Sabbatical

I feel like I've been in denial. I'm about ready to enter into something called a "sabbatical" and since I'm not sure what do do with it, I've been avoiding having to come to grips with certain facts. The basic problem is that I really identify with ministry. It's what "I do" and I've been "doing" it (as if you do ministry to people!) for quite awhile now. This is the first sabbatical that I'm actually going to take!
There was always talk within Campus Crusade of giving staff a sabbatical, but it was always attached to support raising. Most staff never take the opportunity and if they do, there is a tremendous amount of guilt associated with it especially if support is low. The closest to a sabbatical on Crusade staff was the summer right after Kay and I were married. It was a very leisurely summer of doing pretty much nothing except for thinking about support.
It's really hard to think about taking time completely off when it's been ingrained in you that ministry is something that you "do." When you take the time off and actually reflect it's clear how much identity is attached to what you do. I suspect that this is what's going on when people retire and then turn around and go back to work. Or they sit around and get bored around the house. It is amazing to stop and think about how much of who we sense we are is attached to what we do or who we are with - work, school, family, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc. The very fact that i am mandated to take time off reveals just how much I associate who I am with what I do and the people I'm with.
Since I can be honest about it, here's the background for sabbatical. The biblical basis for sabbatical revolves around the idea of seasons. In Exodus 16, there is a pattern of work - six days on, one day off. How well we hold to a sabbath is the subject of another blog. But the point is that there is a rhythm to the week, to life. Then in Leviticus 25 this is extended to the land. The point of all of this is work, rest, and renewal. The point of sabbatical is to rest and be renewed while still employed. It is more than a gesture of appreciation from the church. It is an intentional break to rest and be renewed. It seems primary that in the rest one would see how attached one is to work in terms of identity, production, and whatever else lies in the heart.
But it's also a time of renewal. It's time to let the ground lie fallow so that it becomes restored, renewed to foster new life. Here's the general plan:
1. To not let the mind dominate in terms of planning and execution (C.S Lewis in "On the Reading of Old Books". This is not to discourage all sorts of reading and learning but it is to remind me not to plan in way that cuts out the spontaneous working of God.
2. To plan for regular times of reflection, silence, and contemplation (Henri Nouwen, "The Way of the Heart")
3. To not try and do too much. I don't want to fill my days with things to do. I want to have the space each day to simply ask, "Lord, what would you have of me today?"
4. To pursue meeting with a spiritual director each week (depending on their availability during the holiday season)
5. To actually spend time reflecting on Christian spirituality as it relates to young adults. My plan will include reading a wide spectrum of books, all intended to shed light on what it looks like for Christians to grow. James Wilhoit wrote about the uniqueness of the college experience as, "the need to expand character formation beyond ethical training and moral decision making. While these roots are necessary, there is also a pressing need for the development of righteous virtues, affections, commitments, and patterns of living rooted in a right understanding of God and self."
That's it! Sunday is my last day until February 1, 2010! Keep checking the blog for updates on what the Lord is teaching me! Pray that the Lord would use this time in my life to renew and refresh me!

Pascal's thoughts on diversions

The last blog was an introduction to the theologian/philosopher/scientist Blaise Pascal. He is rightfully receiving more attention as some of his thoughts (Pensees) are a wonderful examination of human existence and the connection to the Gospel. The last blog recounted Pascal's suggestion that the unending sense of need that people try to fill actually points to the Gospel of Christ. The hole that seems endless can only be filled by something (or someone) that is endless.

Here's where I think it gets interesting and pretty accurate in terms of how people actually live. Pascal tells us that people use diversion in their life to avoid realizing that they are, in fact, empty. What he meant by that through busyness and entertainment people can actually try to remove the dissonance that they feel so strongly. The word that Pascal uses is "diversions". Yikes! Here’s a guy who lived a long time ago and yet I think he's pinpointed something that is true! Think about everything that people try and fill their emptiness with, craving something like meaning and purpose, satisfaction and fulfillment, but nothing seems to actually work. If a person doesn't want to acknowledge a personal Creator God who made them and knows the depth of their aching need and the void inside of them, what must they do to "ignore" so great an impulse? Pascal suggests that people divert themselves in order to avoid the real solution.

Pascal writes, "We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it." The shallowness of our lives is so apparent from the "stuff" that we put in our lives to fill us. I'm sorry but there is no amount of information about Jon and Kate Gosselin that adds to the "good life". People cannot face the fact that they are empty and so they fill their lives up with junk. Pascal uses a French word that is very direct and literally means "crap." I think it's what the apostle Paul gets at in Philippians 3:8 when he uses the Greek word, "scubula". It does not literally mean "dung" or "refuse". Those are too sanitized. You get the shock value of the contrast?

All of this is connected to our heart. Proverbs 4:23 tells us to watch over our hearts from out of our hearts flows our real life. What Pascal did write was, “The heart has reasons that reason does not know.” For an old dead dude, that’s pretty accuate! Pascal was focused more on the hearts of people rather than trying to rationally prove God's existence. I think the formal proofs for God’s existence are helpful and they have their place. But what if we followed the lead of Pascal and C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias and Kierkegaard and start with the condition of people and what they feel in every day life? I think that would help the gospel message connect more with people.

May I introduce Blaise Pascal?

One of my favorite theologians/philosophers is Blaise Pascal. He’s who I had in mind when I titled the blog, "Pensees of a Pastor". He was a French scientist who lived in the 1600’s and believe it or not he invented some things that we even use today like the syringe, the hydraulic press and the adding machine (ok, that’s so old school!).
There was a time when Pascal was religious, at least on the exterior. Then something happened. He had a Holy Ghost moment, a spiritual “aha”, that he speaks of as his point of conversion. He ended up writing "pensees", which is French for “thoughts.” So really his book is a collection of his thoughts with no particular order to it. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in Pascal – Thomas Morris, James Houston, and Peter Kreeft – to name a few who have tried to organize his thoughts to give it some order. What I love about this is that it gives some context to Pascal's famous "Wager". It really takes an understanding of what leads up to the Wager to truly understand it for what it is.
Pascal is considered by some to be the precursor to Christian existentialists. He wasn’t opposed to the rational proofs for God. He just thought it was more helpful to start with what you and I experience in life – what we feel, what we sense as intuitions. I’ve always thought that was extremely helpful in getting people who are not Christian to think about God because the very thing you can’t ignore is what you sense daily about you and about life.
One thing that interested me was did you know that the quote we attribute to Pascal, he never said? The quote is something like, “There is a God-shaped vacuum inside each person that can only be filled with God.” I’ve read his writings and that's not exactly what he wrote. My best guess is it was summarized from this Pensees… “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” [Pascal, Pensees #425].
So he said something close to it at least. Let me explain what Pascal is saying in this Pensees: Have you ever sensed that your needs are unending? You know how it goes… You buy an ipod and then a newer model with more gigabytes or wi-fi comes out. All of a sudden your ipod is so “ancient” Ugggh. I was happy once I bought it but now I really want the newer model! I have to be honest with you when I say that I’m never satisfied with what I have. It seems like my needs are unending, insatiable, like I’m on a path to consume more and more.
Here’s something to think about. What if that internal abyss you sense inside is not something that can be filled with anything temporal? What if the “hole” inside that you try to fill to get rid of the feeling is actually endless? That “hole” can only be filled with an endless person. Your deepest longings cannot be met by any “thing” or finite person, but by someone who by His nature is endless or eternal. What Pascal is pointing to is the "faint remembering" that we were once filled to the brim with someone infinite and immutable (unchanging) but this was radically changed at the Fall. This is simply one way in existence that we "sense" eternity. More on Pascal next week...

The wrong kind of curiosity

Have you ever noticed just how relentless the "news" is in providing us updates on everything and everyone famous? Certainly it is driven by an entertainment culture that voraciously feeds on the latest escapades of sports figures, actors and actresses, and "reality stars". Why do I have to sift through the news to get a picture of the health care debate and at the same time read about Octomom's latest escapades? What interest do I have in Sean Merriman's either virtuous or vicious behavior toward a certain reality tv star? Why do I care about what's happening with Jon and Kate? Why are the Gosselin's even important to talk about? Or maybe even more disturbing... in the end is the story in the newspaper because that's what we deeply care about?

I guess my point is not to say that you are completely evil if you have any interest in these kinds of stories. For sure, they even peak curiosity within me! The first question I have to ask myself is, "Why such curiosity about another's life, even misfortune?" Their life seems so compelling.

Thomas of Aquinas was the master synthesizer and organizer of theology. If you have ever read the Summas (which if you have a mind for theology they are classics) you begin to see just how brilliant he was. But on to Thomas' categorization of the virtues and opposed vices. I was caught off guard a bit with the vice called "curiositas".

What the early Christians identified was that this particular vice was opposed to learning as a good. They saw the development of the mind (and Thomistic thinking is pretty rational) in study as a virtue. It was learning for the sake guiding one toward flourish or live life as it was intended to be lived. This virtue of "studiositas" was connected to greater virtues such as modesty and ultimately temperance and humility. In other words, to be modest is in some way to be temperate and humble in life. That's something for us to think about today!

But the opposing vice connected to "studiositas" was called "curiositas". It was not the curiosity of learning, but curiosity for the sake of simply curiosity. It's the curiosity that is referred to when we say, "Curiosity killed the cat." What fascinated me was that Thomas connects this vice to immodesty. In other words, it was not immodesty in outward appearance but immodesty in the inner person. When one is curious just to know the facts about something, curious just to know what is largely irrelevant, or curious just to be titillated in some way, and none of this makes any appreciable difference in how one lives life, this is immodest. Just as one can be immodest in dress, one can be immodest in the ways that one spends time gathering information about. One can be immodest in terms of what interest them or what one cares about.

When people open themselves up to what is offered as "reality" today, they are actually living in non-reality in the sense that it teaches them very little on the skill of living their own life. While we might end up fascinated with the Gosselins, what appreciable difference does this make in instructing us how live in the present? Do we crave tabloid kind of news because we just have to know the details about someone else's life. Now here's the big question... is my craving, my curiositas related to the fact that I'm bored with my own life that I have to live vicariously through the "exciting" life of another? Is the life that God has offered to me that boring such that I have to find excitement in the life of another? That is the wrong kind of curiosity and is certainly an issue of the heart.

Living Contradiction

Have you ever felt like you were made for something more than just the temporal? Either there was a deep longing in you for something in the future? Hope for something greater or that you could be something greater? Or the deep yearning for things to be restored to working condition?

Writers, philosophers, poets, singers have all expressed this in some way. Here are a few voices:
Solomon, who was the wisest man on earth wrote, "God has also set eternity in their hearts…" Thoreau wrote, "In eternity there is something true and sublime." He goes on to write, "Time is a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink in it but when I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away but eternity remains." Bob Dylan poetically wrote these lyrics, "Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while"
The song, "VIsions of Johanna" is Dylan's heartfelt expression of the human longing for the eternal. The fact that there is nothing finite that can fill us or give us a sense of substantial sense of well-being. This should be a reminder that we were created for the eternal. Only something (or someone eternal) can fill the eternal longings of the heart. And yet we find ourselves living in the finite. That is the tension or pull between the two is incredibly strong.

I like reading Blaise Pascal, a French scientist/philosopher/theologian who lived from 1623-1662. I agree with Doug Groothius and consider Pascal the original Christian existentialist! In one of Pascal's Pensees (French for "thoughts" or "musings") he observes that the human condition brings with it a sense of deposed royalty. That is, people sense in their life that they have lost something grand or eternal, which he calls it a faint memory of royalty. The human condition seems to be "caught" in between eternality and temporality. What i mean by that is we sense that there is something eternal to us and yet we find ourselves living as if the temporal were all there was. If we are honest, in our every day lives we have touch points with the eternal - we sense that we were made for something greater, we hope to become something more... we sense that our bodies are important but there is something else to "me", something immaterial, we long for justice, for redemption, for healing.

Soren Kierkegaard put it like this - humans have the capacity for great things, great plans, nobility and virtue, expressing beauty, and gaining knowledge about the real world. Yet they also behave in incredibly boorish and even hurtful ways. It leaves us with a natural sense that something about us is broken. There is the faint memory of the infinite, eternal, and freedom while at the same time acting in ways that are contradictory, what he labels as "finite", "temporal", and "necessity". Kierkegaard's point is that existence is to synthesize that which appears to be contradictory. It is, in the power of your freedom, to take that which desires the eternal and to bring it to the concreteness of everyday experience.

I have often thought about the lengths people must go to resolve the conflict between the temporal and eternal and to defend the living contradiction they are. How do you resolve the conflict in your own mind? How do you live with this sense of eternity while at the same time, live in the ordinary? How do you resolve the contradiction? As a point of discussion, what do you think? I'll add a few more thoughts in the days to come.... Shalom!

The pull of busyness

I have made an observation about being overseas and then returning. There is a rhythm to being overseas that is fairly simple: get up from sleep, eat, minister with every ounce of my being, take moments to reflect upon God's grace and providence for the day, crash and wake up to do it again. It really is a simple rhythm that some have called, "a spiritual greenhouse". The reason is that when God is central to what we do each day and there's time to reflect on Him and His provision for the day, then it makes life fairly simple and growth happens. No computers, no to do list, no scheduling, lack of abundance of meetings, no work, no kids' events! Life gets real simple... simple enough that one has the space to pay attention to God.

But what happens upon returning? I think for many of us who have gone to India and Israel we can attest to the fact that we jump right back into it. In fact, this morning I even remarked to someone, "I'm back in the swing of things." What I meant was that I'm ready to start ministering again. But as I reflected on it, what I really meant was that I'm ready to be busy again! How do I know? Because the initial temptation I faced this morning was, "Do I want to offer the day to God or do I just want to start in on all that has to get done?" Why is it that busyness seems to rear its head after such a wonderful time of ministering and listening to God? Why does life have to get complicated again with multiple layers? Why do I gravitate toward busyness? And my response to people when asked, "How are you?".... "Oh, life is pretty busy." Is that making a statement about my identity?

Some of the layers of life seem unavoidable. For instance, I cannot tell my son, "No birthday party last night because it complicates things too much and I would rather spend the time relaxing and listening to God!" My son would "boo" me out of the house!! But as I have noticed my propensity to just jump into the day with no sense of pausing to offer my heart and the day to God is troubling. There seems to be something that the Enemy uses to distract us from the ultimate good, to rest in our relationship with God in light of the Cross that no sense of striving can accomplish.

This summer I re-read quite a bit of Soren Kierkegaard. He is a bit complicated to understand for a couple of reasons. First, he was really smart and smart people sometimes forget that they need to communicate to ordinary people. Second, he is responding to a form of philosophy (and its implications for theology) that he thought were harmful (the Hegelian influence in thought). But third, he writes often in pseudonyms - Climacus, Anti-Climacus, Johannes de Silentio - that often confuse people. Are they speaking for SK or not?

Rather than go into his thinking (especially the controversial stuff), he makes a suggestion about the Christian life. It is one of suffering. But he does not define suffering in the ordinary sense, like experiencing pain. He defines it as "dying away to immediacy." You and I in our busyness tend to commit ourselves to relative ends. That is, in the scheme of things they are fine. Some are even considered noble, worthwhile. However, they are all relative in the sense that they are not the highest goal - one's proper relationship to God in love. He says this dying to the immediate or temporal is "to express existentially the principle that the individual can do absolutely nothing of himself, but is as nothing before God." In short, suffering is dying to the immediate needs and things of the day and to offer myself in such a way to the eternal God resigning myself to the fact that I can do nothing of myself. We enter willfully into suffering because that is the expression of my dependency upon God. This becomes clear when we understand that the word "suffering" originally had a double meaning: "to feel pain" but also, "to allow, to let, to take up a passive relation toward something." We suffer when we look at our busy lives and reflect with God, "That is not what defines me nor is that the final goal of life."

In the end, I am busy and jump into busyness because I honestly believe that much of life is up to me. There is an underlying belief that my part is substantial and its up to me earn something in my life. While some of life here in the west seems unavoidable, the busyness of life is more ingrained in me then I want to admit or even desire. Its understandable why busyness would rob me of joy because there is no longlasting joy in the temporal, in the immediate. Joy is only found when one is clearly recollected in Christ. Certainly this is not an apologetic for dropping everything. Rather, it is a reminder that busyness can function as a mask to keep me from exploring the deeper beliefs of my heart in relation to God.

"Of all that shall come to me this day, very little will be such as I have chosen for myself. It is Thou, O hidden One, who dost appoint my lot and determine the bounds of my habitation. It is Thou who has put power in my hand to do one work adn hast withheld the skill to do another. It is Thou who dost keep in Thy grasp the threads of this day's life and who along knowest what lies before me to do or to suffer. But because Thou art my Father, I am not afraid. Because it is Thine own Spirit that sirts within my spirit's inmost room, I know that all is well. What I desire for myself I cannot attain, but what Thou desirest in me Thou canst attain for me. The good that I would I do not, but the good that Thou willest in me, that Thou canst give me power to do." John Baille, Day Nine Morning Prayer. Taken from

Entry into the world of blogging

I have made the decision to continue to blog after the Israel trip. But I had to get clear again on the purpose of why I would do such a thing. After all, I can point to numerous stories of people using the blog in a way where they could emotionally vent. Then you throw in some pastors who have blogged and written something to vent or even worse, heretical. I want to do neither, especially the heretical part!

Here's what I propose this blog is for. First I want to blog to share some thoughts I have about what Lovelace calls a "live faith". That is a faith that is is alive, continually being renewed and revived. If anything is true in the fast pace of life where everything and everyone clamors for our attention (Mark 1:37), how is our faith constantly renewed. By the way, if you ever want to read a great book (albeit a bit academic) on sanctification and spiritual theology, Lovelace's book is one of the best.

Second, I'm writing this not so much about catharsis but to encourage and challenge. I don't see this necessarily as a devotional. But it is something that can be used by a person to reflect and recollect in their relationship with God. If my comments seem a bit critical at times, the heart is to urge us back to God's heart. And please keep in mind that my comments are not directed toward any individual or the church I work for but rather general comments about the state of evangelicalism.

Third, my training is in theology and philosophy. So I hope that this blog serves to bridge the chasm between good thinking and good living. That seems to be the heart of integrity! As a result, I really do think that there are modern problems that have ancient solutions. In our quest for answers, we moderns must be careful that we do not buy into the notion that any good idea started with modern times. Many wonderful theologians and philosophers (pastors in the old days were considered the resident theologian/philosophers) have been neglected other than to use them in divisive ways leading people to fall in one camp or another. I certainly hope that the blog leads us to the heart and mind of God.

Fourth, in the process of being trained for ministry, I discovered the heart. From my time with people who teach at Talbot's Institute for Spiritual Formation, I have been exposed to wonderful spiritual writers throughout history. I am deeply concerned that our understanding of the gospel is less than full (I use that word not in the Pentecostal sense but in the sense that we have neglected some aspects) and a result we have end up with a stunted view of sanctification. So the attempt of this blog, at least in part, is to recapture a robust picture of the Spirit's work in our lives as He conforms us to the image of Christ.