Learning To Live For Something Better

In a world that teaches pride in the guise of self-esteem, it's a difficult teaching to say that we aren't the most special person alive. But none of us are. Even more importantly, nobody is special enough or good enough to be right with God through their own strength, looks, money, or intelligence.

But what you are is loved. With all your faults. With all your problems. In the midst of your brokenness, you are loved.

In Japan, they have a practice called kintsugi:

"It's the art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer resin dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. As a philosophy it speaks to breakage and repair becoming part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise."

"It is the embracing of the flawed or imperfect. Japanese culture values marks of wear by the use of an object over time. This can be seen both as a rationale for keeping an object around even after it has broken, and as a justification of kintsugi itself, highlighting the cracks and repairs as simply an event in the life of an object rather than allowing its service to end at the time of its damage or breakage."

Your brokenness makes you uniquely you. Despite the flaws being things that we may wish that never happened, they are what makes us who we are. God is a lot like the Japanese mindset that values an object that is broken and fixed. He loves us despite us being broken. And He fixes us. 

Here's the thing with God's unconditional love. Being loved by God doesn't just apply to me. I'm not super special being the only one that is loved by God. Everyone is loved by God.

This is the heart of the gospel message. God loves you despite you being broken. He knew you would be broken and He still paid the price for you to be right with God. Yet He did the same for your neighbor. And He wants you to love your neighbor despite them being broken just like He loves you despite your brokenness. He knew we would all be unfaithful, yet He still came down to earth to show us how to live. This wasn't because of our greatness; this was because of His great love. This is the message we need to share with the world through both our words and action, all in love.

I find myself playing out of tune with God at times. I get distracted. Lose focus. Start worrying about things of this world rather than things of God, yet I am called, as are all of us, to be primarily spreaders of the love of God to others. That is our primary occupation whether we receive a paycheck through any other full-time occupation. No matter what our paying occupation may be, our primary occupation, if we claim to be Christians, is to spread God's love and bring about His will here on earth as it is in heaven.

The problem with the church today and the world around us is that many just claim to follow Jesus, yet they don't make following Jesus their life. This is ridiculous because we can't fool God. He knows whether we have given him our lives or not. He sees our heart.

After David had his affair with Bathsheba, he wrote a song. This is the David who God loved because David was a man chasing after God's heart. Yet David wasn't perfect. He made some serious mistakes. And having an affair with Bathsheba and having her husband killed was one of the worst. Yet this is what he said to God after facing the seriousness of his mistake.

You would not be pleased with sacrifices, or I would bring them.
If I brought you a burnt offering, you would not accept it.
The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit.
A broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 51:16-17 (NLT)

David knew what God wanted. God wanted his heart. All of him. His passion. His focus. His goals.

He wants the same from us. Yet we get distracted.

I get focused on this or that. I stop trying to love others, and I become self-absorbed. Maybe you find yourself doing that at times too. When we fail, we need to be like David. He turned right around and gave God his heart.

We start to forget that we are all broken vessels who have been put back together by God for use by Him. We begin, once again, to think that it is all about us. We deserve what we have. We deserve to be selfish with our blessings.

But it's never about us.

We can't forget that.

It's never about us.

Everything gets messed up when we start to think things are about us.

Our society teaches us to look out for ourselves first -- that our needs and wants are the most important things to be met. And we all know that in following Jesus and getting right with God, our lives will have to be surrendered from loving ourselves to loving God and loving others. Our life will no longer be about us. It will be about Jesus.

The most baffling thing is that at the end of the day, loving God and loving others is actually the most loving thing we can do for ourselves. In giving ourselves up, we will find true purpose. In emptying ourselves for others and allowing God to refill us, we will find true contentment. In denying ourselves and living for God's higher vision, we will find true meaning. If you don't believe me, try it this week. Take twenty dollars and spend it on someone that you would never spend it on. They may think you're weird, but they will appreciate the gift. And you will also appreciate the giving. And in that, you may just find God.

Secret Love and Dwindling Lights

But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:3-4)

I was in a conversation on Saturday night with a friend in which this passage was brought up as a reason that the church shouldn't be involved in corporate loving, i.e. loving people through the church with church funds. In their view, loving others should be done on an individual basis and in a completely private way. We were working through our thoughts, so I don't really know if that is the conclusion that he is going to end up at. However, I do think it is the conclusion that many Christians have ended up at.

This teaching of giving your alms in secret comes from Jesus in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, right after the section on loving your enemies and right before two other similar sections about praying and fasting in secret.

Right at the beginning of this same sermon, Jesus taught a principle that rubs differently:

You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven (Matt 5:14-16).

Despite popular thinking in the other direction, Jesus taught that we are to do our good works so that others may see them. There isn't any secret meaning to that teaching, no hidden message. It flat out says that our good works are supposed to be seen by others. So if you have been using "do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing" to not do loving actions, I think you are sadly mistaken.

So what was Jesus saying? How do we do our good works so that others may see them if we are supposed to keep our good works secret? It seems very consistent with the Old Testament prophets. Religious acts like prayer, fasting, and tithing are not to be done for show because God is not glorified by other people seeing someone doing religion acts. It brings no attention to God, just attention to the doer. So if you are a great tither, or a powerful person of prayer, or an incredible and dilligent faster - keep it up but keep that to yourself. It doesn't bring God any glory for you to share your spiritual prowess.

However, good works, by their very nature, involve other people. They can't be done without another person. But here is the key. The passage ends with the reason of why we do good works: "So that they may see your good works and give glory to God." We live a life of love so that God may be glorified. If we do loving actions so that the attention is drawn to us, then I would say the principle that was expressed in the alms section applies to us. The principle to not do the things of God for the attention of others would be broken. However, loving actions always involves others so we need to make sure that our hearts are in the right place. Getting hung up on doing loving actions in secret is often an excuse to not love and a hindrance to us loving effectively. Instead of being a place of rescue for the emotionally, spiritually, physically, and mentally wounded, we just become a church of pious, religious people.

There is no verse that teaches us to love people in secret so that our light doesn't shine. We need to love others so that people will see those acts of love and - this is the main point - give glory to our Father in heaven.

How Much Should We Give to our Local Church and other Ministries

Let us give till it hurts. Tithing (giving 10%) is a myth. We should give to the point in which we make financial sacrifices to give. C.S Lewis said, "I'm afraid biblical charity is more than merely giving away that which we could afford to do without anyway."

Proper giving for financially blessed Christians who live in nations that are prosperous is much greater than 10%. It would be impossible to put a number on what exactly is the right percentage for each person. Each individual must seek God's will for their life and give what they feel convicted to give, not what they feel comfortable giving.

We must always remain faithful in our giving. There is no legalistic point at which we can say, "Yes, I have given enough. The rest of my money is mine to use with as I like." All of our money is God's money.

We see in Scripture that it is those who give cheerfully and sacrificially that are held up as examples. The church in Macedonia is exalted in 2 Corinthians 8:1-7 because of their sacrificial giving. "They voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints."

Luke 21:1-4 shares the familiar story of the poor widow who gave sacrificially while the wealthy man gave his much larger gift. Giving out of our abundance is not as blessed as giving sacrificially.

Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” Luke 21:1-4 (ESV).

Let us give till it hurts.

When We Steal and The New Life of Helping Others

There is a great collection of stupid criminal stories at a legal forms site.

Investigating a purse snatching, detectives picked up  a man who fit the thief's description and drove him back to the scene. He  was told to exit the car and face the victim for an I.D. The suspect carefully eyed the victim, and blurted, "Yeah, that's the woman I robbed."

When we steal, what do we steal for?  Yes, I didn’t slip.  I meant “When we steal.”

Typically, we narrowly define the term "stealing" into one that we can legalistically adhere to.  We know that stealing is going into a store, taking a good, and leaving without paying for it.  We know it is breaking into someone’s house, stealing their computer, and not paying for it.  None of us struggle with stealing when we define it so narrowly.  But unfortunately, we live in and participate in a culture that has become very creative with stealing and has brought to a whole, new global level.  We're not like that dumb thief handed over his I.D.  We, as a group of people, send our military into nations so that we can buy oil cheaper.  We pilfer a poor nation’s natural resources, albeit in collaboration with their corrupt leadership, and use it to prosper and have more material goods.  We consume goods that were manufactured by people who were not paid a fair wag; people who live under a dictatorship that we support because they provide us with inexpensive goods.  It's almost like we don't think it is stealing if enough of us do it.  We are all thieves, living in a culture of thieves.  We’re the thieves of the world!

Paul wrote, “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).  This is delivered in the midst of the old self, new self analogy.  Paul states that the old self is the life of a thief.  The new self is a life of working hard so that we can share with anyone in need.

If we're honest with ourselves, deep down we think that we steal for a good reason.  You see, we have an idol to worship, and that idol is ourselves.  Our self’s temple, also known as a house, is a necessary idolic accessory in America.  And we will do nearly anything for our idol and its temple.  We save for homes, spend so much money on homes, work days off of from our job on our homes, and we don’t think a second thought about our indulgence in our homes.  It’s normal.  It’s the great American temple for our great self idol.  We tell ourselves that it is okay to invest our time and money in our home while those around us are in need.  We might even deceive ourselves even more and say that we are indulging in our home for others.

We spend so much time dreaming, acquiring money, and expending energy maintaining our dream house.  But I want to propose an alternative to overindulgence in our personal temples.  What if we spent the excess money we spend on our houses on furthering God’s kingdom?  What if we chose to live simpler and less extravagantly, maybe even live together, to save our resources to bring about God’s will in our community and around the world.  Are we willing to make changes in our lives in order to bring about the kingdom of God here on earth? 

The 1928 issue of The Rotarian shared a fascinating story.  William James was a professor of psychology and philosophy at the university of Harvard in the late part of the 1800s and the first decade of the 1900s.  He proposed, that “if a group of Eskimos were brought from the far north to New York harbor, they wouldn’t, in all probability, notice the many startling things that would be altogether new to them.  The students - especially the freshmen - failed to be convinced.  Years late the experiment was tried, and the Eskimos were oblivious of the magnificent bridges and towering skyscrapers.  Their attention was caught by, and their eyes riveted upon, a little boat, somewhat similar to the ones that they use during part of the year.”

The Eskimos were not interested in the amazing New York cityscape because they had no framework from which to compare it to.  We are similar to those Eskimos, but instead of being Eskimos in New York we are Christians in the Kingdom of God.  We fail to see what God really wants us to take notice of because it is difficult to look outside of our American cultural lenses that we have been raised with.  We fail to see the radical life he has called us to.  We justify our extravagant use of our money because we are more generous than those around us, but God doesn't want us to compare ourselves to the fellow imperfect people around us.  He wants us to compare ourselves to Jesus and His perfection.  We shouldn't pat ourselves on our back because we live slightly different and a little more loving than the people around us when God has actually called us to live completely different than the world. 

We are part of  a long line of people who have come before us that have made the same mistake.  The Jews, God's chosen people, committed it when they returned from exile in Babylon in 538 B.C.  You would think after spending nearly fifty years in exile, they would have figured out to put God first, but they returned from exile and immediately went back to their old ways of putting themselves above God.  It wasn't until 516, after Haggai rebuked them, that they eventually restored the temple.

Here's what Haggai said,

"Thus says the LORD of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD." Then the word of the LORD came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

 "Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors" (Haggai 1:2-11).

I think we would do well to heed that warning.  Let's learn to see the world the way God wants us to see the world, and learn to use our resource to love the people in need around us.  That's the new life we are called to.

Mother Teresa's Feet and Sacrificial Giving

An excerpt from Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (167-168).

There’s an old story from the desert fathers and mothers, people of deep faith who found it necessary to go into the desert to find God. They lived in little clusters of communities (much the way many of our communities now live, only our desert is the inner cities and abandoned places of the empire). Someone had brought one of the communities a bundle of grapes as a gift. That was quite a delicacy, maybe sort of like giving someone chocolate truffles today. They got so excited, and what happened next is fascinating. Rather than devour them all, they didn’t eat a single one. They passed them on to the next community to enjoy. And that community did the same thing. And eventually, those grapes made it through every community and back to the first community without being eaten. Everyone simply wanted the others to experience the joy of the gift. I’m not sure what ever ended up happening with those grapes. I think maybe they had a big party, or maybe they made some wine. But no doubt God was happy. One of the quotes on my wall reminds me of this daily: “The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away.”

Mother Teresa was one of those people who sacrificed great privilege because she encountered such great need. People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. Sometimes it’s like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery, like a beautiful wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never forget—her feet. Her feet were deformed. Each morning in Mass, I would stare at them. I wondered if she had contracted leprosy. But I wasn’t going to ask, of course. “Hey Mother, what’s wrong with your feet?” One day a sister said to us, “Have you noticed her feet?” We nodded, curious. She said, “Her feet are deformed because we get just enough donated shoes for everyone, and Mother does not want anyone to get stuck with the worst pair, so she digs through and finds them. And years of doing that have deformed her feet.” Years of loving her neighbor as herself deformed her feet.