Mark's Letters

Again and again I have heard people explain their departure from a congregation by saying, “We just weren’t getting fed there.” Although there may be some situations when this is true or perhaps a valid concern, I have come to hate the expression.

The first reason I object to the declaration is that it centers on us and our needs—not the church or the purposes of God. In this consumer age it is tempting to shop for churches that meet our needs or taste. A more biblical approach is to find a place of worship that gives us opportunities to serve God and our brothers and sisters in Christ. Unfortunately, I seldom hear folks say, “We stopped attending that church because we just couldn’t find enough opportunities to serve others.”

Another reason I object to this complaint of not being fed is that getting fed isn’t that hard if you are hungry. Yes, some preachers and teachers are more eloquent and insightful than others; but if they are presenting the word of God and trying to live it out, we can be fed. Too often we are just picky eaters. As a terrible student in high schools, I failed to learn for two reasons: occasionally teachers would not teach, but more often I refused to learn. Feeding the sheep doesn’t guarantee the sheep will eat.

Additionally, over the years I have realized that “We were not being fed” often means something else. It often means, “I am mad at the pastor and refuse to listen to anything he says.” It may mean, “This church and pastor have not made me feel as important as I truly am.” If the pastor has instituted some changes, the complaint may mean, “I don’t like the new style of worship.” And the worst scenario is when our complaint about not being fed is the result of the pastor feeding us so effectively that the Holy Spirit is convicting us of sin. Of course, all these concerns have little to do with whether the pastor is actually feeding his flock with the Word of God.

God does call people to other congregations because He has new opportunities for them to serve and minister. I also recognize that when the shepherd turns out to be a wolf or the teaching departs from basic orthodoxy, it is time to go elsewhere. However, when we approach church with the heart of a servant instead of a consumer, our reasons for going and staying stop being about us. At the end of his ministry, Paul was conflicted about whether to depart and be with the Lord or stay and continue to minister. His conclusion was to declare, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” It is always about the Lord, not us.

It is certainly true that many Christians have distorted or unbalanced views of God. But just as dangerous to our spiritual health is the “spin” the world puts on sin. The first lie is the idea of heroic sin. This lie has many permutations, but it basically asserts that breaking God’s law is a brave act of defiance against a tyrant. This spin on sin was very popular with Byron and Shelley and their romantic imitators. This romantic spin on sin has lived on in certain rock-and-roll celebrations of sex, drugs, and rebellion against authority.

Another spin is that rules were made to be broken. In Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan tries to convince Eve that God made the rule against eating of the tree of knowledge so that Eve could have an opportunity to show her independence through disobedience. The breaking of the rule, Satan argues, is something God desires and a step in her development. This idea of sin as a step into maturity and wisdom still floats around today. It is especially tempting to kids raised in the church who are made to feel ignorant and stupid because they have not yet explored all the dark corners of sin and depravity.

Perhaps one of the saddest spins on sin is one given by some unthinking Christians. It is the flipped-coin version that presents the law of God as just an arbitrary set of rules. It’s like God flipped a coin and decided some things were wrong. Legalists present sin as the violation of arbitrary rules because they approach the Scripture as a list of rules rather than a revelation of the love and holiness of God. They present God’s law as an expression of his need to assert his authority rather than as an expression of his love for man. It is easy to break a rule when the rule has no point.

In his Letters to Malcolm, C. S. Lewis argues that we should see sin as vandalism. Sin like vandalism isn’t creative, doesn’t build anything, and doesn’t offer anything new. It only mars and distorts the good things God has given. The sexual union between a man and woman, the true oneness of body and heart without the loss of identity, is possibly one of the greatest natural gifts given by God. It also is a picture of the ultimate oneness of the bride (the church) and the bridegroom (Christ). So it makes sense that Satan is always and forever marring, destroying, and distorting the holy beauty of the sexual relationship.

We break the windows of God’s creation and act like we were brave, we spray paint obscenities on the walls of the world and declare ourselves creative, and like a wave we break our hearts against the solid rock of God’s love and boast in our strength. But like a rock, God’s law remains—it remains an expression of his love for us. God hates sin because he loves us. Because God made us, only he knows what will bring us joy, peace, and holy purpose. We can trust God’s law because he made us; we can trust his love because Christ gave his life for us. Ultimately, we sin not against a law or rule, we sin against Jesus who on the cross looked at sinners and said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” When we sin, we sin against love.

When I was sixteen I got all Jesus freaky. My church had the traditional roles for youngsters and oldsters that allowed only old folks to occasionally shout an “Amen!” or “Hallelujah.” Sometimes, partly to annoy folks, I would let loose with an amen or hallelujah. People weren’t quite sure if teenagers were allowed to do this, but they couldn’t really say anything.

I wasn’t obnoxious to just church folks. When secular people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say, “Holy.” They would look embarrassed or befuddled and shuffle away.

On some level I understood that spiritual warfare was going on in the linguistic and semantic realm. Words that had once had strongly positive connotations were being murdered. In our secular discourse we could talk about people who had a holier-than-thou attitude but not a holy attitude. We could label people as self-righteous, but never simply righteous. Every common use of the word “holy” was sarcastic or satiric. The word holy in a positive sense had been killed in everyday discourse.

In the 60’s and 70’s even Christians became reluctant to talk of holiness as something they longed to possess. We so feared being cast as self-righteous Pharisees or unhip puritanical legalists that we carefully avoided talking about God’s command for us to be holy as he is holy. Hey man, we’re all human!

And of course the other front in the linguistic war was to take every negative word and use it positively. Things we approved became “wicked, bad, or sick”. Other negative words were made over with an endless stream of euphemisms. Adultery became having an affair, a fling, a thing, a friend with benefits.

So my little stunt of saying I wanted be holy when I grew up was a rebellion against what C. S. Lewis called verbicide—the killing of a word. In a small smart-alecky way I was refusing to let the word be killed. I now have a little list of words I refuse to exile from my conversations with secular colleagues and friends. Recently, I have had to add the words moral and immoral to that list in defiance of the snarky attitude that snickers at any attempt to make moral judgments about actions or policies.

We think with words, so when we are robbed of specific words, we lose not just a word, but all the word means. The good news is that the hunger for righteousness (which Jesus called blessed) and holiness remains and is rooted in the human heart even if the world shuns the words. So not only should we refuse to surrender the words to pejorative meanings, we should always be finding fresh ways to express the beauty of holiness and a life unpolluted by the toxic waste of sin. And as with love, holy actions speak louder than words.

I saw an ad for a movie in which a character had gotten the tattoo, “No Ragrets.” Not only is this hilarious (to me at least), but the saying itself, even when spelled correctly, is emblematic of our times.

If “no regrets” meant living so that nothing should be regretted, it would be a noble sentiment and goal. It is good to never have to wish we had treated people more justly or kindly. “No regrets” would be an admirable slogan if it meant approaching every decision with prudence and wise counsel of others. Discerning what is worthy of our time and energy can keep us from wasting our lives.

But too often the slogan indicates a stubborn refusal to regret actions that are truly regrettable. Those who never regret, never repent; they never ask forgiveness of those they wound. We should regret foolish or selfish things enough to stop doing them. A person without regrets is usually without wisdom.

Of course, spending all of one’s time moping over what “couda, shoulda, and wouda” happened is unwise and miserable. We should regret, sometimes repent, and move on with greater wisdom. Honest admission and regret of what was stupid or evil can help us escape vicious circles of self-destructive behavior. Too often no regrets equals no progress.

Some might argue that we should not regret anything from which we can gain wisdom. I suppose there is some wisdom that can only be learned from experience and mistakes, but most things can be learned more painlessly by obeying God’s Word and the wise counsel of others. For instance, I know some adults who now regret how terribly they treated their parents. Because I have always taken seriously the commandment to honor my parents, I have no regrets in that department (my regrets are elsewhere).

It is certainly true that God can use all our experiences—good, bad, and ugly—to teach us and equip us to help others. But God’s power to bring good from evil actions doesn’t mean we shouldn’t regret evil. God may powerfully use redeemed criminals to reach other inmates with the gospel, but it is still good and necessary for them to regret their crimes.

A better T-shirt slogan or tattoo would be “Pressing On” from Philippians 3:12: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

 Yes, I have regrets, but I am pressing on a little wiser.

Yesterday I hiked to the top of Mount Bolivar. At 4,319 feet, it is the highest point in Coos County. Although the trail up is only 1and 1/4 miles, it involves a lot of huffing and puffing because the trail is mostly a set of switchbacks climbing up the mountain side. I had lunch, emergency stuff, and four bottles of water in my daypack and my binoculars. Mount Bolivar is on the northern edge of the Rouge River Wilderness so I thought I might see some unusual birds.

The day was beautiful, but I wasn’t. In the bright sun I trudged along with sweat dripping into my eyes, my feet slipping on the loose rocks. I have no cartilage in one knee so I ease the banging of bone on bone with two hiking poles. It’s not that high but my aerobic conditioning is terrible so I am often stopping to catch my breath. That’s when it happens: I look up and see a branch moving where a bird had been perched.

I can tell by how much the branch is moving that is not the wind and that a bird had just taken flight. Who knows what it might have been or how long it had watched me slogging toward it? This happened twice to me. The third time I heard something high in the branches right above me. I saw a flutter of wings and then flash of red. In a small opening in the trees I glimpsed a red-tailed hawk soar away on the breeze.

Although the top of the mountain offers beautiful views of surrounding forested hills and the deep Rouge River valley to the south, it is a miserable and ugly place. The watchtower that had once been there burned to the ground. All that is left now are the foundation footings, rusty nails, and clumps of melted and shattered glass. Big flies of all different kinds loudly buzz over the area. Early in the year red rock penstemon and candy-striped lewisia bloom, but in August only the stone crop is blooming. On this day there was no shade and no breeze.

I ate lunch in blazing sun. Then I prayed and tried to write in my journal. I felt nothing—except hot. I didn’t encounter God, hear his voice, receive a revelation, or anything that makes for a great story. For some reason I kept thinking of the moving branch. The branch was empty, but it was definitely moving. I was not alone.