The Endeavor

Isn’t it true that a thing is greater than the sum of it’s parts? Let me give you one of my favorite examples.

Chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies are comprised of multiple things, right? Some are good by themselves: eggs, chocolate chips, sugar, maybe even salt, if you’re into that kind of thing. Others are not so great by themselves: baking powder, vanilla extract, flour. But when they’re all together, a whole new reality is there. We don’t look at a chocolate chip cookie and think, “wow, look at that lump of eggs and flour and sugar and salt and all the rest.” The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

It’s funny to me that we take such things for granted with cookies, and a great many other things, but the buck stops when it comes to us. A story is more than words. It is the emotions and the adventure. It is the characters and their plight. The words are how the story is made, but they are not what the story really is. But you and I? We are just bags of protoplasm. We are just matter, atoms bouncing around and chemical reactions and electric synapses. Love and morality and religion and pain are just the chemical reactions occurring in some way that keeps our hearts beating just a little bit longer and fulfills some inherent drive to survive. The parts most definitely do not make something bigger.

I am not the most educated person. Perhaps if I were I could think of a better analogy than a cookie or a story. But it really is amazing to me that this is a pervasive worldview in our culture right now. Sure, we experience emotion, we experience romance, we experience what we perceive as right and wrong, but those experiences are meaningless. Emotion is the way our brain interprets the synapses going on inside itself. Romance is just the playing out of our desire to experience physical pleasure and pass on our genes. Right and wrong are just words we use to encourage or discourage certain behaviors that either promote our chance at survival or put that chance at risk, and they are most certainly relative and definitively mutable. To read anymore into it is to deny science its due and to engage in mystical delusion.

I disagree. I believe that just as a story is more than the words that make it up, and just as a cookie is more than the ingredients that we bake into it, we are more than our physical components. What a thing is made of is not what that thing is.

I think Genesis brilliantly puts it that men are made of dust. Whether you believe in Genesis as a literal story of the creation of humankind, or as a kind of allegory or parable or poem that symbolizes how creation happened, I hope you can appreciate just how divine the description of man as dust really is.

We are made of this natural stuff. We are made of matter. But matter is not what we are. We have animalistic impulses. But animals are not what we are. Even as important as emotions and ethics are to the human experience, emotion and ethics are not what we are. All these things compile on each other and become something greater. And just as I believe Genesis brilliantly states that we are made of dust, I think it brilliantly makes it plain that we were not what we are now until the breath of God came into us.

I think we sell ourselves short when we settle for thinking of ourselves as just matter and impulse. I think it’s a cop out. We would rather say it’s an acceptable part of our nature to engage in sexual pleasure often and with as many people as we want as opposed to admitting that this same philosophy on sexual pleasure is a huge part of the broken state of our families, which in turn is a part of the broken state of our children, which is why we have kids unable to cope with the world who end their own lives for lack of seeing a way out of the darkness they’re experiencing. We would rather give in to impulse than realize that we are more than the sum of our parts, and that to be human means not to be animal, and that when we choose to act more like animals, we lose a part of our humanity. Sexuality isn’t the only relevant point of discussion, but I believe it’s one of the most pervasive and perverted points.

Ultimately, I believe we have a responsibility to each other. We have a responsibility to bring out the best in each other. We have a responsibility to make the world a better place for the generations coming after us. This responsibility is unmet when we belittle what we really are. We can’t teach our children to be good without teaching our children that there is such a thing as Goodness. We can’t teach our children to love without teaching them that there is such a thing as Love. We can’t teach our children to take care of their neighbors and at the same time teach them that they only need to look out for themselves. And we can’t teach the reality of these things without the understanding that we are not just animals, we are not just the pieces and parts that make us up, and that there is God-breathed spirit inside of us, and that spirit was designed to live a certain way. God breathed life into us, and that is what made us human. And in that same intimate closeness with God we find the real fulfillment of who we are and how we are meant to live.

I am a Christian. In that statement lies the claim that I model my life after the life and teachings of Jesus. Those teachings tell me that I should love my neighbor as myself, that I should care for the poor, that I should give generously of my time and my financial resources, that I should not be greedy. Yet, when my neighbors (literal, not figurative) leave their broken vodka bottles in my yard for me to run over with the lawn mower, I am not moved by compassion, I’m moved by some other emotion. When I see the beggar, I often offer sideways glances instead of money or food or anything of value. I think far more about my next material venture than I think about what kind of blessing I can be to others with my finances. So, I am a Christian, but I am a sinner.

This is the tension of the life of a Christian. There’s an old, Latin phrase that speaks to the truth of this situation. Simul justus et peculator, which means “simultaneously justified and sinner.”

I believe that all Christians feel the tension of this. They know that they ought to do one thing, and they hate that they find themselves falling short. They know the character they should have, and they feel shame for not having it. They know what God has required of us, and they know that they have not met the requirements.

While some Christians feel the tension of this and it drives them to gratitude for grace, others feel the tension of this and fall into disillusion. They begin to think that they must not really be a Christian, they must not really be “saved.” If they were, so they think, they wouldn’t have these problems! They wouldn’t fall into the same old sins!

I agree and disagree with the sentiment.

Here’s why I disagree. The term “justified” means something very specific in Christianity. To be justified means to have the guilt of your sin removed and to be made righteous through Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Jesus died for you, you have received Jesus’ grace, and so you are justified. What does that mean? That means that even though your sin is real, even though my sin is real, if we really believe that Jesus died on the cross for sinners, that means we really believe that it is through His death that we are right with God, not by our living up to the standard. We can be simul justus et pecattor because Jesus died for us knowing that we were imperfect. His salvation is ours even though we fall short. We rest in His perfection, not our own. That is why it’s called grace.

Here’s why I agree with the sentiment. If we are saved, if we have decided to follow Jesus, our lives should change. God accepts us as we are, but He doesn’t want us to stay as we are. Part of the salvation we have through Jesus isn’t just the salvation of our souls from the punishment of sin, but it’s the salvation of our whole person. God wants to restore us completely. He wants to take us from death to life, and that means that the parts of us that fall short of His standard are supposed to die, and we are supposed to be made more and more in His image.

This sounds very lofty, but it’s really not. Just ask the ex-drug-addict. Just ask the person who used to be so controlled by their anger that they couldn’t get close to anybody. Just ask the person who used to be a pathological liar. Ask a close friend who is a Christian what ways their life has changed since they started following Christ. As we begin to follow Christ, those old things do die away, and we really do begin to take on new characteristics, a new identity.

The third chapter of Colossians talks all about the new life with Christ, but I love verses 12-15 specifically:

Therefore, God’s chosen ones, holy and loved, put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, accepting one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. Above all, put on love — the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of the Messiah, to which you were also called in one body, control your hearts. Be thankful.(sourced from Biblegateway.com)

I love these verses because I believe all those words that were used are the words we’re all seeking in our lives, and they’re the words we all seem to be missing when we’re apart from God. Compassion. Kindness. Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Acceptance. Forgiveness. Love. Unity. Peace. Thankfulness.

If you are a Christian, think about your life before. Would you describe it as peaceful, or full of drama? Would you define it as full of love, or full of bitterness? Would you describe your relationships with others as unified, or divided? How often were you thankful for the situations you found yourself in? If you are not a Christian, take an inventory of those things now. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a change?

When we come in contact with Christ and begin to follow Him, and when we submit to His word and allow Him to start changing things in us, we begin to have these things in our lives. That’s how He intended it! That’s how He wants it!

But, to bring it back around, I think we have to be sober about it. We have to realize that it is a process. Justification is not the same thing as sanctification. We stand right with God the moment we are saved. We do not live right the moment we are saved. We truly are simultaneously justified and sinner. It’s okay to recognize that. And it’s okay to live in that tension, because we really should want to change. But understand that God knows us, and he isn’t up there waiting for you to mess up so He can kick you out. He’s up there pulling for you because He believed in you so much that He sent Jesus to take the punishment for your sins.

I know this post was a little long, and a little more serious than most have been. I hope you stuck with it, and I hope you came to the end being encouraged to stick with it and encouraged to allow God to move in your life and change you. And if you’re somebody who struggles with the fact that you know you should be better, read Psalm 103. Verse 14 says that He remembers we are dust. He knows we aren’t perfect. He loves us anyways. And His Word isn’t just to tell us how wrong we are, it’s to help us to really be right.

A few weeks ago I wrote about “Starbursts, M&Ms, and the Differences That Define Us,” where I celebrated our differences. I ended the blog with this quote:

You are you, and there is nobody else like you. Rest in the fact that God designed you to be you. Step up. Step out. Be different. Love every moment of it. And love all the amazing, beautiful, different, unique people around you the same way you hope they’ll love you.

If you haven’t read that blog yet, go give it a read. I still stand by everything I said in it! However, after I wrote that I had a friend message me and start talking to me about the flip side of the coin, and I also agree with what he said, so I want to talk about it as well.

The whole point of the original “Starbursts and M&Ms” post was to celebrate the fact that our differences are what make us who we are. We have different gifts and talents, different perspectives and outlooks, different likes and dislikes, different passions and disdains, and those things are what separate us from each other and give each of us our unique flavor. Those things should be celebrated, not things to take shame in.

The flip side of the coin is this: While we do have differences that should be celebrated, we also have incredible commonalities that we should find comfort and hope in as well!

Working in a church often gets me one of two reactions from people, but both are rooted in the same thing. The first reaction is that people don’t want to open up to me because they think I “have it all together.” They think that since I work in a church, that must mean my life is perfect, I’m the epitome of moral uprightness, and I would only be appalled if they opened up to me about some of the things going on in their life or some of the thoughts rolling around in their head. The second reaction is that people do open up, and they are often ashamed of themselves — though, they may use different words.

Both of these reactions stem from the same thing: we have a tendency to glamorize the people around us and demonize ourselves. When we see somebody in a place that would normally be considered successful, we immediately assume they have things in their life prioritized and together and all the loose ends tied up. When we see somebody in church in their Sunday best, we tend to carry that image to the fullest extent, assuming that their Sunday best is their everyday normal. And when we fail to live up to the self-imposed standard, we crush ourselves. We point out every mistake, every shortcoming, every moment of weakness, and we compare our every day weaknesses to our misguided view of everybody else’s success — a success that doesn’t really exist.

That is the flip side of the coin. Yes, our differences should be celebrated, but we should also realize that we all have our humanity in common. We all deal with brokenness. We all deal with insecurities. When you look at somebody who seems to have it all together, there’s a very solid chance they don’t. They’re looking at somebody else the same exact way, wishing they could do better, just like you.

So, what does this mean? On a practical level, what can you do with this? Well, for one, stop looking at yourself as if you’re somehow inferior because you have bad days (or bad weeks, or bad months). A person’s social media image isn’t their real every day life, so stop comparing your life to their Instagram. This is real life, and those of us who live in it know that life gets hard.

That leads me to the second thing we can do, which is to be there for people when they’re in those tough seasons. When you’re in a season of doubt or insecurity or whatever kind of brokenness you may experience, what do you need in that time? you need somebody to be there for you! You need somebody to listen to you, to give you a shoulder to cry on, to urge you to keep pushing through, to give you some advice or a helping hand. Be that same person for others! Be the confidant you wish you had.

Finally, you can allow yourself to open up to others. Realize that because we all go through hardship, we can all generally relate when we have a friend going through hardship. I’m not saying you should incessantly harp on the negative and never come to a place where you’re ready to get help, get up, and move on. If you always complain and never position yourself for growth, people will stop listening pretty quickly. However, you can’t let insecurity stop you from opening up to people when you have a genuine desire to get better. Your fear of their disapproval is often just that — fear. A good friend will be able to sympathize more than you realize. Why? Because they’ve been there too. We all have.

I hope this helps somebody out. If so, let me know! I would love to hear your story. And I’d like to thank my friend Jason for prompting me to think about the flip side of the coin.

My kids love the zoo. Before they started school, their grandma would get a membership every year and take them weekly, sometimes more, while she babysat them when my wife and I were at work. Because of this, they have a sort of routine down for zoo day. They always ride the little train, go down the otter slide, go on the carousel, and they know every fun little stop and where every animal is. I remember a few years ago when my son, Asher, was three years old and he got sick while we were at the zoo. He started getting a temperature and he just wasn’t acting himself. He wouldn’t look much at the animal exhibits. When we would get to something like the otter slide, he would hop out of his stroller and go play, but there wasn’t the same zeal and fun and laughter that normally accompanies it. He wanted to have fun and do all the things he loved. His spirit was willing. But he was sick. His flesh was weak.

Doesn’t this picture hit home for many of us? We set goals that we want to accomplish. We have habits that we want to break. We have a past that we want to stay in the past and a hope that we can push through it into our future. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a more devout Christian, a better neighbor, a more generous giver, a less cynical person. The spirit is willing.

But when it comes down to it, it’s hard to carve out the extra time for working out, for reading that book, for writing that book. It’s easier to buy the cigarettes, to stop at the bar on the way home, to erase the history after the google search is done. We may hate our past, but it’s like a well-worn, albeit tattered, pair of shoes — you know you should get something new, but these are so familiar and so comfortable. Forging a new path takes a lot of work, and being comfortable is… well… comfortable. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

So the question is this: If the flesh is weak, how do I strengthen it? I’m willing on the inside, but it’s just so hard to get going! How do I overcome the desires of comfort and familiarity? How do I get the zeal to push forward into what I know is right and leave behind the things I know are wrong? How do I steel my resolve? How do I strengthen my flesh?

We don’t. We can’t. The answer isn’t strengthening our flesh, the answer is killing it. Galatians 5:24 says that those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. The reason our flesh is weak is because it’s ours. The reason it’s so hard to do what we know is right is because what’s right is generally not self-serving, and we love to serve ourselves. The spirit is willing because it’s easy to recognize goodness for what it is. The flesh is weak because goodness is sacrificial.

When we kill our flesh, when we crucify its passions and desires, when we nail our greed and self-serving and sinful nature to the cross, it is a giving-over of our desires to God. When we hear this, our minds automatically think that means dashing our hopes and dreams and throwing out everything we’ve worked for in our lives. For some people, depending on what it is they have been working for, I guess that could be true. But more often than not, it really means a redemption of all the struggle and work.

God has a way of taking what’s dead and bringing it back to life in a more glorious way than it had ever been alive before. Jesus was a man, but he came back to life as much more than a man. When we crucify our flesh, our desires die in greed and self-seeking aspiration, but they come back to life in God as much more. The truth is that God created us with our strengths and weaknesses, and God created us with our gifts and talents. If you’ve been using your gifts and talents to get where you are, it isn’t God’s desire that you never use those gifts and talents again. But it is His desire that you use them for more than yourself.

As we start out a new year, it’s a time that many of us are making new goals and gearing up for what we hope is a bright future. It’s also a time that many of us are remorseful about missed opportunities or balls dropped in the past. And many are mourning brokenness and trying their hardest to not remain a victim of situations they had no control of and had no way to avoid over the last year. No matter where we are, we all have the option to stay there or to move forward. We have the option to be all about ourselves or all about the people around us. We can opt to further entrench ourselves into the unfulfilling lull of the desires we have grown to know and hate, or we can let them die and press forward into the things our souls cry out for.

The spirit is willing. Is the sacrifice worth it?

In case you missed it, yesterday was Christmas. I love Christmas time. I love spending extended, uninterrupted time with my kids while we’re all on break for the holiday. I love buying them presents and seeing them light up on Christmas morning. I love getting to sleep in and having no solid plans or pressing responsibilities. I love being able to choose between playing a game, reading a book, staying in, going out, inviting friends over, or answering invitations to friends’ homes. I know some people don’t have an extended break from work like I do, which is an honest shame. But I love that I do, and I take full advantage of it.

In the midst of the freedom and family fun that comes during Christmas break, I encountered a dilemma. Yesterday, while I was visiting family, my mom (also known as my biggest fan) asked me if I was going to post a blog because she always looks forward to them. It was Monday, the day I normally post new content, so it was a perfectly understandable question. And, to be honest, if I had prepared better ahead of time, I could have had a blog pre-written and ready to post Monday so I wouldn’t even have to think about it. But I didn’t. So, it was Monday, but it was also Christmas. Christmas is a day about family and celebration. I wanted to spend time with my kids and my wife and honor the holiday. So now I was faced with a decision: Do I write and post a blog, or do I skip it? Do I spend intentional time to a goal I committed to — posting a blog every Monday? Or do I spend intentional time with my family? For me, this dilemma had an easy answer. I’ll post the blog a day late.

This got me thinking though. How many similar decisions have I had to make that I made the other way? How many other times have I been faced with what should be an easy decision — wake up and accomplish a goal, or sleep in and try later; stay home and play with my kids, or go out on an impromptu night out with the guys — and I made the decision that didn’t build toward my ultimate goal. Yesterday I neglected my blog, but I honored my family. Sometimes I neglect my family or my spiritual life or my intellectual growth for something much less important.

I was recently texting a friend about reading a few books. He told me he needs to make more time for reading. I told him I was terrible at it until I set a goal and just held myself to it. Sometimes when I’m falling behind, I know that at night I’m not going to play xbox with friends, I’m going to read. I make decisions based on hitting that goal. I told him to do the same thing.

That’s also what I did with my blog yesterday. I made a decision that I was going to work toward the goal of being a good father and husband, and that I was going to put the blog aside to enable myself to do that. And that’s my proposed solution for the rest of it too. What do we do when we have a decision to make between two competing goals? When there are two good things that we can do, but one will take away from the other, what do we do? We choose the one that we believe is the most pressing, and be okay with doing the other one later.

I’m not great at this. I’m definitely still learning. I might come back in a month and say something completely different about the same subject matter. Maybe I’ll even say that the things we save for later may be an indication that we can cut them out altogether. For some things, that’s probably true. But my real point is that I don’t want to get to the end of my life and look back with regret because I spent so much time doing so many good things that I let the really important things slip through my fingers.

What is important to you? Work toward that goal. The rest? Be okay with it being a day late.

Do you have a favorite Starburst color? I’ll admit it: I’m pretty apathetic about what color I get in my little snack-sized Starburst two-packs. If I buy a big bag, I don’t pick through and find certain colors. I just eat the first one I pick up. I like them all. For some people, this mode of operation is heretical when it comes to Starburst. I have friends who will open that little two-pack and give the whole thing away because they were both pink. I have friends who will go through the entire bag, pick out their favorite colors, and give the rest away. A few weeks ago I actually ended up with a hardy handful of Starburst from a coworker who did this very thing.

Did you ever think about why this happens so much more with Starburst than it does with other candy, like M&Ms, for instance? You may have friends that say they love the green M&Ms, but they’re not picking the green out and throwing the rest away. Why? Because M&Ms may look different, but they all taste the same. Starburst colors are special because they all taste different. It’s the difference that makes it special. It’s the difference that makes it worth it.

Something I’ve noticed from people of all ages is that a lot of heartache comes from us trying to take an M&M approach to a Starburst life. We approach life like we should be essentially the same as everybody around us. We should be good at the same things. We should be bad at the same things. We should like the same things. We should dislike the same things. Sure, we might have some slight differences in the way we look, but everything besides the shell is monochromatic.

But like I said, it’s the difference that makes it special. It’s the difference that makes it worth it.

It’s the difference that makes you special. It’s the difference that makes you worth it.

What makes a funny person funny? It’s that the rest of us are boring! What makes the organized person organized? It’s that the rest of us can’t find our keys 6 out of 7 days a week! Why are we in awe when we hear somebody who sings spectacularly? Because when some people sing, babies cry! Why are we so captivated by amazing orators? Because we’ve all sat in a lecture or a speech that’s made us fall asleep! Our differences are what make us stand apart. Our differences are what make us unique. And the truth is, our differences are what makes the rest of the world need us.

I don’t need another me. I already have one. And the one I have is usually pretty underwhelming. But without my wife, I would be incomplete. Without my best friends, there would be something missing. Without my mentors, I wouldn’t have the same urgency to grow. Without the people I lead, I wouldn’t have the same urgency to remain consistent and true. I don’t need somebody else just like me. I need somebody just like you.

Eugene Peterson puts it amazingly in his paraphrase of Romans 12:4-6 in The Message:

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

You and I make up very unique parts of a body. Our differences define us. You stop trying to look like him, or sing like her, or draw like them, or speak like that. I’ll stop trying to play guitar like somebody else, and sing like somebody else, and write books like somebody, and lead like somebody else. Sure, take inspiration from amazing examples. That’s fine, and that’s important. But don’t change who God made you to be. If we want to live in fullness in the world we live in, we need to be okay with being our own unique flavor, and we need to appreciate the people around us for the unique contribution they bring to the table.

Don’t let the expectations and the confinements and the categories of other people define your identity. You are you, and there is nobody else like you. Rest in the fact that God designed you to be you. Step up. Step out. Be different. Love every moment of it. And love all the amazing, beautiful, different, unique people around you the same way you hope they’ll love you.