A Matter of Perspective

            I have a couple friends who willingly engage in theological discussions with me. One is a Pastor with a Doctorate from Southern Seminary. The other is studying to be a Pastor and a Church Planter. Whereas I am just a guy who has too much time to think, so I am generally the first to come up with some lame brained idea. Then after my friends correct me with a verbal smack to the head, I will shrug my shoulders and give up. It is something I learned from John MacArthur (aka Johnny Mac) after I heard him utter the most liberating words in Theological study “I don’t know.”

            Recently we were ranging across the topic of sovereignty and will of God. We wound around to close the conversation with a universal assent that the point we had reached was too big for our little minds to understand. We had tried to figure it out. We were trying to understand the mind of God and determine how He works with our tiny little minds that can’t even figure out how to set the clock on the microwave. What a bunch of doofusses we are, trying to figure out God!

            However, during this conversation, I stumbled across something that helped me with my perspective. I can see His creation from the stars in the sky down to the few remaining hairs on my head - that what I can visibly observe. When I take advantage of modern technology, I can “see” out to the edge of our galaxy and down to the level of microbes. Yet, even with the benefit of our technology, what I can observe of God’s vast creation is only in part.

            Much like looking through a telescope limits my field of vision to a pretty narrow view, what I can observe of creation is only a pretty small piece. What else exists beyond the edge of our known galaxy? I don’t know. What else exists down underneath our skin? I don’t know that either. Why does God do what He does? I don’t know. Why are children born blind? I don’t know. How does God maintain His sovereignty while allowing us some manner of choice? I don’t know. Insert your own conundrum here and the answer might still be “I don’t know”. If Johnny Mac, Dr. Duncan, and Job can all admit that they don’t understand something about God, then maybe it is OK or the rest of us.

“Then Job answered the LORD and said, ‘I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me. I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” Job 43:1-6

Light the torches and lower the drawbridge...

            “I want to be part of a church that wants to be part of something.” These words came from my 17-year-old daughter, Grace. These words have been rattling around in my head since they were spoken. They weren’t said out of anger or spite, but frustration at the circumstances in which our family has found itself, not necessarily with our church, but with an unknown future. The words hold a double indictment for me, like a gentle one-two punch, if there is such a thing.

            The first is an indictment against me as one of the Elders of our church. Our church is only 5 years old. We began the church following the traditional model but over the course of the first three years, we transitioned to the family integrated model.

            It was very liberating from a leadership point of view. I was “allowed” to push decisions back down to the parents, where I believe they rightly belong. We didn’t have to recruit Sunday School teachers or Nursery workers. There were no big promotions for Vacation Bible School, no bring a friend to Sunday School Sundays, no requirement to conduct background checks on our teachers.

            I believe putting away these types of programs from our church was the right thing for us to do. I believe God led us to the point where we are today. I also believe I might have encouraged the church to throw some of the babies out with the bath water.

            As we wrestled with what it meant to be a family integrated church from a leadership standpoint, I found myself repeating the line “That is up to the fathers to decide for their family.” I loved that line, it was so much fun to say.

            “Should we do some kind of church mission project?”

                        “That is up to the fathers to decide for their family.”

            “Should we do some kind of servant evangelism?”

                        “That is up to the fathers to decide for their family.”

            “What should we do to engage with our community?

                        “That is up to the fathers to decide for their family.”

            What we ended up with was a group of families that might or might not be engaged with their culture. I say “might or might not” because I don’t know. I had not only pushed the decision off to the fathers, but I had pushed any connection with their ideas and passions away also. In essence, we have become a church that is filled with families, but we are missing part of the mission. As a church, we have been so busy looking inward, we have forgotten what it looks like outside. We are a church full of busy people, but we are busy with each other and our own families.

            As a leader, that realization is disheartening. As a leader, I have failed to engage the other Elders to ignite their passions for winning souls, for counseling the broken, for caring for others, for visiting the widow and the orphan. If anything, I have poured buckets of cold water on the fires that once used to engulf them, simply by not encouraging them in their pursuit of God. It is one thing to say, “If that is what you want to do, then do it. If that is where you want to go, then go” and quite another to say “if that is what you want to do, how can I help? If that is where you want to go, let me go with you.”

            The second indictment is against me as the father and leader of my household. In embracing the ideas of family integrated church, I had allowed my own family to become disengaged with the world around us. As the father, it is my responsibility to teach my kids how to engage with the culture and community around them without compromising their faith.

            I had built a fortress around my household, which isn’t a bad thing, but I had nailed all of the windows shut, raised the drawbridge, shut the gate, and filled the moat with sharks that have lasers on their heads. Not only am I keeping the “world” out, but I am also keeping the poor and defenseless out. Where can they go if they cannot come to us for refuge? How can they learn the joy of the Gospel if they can’t get past the sharks?

            So where do we go from here? As an Elder I need to fan the flames of passion back to life, maybe even relight a few. I need to lead with conviction and passion for the whole of James 1:27, not just the safe part. I need to work with the other Elders to find common passions and goals for our church body to be engaged in as families. I need to pray, pray, pray, and pray some more.

            As a father I need to lower the drawbridge, open the gate and windows, and get rid of the sharks. I need to teach my family what the whole of James 1:27 means in daily life. I need to show them through action how to love those who are unlovely; how to be a refuge for those who are in need; how to be a father to the fatherless and a son to the widow. I need to pray, pray, pray, and pray some more.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27 (NIV) 

I don't know what to do with it...

When someone brings me a problem, I usually know what to do with it.

“Dad, my shoe keeps coming untied…”

“Dave, the dishwasher isn’t cleaning the dishes…”

“Dave, I tried to jump my bike from the pier to the barge and ended up in the river, I need some dry clothes…”

“LT. Truman, my wife just had a miscarriage…”

“Sorry LT., there are no replacement parts for that anywhere in the western hemisphere…”

“Mr. Truman, the bearings in this motor keep erupting into giant fireballs…”

            I think it is something I learned from my Dad who, without exaggeration, could fix pretty much anything. For example, I watched him fix the exhaust system on my VW bug with a pair of green bean cans, it was amazing. It is also partly that I am a guy, and we are made to be fixers of problems. And it is partly that I am an INTJ personality, which means I am pretty much right all the time, just ask my wife and daughter (don’t ask my boys because they are also INTJs and think they are right all the time too).

            It wasn’t until the last 5 years or so that I ran into problems that really stumped, and stunned me.

“There are an estimated 147 million orphans in the world.”

“Every 18 seconds, a child becomes an orphan…”

“2 children are sold every minute…buyers can order off the ‘menu’…”

“Half of the children who graduate out of foster care will be back in the judicial system by their 25th birthday…”

 “They don’t think people will want to adopt children with medical problems, so they send them away to ‘special’ orphanages…”

“Memphis has the highest infant mortality rate in the country…a child dies very 43 hours…”

“1 out of 10 orphans will kill themselves within 6 months of leaving the orphanage…”

 “When she leaves the orphanage at 16, she will be met at the gate by men who will then sell her into prostitution…she will most likely be dead before her 18th birthday…”

           

            I don’t know what to do with it. These problems overwhelm me. Each time I have to face them, even in writing this blog, it is like being punched in the gut. The magnitude of the problems seems too big. The cost of failure is enormous. Literally, the lives of innocent children are at stake. How is it possible to solve problems this big? Where do I start?

            What I am finding is that generally, I don’t have to ‘start’ solving these problems. Organizations like Change30, Together for Adoption, Two Hearts for Hope, Bethany Christian Services, Lifesong for Orphans, Mission Link International, Love146, and Red Page Ministries are moving and shaking to find and implement solutions to these problems that haunt me. Amazingly, this simplifies the problem for me. Now I just need to figure out how I can help them help others and together, maybe we can know what to do with it.

(P.S. This post is a perfect target for some feedback on what you do when faced with these giant problems, so fire away.)

Be careful with it, they break very easy...

This past week we went to see the Houston Astros play the Pittsburgh Pirates. Our youngest daughter, Zhenya, doesn’t know anything about baseball. She didn’t care that the Astros have firmly established their position in last place of their conference by winning only a third of their games, and even if they win every game for the rest of the season, they will still have a losing record. Nor did she care that the Pirates, although better than the Astros, were also only playing for pride. She didn’t seem to care that the amazing Minute Maid Stadium was only about a third of capacity. She wasn’t impressed by the full size locomotive or the retractable roof. She was just happy to be at a baseball game, calling it “the best night ever!”

Around the 5^th inning I noticed some veterans sitting in the handicapped section. They were there with helpingahero.org, an organization that builds specially equipped houses for injured vets. As a vet myself I wanted the kids to meet some people who are heroes, as well as get them past the shock of meeting someone who was missing a limb or had been severely burned. Maybe it sounds a little callous, but I imagine that is what I would want if I were missing an arm or leg.

I took Zhenya by the hand and walked her over to their seating area. She played shy at first, but was soon deeply engaged with them and their stories. Three young men in particular captured her attention. The first is a Marine who was missing an arm and both legs. She whispered to me “What happened to his arm?” looking at his prosthetic arm which ended in the classic hook design. I asked him if it was OK for her to ask. He replied “Of course” and engaged her with a huge smile. His wife also directed her attention to the little seven-year old that was standing by them. Zhenya asked and he replied “My arm was broken so badly that they had to take it off.”

Zhenya, in her open and unpretentious manner, asked the next question, “How did it get broken?”

“um…” he hesitated, not quite sure how to explain how an IED had blown up his Humvee while he was on patrol trying to kill Al-Queda soldiers in the heart of Afghanistan. “A bomb blew up the car I was riding in” he tried.

“OK” Zhenya replied. He looked at me, unsure if his response was appropriate. I smiled to reassure them, explaining how Zhenya takes everything at face value.

Zhenya then spied the two soldiers sitting across the way. They were both in wheelchairs, one a double amputee with a severely injured arm in a bandage, the other a triple amputee with only short stumps where his arm and legs used to be. We walked over and introduced ourselves. Zhenya, with her usual lack of reservation, asked them what happened. They also hesitated at the thought of explaining a land mine to a seven year old girl. “I stepped on a bad thing the boogey-man hid under the ground” one tried. Zhen looked puzzled and then he looked puzzled.

I interceded with “The bad guys put bombs under the ground and he accidentally stepped on one of them.” All of the puzzled looks went away as understanding took over. They found a child with whom they could talk to without being afraid of freaking her out, and she found some adults that engaged her and talked with her without fear. They showed her their stumps, scars, and tattoos. She told them about her dogs and her dream of getting a horse. They shared about their wives and their children. She shared about her brothers and sisters and her dad who used to be a sailor. At one point I looked down at Zhenya and found her sharing peanuts with one of the sponsors, all the while deeply engaged in her conversations with these men.

When I felt it was time for us to go, I told her to tell them “thank you” and “goodbye”. One of the soldiers gave her his ball cap. It was an Astros hat that had been autographed by several of the players before the game. “I really don’t like the Astros that much, would you like to have it?”

She reached out for it and took it gently in her hands. I looked down to see her eyes filled with tears. She tried to rub them away before anyone else noticed. I whispered to her, “Maybe you can trade him something for it.”

She took one of the ever present silly bands off of her wrist and presented it to him. He held out his hand, and she slipped it onto his wrist. “Be very careful with it,” she warned, “they break very easy.” She slipped the oversized hat onto her head and beamed.

These men, battle hardened and bloodied, had seen the worst of what the world has to offer, had engaged my little adopted Kazakh daughter and impressed her, not an easy task. Zhenya, through her unpretentious and unassuming nature, had managed to capture the attention of two soldiers by slipping past their outer defenses which were embodied by their injuries, and captured their hearts. Are there lessons to be pulled from this story? Absolutely, but I will leave that to you.

When I looked up at the scoreboard, the Astros had scored 5 runs to take a 6-3 lead. We hadn’t noticed.

“Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” Matt 18:4 ESV