Sabbath: Worship and Rest

I’ve recently read a few books which have spoken about the practice of Sabbath. The first book, Garden City, by John Mark Comer, was entirely devoted to the roles of work and rest in our lives. The second book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, by Peter Scazzero, spoke about many internal and external facets of being a healthy Christian leader, but had a great (and challenging) chapter on the Sabbath. I would recommend both of these books if you’re looking for something to read that will help you grow spiritually.

The practice of the Sabbath

The practice of the Sabbath is about resting in God. It’s about an intentional break from work and productivity. It’s about recognizing that God created you as a human being, not a human doing. It’s about recognizing that God loves us even when we do nothing, and that even in our rest and play we can be worshiping God. After all, He is the creator of work and rest, of productivity and play; He created us to enjoy eating and drinking and recreation just as he created us to enjoy producing and inventing and building. Both work and rest are essential parts of human life, and worship to God is found in both.

I am not a pro at practicing the Sabbath. I don’t even think I completely understand the Sabbath. I have been trying to practice a weekly twenty-four hour Sabbath with my family for a few months now, somewhat successfully, but I know there is still a lot to uncover about just how God moves and blesses us through our rest in Him. However, one thing I have noticed already is how practicing the Sabbath increases the awareness of God’s love for us in the little things that may seem completely removed from “spiritual life,” and how even in the completely natural moments of life are found opportunities for worship and adoration of our God.

Worship apart from productivity

I’ve worked vocationally in the church for nearly a decade. I am thirty years old. That means I’ve worked in the church for nearly my entire adult life up to this point. I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever felt like God loved me based on my utility in the local church. I think I’ve always had a better understanding than that. I haven’t tied my worth in God’s eyes to my work for God. However, as I’ve learned a little bit about resting, I think I’ve uncovered that I have tied my worship of God to my doings for God.

Worship has meant Bible reading and church attendance and inviting people to church and acts of service. All these things are acts of worship. However, I believe what I’ve been challenged to understand is that worship is much more, and in some ways much easier. Worship is loving my wife and kids. It’s having a coffee with a friend. It’s looking out the French doors that lead to my back deck and watching the clouds skate by in the moonlit night sky. With an understanding of the Sabbath, of resting in God, just existing in God’s created world is an act of worship. We honor Him by the sheer acknowledgment that He is and that He created us in His image. And sometimes, that is enough.

God is present in the “unspiritual”

Now, I want to be clear for a moment that I’m not denigrating work. I’m not downplaying acts of service or worship by way of doing. God has clearly called us to have an active faith in the world. We are called to love and to serve our neighbors, we are called to the spiritual disciplines, we are told that if we neglect those around us, we are neglecting God. My intention isn’t to say that we now have an excuse to sit back and do nothing. After all, God says to work for six days and to rest for one. What I am saying is that I’ve been challenged to see God in all those little parts of my days that seem natural and unspiritual and plain. And as I’m learning to pick those out, it’s been good for my soul.

God is present all around us. He made the world around us to be enjoyed. Much damage has been done because of the fall, because of the selfishness of humanity, and so there is much to do by those who follow Christ to help restore the good world our God created. But there is also much in which we can sit back, breath deep, and realize, “God is in this moment. Right here. Right now. And this is an expression of His love toward me.”

I want to live in a deep awareness of those moments.

 

Everything is Spiritual

Spiritual and Secular

The first time I heard the statement “Everything is Spiritual” was from Rob Bell in a DVD released in 2007. “Everything is Spiritual” is actually the title of the DVD, and I still recommend that DVD to people today – it can be found here for purchase.

The phrase turned up again in a book I read recently called Garden City, by John Mark Comer, which I also recommend.

In both of these works, the statement that “Everything is Spiritual” was used to correct the idea we tend to have that our lives are split into the spiritual and the secular. Church, prayer, Bible reading, and fasting are spiritual. Eating, going to a party, watching TV, and school or our jobs are secular. It’s easy to live as if there were a divide in these things.

Bell and Comer both tell us, however, that Jesus never spoke of his “Spiritual life.” To say we have a spiritual life means that we also have some other part of our life that is non-spiritual, and neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament make such a distinction.

If you track what you do in a day, how much of it is spent on those things we would consider spiritual? We spend eight hours sleeping (okay, maybe six hours if you like to stay up late). We spend eight hours a day at work. We spend a few hours a day eating. We spend hours on our phones, on social media, watching netflix or listening to music. We have our social lives, hobbies, and family responsibilities. So, even if you’re a really disciplined person who spend an hour or two every day reading your Bible and praying, what’s the ratio? Are those few hours a day actually the only parts of the day that God is interested in? Are those the only parts of the day where we are honoring our Creator?

I think not.

Everything is Spiritual

I’m not going to go really in depth here with this – I really recommend checking out the resources I put above, because they say it way better than I can – but I do want to share a quick thought on how I try to get rid of that divided mentality in my own life.

Colossians 3:16-17 (HCSB) says, “Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

Verse sixteen explains how we accomplish verse seventeen. How do we keep in mind that everything is Spiritual? How do we make every moment an act of worship? How do we make sure everything, all that we say and all that we do, are in the name of Jesus? We do it by letting the message of Jesus, the Good News, the Gospel, “dwell richly” among us – that message lives with us and fills every moment of our lives.

God created us for community, so hanging out with friends, eating great meals with loved ones, celebrating and mourning in their proper times with the people we live life with, can all be moments filled with the presence and the glory of God.

God created us for rest, so vacation, relaxation, and just a weekly rhythm of slowing down and keeping a Sabbath are all moments where God is present in our lives.

God created us with specific gifts and talents and gave us a purpose (to rule and subdue the earth – making it look more and more like heaven – and to make disciples), so learning to sculpt and hone those talents and abilities (school/education) and opportunities to put them to use (work) are not secular moments, are not separate from God.

God’s presence and purpose aren’t relegated to the church building, to times of prayer and scripture reading, to times of spiritual discipline. Those moments are great and are indispensable in the life of a Christian, but they aren’t the only part of our lives where God dwells. God created us for love and community, for work and play, for sex, for food, for rest. He designed our bodies and the world we live in. And His purpose is to fill each and every moment we spend here.

 

Evil: Our role in causing and fixing it

Evil: Who is to blame?

Our world is full of evil. Even if you don’t really use words like “good” and “evil,” you can agree that our world is full of less-than-ideal circumstances and situations, often created intentionally or through negligence by the people who inhabit it.

Rape. Murder. Greed. Malevolence of all kinds.

The existence of these things is often used as an argument against God’s existence, or sometimes an argument for why God, if He does exist, is not a good God.

I want to ask this question, however: If there were no God, no Devil, no supernatural, then who would be to blame for those things? Where would the responsibility lie for fixing the moral atrocities at which we are quick to shake our heads and wag our fingers?

The existence of such malevolence would clearly be the result of humanity’s own selfishness. And the responsibility to fix it would fall on the same humanity who created the problems in the first place.

Does the existence of God change our responsibility?

Now, if we can agree with that idea, I’ll ask another question: How does the existence of God somehow absolve humanity of it’s role in the malevolence in the world? And How does the existence of God somehow absolve humanity of it’s role in fixing the problem?

My answer: It doesn’t.

What I’m about to say does rely on the idea that God’s existence doesn’t negate humanity’s freedom to choose their own course of action. I understand there are some differences in opinion on that subject when it comes to God. However, in my opinion, we live as though we have the ability to chart our own course. Our laws and the punishments for breaking those laws rest on the idea that we can choose whether or not to perform the actions we perform. If we really believe the world works this way, and it seems as though we really do, then humanity is responsible for the malevolence in the world whether there is a God or not.

Rule and Subdue

In Genesis 1:27-31 we see an account of God creating man and woman and then charging them with ruling and subduing the earth. That’s very interesting. Rather than God ruling himself, he delegated the authority over the world to humanity. It’s right there at the beginning of Genesis. Maybe the evil we see isn’t because God isn’t doing His job, but it’s because we aren’t doing our job.

God actually gave us the freedom to shape the world we live in. He gave us all the raw material we would need and the freedom to mold it and create with it. Sometimes humanity uses this creative freedom in really constructive ways. Often we use it in really destructive ways. What if the evil that we see is humanity reaping the harvest of it’s own misaligned priorities and poor governance of the authority and freedom it’s been given?

What if the commandments of God weren’t put in place to subjugate humanity under the tyrannical rule of a narcissistic God, but they were put in place to help a faltering humanity regain control over the world it’s been destroying through greed and selfishness and neglect? What if the same responsibility we would assume for making things better if God weren’t there is the same responsibility God expects us to assume because He is there? What if that’s actually what He’s charged us with as His image bearers and the delegated rulers of the earth in which we live?

We can all look around and see things we wish didn’t exist. We aren’t meant to just observe it. We aren’t meant to just ask why God isn’t doing anything about it. We have been charged with making it better. What if people aren’t seeing God because they aren’t seeing God’s people ruling in the world the way He created them to? Only we can change that.

 

(This post was inspired in part by the book Garden City: Work, Rest, and the Art of Being Human by John Mark Comer.)

Glory – Kavod – Weighty

For the last several months I’ve met with a group of guys on Friday mornings at 7am to read through and discuss books together. We pick a book, read a few chapters throughout the week, then when we meet up on Fridays we just hang out and talk about what stands out, what rubs us the wrong way, how to apply what we’re reading (or if we should apply what we’re reading). I’m a social person and I love reading, so this is a great time for me!

The book we’re reading right now is called Garden City, by John Mark Comer. There was a chapter in the book that talked all about the glory of God, and how the Hebrew word translated “glory” is kavod, which literally means “weighty” or “heavy.”

I don’t want to get too far into the weeds with this, because there’s a lot to explain and there’s a lot I won’t even pretend to understand when it comes to the glory of God, but there was one thing in particular that stood out to me in this chapter that I wanted to share. I’m going to quote from the book here:

One of the most jarring commandments in the New Testament is from the writer Paul:

“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

We live in a time of overlap between the ages. What one theologian called “the time between the times.” Because so many people are blind to God’s glory, we, as God’s people, are to live in such a way that people start to see God’s presence and beauty. But notice Paul’s examples. “Whether you eat or drink…” What could be more ordinary and humdrum than eating and drinking? And then Paul says, “or whatever you do.” Wow, so no matter what it is we do — everything — the most mundane, unimportant stuff in our life, should be “for the glory of God.”

The chapter then goes on to say:

How do any of us glorify God with our work if it’s not overtly Christian?

Well, here’s my take: we’re the image of God, remember? Our job is to make the invisible God visible — to mirror and mimic what he is like to the world. We can glorify God by doing our work in such a way that we make the invisible God visible by what we do and how we do it.

So, everything we do has the ability to bring this weightiness of God. Even eating and drinking.

How?

I’m still trying to kind of wrap my head around it, but let my try to explain by going back to Friday mornings.

My Friday morning book group could look two different ways. It could be a day where I get up early, even though it’s my day off, and I go to a coffee shop and hang out with some guys because I’m trying to be productive and be a good friend, and there would be nothing wrong with that! It would still be pretty enjoyable! But it could also be a day where I intentionally experience and invite others to experience community and love and growth, and where we spend time doing something we enjoy for no other reason than we enjoy doing it. Neither of those things are bad. But one of those seems to have more weight to it. One of those sort of turns into a list of things to do, a quota to meet. The other seems to breath life. I think that’s because one of those is a good thing, and the other is a God thing.

Externally, there is no difference. For most of us, most of what we do has to be done. We have to go to work. We have to take care of our children. We have to eat dinner. And, if we want to stay sane, we have to find some things to do in our week that we enjoy. However, there’s a way to do those same things in a way that brings the weightiness of God to it.

As we realize that God created us to work (remember, even Adam and Eve had a job tending the garden!), created us to have and raise children, created us to eat and drink, and created us to enjoy creation, it brings freedom that these things aren’t just unfortunate boxes to check along the way to making a productive, worthwhile day. They’re actually a bunch of moments where we can intentionally engage with the way God intended the world to be, and try to make those moments look more like they were originally intended to look.

Work can be an opportunity to tend to the created world and make it better for everybody who lives in it. Raising children can be a time to build relationships and grow in love, as well as raising what will ultimately become the people who will be running the world! Eating and drinking can be a time for thankfulness for provision, a time for laughter and fun, a time for conversation and community, a time for sharing. I love the fact that God commanded festivals in the Old Testament. I think God likes when people come together and just have a good time!

So, in the day-to-day, how can we bring this weightiness to each moment we find ourselves in? How can we show the world around us the glory of God?

Being Used By God

As I was reading my Bible the other night, this scripture stood out to me:

2 Timothy 2:20-22

Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver bowls, but also those of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. So if anyone purifies himself from anything dishonorable, he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.

Flee from youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

It stood out to me for two reasons. The first reason is that I have been praying about what I need to do, what steps I need to take, to continue to become the person God has called me to be, and the second reason is that I believe a lot of people feel stuck where they are and aren’t sure about how to move forward, and it seems to me like these verses speak to both of these issues.

Becoming Who God Has Called Me To Be

When I write, I generally say “we” a lot, but I’m not going to do that right now. I’m going to speak on this more personally, because right now it is a personal issue to me, but I think this is a general truth that can be applied to your personal situation as well.

I believe God has put a specific calling on my life. I believe He’s done so for each of us. There’s a reason we all have gifts and talents and unique abilities and mindsets. There’s a reason 10 people can look at the same situation and interpret it 10 different ways. We are all unique, and God has unique purpose for us. With that in mind, I don’t want to miss out on what God has called me to. If He designed me specifically for something, gave me passions and desires and hopes and dreams that all fit into the place where I can be used by Him and where I can really come alive, that’s a place I want to reach!

However, I think there is also a general calling on each of our lives, and if we can’t do the general part, I don’t know if we’ll ever really get to the specific part.

The verse says that some will be for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Dishonorable there can actually be translated “ordinary,” so don’t think it’s saying that God wants to use you in a way that is bad for you. He’s a good God, not a bad one. But, the verse continues to say that the onus is actually on you and I for whether or not we can be used for honorable or ordinary use by the Master. In order to be used for the honorable, we have to separate ourselves from the dishonorable.

If I want to become the person God has called me to be, if I want to step into the place He really designed me for, it means stepping out of the place I designed for myself. It means stepping out of sin and selfishness and greed and all those things that so easily take over if we are left to our own devices.

God wants to use me. He wants to use you. But to really step into that sweet spot that He designed us for, it means we’re going to have to quit pursuing the things that filled our minds before we knew Him, and we’re going to have to pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace – and we’re going to have to pursue those things in community with others who are also pursuing those things.

Getting Unstuck

There have been times in my life where I’ve felt really stuck. I’ve had a lot of conversations with others who have felt the same. And I’ve known some who just resign to the idea that the place they’re in is the place they’re meant to be – usually because they think it’s punishment for the way they’ve lived in the past.

I wonder if sometimes being stuck isn’t just a symptom of living in a way where we have designated ourselves for ordinary use, but feeling the call on the inside that we were meant for more. I wonder if it isn’t the subconscious (or maybe the spiritual) recognition that God has so much more for us, He has called us to do and be so much more, but we’re keeping Him out by putting distance between Him and us with the way we’re spending our time and energy and by the things we’re choosing to pursue.

Again, I think the above verses challenge us with the next step. It may be time to have an honest self-examination and see if there’s something we’re allowing to have a place in our lives that needs to go. It could be some sin we’re holding on to. It could be something that in and of itself is innocent, but that we’ve given too much priority. It could be knowing that God is saying, “Go there, do that,” but we’re too timid or unsure or afraid to step out in faith when we don’t see the end of the road yet. But the verses challenge us to separate ourselves from the dishonorable, purify ourselves, and then we are preparing for honorable use by the Master.

Is Jesus Both Lord and Savior?

Lord and Savior

Have you ever heard Jesus referred to as “Lord and Savior”? This double title isn’t just creative flare. These titles describe different roles Jesus plays in our lives. The roles are not the same, but they are absolutely intertwined, and I’ve been thinking about how to submit my life and allow Jesus to be both Lord and Savior.

So, let’s define the titles. I’ll start with Savior, because that’s usually what you see on billboards and bumper stickers – “Jesus Saves.” It’s also usually the case that Jesus as seen as Savior before He’s seen as Lord in our lives.

Savior

Jesus is referred to as Savior because, as Christians, we believe that Jesus has literally saved our souls. We believe that God created the world and all creation to exist in harmony with Him, and we believe that humanity rebelled against him. When we see the brokenness of the world, both in nature and in civilization, we believe that it is a result of humanity abandoning God’s way and choosing our own way instead. In Genesis, scripture says that God called man to rule over the earth. When we decided to rule by our own rules instead of by God’s, we corrupted creation as well as ourselves. And the punishment we deserve for this corruption is death. But God is merciful.

Instead of giving humanity what it deserved, God spared them in Genesis after the rebellion. And we believe that in Christ, God has poured out the punishment of death that we deserved and He has begun to make right all that we have wronged. Jesus is Savior because we deserve death for our selfish living, for our sin, but He died instead so that we might learn to live a new way and, in time and with God’s help, make our world look the way God always intended it.

And that leads me to Jesus as Lord.

Lord

Jesus is referred to as Lord because His ultimate goal wasn’t just to save our souls. His ultimate mission wasn’t just to take the punishment we deserved and restore our relationship with God. His mission was also to restore us in our role as godly rulers over creation. We can’t be godly rulers over creation if we don’t rule the way God wants us to.

The rebellion of humanity in Genesis was us choosing our way instead of God’s way. Making Jesus Lord is us choosing God’s way instead of our own way. Salvation is the personal acknowledgment that you have participated in the rebellion against God, that you deserve death, and that Jesus has taken that place for you. Alongside that acknowledgment is the understanding that there is a way God wants us to live that is different than how we have been living. Making Jesus our Lord is the submission of our lives – of our preferences, of our finances, of the way we spend our free time, of the kinds of activities and entertainment we participate in, of every part of us – to God in order to make the world look more like the Heaven He intended and less like the Hell so many are experiencing now.

Godly Rulers

As we begin to examine our lives and see the parts of us that actually make the world worse, or maybe the parts of us that just aren’t making it any better, it begs the question, “What would God have me do with this?”

In the creation story in Genesis, God looked at all that He had made and said it was good. When we make Jesus Lord, we are recognizing that God charged humanity with ruling over this good creation and we failed, but now we want to be the tools He uses to restore it.

Jesus came as our Savior in order that we might stop the selfish pursuits that made the world the dark place we see today and instead make Him Lord, take on the charge of Genesis to rule over His creation, and restore the broken world around us to the goodness that God always intended for it.

Submission

As I said in the opening, God as Savior and as Lord are intertwined, and it’s important that we submit our lives and allow Him to be both. First, we admit that we have participated in the rebellion against God. We have played an active role in making our world a worse place, and Jesus has taken the punishment we deserve for that. Then, we choose to live God’s way instead of our own in order to restore His creation to the glory He originally intended for it. I may have my personal preference, but to make God Lord means to submit my preference and choose to live in line with His instead.

So, where do we find His preference? If we are to submit to God’s way and choose His preference over our own, how do we do that?

We find it in Scripture. God has revealed His character and His will to us in Scripture. Will we find things that are hard to swallow, things that challenge the way we live and the way we believe the world operates? Absolutely. I use the word “submit” for a reason. But there’s no doubt as we look around the world now that we are obviously missing something. Maybe linking up with the God who created this world and living how He intended us to live in it will make the kind of difference we’re all looking for.

Emotion Versus Foundation

Locker Room Pep Talks

If you’ve ever played a sport or watched a sports movie, you’ve seen the locker room pep talk. The coach riles the team up, gives them an encouraging speech, then they go out and win the game! That’s how it works, right?

I had two experiences of the locker room pep talk while I was in school sports. The first was when I wrestled in middle school. We were at the final tournament of the season and we were in a position where the next matches would either put our school in the running for winning the whole thing, or they would knock us out. In the locker room, Coach reminded us of the work we put in during the season, and he told us we weren’t living up to our potential on the mat, but it was in our hands to change it and we had the ability to do so. We went out, won our matches, and took first place as a school in the tournament with several first place wins in individual weight classes. It was the perfect movie ending.

The second experience was when I played soccer in high school. My senior year we were playing away at one of the best schools in our area. It was their senior night, where all the parents come out on the field with their graduating seniors beforehand and families are there to watch, so we knew the stands would be full and the pressure would be on. Before the game, the team captains got the team pumped up! We screamed out chants from our school pep-rallies and we said this was going to be the time the underdogs came out and won it. The atmosphere in the locker room was electric, and every guy was hyped for the game. We went out and took the field, and we lost 0-6. We got completely annihilated.

What was the difference between the first experience and the second? Why did we win the first time and get crushed the second time?

Emotion Versus Foundation

The difference was that in the first scenario, my team actually had the understanding and the ability to go out and win. We trained well, we had the skill, and we had won many matches against these same schools during the season. We just needed to put action to the foundation we already built. In the second scenario we had none of that. We were less skilled, many on our team lacked some of the most fundamental soccer skills, and we had only won one game the entire season. In both instances we used emotion to set the stage for what we wanted to happen, but in only one instance did we have a solid foundation upon which that emotion could be built. And without that foundation, the emotion doesn’t actually get you anywhere.

I’ve found that sometimes we can be the same way in our faith. We can go to a good worship service, a good conference, or a good camp and get really excited about God. Instead of being at halftime and hearing a speech about winning, we’re in a worship setting and we’re hearing that God wants to get us out of that abusive relationship, or that He wants to free us of that addiction, or He wants to prosper us. We get excited! We can get out of this tight spot and walk into victory! But, just like with my soccer game, that emotion can come crumbling down when there’s no foundation underneath it.

When we take any step in faith – when we try to obey God and leave that relationship, or check into rehab, or steward our finances well, for instance – there will always be opposition. People will talk, or maybe try worse than talking. Our brains and bodies will rebel. There will be plenty of opportunity to get off track. Life isn’t easy, and living life in line with God’s standard definitely isn’t easy when we’re living alongside people who think God’s standard is absolute nonsense. If our decision to take that step of faith is based solely on emotion, the moment that good emotion fades we’re going to be stuck in a tough place. And – spoiler alert – the good emotion doesn’t usually stick around when you’re facing opposition from your friends, from yourself, and from the culture around you.

Emotion isn’t bad, but it can’t be the foundation. There has to be something more.

So, What Is The Foundation?

The foundation has to be an active relationship with God. We have to be grounded in Scripture, we have to be grounded in prayer, and we have to be grounded in community with Jesus followers who have our best interest in mind.

Scripture:

Scripture is God’s revelation to us of His character and of His general will. We see in scripture the lengths He goes to for our salvation and for our betterment. We see that He won’t give up on us. We see that He expects obedience from us as well. We see that to love Him means to keep His commands. Scripture teaches us and guides us. When hype goes stale, the foundation of Scripture reminds us who God is, what He says about us, and what He expects from us.

Prayer:

Prayer is our communion with God. It is a time for us to pour out our thoughts and concerns, a time for us to make requests and intercessions, and a time for us to receive specific revelation from God. The Bible can’t tell you which company to take the job with, which school to go to, or whether or not to date that person. God can. When the excitement about a new step or a new direction fades into uncertainty, prayer can bring clarity, assurance, and wisdom.

Community:

God never intended us to live alone. Adam was incomplete without Eve. In the garden of Gethsemane, even Jesus sought solace in the company of friends and was dismayed when they left him to carry his load alone. When the emotional high gives way to uncertainty, community provides you with Godly counsel, friends who will pray for you, people with experience who can give you wisdom, friends who will celebrate your victories and share the load in your defeats.

I am not against emotions. I’m not against getting excited or getting hyped up. God gave us emotions, and they’re incredible. But faith won’t last if it’s built on nothing but excitement. Eventually life will throw something at you that isn’t very exciting, and you’re going to need something that can be strong when everything else in life is crumbling. God is that strong. So let’s build our foundation on Him.

Is Self Love scriptural?

Self Love

“Self love” is a buzz phrase in our culture right now. You can find more constructive articles and information, like this one, which center around the idea that it isn’t actually constructive to beat ourselves up and harshly judge ourselves. Instead, we should ask ourselves how we would treat a loved one if they were in our shoes, and then we should treat ourselves the same way. There’s a chapter dedicated to this idea in the international best-seller 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Dr. Jordan Peterson, titled, “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.”

You can also scroll through your Facebook feed and see where this idea has been taken a little off the rails. “Self love,” for some, has changed from an internal realization that none of us are perfect, we are all on a journey, and that’s okay, to an acceptance and active allowance of the less-than-ideal in our lives. What started as a movement to encourage individuals that we are all growing, that we should acknowledge our feelings and not bury them, and that we should love ourselves despite our shortcomings as we try to overcome and become better people has, for some, turned into the idea that we don’t have to change because we are okay just how we are. What started as a healthy way to silence our anxiety and not fall victim to the voices (or perceived voices) of others has, for some, turned into a philosophy where nobody can tell you what’s good for you, because only you know what’s good for you.

For some, self love has actually changed to a form of self indulgence.

Come As You Are

You can see where this mentality has also taken hold in Christianity. You see churches with slogans like, “Come as you are,” or, “No perfect people allowed.”

Again, I think this is actually, at its foundation, a good thing. There’s a recognition that none of us are perfect, that we are all fallen (Romans 3:23). There’s a recognition that we are all on a journey of faith where we are learning and growing, and sometimes failing.

I also think we don’t have to look far to see where this has been taken off the rails. “Come as you are,” for some, has changed from the idea that God loves you just as you are to the idea that there’s no call on your life to change.

What Does The Bible Say?

So, what should we do? Should we dump the “Self love” rhetoric? Should we denounce the “Come as you are” philosophy?

I don’t really think so. For starters, scripture says that Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). There’s kind of an inherent idea in that which says that God knows we are fallen yet loves us anyways. Christianity isn’t a religion where you get your act together and earn your way to God. It is a belief that God made a way for us to come to Him because we could never earn it anyways. We can, actually, come as we are.

The apostle Paul also reveals that there is a journey involved. In Romans 7 there’s a solid chunk where he talks about his own inability to do what he wants to do, and his tendency to do those things (he actually calls them evil things) he doesn’t want to do. So, if you’ve ever been in a place where you feel like you should be doing better, it isn’t just you. We’ve all been there. Even the author of the majority of the New Testament. (Does this sound like “Self Love” yet?)

However, Paul also tells us in Romans 6 that we have no excuse to stay as we are. If we live with Christ, we cannot continue to live in sin. As a Christian, we can understand that God loves us despite our imperfection, that Christ died for us even though God knew we were steeped in sin and living less than perfect lives, and that God’s love for us isn’t based on our  merit or how well we’re currently measuring up, but that He also loves us so much that he wants us at our best and this isn’t it. Scripture comes to mind that speaks of our being made new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) and the need for the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2). These indicate that there is a process happening, and we aren’t at the end of it. Scripture also comes to mind that says God is at work changing us (Philippians 1:6) and that we should also be active participants in becoming who He wants us to be (2 Peter 5:1-8).

Don’t Stay As You Are

I don’t believe the takeaway is that it’s wrong to love yourself. If you don’t love yourself, it’s going to be very hard to love others. If you don’t love yourself, I might even say that it’s hard to imagine you believe God loves you. God does love you. He created you as a unique contribution to a beautiful world, and there’s a role here that only you can fill.

The takeaway should be that loving yourself doesn’t just mean accepting yourself where you are now, but it also means striving to become all that you can be. If you are a Christian, you can take hope in the fact that God promises to be with you, and He is active in the process of stripping away the old you that doesn’t measure up and making you new.

I like to say it this way: Come as you are, but don’t stay as you are.

There is no other you on this planet. Nobody with your unique set of strengths and life experience and all the thought processes that go with those. So don’t sell yourself short by accepting the way you are right now as the way you will always be or the way you should always be. Be okay with not being at the finish line, but don’t stop running toward it. Don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect, but don’t accept the lie that you can’t or shouldn’t be better either.

“Therefore… let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1-2 HCSB).

You can’t love God without loving your neighbor

Something that sets Christianity apart, especially in the historical context where it emerged, is its insistence that our relationship with God is not just acted out by religious ritual, but that it’s actually acted out by how we live in relation to the people around us. The inadequacy of ritual sacrifice as a proof for our love of God was made apparent in the Old Testament, as well as the new.

Isaiah 1:11-17 (HCSB) shows us God’s heart on the matter:

“’What are all your sacrifices to Me?’
asks the Lord.
‘I have had enough of burnt offerings and rams
and the fat of well-fed cattle;
I have no desire for the blood of bulls,
lambs, or male goats.
When you come to appear before Me,
who requires this from you—
this trampling of My courts?
Stop bringing useless offerings.
Your incense is detestable to Me.
New Moons and Sabbaths,
and the calling of solemn assemblies—
I cannot stand iniquity with a festival.
I hate your New Moons and prescribed festivals.
They have become a burden to Me;
I am tired of putting up with them.
When you lift up your hands in prayer,
I will refuse to look at you;
even if you offer countless prayers,
I will not listen.
Your hands are covered with blood.

‘Wash yourselves. Cleanse yourselves.
Remove your evil deeds from My sight.
Stop doing evil.
Learn to do what is good.
Seek justice.
Correct the oppressor.
Defend the rights of the fatherless.
Plead the widow’s cause.'”

What’s interesting is that God has apparently grown tired of the religious rites that He actually prescribed. The Sabbath, for instance, is part of the 10 Commandments, the Mosaic Law that God gave on Mount Sinai. Why would He grow tired of something He actually put in place?

In Matthew 22: 37-40, Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all that we are – our heart, and soul, and that the second is like it: love our neighbors as ourselves. He says that all the law and the teaching of the prophets stand on these two things.

So, why would God grow tired of the rituals that He actually put in place? Maybe it’s because the rituals became devoid of their meaning. They grew to become neither an act of love for God nor an act of love for neighbor. They became religious necessity, self-righteous affirmation, a sort of magic to try to manipulate God, even a means by which the religious elite could dominate those they were supposed to be caring for.

God’s response is to tell His people that all the religious actions, the prayers, the sacrifices, they’re all garbage if we’re ignoring justice and oppression, if we’re ignoring the widow and the orphan. God is not just looking for empty ritual “worship.” If it is worship to love our neighbor, then it is blasphemy to say we love God and to ignore the needs of our neighbor. 1 John 4:20 (HCSB) says, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen.'”

God actually is interested in religious actions or “rituals,” even in modernity. He is interested in church attendance, He is interested in prayer, He is interested in worship. But He is not interested in those things if they are separated from caring for people. Jesus didn’t say, “Love God with your heart and soul, and love your neighbor if you have time.” The two go together. Love God and love your neighbor. And if you aren’t loving your neighbor, are you really loving God?

It’s a tough question. But it’s one we have to ask as Christians. “How am I loving the people around me?” A mentor once challenged me with the question, “If you received everything you ever prayed for, how many people besides you would be impacted?” That’s a great question to ask yourself!

How can you build relationships with people? Whose needs can you meet? It could be as simple as getting a group of people together for games on a weekly basis, or maybe to read through a good book together. It could be joining a small group at church, or maybe even leading one. It could be volunteering at church or at a local shelter or food bank or some other organization. Loving and serving people can take all kinds of different forms, but regardless of what it looks like, it’s an essential part of Christianity. The goal isn’t just checking the box that says, “I interacted with people,” but it’s intentionally building relationships with people, loving them the way God loves them, and pulling them into the kind of Heaven-on-Earth God really wants them to experience — a world where they are cared for, where they are heard instead of just talked at, where they genuinely know that they are loved by their friends and by their God.

Our interaction with the people around us, with the world around us, is not separate from our faith. It is an indicator of our faith. If all that we take part in only promotes ourselves, we don’t worship God, we worship ourselves. I don’t say this as some paragon of faith, as the epitome of loving one’s neighbor. I say this because it’s a challenge I’m confronting in my own life, and one I think every Christian should confront. And I hope that as I intentionally move toward living a life defined by loving the people around me, I can bring some others along with me.

Self-Control

Last week, I had the opportunity to work at a church camp for high schoolers. One of my close friends is the youth pastor of one of the youth groups that was present, and on the last night of camp he asked me to come to the cabin with his boys and hang out. It turned out that this was a set up! He actually brought me in then told the boys to ask me any question about anything they learned at camp, questions about faith in general, questions about God, etc. He wanted them to get to ask somebody from a different background than him, who would still give good, faith-based answers. I enjoy that type of thing, so I went along with it.

One of the guys asked me a question that I think is one of those life-long questions a Christian has to deal with, so I thought it would be fun to talk about it here. I’m paraphrasing a little bit, but the question was basically, “What do you do when something happens and you want to react a certain way, but you know you should react a different way?” His example was that he is a basketball player, and in basketball (especially inner-city basketball with young men – he’s from Cleveland) there’s a lot of disrespectful trash talk that happens. How do you respond when you don’t want to let somebody disrespect you, and you may even want to fight, but you know that’s not what you’re supposed to do?

His example was specific, but I think the question can be generalized. What do you do when any given situation invites a certain reaction, maybe even a reaction that would be acceptable and understandable to onlookers, a reaction that would feel good to you, but you know that a different reaction would be more pleasing to God?

It’s a great question. If you really think about it, you probably run into some kind of situation like this almost daily!

My response was something like this: Make the intentional choice to do the Christ-like thing.

Galatians 5:22-23 lists self-control among the characteristics that show the fruit of the Spirit of God living in you. Sometimes we can let ourselves think that because we love God, and because He wants us to live a certain way in the world, that some supernatural force will somehow take away any desire to act outside of what God wants. That’s not quite how it works.

God doesn’t take away our natural urge to get angry, to want to retaliate, to act in a self-promoting way, or to act pridefully. It’s not up to God to take away our emotional instability and our tendency toward prideful conduct, it’s up to us to submit to His standard. It isn’t easy. Paul compares it to athletic training (1 Corinthians 9:25-27). An athlete becomes proficient by training continuously and repeatedly. It isn’t any different for us as Christians.

In order for us to live the way God wants us to live, it’s going to take continuous effort. When the situations arise in our lives where we have the option to respond in a Christ-like manner or in a manner less pleasing to God, we will have to intentionally choose to respond like Christ just like the athlete intentionally chooses to repeatedly perform the same exercise or drill to master a skill. And for us to build self-control, for us to really be disciplined and be able to consistently respond in a Christ-like manner to the situations that confront us in life, it will take intentional choice after intentional choice after intentional choice.

The fact that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit does not mean that the Spirit somehow miraculously deposits self-control in us and we go from absolute mess one day to the epitome of Christ-likeness the next. It does mean that as we ask God to lead us and become sensitive to that leading, as we use the wisdom He gives us, and through our repeated decisions to respond how Christ would respond in a given situation, we will begin to see self-control manifest in our lives. And the by-product of that self-control will be that in each of those instances where we respond like Christ, we will have brought a glimpse of Heaven in where it didn’t exist before.