Henri Nouwen had escaped to rest and retreat from his teaching job at Harvard. Upon arrival at the retreat center, he was sought out by a group of students who had somehow discovered he was in town. They asked the Abbot if Henri would guide them in a retreat.  When the Abbot approached Henri about their request, he declined.  Not only had he come to retreat but, Henri noted, he was not prepared to lead a retreat.

“You’ve been a christian over 40 years” the Abbot pushed back, “what preparation do you need?”

The more I am asked to teach the more I find myself spending longer hours preparing my teachings.  While there is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to do my work excellently, that isn’t always the impetus for my lengthy study.. At times I have to spend a great deal of time learning the subject matter or the text I am about to study in order that I might teach it. And when that’s the case, I think I’m missing the mark.

I’ve written elsewhere that I believe true teaching means living well and then helping others understand how and why to do the same. In that light, preparedness for teaching  has to be more than reading and then organizing slides and notes.  It has to be a purposeful transference of a changed life.

The thing this is forcing me to face is that if I must strain to pull together a teaching, I likely ought not teach whatever it is I’m wanting/trying to teach.  Because I do not know it yet. All I will end up doing in such an effort is teaching myself to cheat; to skirt around the hard work of being changed or transformed by the truth which is the sincerest foundation for true teaching.  The obvious side effect to this kind of short-cutting is that I end up passing along only a shadow of truth and nothing at all helpful.

I have often hesitated entering into discipleship relationships, particularly as one who disciples,  in fear that I would be read as trying to control someone else’s life.  Discipleship can look like control when practiced poorly.  But they are two very different ways of doing things.

Just one of the key differences between discipleship and control is that discipleship begins with trusting that God is already up to something in someone’s life.

Control, on the other hand, begins with a preconceived idea of where I would like that person to end up, what I would like that person to end up looking like and what they ought to end up doing (which often has a lot to do with how they could best serve me and my mission).

I’m afraid that much of what passes for discipleship in christian circles looks a great deal more like the latter than the former.

I recently took part in a panel discussion entitled “Conversations With My Inner Atheist.”  The stated purpose of the discussion was to “normalize the faith struggle,” During the conversation, a few ideas shone through.  One of them was the idea of “chutzpah.”

Chutzpah
Chutzpah means having the guts to face God and say “I disagree.”  We see it in the book of Job, a few of the Psalms and the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Which is to say, it’s not a frequent thing but it is certainly part of the mix. Chutzpah is part of a healthy practice of faith.

I am not suggesting a life of complaining at every scrape and bruise.  But one in which, when it sincerely hurts or when it really does stop making sense, we carry our complaint to God like an offering; we sit in protest before Him just as we would in reverence. We plead, we cry, we shout and pace. We return over and over until either the mountain has moved or our hearts have changed.

A good friend, currently in a brutal season, said about his prayer life, “It’s mostly about yelling right now.  But that’s still prayer, right?”  Yes…Yes it is.

Job railed against God, calling Him unfair and unjust. In the end, his conceptions of ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ were crushed under the weight of a broader, deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of God. I believe part of the writer’s intent with Job is communicating that we do not come to such knowledge without putting our best argument on the table, especially when we believe we are “right” and God is “wrong.” That’s chutzpah.

Bad Analogies (cuz that’s all I’ve got)
Chutzpah is one path to wisdom, which famously begins with “the fear of God.” This is not a fear in which one cowers timidly, but one of deep awe; one that many of us only come to by fighting God… and losing.  Think of it like the first time we get thrown around by waves at a beach; we learn a bit about the power of the ocean and forever look on it with greater and deeper respect.  Or the first time we challenge a professor in class and find out that she is not only far more knowledgable, far better read and more passionate about the subject but also that she is deeply interested in guiding us to wisdom, not just putting us in our place. Chutzpah leads to a knowledge that moves beyond concept to relationship; a knowledge that cannot be gained in study, but only in engagement. In some cases that engagement can last for years.  But disagreement is still a way to engage; a facet of relationship.  And just as we come to know one another in part by disagreeing, we come to know God.

Wisdom from the West Wing
During the first season of the West Wing, Leo McGarry challenges the White House Staff that “If we’re gonna walk into walls, I want us running into ‘em full speed.”  If they were going to find their limits, they should do so in such a way that they would plainly know. Again, the path to wisdom  begins, in part, by knowing where we end.  I’m convinced that many of us carry deep resentment towards God because we’ve not honestly aired that grievance or pain.  We settle for an untested, unsettled and distant ‘belief’ in a God whose goodness is something we’ve quietly or begrudgingly agreed to, like a math equation, but not something we’ve come to know.  Our perception or interpretation of the events that cause us grief might be wrong (or even right) but we never truly know because we do not carry our complaint to God and speak… we lack courage… we lack chutzpah.

(A few weeks ago, I taught on King David and particularly the way his identity defined his life’s work. This is a reflection from that teaching.  Below is a short audio excerpt from the sermon)

I sincerely believe God makes promises.  Those promises can be awfully confusing in light of our circumstances.

Just before the prophet Samuel anointed David King of Israel he had installed Saul as King of Israel. What this meant for David was that he had to wait. Having been given this promise of identity, David then had to live for a time under circumstances that did not at all reflect that promise. In fact, during that time of waiting David has to serve and obey the man who “stood in the way” of his promised destiny.

Maybe you were promised something. Or maybe there is something you have always known about yourself but your life’s circumstances have dictated something different.  Do you trust the things you were promised or do your circumstances dictate your understanding of yourself?

I’m not referring to the the scenario in which someone of my build laments his “shoulda-been” days as an NFL linebacker.  This can obviously be abused and misunderstood…

…but after a series of failed relationships, should you buy the idea that you’ll always have to settle for a man whose love and consideration are fleeting at best?

…or after years of toiling away at jobs that suck the life out of you, should you buy the idea that you’ll never have fulfilling work doing something you’re good at; work that adds beauty to the world?

…and then there is this general “promise” many of us have some strange inkling of that some “good” is to come of all this.

I sincerely believe God makes promises. Some of them are quite personal and some are general.  I want those promises to shape my hopes and expectations for my life and the lives of those I love rather than bow to the circumstances I often find myself in which say “those good things cannot be.”

Waiting On A Promise (2min Sermon Clip)

Belonging to one another comes at a cost. This is part of why I love the way the Communion meal lies at the heart of christian community; it is symbolic of the sacrifice that makes family actually work.

I sat in a service recently that was not at all my cup of tea.  Between the style and execution of music, the topic and conclusions of the sermon and the general demographic of the congregation I felt about as out of place as I have ever felt in a church.  These were not at all ‘my people’ and more to the point, I am certainly not one of theirs.

But as I sat there settling comfortably into my “otherness” I remembered a scene from CS Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters” in which the tormenting demon was bid tempt his charge to examine his fellow church-goers and see their lowliness and otherness;” to conclude that he could not belong to “those people” for many of the same reasons I was mentally disassociating myself from the christians I was sitting with that morning.

When the band struck up again, I still noticed and disliked the song selection and even moreso the horrible electric-drum-kit sound.  But I opened my mouth and joined the congregation in song, moving to the aisle with the others in my row. I walked down to towards the stage behind a woman who was wearing a perfume that must have been named “Wild Berry Menthol Mist.” She turned and smiled after having taken the bread and wine that was now being offered to me.

“The body of Christ, broken for you.”  I took it and ate
“The blood of Christ, shed for you.”  I took it and drank.. and realized it was juice rather than wine.. but whatever..

And walking back to my seat I stood a bit closer to the pudgy, middle-aged man next to me who couldn’t stay in the same singing key for more than a phrase or two.. and sang with him.

One of the great challenges of the christian life is actually belonging to people you don’t like, don’t understand or with whom you do not fully agree.*  We spend much of our social energy trying to surround ourselves with a tribe of people more fully reflective of ourselves. Then, in christian teaching, we are asked to do something quite dramatic: to dissolve those expectations and receive into our lives anyone God gives us to.

This costs us.

It costs our levels comfort. It can cost us in our other relationships to be associated with someone who is politically or theologically outside the lines for the rest of our immediate tribe. It surely costs us to belong to people whose lives implode repeatedly due to their own foolish decision making. On and on.. Belonging to someone else, much less a community comes at a cost.  We call that cost “sacrifice” and it lies at the heart of healthy relationships.

And so the communion meal stands at the center of christian community, reminding us that being family means sacrifice. Real sacrifice.  A shade of the sacrifice that makes our community possible in the first place.

Belonging to One Another (3:43 Sermon Clip)

* (It’s a fallacy that christians are, on the whole, entirely like-minded. I’d argue that the range of sociological, political and religious thought within christian culture is at least as diverse as almost any other identifiable people group around.)

The dividing line between that which is “of God” and that which is “not” cannot and should not be trusted to the Marketplace.  But quite often it is.

The Dividing Line
The pastor of a church I recently played in was a self-professed Nine Inch Nails fan.  Aimee Mann as well.  So, as we talked through the tension between wise shepherding and over-protectiveness, we found a great deal we agreed upon.  Still,  he had reservations about my playing cover songs for his congregation.  He was concerned that I was giving his people license to buy and listen to music that at least has the potential to be socially and philosophically dangerous.

We agreed that no one needed permission to seek out damaging media. Perhaps the goal, then isn’t so much to prevent people from engaging with certain forms of media but teaching ourselves and our communities how to be discerning consumers, listeners, readers etc… Part of that comes in approaching media with a different set of questions.  Particularly the question “what can I  see of God in this?”

You see, somewhere before this conversation took place, a decision had already been made about what art is beneficial for christian (mostly Protestant) churches.  We were only dealing with material on “the other side” of the sacred/profane line. But what criteria was used to determine the sacred or beneficial nature of the music played in his church or mine? It seems to me that line is drawn with the same pen that draws the line between what is sell-able and not.  In other words: We sing this song here because it is sung elsewhere or because the artist who wrote it has other successful songs.  That’s not a pastoral criteria.  It’s a market criteria. In more cases than not, monetary success draws the line.

The Danger of Falling Asleep
That pastor and I were having a conversation about Aimee Mann. That’s to be expected. But does a similar conversation happen regarding songs by Chris Tomlin, Brenton Brown or anyone on the CCLI top 100?*  Are these songwriters above such a conversation?  Is there need for similar discernment when it comes to church music?  After all, these songs are sung repeatedly and memorized by church congregations. The language and imagery in these songs helps shape the way thousands understand the mystery of God.  So, what if it’s off? How would we know? Perhaps we’d recognize it in the fruit such art bears.

It’s no secret that the blogosphere (as well as more than a few coffee bars across the US) is choc-full of church leaders lamenting the immobilization or selfish tendencies of far too many congregates.  These same church leaders often acknowledge that the machinery  of church can not only contribute to but encourage such immobilization and selfishness.  If we’re willing to point out the potential dangers of exposure to media, it is vital that we take a more discerning look at art that has likely played a part in lulling many “to sleep in their faith” with repeated blessed assurances that it is well, not only our souls but well with the world, so long as we recognize and acknowledge how He loves us.

When the next hot, church sing-a-long hits the circuit, will it be evaluated? Will it even be thought about? Or will its status as “beneficial” be established the way Truth is established in Stephen Colbert’s world, where once the Market has spoken, it must be true.

I’m finishing Part 2 of this post and will have it up soon.

(The CCLI Top 100 is a list of the 100 most popular songs sung in churches)