Month: September 2017

Biblical Anachronism

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

old typewriter

Yes, I know I just used a big word:  anachronism.  The word simply means trying to fit something from the past into the present, or vice versa.  For example, chances are that submitting a job resume that was produced on a 1940 Cyrillic Royal typewriter probably will not land you a position in a Fortune 500 company.  That would be anachronistic. When it comes to applying the Bible to our lives, we may unknowingly settle for anachronistic readings of Holy Scripture.  That is, rather than trying to understand the Bible’s stories, characters, and teachings on its own terms, too many individuals dislodge Scripture from its historical moorings in order to make it relevant for today.  As a result, with the aim of trying to personally apply the Bible to present day problems, whole portions of God’s Word are ignored and never read.  If God intended for us to approach the Bible this way, he would have given us scripture memory packs from heaven.  It’s almost as if some folks believe that all we need do is simply read and memorize an isolated verse of the Bible, and be blessed.

The Bible is very much a collection of books that are immediately helpful for every believer in God for every age.  Yet, when we only approach the text of Scripture in order to be instantly relevant and useful, we actually undermine the integrity and history of God’s Word.  The Bible is not a random collection of verses to be ransacked by present-minded people for the sole purpose of finding personal fulfillment and inspiration to get through the day.  The Bible is an unfolding drama of redemption that moves its way through history with people tied to their particular time and place.  So, an evangelical anachronism asks present day questions of the biblical text before ever answering the crucial questions that the text itself raises for us.

To be able to see the characters of the Bible in their own time, surrounded by their own historical context, to be attentive to both their wisdom and their blindness; to recognize the extent to which they were caught up in situations beyond their control that demanded faith; and, to realize that they themselves were on a journey of knowing God – to know all this about the past and to be able to relate to it without any anachronistic distortion to our present realities – is what it means to have a biblical sense.  Yes, Holy Scripture is relevant and applicable to our present day situations.  But unless we gain a certain biblical sense about the Bible itself, we will only get a twisted understanding of how to use it for our life and ministry today.  What this means in making sense of particular Bible verses is that we must first understand the shape and flow and overarching argument of the biblical writer so that we can begin to develop a working understanding of that verse.

reading the bible

Some may mistakenly think that what I am advocating is that only the learned trained minister or theologian can make sense of the Bible.  No, instead what I am advocating is that we become eminently familiar with God’s Holy Word.  There is no substitute for actually reading the Bible for oneself, over and over and over again.  And we need to read through whole sections and books of the Bible – more than once.  If we are to have a solid biblical sense of the Bible, we will need to completely immerse ourselves in its contents daily.  The spiritual practice of plain old Bible reading needs to top the list of things we do on a regular routine basis.  We are to swim in God’s revelation to us, to plunge in headlong and come out dripping with his grace and truth.  If we are too busy for this most basic of spiritual disciplines, then we need to change and discover anew the forgiveness of Jesus Christ contained in, well, the Bible.

Don’t settle for anachronistic approaches to the Holy Bible.  Take it on its own terms and enjoy discovering its depth and richness.  Then you will truly know what it is to be blessed.

Responding to Suicide

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality BlogLeave a comment

bereavement

September is National Suicide Prevention Month.  World Suicide Prevention Day is always on September 10.  Its purpose is to remember those who have been affected by suicide, to raise awareness of the problem, and to focus efforts on prevention.  This is more than a worthy effort; it is much needed.  Most people have been touched in some way by the suicide of an acquaintance, co-worker, friend, or family member.  Today I want to focus a few thoughts on those left behind, on those who desperately need some sort of solace to their deep lament.

The following is a funeral message I gave a few years ago, remembering the life of a young woman who took her life.  In Betty’s case (I have changed her name) she had chronic health issues and endured multiple agonizing surgeries.  When faced with the prospect of yet another surgery, she had enough.  She left behind a loving and supportive family who, as you might imagine, was wracked with incredible grief.  Here were, in part, my words to them:

“If God is for us, who is against us? He didn’t spare his own Son but gave him up for us all….  Who will separate us from Christ’s love?  Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?… I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord:  not death, or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.” (Romans 8:31-32, 35, 38-39, CEB)

We are here today because of love – of love for Betty, and of God’s love for her and God’s love for all of us.  It is because of love that we hurt so deeply.  Death separates us, and because of death there is the feeling that a part of you is amputated.  But the good news of the Christian scriptures is that death cannot separate us from God’s love.

Our confidence and assurance of faith and our ultimate destiny lies not in our actions, but in God’s purposes and actions in Christ.  Nothing means nothing – not one thing can separate us from God’s love.  The grace of God trumps everything, and because of Christ’s redemption through his cross, Betty belongs to God.

The nature of the Christian life is not a perfectly straight line of upward progression at all times, but is much more a three steps forward, two steps backward journey of faith and development.  Those of you who knew Betty can attest to her wonderful times of sensitivity and growth, but also times of dark depression and difficulty with life and relationships.  The truth about all of us is that in our strengths, there is also weakness.  Betty was artistic, poetic, sensitive, fun-loving and compassionate.  Yet, along with the wonderful expressions of deep and profound thought and faith, was also the hurting and haunting of depression and despondency, of introspection and struggle.

Yet, when all is said and done, life is really not about us, our strengths and weaknesses, our highs and lows, our confidence or doubt – life is about the power, the person, and the work of Jesus Christ, who in his death and resurrection, has taken care of all our sins – past, present, and future.  God’s holy love has been forever satisfied in the cross of Christ.  The declaration of the Apostle John in his first epistle, chapter 4 and verse 10 is true: This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Betty’s sins are covered, not based in any work or doing of her own, but by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

The tragedy of Betty’s death is something we cannot explain or fully understand.  Broken hearts are not healed by explanations – they are healed by the love and grace of God.  Jesus Christ died and rose again so that you and I might receive God’s forgiveness, and experience God’s love – a love that seeks after us, saves us, keeps us no matter the circumstances, and unites us together.  And I am confident that this love and grace from God is exactly what Betty wants you to know today.

Accepting the True Self

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog2 Comments

walking with a cane

I live with chronic low back issues.  Twelve years ago I was in a car accident, and my back has never quite been the same.  On most days I can function well enough to do most of the things I need to do.  The pain is typically minimal.  But there are days when the pain spikes and my mobility is so limited that I can barely walk across the room.  After my initial injury, the stubborn German heritage thing kicked-in to my inner dialogue and I refused to admit how debilitated I really was.  One day, in a determination to go shopping at Target with my wife, I opted for not using a cane to walk because, dad gum it, “I’m not an invalid.”  But I could barely walk from the car into the store.  Walking very slowly, some obnoxious dude in his car became impatient with my parking lot slowness and honked, yelled at me to hurry the f**k up, and angrily flipped the bird at me when he was able to finally get moving.

In such situations it is more than tempting to just focus on the jerks around us and, so, never take a look at ourselves.  Although Mr. Jerk was a first-class detriment to me and his behavior cannot be excused, he obviously did not know that I was only moving as fast as I could, which was a snail’s pace.  He did not know my situation, and maybe he wouldn’t have cared.  Yet, here is my takeaway from the experience, because I can’t change Mr. Jerk; I can only change myself:  I was not accepting my real condition and was not being true to who I was.  I was posturing and pretending to be okay when I was not.  And, it turns out, once I embraced my limitations and started using a cane in public, people were quite sympathetic and the parking lot jerks disappeared.  In fact, I noticed parents instructing their kids to be careful around me, cars began patiently waiting, and I even had lots of interesting conversations with other hurting people – all because I stopped putting up a false image of myself.

Most people are just trying to do the best they can under the circumstances they find themselves in.  They want to carry their own weight without being dependent on others.  They desire to contribute, and not to leech off others.  Yes, there are real jerks out there; we all know a few.  But we’re all in this human condition together, and must learn to negotiate our relations with each other based on truth, not falsehood.  I was doing no one any favors, especially my own self, by putting up a faux exterior on how I was really doing.  I drove my poor wife nuts.  She shares neither my gender nor my barbarian ancestry and had no sympathy for my denial of disability.  I wasn’t winning any Academy Awards for my portrayal of a got-it-all-under-control-don’t-need-anybody’s-help Mr. Macho Healthy Guy.  By the way, just so you know, Chuck Norris has never won an Academy Award, because the dude wasn’t acting.  No false front, man.  I don’t think anybody else could be Walker, Texas Ranger.  Stare down.  Roundhouse kick.  Badass.  It’s not really a character.  It’s Chuck Norris just being Chuck Norris.  If I tried to be Chuck Norris I would probably look like my sister’s pathetic attempts at being Billy Jack when we were kids.  Not gonna work.

Chuck Norris

We have a word for people who try to act one way but are really another:  hypocrite.  This is exactly why the Pharisees in the New Testament Gospels were vilified by Jesus.  They put up a plastic image of themselves.  They did not take a good hard look at their insides.  They kept up appearances, kind of like when families pull into the church parking lot fighting like cats and dogs, but enter the church building all smiles and looking fine.  That kind of stuff is soul-draining and keeps us at arms-length from people who could accept us for who we really are, warts and all.  Maybe I have a thing about parking lots, or maybe parking lots just end up being dens of iniquity for all the pretenders of the world.  Anyway, whatever the case, I think you get my drift.  Mr. Jerk isn’t always the insensitive guy freely exposing his middle finger.  Whenever we deny our authentic and real selves and try to hide from others through air-brushing our weaknesses and sins, we become what we most hate in other people.

So, keep it real, man.  Use the cane, for God’s sake.  Let’s stop trying to be someone we are not, and discover the person God created us to be.  The best people to be around are the people who are the most comfortable in their own skin, kind of like Chuck Norris.  Give that false self a roundhouse kick.

Feeling Pain

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog1 Comment

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“There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.” (Isaiah 53:2-5, The Message)

I don’t like pain.  I’m not at all into the feeling of discomfort.  I am told by a few lady friends who have had kidney stones that they are as painful as childbirth, if not worse.  I’ll take their word for it.  I completely believe them because I have had a few stones in my life.  The last time I had one, I vehemently demanded and commanded the emergency staff at the hospital to help me now, and to get me the strongest pain relieving drugs known to humanity now.  I thought I was giving birth to a boulder, and I did not just want pain relief; I needed it.  The pain was acute, and there was no way to let my body relax enough to pass a stone without some significant medicinal intervention.

We often use the word “pain” as if it is a one-size-fits-all for a range of unpleasant experiences.  But the reality is that there is a world of difference between physical pain and emotional pain.  As painful as those kidney stones were, nothing compares to feeling deep emotional pain.  It hurts more than a hundred stones.  It’s a different kind of pain, requiring a different kind of remedy.

When we have physical pain, it is both good and right to work on alleviating the pain through the wonderful drug therapies which exist.  More than once I thanked God for morphine.  But emotional pain is unlike any other kind of hurt.  Whereas immediate pain relief is often necessary to the body in order for it to heal, such is not the case with the soul.  Emotional pain, the kind where our spirits are broken and our souls are damaged, the kind where dreams are shattered and hope drains from the spirit, will not simply go away or ever be alleviated apart from actually feeling it in all of its ugly hurt.

Trying to mask, cover-up, or numb emotional and spiritual pain will not do.  Working harder or faster; imbibing a few strong adult beverages; smoking; overeating; a shopping spree; or pornography are not paths to properly handling the kind of pain that is deep down in the soul.  Binging on sports or Netflix might temporarily distract a person from emotional pain, but it doesn’t make it go away.  In fact, it only exacerbates the future pain.  Try and put a lid on emotional pain and it will only explode its contents on others who don’t deserve the unhealthy barrage of words and behaviors.

Emotional pain must not be ignored, circumvented, or stuffed.  It needs to be faced squarely and deeply felt.  One must resolutely walk into it and through it because it is the only way to effectively deal with it.  Unlike the human body, which is designed to heal itself when given the chance through meds and rest, the soul cannot heal unless it recognizes its hurts, names them, and feels them.  To try and work around it, believe we can simply buck-up and get over it, or wrongheadedly think it only belongs in the past, will not do.

Jesus entered into our pain.  He felt terrible physical pain as well as agonizing emotional pain.  The pain of the entire world was focused on him.  Christ intimately knows our pain first hand.  The path to healing goes through the cross – not avoiding it or going around it, but facing it in all of its foulness, degradation, and pain.

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When my emotional pain seems to go right down into the marrow of my bones to the point where my insides hurt, popping some pills will not help.  I don’t need my pain masked; I need it transformed.  I need to crucify my disappointments, my missed expectations, and my desire for revenge.  I need to nail my perfectionism, my puny attempts at control, and my avoidance of forgiveness to the cross.  And I need to see that by the wounds of Jesus Christ I am healed.  Only through entering into Christ’s pain, and allowing him to enter mine, will I ever experience the long sought healing deep in my soul so that my insides are made right once again.

The emotional kidney stones of my soul are transformed by the rock of my salvation, Jesus Christ.  The great servant of Jesus, the Apostle Paul, said that he has been crucified with Christ and he now no longer lives, but Christ lives within him (Galatians 2:20).  The cross was not simply an historical event occurring two millennia ago; the crucifixion is a past action with the continuing results of genuine deliverance and real healing.  Pain is a gift, and one that must be opened and acknowledged, seen and felt, and transformed.