before you offer me an easy way out by saying that I am being hard in myself or that something like Bataan was too extreme of a situation to use as an example, consider this:

 

I am in prison, but as far as prisons go this place is not so bad. There are some good people here. However there are some very bad people here as well (prisoners and guards). People that do things that make me sick. Violent people, abusive people, perverted people, and the list goes on.

 

In short, people that I find very easy to hate. some passively, some actively. As if it is not enough to hate them, but I have to go the extra mile and let them know what I think about them. To judge them publicly. People who i see no hope for in this life or eternally. People who i have already judged as unworthy of hope, as beyond redemption and by doing so I have, quite literally, betrayed my faith. Defamed Jesus. Denied Love.

 

Harsh words? Maybe. But I passionately believe that after all is said and done, after all of the complicated theological considerations the two things that God asks me to do (The ‘two most important commands’) is to 1) Love him and 2) love others (Matthew 22:38-39) and that by loving others he explicitly means those that are hardest to love, enemies and all (Proverbs 24:17, 25:21; Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27,35; Romans 12:20 just to list a few).

 

So what to do now? I feel confronted and convicted by the Holy Spirit and I want to respond honestly, to work through these thoughts and feelings. I started by prayer and reading scriptures which confirmed my thoughts and encouraged my desire to work through them. To apply them in my life.

 

I was thinking about reading the whole book again seeing if I could find some empathy or other softening of my heart towards the people I have come to hate so vehemently the first time through…but that began to seem to academic to me. So I decided to write this letter while the thoughts are still fresh and the emotions are easily palpable…

 

…and then I am going to walk around the prison yard here and see what kind of hope and affection I can develop towards those people I have purposely withheld it from.

 

Because, it is true, No one is without hope, not even me!

 

Joe

 

PS – So now I am thinking about what it means, or looks like, to show hope and affection towards guys I really can’t stand, guys I really can’t stand in prison, and it sounds really corny, kind of impossible and maybe just a little intimidating (and while I am at it not much fun either…at least in the short term). This is the walking by faith part, the trusting in Jesus part, the doing his will part……

 

Hmmmmm, what will I do?