What Would You Die For?

Most of my life I have wondered if I would have courage to die for what I believe. I have honored heroes who have. I wonder the point they crossed, the thought, the reason that made life so small and the unseen so...worth everything.

Someone once said that dying for what you believe is easier than living for it. I think there may be truth there. But I'd take it one step farther. I say, unless you live for what you believe, you can never die for it.

It is so easy in the day to day mundane tasks to lose sight of the important for the urgent, to compromise in the small things until you have moved so far from the goal you don't know who you are anymore or where you are going. Or, maybe you have never known...

"How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your Word.
With my whole heart I seek You; let me not wander from Your commandments!
I have stored up Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against You....

"I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not Your commandments from me!....

"Even though princes sit plotting against me, Your servant will meditate on Your statutes.

"Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors.
My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to Your word!...

"My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to Your Word!

"Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me Your law!
I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set Your verdicts before me.
I cling to Your testimonies, O Yahweh; let me not be put to shame!

"I will run in the path of Your commandments for You have set my heart free!

"Teach me, O Yahweh, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end.
Give me understanding, that I may keep Your law and observe it with my whole heart...

"Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!
Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in Your ways....

"Let Your steadfast love come to me, O Yahweh, Your salvation according to Your promise;
then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me, for I trust in Your Word....

"I will also speak of Your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame,
for I find my delight in Your commandments, which I love....

"This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your promise gives me life."
(Psa 119:9-50)

Is there anything for which you would die?

I Love the Idea of You

In February, I was in a play where I met a new friend of mine. Harmlessly flirtatious, "J" often missed cues because he was busy teasing the women backstage. Because of my frequent sarcasm, "J" fluctuated between charm and sarcasm in his interaction with me. One day, after he had a bout of charm, he started in on the sarcasm. I reminded him that he loved me the day before. "I was in love with the idea of you," he said.


All this was, of course, in jest, but the phrase struck me. It's so true. I wonder how often I "love the idea" of someone more than who they are. When love is put to the test--the wrong temper, disappointing action, hurtful words--I may find the emotion dissipates and the "love" is gone. Sweet was the idea of love, but no follow through.

A song by DC Talk points out that love is a verb: "Words come easy but don't mean much/ When the words they're sayin we can't put trust in/ Were talkin 'bout love in a different light/ And if we all learn to love it would be just right."

In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare says, "Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds,/ Or bends with the remover to remove."

Even more clearly, the Apostle Paul breaks it down to actions: "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.

"It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends..." (1Co 13:4-8)

I have only ever experienced this unconditional love from God, the Source of real love.

This is the type of love I desire to exhibit to my friends and family: to see their failings, but as no worse than my own; to be hurt by them, but to remember that I have hurt, knowingly or unknowingly, too many times to count; to reach out to them (these are the hard ones for me) when they do not reach out for me; and to be willing to be rejected, to do what is best for them.

The Ultimate Love is Jesus: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) And He did.

What about you? Do you love people or do you just love the idea of them? If you're like me, it may fluctuate day by day, minute by minute, but the source always stays the same.

Don't Forget Your Mind

I went to see some friends perform in a play based on The Screwtape Letters. The script well represented C.S. Lewis's book and the essay Screwtape Proposes a Toast. It reminded me again, with Lewis' usual combination of wit and truth, of the subtleties of sin.

The demon Screwtape explains to Wormwood, the younger demon, that truth isn't to be avoided, but twisted. It is much more efficient to block the human ears to what he doesn't wish to believe than to constantly be whispering lies to him.

A follower on Twitter--Bob--illustrated this idea very clearly this week (for those who don't understand Twitter, think of it as being like what used to be status--now "What's on Your Mind?"--updates on Facebook, but more frequent).

I posted a link to an article our ministry wrote about why God allows evil. Bob responded that it was simple logic: 1) God doesn't exist. 2) Evil is only in the mind of Christians.

I asked him if he didn't believe murder to be wrong. He tried to dodge the question with all sorts of rabbit trails, but eventually agreed to a definition of murder as the taking of a human life that cannot defend his- or herself. He said it wasn't okay, but he would do it if he was willing to take the consequences. He also added that he didn't believe it was evil. "Murder is murder," he concluded.

Then Bob brought God and Jesus into his arguments. I reminded him that he did not believe in God.

Bob said he had read the Bible. I told him I was glad, because it is good to know what you believe and why. I have read it for about 27 years. If what I believe about its truth is wrong, I have lost a false peace. If what he believes is wrong, he loses everything.

He then quoted a verse, obviously twisting it, as a comeback to my statement. When I smiled and pointed to his taking it out of context, he agreed, but said he believes that's how Jesus meant it.

Finally, I asked him who he thought Jesus was. He said, "Jesus is who he claimed to be." Our conversation ended when I asked him who Jesus claimed to be.

Bob wanted to believe the Gospels about Jesus, but did not want to accept any of Paul's writings. He, of course, failed to understand that Jesus did not write anything about himself. The writers were eyewitnesses or wrote down the statements from eyewitnesses to Jesus' life. Paul, likewise, wrote as God revealed to him. This was accepted by believers at the time these men lived and have been passed down together for nearly 2000 years.

Bob is just one of many who sample religions like dishes at a smorgasbord. They believe they can gather truths and create a religion comfortable to their lifestyle. What they fail to understand, for one thing, is the founders of each religion would never assent to the points of another. Buddha claimed there is no God; enlightenment comes from within oneself. Muhammad tried to kill the Jews and Christians that would not convert to his belief in Allah. And more isolating than all the rest is Jesus statement: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Every religion, except the Bible, gives you a chance to have pride in your own accomplishments, to gain the right to heaven, to balance evil with good. The Bible says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;" "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord;" and "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He has saved us... not by works lest any one should boast."

Atheists, though too simplistic, at least try to balance their unbelief with an effort at logic. Smorgasbord religionists ignore their minds almost completely in their attempt to sample only what they like or feel.

God asks us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Do you know what and why you believe what you do? It is equally as dangerous to avoid the mind as it is to avoid the heart. Don't forget to think.

The Imprisonment of Freedom

I finished reading Crime & Punishment this evening. I must confess, had a friend with excellent literary taste not raved about how good it is, I may have been tempted to stop in the first chapters.

The book does not make good bedtime material. The intense internal struggles begin as depressing, move to desperate, and then weave amongst mystery, suspense, intrigue, discovery, despair, and hope.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is a master at storytelling with depth. He does not just tell you the state of human affairs, he causes you to experience the enslavement to such a point that you suddenly realize the mirror you are peering into.

The murderer mentality appears as a foreign thought process to most readers or at least on the surface. Character Raskolnikov's rationalization of his crime, his belief that his only mistake was in lacking the nerve to carry his plan to fruition, and that the end would justify the means if he had succeeded...these thoughts are much closer to the views expressed on the news for varying degrees of crimes.

If these ideas are unfamiliar to you, perhaps you might relate in diverse extents to Svidrigailov. Passion drove Svidrigailov. Not passion for life but for lust. Addiction dictated his life, strangled any chance for love, and left him without hope.

The worst criminals in the story fluctuated between great acts of kindness and terror. The great acts flowed from need within themselves, but stopped miles away from being instigated by love. They needed to alleviate guilt, felt a compulsion or had an ulterior motive. The good they did never wiped out the evil for which they were capable. They knew that. That knowledge eventually lead to the drowning or birthing of hope.

Lest you think this book was 629 pages of depression in ink, Dostoevsky ends the tale with hope. He doesn't tie everything up with unrealistic rosy bows, but he shows the key that frees us from the imprisonment into which we are born; the imprisonment of slavery to passion, pride, greed... An imprisonment that destroys not just those enslaved, but everyone we touch. Slowly, sometimes imperceptibly, our own natures erode other people like water wearing away at rock.

The Apostle Paul sums in his letter to the Roman church:

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

(Rom 7:18-25a)

There is only one source for freedom. Freedom from Jesus means slavery to sin. Slavery to Jesus means freedom to live.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, Paul tells the Galatians (5:1). Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Who are you living for? You or Jesus? It is a matter of death and life.

Uniquely You

Have you ever noticed that ultimately everyone who tries to be unique becomes a type of what we have seen elsewhere? A singer tries to be unique. He may have a new sound, but his life becomes a pattern of the lives of other singers or writers, actors or businessmen. In trying to break a mold, they become more and more like everyone else. They want to live the way they want to live, so they follow the patterns that others are following blatantly or secretly.

Professor Bruce Herman, in his lecture at Oxford in 2008, stated it this way: "This self-concept is actually more the sum of consumer choices than the wholesome identity one develops through a deep sense of belonging and accountability in community. And individualistic pursuit of self often results in isolation and anomie rather than meaning, belonging, and a sense of vocation.”

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." ~ Oscar Wilde

In one of his books, C.S. Lewis explained that the more we try to be originals, the more we become copies. It's as if, in the effort, we use our heads and create ourselves out of our environment and heredity, mimicking what we have known instead of becoming who we are created to be.

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it," says Lewis. "[God] makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created mores souls than one. Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you."

Seeking out the Creator may be the only way to become the true original masterpiece He created you to be.

"Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream." ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

If Looks Could Kill...

I listened to an interesting speaker, Collin Smith, on my way to church this evening. Truth be told, I listened mainly because of his Scottish accent.

It was only the last five or ten minutes, and Pastor Collin was speaking on the sixth commandment--"You shall not murder." We all have a tendency to think, "Phew! Safe on this one. I've never murdered anyone." He suggested that maybe the connotation is broader than we realize.

If broadened, Pastor Collin suggested that this could encompass a belittling comment, look, or gesture; anything that lessens the value of a person in someone else's eyes. Because every person is created in God's image, they have value. By putting them down, in a sense destroying their value, we are destroying someone in the image of God...murdering that image.

Pastor Collins is referring to Jesus statement in the Gospels:

"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
(Mat 5:21-24)

Jesus takes the hurtful things we say or think about another person as very serious business. How serious do you take other people's reputations? I don't know about you, but I think I have some apologizing to do.

"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." (Rom 12:18)

Listening: a thread or an iceburg?

A friend of mine and I recently chatted about the art of listening. We analyzed why a group of our new friends were unique in the way that they listened. We could all be in separate conversations and yet we knew what someone else from our group was saying. Even at a slight distance, our ears would pick up the sound of their voice and what they said. We didn't consciously choose; we almost couldn't help it.

Have you had people in your life like that? They have been rare in mine. I have many who hear me everyday, but few who take the time to listen. I've seen the vacancy in faces acknowleging my voice; their mind rushing through their own thoughts, ready for the next topic. I close my soul to them.

My friend and I likened the art of listening to someone picking up the end of a thread and following it to its source. In conversation, every sentence is just the tip of an iceburg. What is unsaid is fathoms deep compared with a comment. If you care about someone, you ache to know the depths of who they are. You are not content to take the face value. You don't want to just hear words, you want to hear them.

When was the last time someone listened to you, really listened? When was the last time you listened to someone else? Sometimes it comes as natural as breathing. Most of the time it takes effort. If you care about someone, savor not just the words they say, relish the person. This moment could be the last time you have to hear the sound of their voice, longings of their heart, whispers of their soul. Be still. Listen.