the "with" life

Our current series at Westside King’s Church is called  The Baby, The Bathwater, and the Spiritual Life.  Through three focused messages, we are attempting to bring some clarity on what is and what is not essential Christian spirituality, especially in those areas where our thinking begins to get clouded and confused.

This past Sunday we talked about the idea of conversion.   We noted the story of Paul in Acts 9, perhaps the most famous account of Christian conversion in history.   But apart from the meaning of what Paul experienced in that transformative “Damascus road” moment, we also reflected on the larger telling of Paul’s story and how his life reflects to us the on-going importance of transformation and change.  We came to see that while conversion is sometimes experienced as an event or moment in time, it is much more accurately an event that becomes a process.  The truth is that our life with God is all of the following at the same time: a moment of transition, a life of process, and a hope for the future.  Conversion is often the way we talk about how we start this life with God, but conversion also needs to be considered through the lens of the long journey which follows.  But we should not miss the point of Paul’s story: that every one of us needs a significant re-orientation to a “with Jesus” life.

The word conversion simply refers to the reality of transformation, of change.  We can use the term in ordinary everyday ways, such as converting money from one currency to another, or of converting a power supply from alternating current to direct current.  The point is that something is changed into another version of itself.  The Scriptures tell us that this is not only possible, it is necessary.  You must be “born again”, said Jesus (John 3).

Try this for a thought experiment: the word “conversion” is made of two parts.  First, and most obviously, “version” connotes the particular form something takes, especially as it contrasts with other possible forms.   For instance, we might talk of two different versions of the same book, which means it is both different and the same at the same time (this is especially true of certain classics that are often reprinted).  The thing to note is that we can have the same thing in a different form.  Then, when we add the prefix “con” (which simply means “with”), the word takes on an added meaning something like this: the particular form something takes is deeply related to whatever it is in relationship “with”.  When we think more deeply about the word “conversion” we begin to see how real change takes place because of the influence of a third force (or person).  In other words, something or someone converts (changes, transforms) because of the influence of something or someone else.  It is not hard to see that the real essence of spiritual conversion is the possibility of becoming the version of yourself that is only realized by being “with” another.  And the idea of Christian spiritual conversion is the idea of what we become when we enter into the “with Jesus” life.

So here might be a definition of sorts: your spiritual conversion to Christ is the version of you that comes into being as you live with and in Jesus -- by his grace, in his power, according to his teaching, embracing the deepest change he calls us to.  Becoming a follower of Jesus does not deny the you that is you, but it opens up the possibility of becoming another version of you.  And this is simply because you live your life in the company of the One who remakes people by his overflowing life.  You become another version of yourself, not because of your own self-effort, but because of the ways life becomes different when it is lived “with” Jesus.

As always, the best way to understand this idea is to see it lived out in real human lives.  And if there is anything that is capable of genuine investigation, it is the reality of spiritual conversion in countless human lives.  Ask someone to tell you their story.  Look around for biographies of change.  Take time to think through whether or not Christian spiritual conversion actually happens.

The simple truth is that none of us becomes ourself by ourself.  We are made in the company of others -- families, friends, communities, teachers, and so on.  We become by being “with”.  And the deepest need of every one of us is to be remade by Jesus, remade into a transformed version of ourselves, the version that is born by being “with him” (see Mark 3:14).

We hope to see you this Sunday at 9:29 or 11:11 am.  We conclude The Baby, the Bathwater and the Spiritual Life series with a message about guidance.  Stay tuned for a Deep Dive Digital Conversation to follow shortly.

Magic?

This past Sunday we launched our spring series The Baby, The Bathwater, and the Spiritual Life. This is our attempt to bring some clarity to current thinking in Christian spirituality, especially as true practice tends to get immersed in other lesser things. In other words, we are asserting that there is a baby to embrace as well as bathwater to throw away. We are saying that we need to periodically establish which is which.

On Sunday we reviewed the story of Philip and Simon Magus in Acts 8. I would encourage you to read that text and to consider the clear delineation that emerges between a view of spirituality that wants to learn how to control God, and the essential Christian way. What becomes clear is that the message of Jesus which Philip brought to Samaria contrasts distinctly with the deeply magical thinking of Simon. This is seen in how Simon actually attempts to buy the power of the apostles for his own selfish agenda. Simon apparently loves power for its own sake. And as a result, the apostles condemn his thinking in the harshest of terms. Which should get us to thinking -- do we tend towards magical thinking in our life with God? Do we try to make this faith over into a system or technique instead of a deeply trusting relationship?

Magic is a very old thing, maybe one of the oldest things. Of course, there is the silly side of magic, our “Bewitched” fantasy -- that we could wrinkle our nose and clean up the house. But there is a much more serious side to magic, the idea that we can actually learn to control events, people, and objects. The word sorcery literally means the ability to control fate (sors being the old latin word for fate). The idea of magic is connected to one of our most fundamental human temptations, that we can use power to get what we want.

On my daily commute to work, I often hear an add for The Total Transformation System, a kind of coaching resource for parents who can’t get their kids to cooperate. The promises are amazing: “simple step-by-step techniques”, “how to stop any argument with your kid instantly”, “a word-by-word script to use”, “ten words to say”, “the technique that stops back talk”, and so it goes, a seeming sure-fire way to take control of out-of-control relationships. Now, I don’t don’t doubt that there may be pieces of wisdom in what is being offered here (and I may have just helped their business). But the idea that parenting needs a system, or that there is a technique to it (word for word scripts and the like), is deeply resonant with the culture we live in. How many times have you heard a personal change program referred to as a technology? Do we really believe that we can buy a system that will fix our life?

Instances like this are nothing less than magical thinking, that we can shape life through technique. And they reveal how much our culture thinks this way. The need as followers of Jesus, then, is for us to step back and ask ourselves whether or not we are prone to apply the concepts of magic to our concepts of Christian faith. In contrast with magic, an essential Christian spirituality learns the way of non-technique while, at the same time, gravitates towards what is more personal and relational. And all of this is based on what we are presented with in the Scripture: the infinite-personal God, who relates to us as Father, comes among us as the Son, dwells with us as the intimate Spirit, and calls us into the company of his people.

On a practical or formational level, one very good way learn the non-technical and non-magical way of our faith is to immerse ourselves daily in the Lord’s Prayer. This is our primer, the way we learn on a daily basis that God is not a problem to solve, nor a technique to master, nor a system to tweak: God is a Father to love, in the way of his Son, and by the power of his Spirit. Everything is personal here.

I have over-written the Lord’s prayer to show how this works:

God our Father

we honor all you are and don’t want to make you into a thing

we want what you want; educate our wants so that we might become more like you

provide us with what we need to live our normal earthly life as your children

forgive our missteps as we forgive the missteps of others (keep us in this grace life)

keep us from caving in to the unreality and illusion of evil

everything will eventually be seen in the light of your awesome character, Amen

I say the Lord’s prayer daily as part of my morning ritual. What I have been reminded of lately is that there is no consumerism or technique going on there -- it is all pure relational living. And that is good, because we make lousy gods, but we are perfectly fitted to be beloved children.

We continue this Sunday with lessons in authentic Biblical spirituality in our new series The Baby and Bathwater series. We hope to see you this Sunday at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

inside out life

This past Sunday we were privileged to have George Snyman of Hands at Work Africa as our guest at Westside King’s Church. Instead of trying to capture his talk in my own words, I would rather direct you to the podcast at wkc.org/community/sermons. For those of you not familiar with how to regularly access our weekend messages, you will find an instructional video there on how to subscribe to our podcasts via itunes. But back to George, or as his friends call him in Africa, brother George. To spend time listening to or being with George is to get much more than a download of words and interesting ideas. His words on Sunday were incisive and beautiful to be sure, but they also carried a power to change the way we actually live.

Monday morning I spent an hour with George at a local Starbucks (he likes his coffee black). He is the rarest of persons, both soft and sensitive in his demeanor, yet carrying a determination that challenges you. And then I remembered a metaphor that I think captures who George is: he is an endoskeleton rather than an exoskeleton -- on the outside he is soft and touchable flesh, while on the inside he is hard bones. What I mean is that George is both graciously loving and rigidly principled. And that is how a Jesus follower who is also a true human being should be; we maintain our Christian shape by what is deep inside of us, and not by any protective veneers. Being with George brought me to a moment of self-reflection where I said to myself: “give up on trying to carry the impression of a tough outer shell; choose instead to define your shape by the hard bones of faith in Jesus.” Thanks, George for sharing your life with us (and with me).

Over the past few years we have been traveling through a two-fold transition in our community. Its two-foldness is seen in the fact that our transition is not merely an in-house event (Westside is going through changes) but is also, and at the same time, a cultural event (Westside is part of a culture going through changes). This two-fold transition (inside and out) is about the need to refocus on what is truly valuable, to drive ourselves into deeper and better questions, to follow the one who defines the way into the truest life. It is about the need to radically combine a truly gracious exterior with a truly principled core. It is about a life that comes into being from the inside out. Listen to these words of Jesus from John 12:24:

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.

How do I bring together endoskeletons and dying seeds? Perhaps in this way: that any spirituality that is worthy of Jesus and his way must be a spirituality that understands the power of an inside-out life. Seeds and endoskeletons both have that in common -- growth and strength come from deep within. The spirituality of Jesus can never be cosmetic, never defined by mere appearance. It is instead the life that grows from our deepest center, in the core of our being when we are touched by the life of God. But if that happens, if the life of God germinates on the inside of who we are, if the life of God creates in us the bones with which we can move purposefully into the world, there comes in time the surprise of a productively loving and engaged life. The spirituality of Jesus is one that is able to push past the tyranny of present appearance and, in the manner of a seed, become more than what it was.

For these next three Sundays we will be rehearsing a few of the lessons of authentic Biblical spirituality in our new series The Baby, The Bathwater and the Spiritual Life. We will be taking a look at what we see to be the essence of this life that Jesus calls us toward -- “the baby”. And at the same time, we will be as clear as we know how on what we think is the “bathwater” we need to discard. It should prove to be an interesting series, intended to help us towards the life that we really are looking for. We hope to see you this Sunday at 9:29 or 11:11 am. The coffee is always hot.

the city of joy

Our series, The Story of Stuff, concluded this past weekend with a consideration of this question: “what else is there?” Over these past three weeks, we have looked at some of the important questions which emerge from our culture of consumption, and have repeatedly asked whether or not this is, at heart, a deeply spiritual issue. We think it is, and we think that our Biblical faith has plenty to say to us about how we relate to what we make and own. This is not a small or marginal issue.

Let me suggest that the story of stuff will continue to remain our story unless we are able to find a better story, a story with a better and more glorious interpretation of what it means to live a human life. Right now in our culture, the story of stuff seems to be the best story there is. Inundated as we are in the constant messages of acquisition and the joy of new stuff, we find it hard to conceptualize anything different. Perhaps then, the problem is in our imagination. Perhaps the problem is that we are not able to see a different kind of life.

I picked up a little book from the discount shelves at chapters today. It is called The Book That Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them. Being a bookish person, this is the kind of title that grabs my attention. I want to know what other people read, especially those whose words I already value. I want to know the source and inspiration that shaped them; the who and what and how of their becoming. There is always a back-story, and it is helpful to know what it is. So with the story of stuff in mind, let me share with you one of the books that has had a lasting impact on me: Dominic Lapierre’s novel, The City of Joy (1985). Read the reviews at amazon.com and then go buy the book. But let me leave you with a small taste of it power to shift your attention away from your stuff.

This is a story of a place, Anand Nagar, a slum in the city of Calcutta, India. It is, in fact, one of the worst imaginable slums in a city quite overwhelmed by crippling poverty. And the irony of Anand Nagar is that its name means “city of joy”. The story follows the intersection of those who come to this place: an Indian peasant farmer who has to leave his land and moves to the city to become a rickshaw driver, a polish priest who lives in the slums in order to fulfil his calling, and an American doctor who comes to bring his healing arts but finds himself transformed in soul. From far away places come the people who crush themselves into the worst of conditions, make their life there, find love there, and ironically -- most startlingly to us who are defined by the story of stuff -- find joy there! For this is Lapierre’s very strange theme (strange to our ears), that in spite of the overwhelming poverty that these people experience, and the most imaginably horrible conditions, human beings are not defined by the things they surround themselves with. It is actually possibly for human beings to find joy in the worst of material conditions.

This theme is captured in the wedding celebration of two lepers, two people whose limbs are eaten away with infection, whose lives are apparently diminished by such a tragedy, but who are not the least diminished in their capacity for love, for celebration, and for the bonds of committed love. In Lapierre’s novel one begins to wake up to a life that is so much the richer when it is defined by such truths. But this does not mean that our entrance into this world as a reader is not one of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. At one point the American doctor can no longer bear his daily experience of Anand Nagar, and decides to escape for a few days into one of the luxurious hotels of that city. He has the financial resources to do so, and he seeks relief. But after a few days he finds himself inevitably drawn back to what he was previously trying to escape, back to the people he has come to deeply respect. He is being changed. In the heart of the novel, the polish priest says, "Bless you, Calcutta, for in your wretchedness you have given birth to saints." And then you hang your head for a moment of repentant prayer: can a culture defined by the story of stuff give birth to saints?

Lapierre’s City of Joy is a disturbing book, graphically filled with the sights and sounds -- and smells -- of some horrible conditions. But it is ultimately an uplifting book, because we realize that what makes us uniquely human is our ability to love, to find grace, and to become more than what we surround ourselves with. Anand Nagar, "The City of Joy", will set before you an alternate vision of possibility.

This Sunday we are privileged to welcome a special guest to Westside, George Snyman of Hands at Work Africa. We partner with the ministry George leads, giving of our money but also giving of our time. Over these past few years, several dozens of volunteers have served our African brothers and sisters in practically transformative ways. We can think of no more powerful way to exit the story of stuff than to spend time listening and being impacted by George Snyman as he shares his vision of African transformation. We hope to see you at 9:29 or 11:11 am. The coffee will be hot.