My sunshine…

Life is wonderful, isn’t it? Well, at least mine is at the moment. My apartment is filled with light and has a surprisingly good location, with a really nice landlord and a well-working heating system. Against all odds my health is steady due to some intense medication and like this wasn’t enough already, things in both my job and private life are going really well right now.

Everything seems to be alright somehow – a feeling I’m not really used to as there is always something going wrong. Except right now.

And therefore I could be seen running through this world lately with a big and maybe even extremely stupid smile on my face.

I’m having fun in life.

Oops, no…sorry…I’m a Christian. And as such I don’t have fun, but am being joyful. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

And “being joyful” here is commonly defined as being in a good mood and ready for joking all the time. All the time. 24-7-52. Or in other words: all the time.  

Oh yeah, we Christians are a joyous crowd…

Anyone but me.  And maybe you aren’t either.

Between you and me and the gatepost: my nature isn’t really what you’d call a sunny disposition. I ponder a lot, see the world a bit more pessimistic or at least more questioning than most others, worry more about things than I should and have spent most of my life on the rather seamy side of life. I know from personal experience that life isn’t always fun (oops, sorry…joyous) and can even hurt from time to time. There have been more days than one in my life when I was rather Chief Thundercloud than Little Miss Sunshine – and I am well aware that there will be more days like that. Even now, as everything seems to be going my way, there is this little thundercloud floating over my head and casting a almost invisible shadow onto my soul. I know life isn’t pink and fluffy.

And somehow it really feels awesomely good sometimes to cut myself off the rest of the world and to wallow in world weariness, melancholy and self-pity, supported by some nice depressive music coming out of my stereo.

That’s what I think.

Seriously.

 

And this is an attitude that is actually able to spoil the joy for some of my fellow Christians.

Because there aren’t few of them who believe that  my current and certainly temporary emotional high is the actual every-day mood for “real” Christians. In other words: “real” Christians are always cheerful, never depressed and never experience doubts, worries or fears, as they always “hand things over to the Lord” easily and smoothly “walk in the joy of the Lord”.

I really don’t want to sound cynical or judge people who think like that. But I still want to challenge their viewpoint. We usually forget way too fast that there are people around us whose feelings are completely different from ours. Accordingly, there aren’t only sanguine Christians but also those of us who didn’t get their rose-colored sunglasses.

Due to several reasons dealing with people with this pushy sunshine-attitude is quite difficult for me. And by the way: I am not the only one. I know from some of my friends who are also rather melancholic that they find reacting to this opinion appropriately quite difficult too. Maybe you are also one of us.

In my opinion this attitude that Christians must always be in a good mood, cracking jokes and grinning like a Cheshire cat is nonsense. To be more clear about it: I consider this a wrong and harmful theology which both keeps people from exploiting their whole potential and can even make people ill!

This may not be intentional but that doesn’t make things less severe.

Yes, we are called to hand our worries over to God (1Peter 5:7), to come to Jesus with our burdens (Matthew 11:28) and to watch our lives with confidence (e.g. 2Corinthians 3:12). And we have a reason for that! The almighty Lord and Creator of the universe has shown Himself in his Son Jesus Christ and has saved and freed us from our sins by Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection.

We are free.

I am free.

Free from all the deficits of my character, all the things I failed at in my past (and will fail at in my future), I am wanted and love and may know my life safely cradled in the hands of my gracious Lord.

How awesome is that?!

Seriously….there’s nothing more I could long for.

But nevertheless I must also face reality in me and around me – all the illness; all my deficits that are so evident so often – and those of the people around me; all the suffering in my close environment, hopelessness etc. Sorry, but when I think about how many people close to me will be lost, I loose my smile. And when I bring to my mind how many of my (former and current) students have had to suffer from whatever kind of misuse or are still suffering from it, my heart is breaking. How am I supposed to be joyous then? When I’m (once again) sitting in front of a student who has just told me that she’s been threatened with being belted again if she brings home another D (as happened some years ago), what am I supposed to do as a joyous Christian?  Tell her with a holy smile that “God works all things for the good for those who follow him”?! Of course this verse is true and of course I’ve been receiving comfort from it for years (after my father’s death and my decision to follow Jesus Romans8:28 was the first Bible verse I ever memorized). But telling this to somebody in a situation like that would be misanthropic. And it would dispose me from any right to give advice and support to this person.  Honestly, if anybody had dared to beat verses like that around my head back then in my desperate situation, I would have beaten back with other things…

Going through this life with this permanent joyous smile on our face and shielding us emotionally from all the negative emotions and sad realities in this world while we’re surrounded by pain and misery would be scornful and therefore not according to God’s will. We are supposed to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15)!

 

And with regards to ourselves it is important in my opinion that we face up to our own emotional worlds and allow negative emotions. Repression has never gotten anybody anywhere. And I know from personal experience how destroying it is to smile, crack jokes and be joyous on the outside, while you’re fading away underneath the exterior because of pain and sadness. And how try to distract yourself from this pain with all kinds of substitute actions then in order to lead yourself to believe that everything is fine. This is self-parody and only leads to some really bizarre behavior. Not only among Christians, but also among Non-Christians…

We are called to be light and salt for this world (Matthew 5:13+14). But we can only be so by being authentic. And we can only be authentic by being honest with ourselves. How do we expect to be light and set an example how to master life with all its highs and lows with the help of God when people notice straight away that we’re only presenting a religious show and are actually nothing but fake when it comes to our own feelings?! Believe me, people won’t need much time to realize. You don’t really need much psychological knowledge for that – sooner or later we’ll be busted. How embarrassing…

We don’t really help anybody by pretending that we’re always doing fine and are always flying on cloud number nine, buzzing as toddlers in a wading pool. It is rather the other way round. Reliance on God, comfort in the Holy Spirit, renewal, encouragement etc are wonderful elements of a sounds and vivid relationship with God. How do we want to set an example in experiencing these things without allowing negative emotions in our lives? That won’t work.

We must be willing to walk through valleys if we want to show the people around us what an awesome mountain guide we have in Jesus. 

 

And we must allow negative emotions to develop our personalities. Personality development is always connected with pain. Old Sigmund Freud once said that development always comes along with emotional agitation or trauma. Forgive me for invoking an un-Christian guy like Freud, but I still stick to the motto “eat the meat, spit out the bones”. Old Freud may have lots of obvious bones in his theories but also lots of recommendable meat… In my opinion he is right with his statement about emotional agitation and I think this statement is even right from a Christian perspective:

Whenever we ask God to form our characters in order to make us more similar to Himself, we should adjust ourselves to emotional pain. For we can only get better when we get rid of the things in us that are in need of improvement. And in order to be able to get rid of those things we must notice them. And in order to notice them, God must make us aware of them. I have experienced my deepest troughs after having asked God to improve my character. And I always came out of them as a better, stronger me, much more deeply rooted in faith as ever before and as I ever would have thought to hope for (The requests “Lord, teach me humbleness” and “Lord, transform me into a person of your heart” are really dangerous. I can only encourage you to tell them to Him again and again. You’ll be surprised. And you’ll survive the pain!).

 

By pretending that everything was alright and not facing my negative emotions or unpleasant character traits inside of me, but surpressing them instead and busily polishing my halo, I chuck away the chance of getting to know God on a much deeper level and of being transformed more into His image. Do you want that? I don’t. If I get closer to my Lord and get transformed into a better version of mine by it, I’ll happily accept that “little” pain.

 

We can also find some quite demonstrative examples for melancholics in the Bible. Some of the men and women of God were real hardcore-emos. Jeremiah, for example, Noomi, Elija and also Thomas were quite straight forward there… distrustful (John 20:25), bitter (Ruth 1:20), pessimistic (John 11:16) or suicidal (Jeremiah 20:14-18; 1Kings 19:4) but still men and women God used to make history with – because they didn’t stick to their pain but sooner or later arrived at a point of their lives when they handed themselves, their lives, their pain, un-will to live and doubts over to God.

And that’s an aspect where my sunshine-friends are right: sooner or later I must give my pain and everything pressing me down to God. When I do this is up to me.

And I must keep in mind that letting go is a process – that may take months or even years. And that I might need professional support for. That’s alright.

Inner healing is reality.

But it’s also a process.

Processes need time. And we have all the time in the world.

So don’t let anybody tell you that your sadness, despair  or brokenness was a sign for spiritual immaturity or that you weren’t allowed to feel or undergo your negative emotions. For this is not the case.

I am convinced that I will always be a little melancholic. Sooner or later I will be in that place again when this little thundercloud appears over my head and the harmonies in life transpose from C major to D minor. And I’m fine with that. No good composition on this planet only contains major harmonies and a field that is never rained on will never fructify.

And that’s what this is all about, right? Fructifying and being an euphony to this disharmonic world.

Does life hurt sometimes? Yes.

Am I sometimes seriously fed up with everything and complain to God about the dirt I’m stuck in (and that I’ve probably brought myself into)? Of course.

Am I having fun in life? Ooooh yeah!

Joy as well. But that won’t go any further. I count on you…

I am very thankful for all the good things God is giving me. And I am thankful just as much that He is working on and in me in order to improve my life even more – and that He is giving me all the time in our mutual times of growth and upgrade phases I need to wallow in self-pity or to growl at Him until I remember what really matters.

And that’s Jesus.

He is my sunshine, my only sunshine. He makes me happy, when skies are grey. 

 

God bless you!

From stable to stable

There are many animals on God’s farm. Everybody knows that. And at first glance, this is welcome and good. When God has created mankind in His image, there must correspondingly be a multitude of humans of different appearance, thinking, feeling, acting, experiencing etc so that in our entirety we may reflect God’s magnitude, diversity and creativity. Simultaneously our different ways of capturing and perceiving God are important for really and totally capturing and perceiving God’s greatness, His breadth, length, height and depth.  The understanding and image of God of a single person or denomination isn’t enough to understand and reflect God’s nature and His reality. Therefore, we don’t make the grade when our view on God is shaped and coined by only one doctrine for all our lives. To me, the multitude of preachers, denominations, books etc. is therefore initially positive.

Unfortunately, every positive thing also has its negative side effects and they are getting more and more obvious in this increasing pluralism in Christianity. Every flock has its black sheep. And every farm has pigs that enjoy wallowing in the mud more than others, roosters that cry louder than all the others and dogs that bite faster than anyone else.

Here, the Christian farm isn’t different from anything else and therefore this circumstance shouldn’t surprise us. We must learn to deal with it. However, In order to deal with this circumstance appropriately, we need a set of abilities and facilities which (in my opinion) aren’t taught and practiced well enough in our churches today:

-          inspecting and questioning

-          critical faculty

-          self-reflection.

As described in my article on Woo-Christians, this Christian flock tends to being quickly pocketed by colorful, charismatic personalities and their concepts. When we like the person preaching, when we can identify with him, we listen much more closely, read his/her books more attentively and take it for granted much faster that this person is exercising his/her profession with “divine authority”. And that’s a problem as it compromises our will to inspect and question just as much, as our ability to level and accept criticism. Our readiness for self-reflection rapidly vanishes as well as soon as we believe that we’ve found orientation in the preacher, who has the answer to bring Christianity to life again.

I don’t really want to start naming and blaming certain denominations or groups, as I believe that the tendency to act like that is a widespread disease in every corner of Christianity – be it brethren churches, alternative youth churches, Pentecostal churches or anything else.

No matter which barn on the farm we identify with, we must be careful. There is a reason why the Bible commands us to check everything and only keep the good (1 Thessalonians 5:21). In my opinion, we don’t meet the requirements of this command by just labeling denominations or preachers as “good” or “evil” in general. One thing all popular preachers and Christian authors have in common is that they are only humans – fallible, imperfect and sinful. They all only perceive in part and they are (hopefully) all in the middle of a process towards Jesus. Accordingly, it would be completely wrong to adopt all their theories, philosophies, concepts and viewpoints uncritically and to believe they’re true simply because they’ve been framed by our favorite author. To me, this wouldn’t only be grossly negligent, but also disobedient against God – simply because of the command to check everything.

We must be willing to also examine and scrutinize those persons and teachings that we like. It’s not for nothing that the Bible warns us against false teachers that preach things itching in our ears (2 Timothy 4:3)

But in order to be able to examine those that we love in their appearance and preaching, we must also be willing to scrutinize ourselves. I know how difficult it is to deviate from an opinion once obtained. And when I really like an author or preacher, it may become almost impossible to criticize him or to admit that he’s wrong in his opinion on certain things. Too quickly we are afraid of harming ourselves by admitting that we are fallible ourselves, by depriving our own ability to know right from wrong, by revising our own opinion. But isn’t that really a sign of maturity and greatness? Admitting that you’ve been wrong? And isn’t it maturity of character and spirituality that Christians are supposed to aim at?! Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I was perfect or that it was a walkover for me to admit mistakes. To the contrary! My genetically determined family stubbornness makes it even harder for me than it is for people with a rather balanced character.

But it’s exactly the fact that is difficult that should make us understand it is important! Satan knows the human nature all too well. He knows that he can use our avolition and self-righteousness against us to keep us from verging, grasping and living the freedom we are called for. Therefore he takes away our motivation for self-reflection and the courage to question things and lulls us to sleep with well-meant, Christian-sounding phrases that have hardly anything to do with the Gospel.

Isn’t it true that we become more generous when we feel connected with somebody? I conceive negative character traits of people I love much less annoying than of people I don’t feel connected to.

In my opinion and experience it’s the same thing with preachers and authors. When the charismatic, likable preacher A and the unlikable and dusty-seeming preacher B teach exactly the same thing, I will rather reject preacher B’s teaching when I hear him first and accept the same words said by preacher A. Correspondingly, I will, in case that A and B have and spread the same misconception on whatever topic, forgive preacher A much faster than preacher B.

And as if this wasn’t enough: there’s the undeniable danger that I will even adopt this wrong teaching or philosophy, just as I might start watching the same cheaply-produced soap operas on TV just because a person I admire watches them. Topics that used to be important to me and which I had acquired a biblically profound opinion on become less important or I adopt an opinion that actually opposes my real fundamental attitude – just because the “right” preacher tells me that things are different from what I thought. Then, it doesn’t matter anymore that he doesn’t have biblical arguments but only his own. He rocks, I like the way he talks, and hence he must be right.

The problem should be obvious. We are way too fast in giving preachers, authors or church movements a position in our hearts that doesn’t belong to them. We start to give humans a place in our hearts that belongs to Jesus. We start to put talkers and pen pushers into the position of our savior and hinge our and others’ salvation on them. Instead of using Bible verses in discussions to clarify our position, we start quoting passages from Christian books. That’s creepy.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t quote from Christian authors, preachers etc. when they’ve said or written something clever or true.

But I say that we must examine the things they publish. And that we must have the courage to call wrong things wrong and true things true.

And we can only do so by using our Bible. Others may see it differently but for me, the Bible is the only book with divine authority. For me as a Christian the Bible is the word of God and no other publication is. Accordingly, I am not supposed to see any other book, viewpoint etc. on par with the Bible or even with more authority and importance. Whatever is published on the Christian farm – whatever barn it may come from – must be examined on the basis of the Bible. And if the viewpoint, philosophy or interpretation opposes the Bible or cannot be proved by the Bible, we should stay away from it.

I’m not saying we should denounce the responsible as “false teacher” altogether. As I have mentioned before: each of these humans is fallible and in a process of learning. And I must concede this to them just as I want everybody else to concede it to me. Five years ago I had a completely different (and in my today’s opinion wrong) opinion on lots of things. And I know that today I still have a wrong opinion on many things without even realizing. And I still I want to be taken seriously and not hear sentences like “She was wrong back then, she will always be wrong.” or “She’s got a wrong viewpoint there – she is a bad Christian.”

Every entitled criticism must be said in love and humility. This is a biblical principle as well (2 Timothy 4:2; 1 Corinthians 16:14) and is set for everybody who calls himself a Christian.

In order to be able to examine teachings and to know which publications contain real insights and which only contain “so-called insights” that we should stay away from (1 Timothy 6:20) we must…big surprise….read the Bible. There’s a high risk that – facing the huge pile of new publications on the Christian market – we set our focus on fallible words of humans and fill our bookshelves with tons of Christian literature without even managing to  read, review and praise half of it and therefore forget about the essential: reading and studying God’s word. But how do I suppose to get to know God better when I prefer reading what humans thing about Him to reading what He says about Himself and His will?

The most important must remain the most important.

And the truth must remain the truth – and expressed.

And this may sometimes mean that I must dissociate from “Christian” viewpoints, doctrines and constructs and criticize them, however hip and in they may be in my environment. God’s opinion should still be more important to us than the opinions of others. When the adjustment of my way to my destination is slightly wrong, with a variance of only a few milli-inches, I will miss my destination for miles. And when the whole flock is moving into the wrong direction it needs at least one brave with a head on his shoulders who dares to state the truth and to criticize the opinion of the majority. This may secure the spiritual survival of whole churches!

Of course I will go on reading Christian books written by authors I like.

But I want to recollect on every occasion that I must only eat the flesh and spit out the fish bones if I don’t want to suffocate from them.

I don’t want to suffocate. I want to reach my destination.

This destination is Jesus – and He will always be.

I don’t want to loose this destination out of sight. And therefore it is necessary to focus on Him.

I really hope I’ll see you when we get there. Maybe even before, but then at the latest.

Jesus says: „I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.     (Hebrews 2:1)

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.            (Philippians 3:12-15)

God bless you!

Striptease

To me, one of the best inventions of the last 20 years is the internet. Apart from other awesome things like cell phones, DVDs including all the technical equipment linked to it, sandwich toasters for everybody’s kitchen and all you can eat sushi offers for less than € 10, the internet is without doubt the achievement of the 21^st century that shapes and enriches my life the most.

Suddenly, I have regained contact to friends and relatives via email that I had almost lost due to the huge distance between us. I can order a  jerky machine on a Saturday night at half past one just because it popped into my mind that I had always wanted to have one. Those days are gone when I had to traipse round every single whatever ominous record shop and garage sale, searching for that special song from my youth that has been stuck in my head for weeks, and it has never been so easy to gain such an incredible amount of useless and yet amusing knowledge as today.

And as if emails, search engines and online shops weren’t great enough already, there are also several messengers and social networks, which have given my friendships a completely new dimension. I’ve met one of my best friends online and almost our whole friendship happens online (except for some random visits). He lives in England, I live in Germany. Some decades ago, we never would have met or known the other one exists. But today, there is this deep, precious and stable friendship that mobilizes, stabilizes and motivates us both humanly, spiritually and perspectively. This friendship can barely be put into words. And even if some people keep claiming that this friendship wasn’t “real”, as we hardly ever meet offline, it is real. And genuine. This friend has also kind of inspired me to write this article. If you’re interested in social media, read his blog (http://jamesprescott.co.uk/blog/2012/05/05/social-media-digital-extending-the-physical/ )!

 

Even though I am excited of the internet, I of course also see it very critically. I know that not all gold that glitters. Of course I know about cyber mobbing, fake-IDs, fishing mails, Trojans, data theft, glass citizens and other online-spirits that we have called and that now ignore our commands.

And yes, some of the things I see on the profiles of former students and their friends have made my stomach turn for more than once (by the way: I only accept friendship requests of students I don’t teach anymore). I don’t have a problem with people posting a lot. It simply depends on what is posted…

While I don’t really feel emotionally connected to most of the teenagerhood (mainly because of self-protective reasons), my (former) students are important to me. I value and like them, even though they have stretched my nerves a lot and sometimes too much. And even years after our time together, I feel responsible for them. And that’s why I’m often deeply touched when I read what is put on the internet every day – (semi-)publicly and visible for millions of strangers.

 

No, this is not going to be some lamentation against that bad, bad youth, that consider themselves too good for putting up half-naked profile pics, boasting about their last weekend’s drug orgies (if possible including pics as well, celebrating their first big love and first split-up in words and pictures, or complaining about their teachers – even I have already had an online hate group – with only one member, which kind of disappointed me (in my opinion you did something wrong if everybody likes you. But that’s another story…) and I also had to read “headshot”-comments about me on students’ walls that had added me as friends. But to be honest….I’ve been insulted and threatened much worse and much more often offline than online…

 

Our society complains a lot about all those things happening on social platforms; about the cyber (soul) striptease of all those teenagers on the internet. Of course, the things many people tell about themselves online are sometimes more than we would actually like to know (at least, that’s what everybody says, while they read, like and share…) and of course many teenagers don’t consider all the consequences their online activities have (neither did I some years ago). But do we really think that these are problems of the internet.

Let’s be honest…those problems didn’t arise with facebook (oops…I said it…)!

I remember quite well how a  classmate in internet-free times pretended to have taken pills in order to commit suicide, while she had only taken some harmless pills against menstrual cramps – but it was a cry for help and for attention. Of course I already had friends in grade 7 that both fascinated and unsettled us with their voluptuous affairs. And haven’t we all, who grew up without the internet (at least the female ones) decorated our school desks, bus stops and locker room walls with tags like “I love XY” or “M+A. Eternal love”? Isn’t that the same somehow? Weren’t we just as insecure about ourselves and didn’t we have the same hunger for approval? I think we had.

Still, there are two differences – at least in my opinion:

1. The internet never forgets. All the stuff posted online remains on the internet and will still be visible when the poster wants to fade away of shame and embarrassment. There are enough blogs, brochures and trainings about this topic, so I don’t want to waste your time and mine with repeating clever stuff that’s already been said.

I’d rather focus on the second difference:

1. This medial exhibitionism is passing borders ours never was when we were doing our little teenage soul strips shows.

 

And that’s something we should think about.

Those adolescents (and sometimes adults), that present themselves so excessively intimately in word and picture, don’t do this without a reason. And many of those things that I get to read on the walls of former students and their “friends”, all the things being posted for getting as many “like”s as possible, are cries for help to me. A call for acceptance, attention and emergency aid.

And the reason for this call getting louder and louder isn’t only due to the internet and the possibilities of self-exposure given by it.

To me, it’s a serious problem of our society.

The families of my generation certainly weren’t perfect. There were conflicts and difficulties. Many of my classmates already were latchkey kids back then, just as many kids are today. But still I believe that there is a growing lack of safety and stability in our families today.  After almost one decade of teaching with correspondingly many students, it is difficult for me to spontaneously name 10 students with well-functioning families. And I’m not saying this to defame or criticize my former students or their parents! In my naiveté I simply take it for granted that parents love their children, no matter what they do. And I am sure that also the parents of all of my students so far tried their very best. That some (!) of them badly failed in doing so is a completely different story…

And I don’t hold the opinion that this decreasing emotional security is rooted in the “failure” of the parents, but I assume this development to be a consequence of the growing over-stimulation based on the post-modern pluralism we live in. There is a vast multitude of offers in every section of our society. It starts with the choice of coffees we have at Starbucks (coffee, americano, latte macchiato, espresso, double espresso, espresso macchiato, cappuccino, frappucino, iced coffee, decaf, with normal milk, fat-free milk, soy milk….you know what I mean…) and ends with the task of finding the perfect toilet paper in the supermarket. This multitude of offers is even bigger and confusing on the internet. Who really knows what has been put online by whom, for what reason and based on which research?

And while parents might be able to help their children with choosing the right kind of bread, many parents themselves are hopelessly overchallenged when it comes to choosing the right websites.

But security and safety can only emerge when somebody is taken by his hand and accompanied for at least the first steps – which unfortunately happens less and less both on- and offline. Everybody kinda tries to get through his own life somehow.  Self-centered, success-oriented, consume-fixated. Children are put in front of the TV quite early or shunted off to day care centers at a really early age – because it is exhausting to quarrel with grumpy children; it’s no fun and eats up resources that are desperately needed for the stressful job. And who wants that…?!

In our childhood, my siblings and I had several combats about the TV schedule (we only had 3 channels back then…), about our musical taste and about the clothes we chose. This was somewhat frustrating (my parents both are trained and really good pedagogues – of course they always won….an uneven fight…*sigh*), but still we could always be sure about one thing: we were seen. Our parents dealt with us and told us the way because they love us. Back then they gave us the orientation we can still use today.

Many of the kids growing up today don’t get that orientation anymore.

And just as often, they don’t get their parents‘ attention anymore o rare seen. But that’s actually what they are longing for. I know from several conversations that many adolescents even doubt that their parents “like” them! And if your parents don’t see you or don’t give you a feeling
of being loved, you turn to your peer group – back then, either with harmless pills and faked suicide warning, or with self-made colored hair in every horrible red shade you can imagine, today by posting “sexy” pictures which rather look like the girls displayed there have swallowed a fly (wide-opened eyes and puckered lips…you know what I’m talking about…), or with pictures of lots of little hoolies with lots of big knifes, with “I hate my life, I think I’m gonna end it tonight” or “last night was worth this hangover, man…” statuses, or with 5000 Facebook-“friends” of which they know 100 at a max and don’t really like more 20 of them.

I’m worried by that.

While others maybe wonder (with reason) which consequences photos and statuses etc like that might have for the professional future of the concerned, I’m rather dealing with another question:

In what a horrible state must the emotional life of those youngsters be, how sad, lonely, broken and hurt must their souls be that they are driven to publicly bare themselves like that?

And in what kind of society do we live that we are so blind for the needs, sorrows and sensitivities of those surrounding us – and the adolescents in our area of accountability – that they are forced to take such drastic steps and that they value themselves and their lives so little?

And that’s when we Christian must step up the plate.

 

Of course we could now discuss the “decay of today’s youth” or the “decline of values on the internet”. But I think that’s nothing but a waste of time. The Bible has been telling us for about 2000 years that our society would more and more develop into the conditions it had “in the days of Noah” and “the days of Lot” (Luke 17:26-30). And it should be commonly known that those days weren’t characterized by vigilance and empathy. Why should we be surprised by the development our society is undergoing? And why should we complain about it?

In my opinion, we should rather think about how to help those youngsters – how we can give them what they need to feel accepted, sheltered and valued.

We don’t need new fancy concepts, programs or essays on preventive measures. What we need, as far as I can see, is relationship.

It’s our turn now.

We must get active, build relationships, listen to others, be a friend and a companion. As adults for youngsters. As parents for our children. As uncles and aunts for our nieces and nephews. As teachers for our students. It is us who must take over responsibility for the subsequent generations. Not the other way round!

And we should be well aware that good intentions aren’t enough. Being nothing but a friend who listens, nods his approval, presses “like” and doesn’t really care at all what he  is exposed to and what lies behind it, isn’t enough at all. Neither is it expedient or helpful to try to drag teenagers that lie at our heart out of the shit (sorry!) they’re in using our own strength, wisdom or abilities. Believe me. I speak from personal experience – at the end of the day, our effords end up in misery and disappointment.

 

The only one able to help, the only one to give hope and a meaning, the only one who can heal souls, is Jesus. Yes, I know this didn’t come as a surprise now and doesn’t appear very creative. But at that point, I am neither interested in being creative nor in being innovative. I want to be effective here.

And our relationship can only be effective, when we build them with Jesus. Because Jesus is the only effective way to freedom.  

We must be a friend. And to me this means that we set those adolescents around us a loving, authentic and trustworthy example of a vibrant relationship with Jesus and pray for those youngsters we’ve taken into our hearts. This might absorb some time. But it’s well-invested time.  

This generation growing up at the moment, trying to fight themselves through the pitfalls of the transition to adulthood, is important to me. And I’m not willing to leave them to the spirit of these days, the prince of this world without a fight. I want to fight for their souls and their hearts.

And I ask you to support me in this fight.

By beginning to build friendships and to pray for people in your environment.

In case you want to do more than “only” pray, let me know. And if you are somebody looking for a friend, for somebody who will pray for you, listen to you and sees you, feel free to contact me as well. I’ll be pleased to read from you.

Whether I get a message from you or not, whether you start to pray for people and to build relationships (on- or offline), I wish you all the best from the bottom of my heart.

 

God bless you!

 

No way back

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on… when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend… some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.”

Frodo Baggins, the Lord of the Rings

 

Ever since I’ve seen “the Lord of the Rings”-trilogy for the first time, I’ve been deeply impressed by this statement that Frodo makes at the end of “the Return of the King”. Unlike the other hobbits, who live their lives in their own cosy little world and seek their happiness in not much more than eating, drinking and partying, Frodo has seen the bigger picture. He has seen the world the way it is. He has experienced both envy, hatred, fear, fraud, treason and greed and  faithfulness, hope and real friendship. On his way to Mordor he has probably gone through every emotion a human – or hobbit – can go through and has looked deeper into his own and his companions’ hearts than he ever would have wanted to. He has seen reality and realized the truth: about himself, about the world, about our spiritual abysses and about the triviality of his previous life in the Shire. And he is well aware that this has changed him for the rest of his life. The wound he got in battle will remain. There’s no way back into his old life.

Alright, let me be honest. The day I saw this movie for the first time hasn’t been gone for too long. It was yesterday, to be exact. But I wanted the opener for this topic to be a bit more pompous. And as you’ve come so far already, accompany me a bit longer, Sam.

The quote mentioned above has deeply touched and stirred me. It expresses what I’ve been feeling for quite a long time already now without ever having been able to put it in words. As a modern person living in the digital realm as well, I went online today to google this quote and put it into my facebook-status. Interestingly, reactions followed immediately in form of some likes and a comment that showed me that other humans (and maybe also hobbits) interpret this quote in a completely different way than I do.

Instead of ranting on this comment and proving the writer is wrong, I want to use my time to explain why this hobbit’s quote has touched me the way it has.

Aside from our shortness, we also have an analogical biography. During my 30 years on this planet I’ve gotten around a lot – emotionally, socially, geographically. I may not have travelled to the Hindu Kush, the Taj Mahal or Tibet but throughout my life and mainly during the recent years many different kinds of situations, happenings and circumstances have let me look deeper into human hearts and my own little hobbit heart than most others ever will.

I’ve seen the world.

And the world sucks.

Don’t get me wrong. I love life and I love being alive. But that’s not because of this world  or my job or anything else I could ever achieve or receive. The best thing that has ever happened to me, the reason why I love my life is that I left my old life behind and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior. In Him I have a new life that is guiding me from the here and now to an eternity with God. That’s what gives me hope. That’s my strength. Even though it may look like foolishness to others (1Corinthians 1:18). Of course I enjoy life, good food, relationships with wonderful people, the sun, good movies, bubble tea and whatever makes my heart happy, but I am well assure that all of this is nothing compared to what I get from Jesus.  And I also know that – unlike other “girls’” statement – not my maybe-to-come wedding day will be the most wonderful day in my life, but the day that I die and see my precious Lord face to face.

 

Life has its good sides and I want to enjoy them. But nevertheless I know that this world has nothing to offer that is of value. It has nothing to offer but facades, show and worthless glitter. And when you take a closer look you can see the abysses behind the facades.

But nobody wants to see them.

And still we must see them. Even more as Christians.

That the world is evil has been preached by church throughout the centuries. But I think they’ve made a severe mistake there: they set a wrong focus. Throughout the centuries church has doomed and demonized humans whose thinking and acting wasn’t according to the Bible.  Of course evil doesn’t come from God but from the devil but still I think it is completely wrong to condemn people because they don’t know Jesus yet and accordingly act like that as well! When Jesus condemned people, they were the spiritual leaders who – in their pseudo-godly actions – were just as blind as the people (something worth thinking about…). At the same time he looked at those seeking for meaning and hope as “seep without shepherd” (Mark 6:34). He didn’t condemn them, he didn’t avoid them, he focused on them and their needs and told them about God and the hope we have in a life lived with Him.

When we have understood this – that our life is meaningless without Jesus but that we can have all we need in Him – cannot go back. That person cannot pick up the threads of his old life and go on as before. And that person cannot be all chilled and happy and pretend that it’s all good.

This world isn’t all good. It’s broken and it breaks people.

We must face reality: this world is going to hell. Everywhere around us are people without a shepherd, people that are lost and that are moving directly into an eternal separation from God.

That’s something that shouldn’t let us be relaxed. While I’m writing these lines, there are at least 10 persons I love flickering through my head of which I know that they will be lost if they don’t change their ways. That they’re facing eternal torments of hell. And that’s breaking me. It hurts.

There are some things that time cannot mend… some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.

This is a hurt going that deep.

And it fills me with rage and incomprehension to see that some Christians living their lives with nicely-polished blinkers, withdrawn into their terrace house with a garden fence and their smooth little harmony-filled churches and play service there while there’s a war going on outside.

Let’s face it: this ongoing war of evil against mankind is nothing limited to Middle-earth only. We’re right inside a war in which Satan is trying to roll over mankind and to get them under his control. And we Christians don’t know better than to withdraw into our ivory tower, ignore reality outside and watch the world going down? Or even join the party  to prove we’re such oh so cool, cleared-up Christians? Are you serious?
Wake up!

Open your eyes and look outside of your window. See what’s going on in the world around us. Then you will see twelve-year-olds who are ashamed of still being a virgin, fourteen-year-olds that won’t see or feel any consequences after drinking half a liter of wodka because they’re already so addicted to it. You will see nineteen-year-olds on meth and cocaine that believe that their drug excesses are a symbol for ultimate freedom while they’re actually living in mere captivity. You will see thirteen-year-olds beating up their mothers while the youth welfare service is doing nothing and drug therapists who don’t give a damn about their patients as long as they get their paycheck at the end of the month.

Open your eyes, look at this misery surrounding us and then tell me one thing: are you really trying to tell me that everything is alright?

I’m desperately waiting for that day when we Christians finally have this hypocrite smile and this incredibly embarrassing permanent joyfulness fall out of our faces and we finally understand that the sky above us is getting dark and that the forces of evil is getting stronger and gaining predominance.

We must wake up. We must finally understand that we’re right within a life or death fight. Even if we maybe live in a little village and feel safe and warm in our perfect Shire idyll. We Christians have a responsibility for our fellow men that we must embrace. We must understand that mankind is lost and that we misanthropically incur guilt if we watch this battle without doing anything.

We must pick up our swords, put on our armor and start fighting – for our Kind and for our fellow men.

God has given us these incredibly powerful weapons of the Bible and prayer. Why don’t we use them? We’re in a spiritual war that we can only win in the strength of God. When I fight, I also want to win. Therefore I fight the way I win – in the power of the Holy Spirit and with God by my side. And when it seems to those surrounding me like I couldn’t do anything else for the lost except letting them go and watching things helplessly, I know that this is when the battle only begins. For when we appear helpless and weak, maybe even feel helpless and weak, we still have the almighty God, the Lord of all Things by our side. That’s when we stop fighting and He fights. For us. To help us to fulfull our task – however heavy this burden may be.

It is time to fulfill our task and to be light for a world that is drowning in darkness.

Let’s grab our weapons. For the king. For our fellow men.

 

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

                                                                                         Paul, letter to the Ephesians 6:10-20

 

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on… when in your heart you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend… some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.

                                                                                  Frodo Baggins

 

 

 

 

God bless you!

Talking bout a revolution

The attentive reader of my blog might have realized that I sometimes conceive a tiny bit of delight by spicing my texts with a trace of irony and a pinch of sarcasm from time to time.

In other words: I love provoking. I believe that provocation is a wonderful tool for making people think.  When people feel provoked by a text or statement they read or listen to, they have devoted themselves to the text in a way that they get the feeling that it has something to do with them. Which is good.

The things I write about here are things of which I believe that they must be said. I believe that these topics I address concern every Christian and should therefore be deliberated by everybody who is intellectually capable of doing so. Which conclusion the deliberating person draws, doesn’t really matter to me for a start. For me, it is all about the intellectual examination of mindsets and conducts pf us Christians that are moving us into a wrong direction (however long that may have been going already) and that therefore do more harm than good to God’s reputation in this world (see Romans 2:21-24). It is obvisouly not our assignment as Christians to ridicule God. That’s what several non-Christian groups are doing way enough. Our assignment as Christians is to exalt God, to spread the Gospel and to guide people to Jesus, referring to Him with words and actions. And how could that be done any better than by living a life that is based on reading the Bible, taking it serious and following its instructions on one hand and on being taught, guided and used by the Holy Spirit at the same time on the other hand?

But quite often we don’t do that anymore.

In our churches and Christian institutions we are imprisoned by traditions and expectations and follow (sometimes unspoken) church-intern behavioral codes that are usually rather based more on bygone sorrows, fears and difficulties of generations that have already passed away long time ago, than on our lives and the reality we’re living in today.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t  categorically oppose traditions. They stabilize us and spend emotional safety. I don’t want to forego my potato salad on Christmas Eve, just as some older church members don’t want to celebrate a church service without their “new hymns” hymn book printed in 1899. And I don’t believe that everything older than 20 years is per se bad! My generation can (and must) learn so much from people that have already been Christians before our society became the digitalized and globalized prosperous society it is now – from older brothers and sisters in Christ, from men and women like C.S. Lewis, Elisabeth Elliot, Count Zinzendorf etc.

Just as the older generation shouldn’t discount “today’s youth” as too liberal, twisted and secular, we, the younger ones (and I boldly dare to class myself with them) shouldn’t  vent on “the dusty seniors with their outmoded Christianity”.

All I’m saying is that we must scrutinize our traditions!

1. Are our traditions and customs based on Biblical teaching, or do they deform and twist the Bible?
2. Do they really serve the original aim they were created for, or have they become empty capsules that have developed their own dynamics somehow?
3. Can they still be understood by us and the people around us?

 
If  we stumble over an answer like „That’s actually not in the Bible like this/ at all.” or “But it has always been done like that here.” while checking our traditions, our alarm bells should start ringing. Because in that moment we have found something where the vibrant relationship with Jesus has been replaced by religion.about God.

Every generation must seek God in their era, must shape the relationship with Him according to the the time they live in and spread the

It’s about Jesus, Gospel in a way it can be understood in their time. The attempt to attract youngsters to Jesus with an alpenhorn concert will fail just as badly as the attempt to offer an Morovian Watchwords Iphone app to the generation 60Plus.

 

The Bible says that we are the body of Christ.

A body should be vibrant. If it’s not, it is in trouble, isn’t it?!

Therefore, we should be vibrant.

We must be in progress, must move, live. And in order to be able to do so in that often cataleptoid institution “church” (whatever denomination it may be), we must be ready to scrutinize traditions and then to change them, to…

…revolutionize.

We must revolt.

I can imagine how some older readers have their hair standing on end now, while younger readers are excitedly rubbing their hands. In order to prevent misconceptions, I would like to explain my point a bit more detailed.

We need a revolution.

Why?

Because I believe that Christian faith means revolution. That’s what it was all about right form the beginning. Jesus was a revolutionist. Not only, that He challenged the church leaders of His time, showing them how empty and meaningless their traditions were and how far away from God their traditions had brought them (see e.g. Matthew 23:16.23; Mark 7:8-9), He revolutionized the whole history of mankind by replacing the principle of justice based on a person’s good acts with the principle of grace for those who decide to believe in Him and follow Him. He bridged the grift that had existed between God and mankind ever since the Fall of Men, filled the chasm, freed us from our guilt by His death and opened our way got God by His resurrection. (see Matthew 1:1 to Revelation 22:21).

And still today He is revolutionizing the lives of millions of people who experience how their lives radically change in Jesus, by suddenly finding a real, fulfilling meaning in their lives, by seeing how negative character traits are transformed into positive ones, by experiencing freedom from addictions, by seeing inner and outward healing take place.

That is revolution.

Jesus is a revolutionist.

What Jesus is not, is a rebel.

While revolution is the change of aspects of the current circumstances, that need to be changed, rebellion is the essential insurgency against whatever kind of authority and the (based on an imagined moral superiority of oneself compared to all the others) idealization of one’s own self to the universal measure of all things.

 

There are two reasons why this has nothing to do with Christianity (I guess there are even more but I came up with two…).

1. A Christian can never reject any authority per se.
2. A Christian knows that he isn’t morally superior to others and can never make his own self the measure of all things.

The Kingdom of God is – as its name already says – a kingdom and no anarchy. Therefore, Christians are a group of autonomous humans with a free will, that can live their lives individually and freely shaped, but at the same time humans that subordinate to a higher authority, which is their King.

But this King is no despot as many youngsters (mainly from the political left) believe, but the only one who really wants us to be fine and  free and who was ready to give His life for our freedom. He is a king who expects obedience in the important areas of life to protect us from ourselves, but at the same time gives freedom in all the other areas.

In my opinion, that’s exactly what makes God different from human rulers: His aim is not exploitation, control or oppression, but freedom. Accordingly, he frees us from the oppression of our self-made sin and thus our self-imposed immaturity in order to release us into a free, wild life in His presence.       

And still He expects obedience and that we follow His rules.Not to restrict us, but to ensure our survival in freedom. He knows what kind of captivity and obsession we get by what this world calls “freedom”. And He wants to make sure that we don#t believe in some factitious freedom and perish of their side effects, that we don’t make ourselves dependent on humans, actions or substances. He wants us to be free and only depending on one:

Him – in order to experience even more freedom by that.

By subordinating to  God’s authority and by following His rules, we subsequently acquire a view on reality that is not limited by the blinkers of our era or culture anymore. We don’t only receive freedom, but also the ability, the competence, to use it productively and profitably.

I love how God’s reality, His principles and His logic are so completely different from ours.  

As a Christian I know that my freedom doesn’t depend on outer circumstances. Not only that our thoughts are free (which at least some Germans know since the time around 1848), I also have inner, spiritual freedom in Jesus that isn’t limited to those few decades on this planet but spans eternity. By knowing about this freedom, I can – up to a certain amount – subordinate to worldly authorities. This is also something God expects from us (Luke 20:25; Romans 13:1-7; 1Peter 2:13-17), which means that as a Christian I have no excuse for e.g. not paying taxes, riding public transport without a ticket or talking about “the pigs” that deserve “being smashed in the face” because they “represent the state”. Even if I know that neither our system of government nor our government itself aren’t perfect, it is my job to follow the rules and subordinate to the governmental authority.

It must be mentioned that this duty to obey is only mandatory a long as the worldly authority doesn’t try to subordinate God’s authority as well. Here I can and must – just as with Christian traditions – ask: What does the Bible say about it? What does God actually want me to do? And when I realize that the governmental authority wants me to do something that is against God’s will, I am free to disobey, as “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Except for that extreme situation it is not my endeavor as a Christian to defy the state – that would be rebellion.

My duty is to pray for those in responsibility (1Timothy 2:1-2) and to set a positive example of God’s love by the way I live in order to make sure that this world doesn’t stay as it is but is changed for the better more and more – that’s revolution then.

Let’s have a look at the second aspect: As a Christian I know that I cannot make my own self the measure of all things. When I put my wishes, my desires – in short: my will over God’s will, I’ll end up in Chaos and exchange my status as a child of God with the status of God’s enemy.

Lucifer himself used to be an angel of God: close to God, glorious as he was in God’s glory – but not God. And he wanted to be like God and that’s why he made himself the measure of things and rebelled. This didn’t only lead into enmity with God but also made him loose his glory and must ramble the earth where he tries (and unfortunately succeeds) to keep and encourage humans in their rebellion against God (see e.g. Job 1:7; Mark 4:15; Luke 10:18; 1Peter 5:8; Ephesians 2:1-2). Thus, rebellion against God can be found very early in human history (see Genesis 2; Romans 5:19; Romans 11:32) which has ever since made our lives a cheap imitation of how it had been meant to be – driven by desires, imprisoned in dependencies, enmeshed in sin (therefore not slightly morally superior to anybody!) and far away from God.

Even as a Christian I must still struggle with this (Romans 7:15). No Christian is immune from this voice that is trying to tell us that it’s “not that bad” if we do what God doesn’t want us to do, when we move our focus away from Jesus in order to concentrate on “our lives”. The problem is, that life without Jesus is no life, because Jesus is life (John 11:25; John 14:6; 1John 5:20).

In order to remain focused on Jesus and not to end up in a cesspool we don’t want to end up in, we need a never-ending revolution, a constantly ongoing revolution of our Christianity, our enlightenment and understanding, our convictions, our configuration of our life of faith. We must be in progress in order to move closer and closer to Jesus. Because only a body that is moving is alive. Rigidity is death. Also for us Christians, for church, for our personal faith.

Rebellion doesn’t make us reach our goal. Jesus makes us reach our goal.

Rebellion leads us away from God – in the worst case so far that we won’t find our way back home. Revolution keeps us alive.

Jesus is life.

Jesus is a revolutionist.

Viva la revolución!

 

God bless you!

sports and the Bible

Next month, I’m facing the challenge of going to a class reunion. And ever since I got the invitation, my mind is flooded by schooltime memories and anecdotes. Many of these anecdotes are connected with gym class somehow.

I’ve never really been sporty.

Back then, I was really sad about my being unathletic, mainly because it drastically worsened my almost 4.0 average. Today, I am rather happy about it, as it kept me from choosing a path that would have led my far away from God.

Why?

After a long time of intense Bible studies I’ve come to the conviction that doing sports is unbiblical and that, as Christians, we should stay away from it. Of course I am well aware that many fellow Christians will object to this statement but I would like to ask you to let yourself in for this topic and not to pass sentence before having read all my arguments. I will try to make my point clear and will do so by using the Bible –as always.

 

A key verse for the enlightenment that God doesn’t want Christians to do sports can be found in 1 Timothy 4:8. Here, Paul writes to Timothy: “For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.”

In my opinion, it is obvious here what to focus on as a Christian: on godliness, the training of our intellect and our heart, not physical toughening and exercise. Eventually, it is written in 1 Samuel 16,7: “for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.”! Humans concentrate too fast on the outwardness and think they could gain anything by physical exercise.

But does it bring them any closer to God? No.

What brings us closer to God is studying Scripture, which is – by the way – best done sitting.

Age and wisdom were appreciated and respected attributes in Biblical times (Leviticus 19:32; 1 Peter 5:5). Only when the heathen customs of the Greek spread, adoration of youth, beauty and flawlessness entered the thoughts of mankind. Who do we Christians want to be influenced by? Heathen ideas? Or shouldn’t we better keep to the mindset that is shown as good and right by the Bible?

I think the answer is obvious.

Of course, Paul doesn’t forbid sports in general. He only points out that it doesn’t bring much benefit. When we take a closer look into the Bible, we find – similar to the dietary rules in the Old Testament – several helpful statements on which sport is acceptable for God and which isn’t.

A kind of physical exercise Christians should definitely stay away from is swimming. I don’t know one single Bible verse where honest followers of God went swimming. During the Exodus already, God’s people didn’t have to swim, but crossed the Reed Sea with dry feet (Exodus 14:21).

Jesus didn’t swim to cross waters, He used a boat or walked on water (Matthew 14:25). Moments, in which people immersed in water where only moments of purification and healing (2 Kings 5:14; John 5:7) or baptism (e.g. John 1:31; Acts 8:38), but never moments of voluntary swimming!

Peter is the only exception. There are two Biblically recorded episodes which he swam in. During the first episode, Jesus had approached the disciples during a storm on the Sea of Genneseret and had commanded Peter to come to him on the water (Matthew 14:30). As long as Peter trusted in Jesus, he could walk on the water. When did he sink and had to swim? When he turned his focus away from Jesus. When he sinned. When his relationship with Jesus was disturbed.

And also the second episode of Peter swimming is in a context, in which his relationship to Jesus was highly destroyed by sin. After resurrection Peter went fishing with some other disciples when they saw Jesus standing at the shore. When Peter recognizes Him, he jumps into the water and swims to Him (John 21:7). We can see that Peter only swam in moments of sinfulness, but not, when he was in a good, close and healthy relationship with Jesus. Therefore I think that Christians should stay away from swimming.

 

Sports that are absolutely Biblical and therefore acceptable for Christians are running sports, such as marathon (1 Corinthians 9:24) and hunting (Genesis 37:3.30). Those sports can be exercised without having to worry if it is according to God’s will or not.

 

I can imagine that you are sitting there in front of your screen, shaking your head, wondering if I went insane and if I’m serious with what I’m writing today.

No, I’ didn’t go insane.

And no, if course I’m not serious.

This post so far was nothing but a huge pile of nonsense. I just wanted to point to a nuisance that I’ve repeatedly come across in churches and Christian websites and that we must talk about: the picking to pieces of the Bible according to one’s own needs or likings.

 

As I have already mentioned before in my blog: I love the Bible. For me, it is God’s infallible word. I don’t believe that God has verbally inspired it word by word but I believe that God has led the thoughts of the Biblical authors and has shown them what to write. In the Bible we can recognize God’s faithfulness, love, sovereignty, grace and splendor. When we read it, we find comfort and encouragement, but also correction and stimuli for rethinking things. The Bible is God’s love letter to us and worth being read, studied, understood and learnt by heart (I must admit that I’m struggling a lot with the last point).

What the Bible is NOT, is a fortune cookie box, which I can open to pick up my favorite verses without looking at the context.  If we don’t look at the context but only read isolated verses or even only extracts of verses, we cannot grasp their meaning. I know many people who say “I just open up my Bible and God leads my eyes to the verse I am to read”. This MAY happen….but not always. Imagine you’re in real trouble and exercise your Bible reading like this. You as God “What should I do?”, open the Bible and read “And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” (Matthew 27:5). You might say “Wow…ok God…that’s tough…let’s see if You underline this by another verse”. You open your Bible again and read “Go, and do thou likewise.” (Luke 10:37). I think we agree that this might lead to a serious problem…

Equally, we have the right to interpret what I read in the Bible in a way that it fits into my current worldview. Did you notice what I did? I approached the Bible with the background of me being absolutely unathletic and all the moments of frustration and embarrassment linked to it and read it in order to have it tell me exactly what I wanted to hear: that sport is evil. I made my personal preferences and my mindset the measure of all things, ignoring God’s way of looking at things.

Therefore, I turned my worldview into my wordview, but it is only my interpretation and not according to God’s intention.

The Bible is such an amazing opportunity to countercheck our own mindset ,to question it and to adjust it to God’s thinking. We shouldn’t let this opportunity slip away because of pride or convenience!

In the same moment, the Bible is no text that we should read word by word and without using our mind. I know many “Bible-abiding” Christians that do this and I think it’s wrong.

Why?

Because this approach completely ignores that there are many things in the Bible that we cannot understand correctly with our Western worldview and our cultural background.  When we only read what’s written there without putting it into a cultural context in order to understand what God really wanted to say, we don’t treat the Bible with the respect we should! And that’s what it’s all about for Christians: recognizing and understanding God’s will.

Do we want to be Bible-abiding or Jesus-abiding?! I hope the latter one.

Of course, the question arises how we can treat the Bible in a good way. Which “average” Christian should be able to understand what is meant by a text and what God might want to tell us in it? Well, first of all we, who are all able to read, all have the possibility to read study Bibles, commentaries on the Bible etc. And we can also ask our pastors. I know that pastors are always overworked but hey…it’s their job to teach the Bible, isn’t it?

Furthermore, the Bible doesn’t only consist of texts that you can only understand with a Master of Theology. I dare to say that those passages are the minority. And for all the other passages (and maybe also for those that are culturally mistakable) Christians have the best of all helps: as Christians, we have the Holy Spirit, who gives us understanding while reading (I am – by the way – convinced that the Holy Spirit and His guidance must be just as important in our daily lives as the Bible. Maybe I’ll write a bit more about that later on).

When I read the Bible only as a book, it is….only a book. But when I read it to find out more about God, when I ask him to talk to me through the Bible, then He will do so. Sometimes louder, sometimes quieter. And the more constantly and regularly I read the Bible, the closer is my relationship to Jesus, the more I understand His thinking and acting and the louder I can hear His voice in my life.

 

At the moment, I’m on a very exciting journey of wanting to hear God’s voice and learning to discerning and understanding it. So far, I’ve come to the opinion that openness to the Holy Spirit on the one hand and studying the Bible on the other hand must be combined in equal parts. Both ignoring the Holy Spirit and letting your Bible get dusty in the bookshelf are unrewarding. Only a combination of both can let us grow in faith.

And this is actually what I’m longing for. That I grow in faith, am able to follow Jesus more and more until one day, people who look at me can see Jesus. It’s still a long way until I get there but I want to walk it. And I can only walk it with the Bible in my hand and the Holy Spirit in my heart.

When did you read your Bible for the last time? Not some isolated verses, but a whole passage or maybe even a complete chapter? I want to encourage you to do so. Regularly. Without bondage, without pressure, simply to get closer to Jesus.

Honestly…what’s better than being really close to Him?

God bless you!

Freedom, I won’t let you down…

In my last blog post, I wrote that Jesus ist he only way to get and be free. He is the only one that frees us from our yearnings, our mental and physical dependencies and therefore leads us more and more into an all-embracing freedom that we couldn’t ever imagine – not even in our wildest dreams.

Christians are free humans that find their crutch, joy, sense and security.

At least, that’s what it should be like…

Unfortunately, reality looks completely different.

Many Christians sadly seem to believe that it’s enough to choose Jesus once. After that they live their lives as they did before, initially try to be a “good Christian” under their own steam, fail, get frustrated and start wondering, what this whole “thing with Jesus” is actually about. It somehow doesn’t feel the way they thought it would.

They don’t feel the joy and enthusiasm anymore they felt, right after their conversion to Jesus, they don’t experience Jesus anymore the way they did before. The relationship with Jesus is just as leveled off as the relationship to the last holiday flirt, And that’s not too puzzling, as the parallels are obvious:

You passionately jump into a relationship and want to spend at least every moment with the other person. But sometime soon, everyday life shows up. You stop talking to each other, reduce mutual visits, daily mails turn into weekly mails and sooner or later the contact breaks. All that is left are some souvenir photos but they eventually dull, too.

It is the same thing in our relationship with God. While you avidly pray and read your Bible in the beginning in order to get to know God better and to find out more about Him, or simply to spend time with Him, ambition ceases quite fast in many people’s hearts. Daily prayers and daily Bible studies, driven by curiosity and interest, turn to ritualized church attendance, genuinely sung songs become rattled phrases.

There, where you experienced delivery and security in the beginning, emptiness ascends and is accompanied by frustration.

You want to get back to elation. You know it exists – or used to exist. But instead of going back to Jesus and seeking Him, you start to remember that there was a life before Jesus where you felt “good” too – only punctually and with that sallow aftertaste, but hey….little is better than nothing…

Like that, you start to turn back to old vicarious satisfactions, which you had actually dropped because you know that they are pointless and wasteful. In the end, this reaction to boredom, inner emptiness or the desire for love and affection turns out to be a step back: you seek confirmationin what you do, lunge into work or some club, look for others cheering for you. You seek entertainment in candy and chips. You try to forget with the help of alcohol or to simply have “fun” instead of reflecting on God, the world and yourself. Or you look for a partner in order to satisfy this deep desire for closeness. Maybe without loving your partner, simply because you don’t want to be alone anymore. Maybe only for one night, simply because you want to feel your and somebody else’s body.

Maybe you can even feel inside that there’s something seriously going wrong but you don’t want to admit it – neither to yourself, nor to others.

And like that you go on walking that wrong road, moving further and further away from Jesus and from everything you are actually longing for: freedom, security, joy, meaningfulness.

But instead of stepping back and reflecting that something is wrong there, instead of remembering what it was like to be close to Jesus, you try to find excuses for your behavior. And they can be found easily.

Once again, “freedom” is THE keyword.

Suddenly, it’s all the church’s fault because church is who restrained us in what we did and did not do anymore. Because they didn’t let us do what all the others did and have all the “fun” the others had. Them taking away our “freedom” is the reason for our depression in faith.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there’s something like religious abuse and I don’t want to leave the impression that I don’t see it, don’t know it and don’t take it serious. But there’s a huge difference between abuse on the one hand and needed criticism and exhortation on the other hand.

 

You cannot call yourself a Christian and keep on living like you weren’t one.

But that’s what way too many people think. And in order to find an evidence for their wrong attitude, they look for a Bible verse that seems to fit. And of course, it can be found….somehow…

One of the most-quoted verses in this discussion is in 1 Corinthians 10:23. They quote: “Everything is permissible.” and go on saying: “I don’t understand your problem, Mia. The Bible says that everything is permissible. We aren’t bound to the Law anymore but under grace. Therefore we can do anything that we can reconcile with our own conscience.”

I see.

Sounds nice.

There’s only one problem: that’s nonsense! And this nonsense arises, when you don’t read the Bible as a whole, but only read and remember some handy Bible verse fragments and combine them in a way they tell you what you like.

It is true that 1 Corinthians 10:23 says that everything is permissible. But the verse doesn’t end there!

The whole verse says: “Everything is permissible- but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible- but not everything is constructive.”

But the latter is exactly what we do when we turn back to our old vicarious satisfactions. As soon as the meaning of my life is based on the things I achieve, I’m caught in pride and arrogance much faster than I want to admit. As soon as I try to find my approval in being irresistibly attractive to members of the other gender, I’m in danger of hawking me and my body dramatically underpriced and of harming my soul in a way that I will be sucked deeper and deeper in this whirl of desire for admiration and closeness. As soon as I can only relax when I get drunk or stoned or drug myself up to the eyeballs by whatever substance (and be it ever so seldom), I surrender and get captivated by these substances. Then, I’m not the master of my senses and my soul anymore. No matter how you look at it….you are other-directed.

 

I know that my last example probably hit the sore spot of many. “But Mia, how can you say something like that? Don’t you think you exaggerate? I like having a beer or two once in a while an dI think that’s absolutely ok!” But that’s absolutely not what I’m talking about.

I’m fine with having a beer or a glass of wine when sitting together in an intimate circle. What I oppose is the purposeful and sometimes planned getting drunk, respectively drinking beyond one’s limits. Still I think if me talking about alcohol made you switch to defense mode, you should reconsider how you deal with alcohol. You might be further stuck in captivity than you admit to yourself.

But let’s get back to the original topic:

If I take the Bible serious – and that’s something every Christian should do – then there’s no permit to do what we please. The Bible makes very precise statements on how to live our lives.

Let’s stay with the example “alcohol”: How can I justify getting drunk and “having lots of fun with alcohol” when the Bible says: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18), “Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise.” (Proverbs 20:1), “Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine.” (isaiah 5:11) or even “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks,”(Isaiah 5:22).

And even though there are verses and passages that must be seen in the context of their time and should be transferred to our lives today, I see no reason why this should apply for those verses just mentioned. Now and then, alcohol made people drunk and led them into doing pretty stupid thinks (Noah is one of them (Genesis 9:10-21), just as Belshazzar (Daniel 5)). In Germany there are 2.5 million alcohol addicts today and about ten to twelce percent of the entire population consume alcohol in a risky amount! [2]

 

I am well aware that alcohol is just one topic of many and I don’t even want to pretend that it is “worse” than others. Of course it’s always those inner construction areas that are farthest away from our own situation. This is not – and I really want to emphasize this – about judging people or about standing here with a wagging finger. It’s simply a topic that I found to be a problem in my environment during the last few years and today. I may not have a problem with alcohol but I know that I’ve got lots of other topics instead where I’m far away from living the way Jesus wants me to. I’m not any better or worse than all the others. All I’m saying is, that there is a serious problem in today’s Christianity that I want to address and I hope that my environment loves me enough to make me face those things were I don’t live or act in a Jesus-like way!

In my opinion, our way of dealing with alcohol in our culture and our personal lives is a topic that we Christians should think about and that it is something where we voluntarily hinge ourselves on something other than Jesus (maybe even without being “alcoholic” in the concrete sense). When you now think about how many other things, feelings, conducts etc. can make us addicted in so many ways….slavery one, freedom nothing.

But that’s exactly what we’re called for: Freedom! However, we must use it meaningfully and Jesus-like! Paul writes in Galatians 5:13: “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.”

How can anybody read this verse and pretend that as a Christian you can do whatever you want ?! That you can get your vicarious satisfactions wherever and whenever you want? It is absolutely incomprehensible to me and it confuses me and makes me sad that we Christians are still so stupid to believe that fulfillment, love, joy etc. could be found anywhere else but in Jesus. This is to me like when I am up for having a steak and am offered a nice steak but eat sprout salad with tofu cubes instead and then start wondering why my desire for steak isn’t gone. So I also eat mousse au chocolat, fish n chips and blueberry muffins, go home with a filled stomach and maybe later a  completely filled vomit bag in my hand, wondering that I am not satisfied….

That’s crazy!

When I know what a life with Jesus has to offer, maybe even have experienced rudimentarily, why don’t I search for more right there?! That is exactly what the Bible shows us as the only reasonable consequence of choosing Jesus. In Jesus we find absolute freedom. And when we do what He tells us to do, everyhting we do will lead us into even more freedom (James 1:25)! Why sprouts instead of steak if we have access to the best steak in town?!

 

I must admit that this attitude of calling oneself a „Christian“ on the one hand and not caring about what’s written down in the Bible and what Jesus expects us to do on the other hand, really annoys me. We Christians really wonder why we are of no importance in this world and that the circumstances on the planet keep getting worse and worse?! Of course things get worse when we, who are called to be light, adapt to darkness! The Bible says that we shall be light (Matthew 5:14-16) and that we shall walk as children of light by checking what pleases God (Ephesians 5:8+9).

We forget way too often that Jesus is God. He isn’t just our buddy, He is our King, our Master. He is God. And we owe him obedience and fellowship. I know, I know…this doesn’t sound very modern. Who wants to submit? Obedience has been out for many years.

But whom will we obey? A social movement or God? Even if we try as hard as we can to match our Christianity to the antiauthoritarian mainstream of our times – Jesus takes up another position. He says very clearly that not those are His disciples that call him “Lord, Lord” but those that do His will (Matthew 7:21) and that those who love him obey his commandments (John 14:21).

If I really want to follow Jesus, I can do it completely or not at all. Of course you can choose some luke-warm Christianity which will never lead to anything, which will never make you grow in faith, or experience God  and which will always leave you unsatisfied, desperately searching for vicarious satisfactions. And I’m sure you’d even be saved then. But don’t you want more?!

Don’t you want to have Jesus with all His love and power in your life, experience real freedom and live your life in an intensity that you’d never expect to be possible?

Real discipleship needs obedience and a willingness to make sacrifices. Therefore Jesus says we shall estimate the cost of following Him before calling ourselves a disciple (see Luke 14). But when we give up what leaves us captivated and keeps us away from Jesus, we get what we’ve actually been searching for: Jesus. Completely and utterly.

I don’t know how you feel but I want to experience Jesus. I long for Him. And I want to have a fire in my heart, fired by the Holy Spirit every day again. And I want to feel God’s presence in my life, that makes me free from all emotional, social, cultural, intellectual and other bondages.

I want to be transformed into Jesus’ image and follow Him obediently. I know those many construction areas in my life that keep me from living the way I want. And I know that I still have a long way to walk ahead of me until I am where I want t be and fulfill what I expect from myself and ask from others. I have no idea how long this way will be or what it will lead me through. But I know my destination: Jesus

 

“You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Paul, Galatians 5:13+14)

“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” (Paul, Galatians 5:24+25)

“Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.” (Jesus, John 14:21)

 

God bless you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Another interesting passage on alcohol is in Proverbs 31:1-7.Compare with Romans 8:17; 1.Peter 5:7; Matthew 11:28; Romans 5:2-5; 1.Corinthians 13:13; Ephesians 1:18

 

[2] data from: drogen-aufklaerung.de

 

I’ve been looking for freedom…

One of the top-catchphrases of our times today is “freedom”. At least in the Western World, “freedom” and “being free” have become the most important elements of a satisfying life.

But what kind of freedom are we talking about?

Several kinds of freedom, like e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion are written down in our constitutions as human rights, but none of these important, ground-breaking, hard-earned and costly-paid rights are usually called for in the calls for “freedom”.

Hardly anyone of those calling the loudest are physically imprisoned or under house detention. Therefore, this kind of physical freedom can’t be called for either.

The condition more and more people, mainly adolescents have in mind, is an absolute freedom, a non-existence of rules and regulations of any kind. People want to live out, “enjoy life” unrestrainedly, intransigently, senselessly and follow their wishes, emotions, fervors, desires and instincts without keeping to any moral or legal guidelines. They don’t want to take over responsibility, neither them nor others just as they don’t want to be considerate – of others, of themselves, of their own body. Anything that brings “fun” must be allowed.

Criticism is unwanted, just as questioning and self-reflection.

Accordingly, everything that wants to detain such a behavior or wants to provoke some sort of rethinking, is discounted as stuffy and philistine. Existing rules aren’t inspected for their possible significance or value, but ignored, stultified and sometimes even seen as a violation of human rights, whereas the complete absence of any kind of orientation or norm is considered to be the only livable way of social coexistence. In an extreme case, this leads to a call for anarchism, in most cases, this urge for “freedom” only leads to a life, where people confined themselves to hedonism and pleasure gain. They want to “have fun”, do whatever they’re up to. Here and now, with all legally or illegally available substances and practices, without thinking about possible consequences for themselves or others.

Sooner or later, this kind of freedom will (due to many reasons) lead to brainlessness. The border between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and bad increasingly dislimns until it disappears completely in that fight for “freedom”. There’s a lack of orientation guides, which turns “fun” and satisfaction of any kind into the only available constants.

This attitude gets more frequent and obvious, the further a group or an individual is away from Christian faith. Christianity is considered to be the enemy as such, a prison that takes away even the smallest but of fun in life. The image of the medieval Catholic church gets mixed with fragmented statements of dead or living popes on abortion and divorce, which leads to the conclusion that Christians are humans, that bluntly follow the dictate of a quixotic head of church, experience no freedom and therefore know no fun or joy in their lives. And to be honest: when you look at some deadpan Christians, how they shuffle through their lives with stony faces, this distorted picture is even understandable…

But still: this attitude of life is totally past reality.

I am convinced that this lifestyle that is feigned as “freedom” to us is nothing but mere dependence. The Bible gets quite clear here and says in 2 Peter 2:19 “They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity- for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.”

Of course nobody wants to hear that. Who likes admitting that his behavior leads exactly into the opposite of what it is supposed to do. That he has made himself a slave. Nobody. But even though you don’t want to hear this truth, it is a fact that you have to face sooner or later. The “freedom” my generation and the subsequent ones are calling for and living isn’t freedom, but dependence. The insignificance of their own lives, the own felt un-satisfaction, the emptiness of mind and existence force us into searching for completion and a meaning of life. This is quite difficult when you assume that life is limited to those few years we have here on earth, when there is nothing bigger than what we see. What meaning of life could there be then except striving for power, richness and influence, or “enjoying” life and living out lusts?!

How can a thinking person believe that freedom can be found in something that makes you physically or mentally addicted (and that he/she is the only person who won’t get addicted)?

Everything, really everything we want to use on this earth to obtain happiness and satisfaction, can make us addicted. And the stronger the urge for freedom is, the higher is the danger of dependence.

And like that freedom decays into a distorted picture of itself. How is it put in that song Me& Bobby McGee? Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.

What a sad, haunted and pitiful life.

Sooner or later everybody must admit that you can’t get no satisfaction by that kind of life, even If you try…

And sometime most people realize that their life has no meaning, that there must be more in life than materialism and hedonism. And I think that everybody building his life on partying at the weekends, drinking, maybe taking drugs and tries to find fulfillment in a preferably unrestrained sexuality, will – at the latest the next morning – find out that this sallow taste on the tongue spans the whole life.

But as there can’t be what mustn’t be, people search for new ways of having “fun” and mutate more and more into victims of their desires and slip deeper into captivity instead of pausing for a moment in order to think and to recognize the truth.

In my opinion, there’s only one way of being free.

And this way is Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said that he has come to “to preach good news to the poor (…) to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed” (Luke 4:18). And Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:17: “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

As a Christian I know that my life is more than perishable “fun”, that at best ends in a simple hangover or at worst in an heroin overdose or an AIDS infection.

I know that life has more to offer than that!

First things first:

I know that I’m no accidental product of nature but that God has created me. He, the creator of the universe, decided that I shall live – who I am, where I am, now. Therefore I needn’t fight for whatever kind of right to exist or prove it to the people around me. Simply the fact that I’m God’s creation entitle me to be. And this knowledge already gives me some freedom. I am accepted. I am loved. I am allowed to be the way I am. There may be people who don’t like me or cannot handle me the way I am but that doesn’t change my value. I needn’t struggle to be loved but may simple be instead. The longer you are a Christian and the more you deal with Jesus and His word, the more you understand and feel this love. It slumps from the head into the heart.

Love bestows emotional security and safety. Babies and infants usually acquire a sense of basic trust by the closeness to their mothers. They know that there is somebody who cares for them, feel sheltered and can start under the protection of this safety to explore the world around them and to gain orientation. Unfortunately, we live in a society where less and less children experience this emotional security. As a consequence, they develop into confused and disoriented teenagers and adrift adults that seek for security in groups and hope to experience closeness and emotional security in an affiliation to cliques or simply in sex. When this voidness stays despite the help of those “social” facilities, many people decide to choose mommy’s little helpers, alcohol and drugs.

If the voidness cannot be filled with friends and a partner, it must at least be dispersed by whatever kind of jag. Inner voidness and the lack of social security are horrible. No wonder that people want to escape them in every possible way. Unfortunately, this plan doesn’t work.

Jesus restores this sense of basic trust. But not the trust in humans, but in God himself. Karl Marx once stated that religion was opium for the people. But he’s wrong. As Erwin Raphael McManus says in his book “Unleashed”, God is “no drug. He doesn’t bring us into states of consciousness in which we feel good, without really making us better.” (Note: I only have the German version of the book so I re-translated it. Sorry I didn’t use the original words. But read the book, it’s awesome).

Jesus is no drug, no placebo, no excuse.

Jesus is the answer.

To everything.

Only n a relationship with him we can really get free from our cravings, fears, doubts, voidness and lack of orientation. He created us (Colossians 1:16-17). He knows us (Isaiah 43:1; Jeremia 1:5; Psalm 139). He knows what we need (Matthew 6:8). And he provides everything we need (Matthew 7:11; Philippians 4:19). Not necessarily what we want, but what we really need. The Bible says that in Him we have the fullness (see Colossians 2:10) and get life in abundance (John 10:10).

And isn’t that exactly what this urge for freedom is aiming at? Gratification. Life.

The difference is, that this life doesn’t stop after some hours, but remains. This feeling of aliveness, the meaning of life, remain as long as we stay in contact with Jesus (John 4:13+14).

I don’t claim that you’ll always be jubilating as a Christian, that everything will always be fine. Sadness, pain and difficulties are a part of life. But how boring would life be when everything was always going right?! Just as boring as a song only containing major harmonies. A good song also contains minor chords, just as a good life contains dark times. They are always a chance to grow, to mature and to experience God’s love stronger than ever before (see Psalm 23:4; 1 Corinthians 10:13).

In Jesus we find the real meaning of life and real freedom. No fake, no self-delusion, no addling, but real happiness. No perishing fun but lasting joy.

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to make do with substitutes that lead me to believe that life is wonderful for a moment and then leave me naked and empty in the next moment.

I don’t want to have “fun” that vanishes in the haze.

I want everything.

I want life. Real life.

I want Jesus.

 

I am the way and the truth and the life. (Jesus, John 14:6)

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, (Jesus, Luke 4:17+18)

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

 

God bless you.

the parasite

Boredom sometimes makes me do stupid things.

It’s not like I didn’t have enough things to do to keep me busy or that I didn’t know what to do with my vestigial free time. But when I’m ill and don’t feel fit enough for reading, writing or thinking, I get bored real fast.  Now and then, this makes me prowl the internet and join whatever discussion boards on whatever topic – which is usually detrimental to my recreation and recovery…

Some years ago my illness-owed boredom brought me into a public Christian chat room. I have no idea how I got there (especially as I think that chat rooms are completely dumb and useless), but I remember very well what happened there.

For the first five to ten minutes I only sat there rather bored, reading how some chatters Bible-bashed their heads for some irrelevancies (see my post “Pharisees reloaded?!” for my more detailed opinion) until a new user entered the room. It was apparently a young woman in an emergency situation (or somebody pretending to be one) and wrote: “Hi you Christians, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll have an abortion tomorrow. I can’t wait ‘til I get this parasite out!”

What a crass announcement.

I was stunned.

Not because somebody there was going to have an abortion but because of all the bitterness, anger and scorn that could be seen in those words. No matter if this was a woman ready to have an abortion or somebody only pretending to be one – calling an unborn child a “parasite” is quite severe to me. My first thought was: “What must a person have gone through to write think or do something like that? Is she drugged? Has she been raped? Does she have depressions for another reason?” I wanted to know and wrote: “What happened?”

Thanks to the auto-scroll-function my question disappeared from the screen within seconds and what I saw next shocked me even more than that young woman’s statement (she had already left the room by the way).

Suddenly all the “Christians” that had been busy fighting each other for nothing some seconds ago where now united. United in their hatred against that woman. “You dirty whore!”, “You goddamned bitch!”, “You monster!“ and other “kind words” bickered over the screen of the chat window and peaked in the statement: “God hates you for what you’re doing and will punish you real bad.”

Wow.

Christian love live and in color.

I was startled.

Startled by all the hatred those “Christians” had in their hearts, by the contempt coming from their words and by the horrible, wrong concept of God that they carried in their hearts and that they obviously also spread in their environment: God hates you when you do something wrong. And then I also have the right to insult you as much as I want.

I have no idea which Bible translation those people use but it’s obviously none I know. In all translations I know Jesus kindly turns to sinners. He Himself says that he came for the “sick” and not for the “healthy” (Matthew 9:12), that he came to to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). He had fellowship with those people disowned by the religious elite (e.g. Mark 2:16).

 

While reading those insults I had to think of the story where the Pharisees and scribes dragged a woman to Him that they had caught in the act of adultery. They charged her with a crime that was – after all – punished with death penalty by Mosaic Law. They called on Jesus, just like the foaming-mouthed mom in that chat room, to damn that woman and to bring her to justice, that is to stone her.

And what did Jesus do? I don’t know any translation that says: “And Jesus answered: Guys, you’re right. This woman is a dirty slut who has broken the Law. I don’t care why. Stone her.” This would have been a logical reaction, mainly as Jesus Himself had preached against adultery before. And He knew the Law better than anyone else. Instead, he “he straightened up and said to them, If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7). And, so tells us the Bible, when they were all gone, He said to the woman: “Neither do I condemn you, go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:10).

He lets her go! And that’s no solitary case. Whenever the Bible tells us about encounters Jesus had with sinners, He is friendly and kind. He doesn’t focus on what all the others see but he looks at the oppressed heart that dodges behind the behavior. He doesn’t condemn, he doesn’t punish, he doctors.

And what do we do? His disciples? We condemn. We curse. We collect stones and throw them as soon as we can.

 

Just to avoid misunderstandings: I personally believe that abortion is wrong. I think that a little human is killed in every abortion. A human that God Himself has created in His own image.

But does that give me the right to condemn women that have an abortion?!

No. Definitely not!

Do I know what has happened to that woman? Do I know what’s pushing her to abortion (inwardly and outwardly)? Do I know if she’s been raped? No!

Of course there are women that got pregnant unintended because they didn’t know well enough about contraception – or maybe not at all, or because they live out their sexuality in a way God didn’t make it for and that now want to “get rid of” it  now.

But let’s be honest: Which woman can have an abortion off-handedly? None, if you ask me. And when she is really that ruthless and cold that she looks at this beginning life as a “lump of meat”, an “unexpected accident” or even a “parasite” that you can “get rid of”, it should really make us sit up and take notice. We should start wondering what she may have gone through (maybe since her early childhood) to become like that, think like that, feel like that.

At any rate, we need pastoring here, no condemnation.

Who am I to insult or condemn somebody who, due to her (maybe unconsciously) desperate situation and maybe after a long mental struggle with herself, decides to have an abortion?!

Who am I?

Nothing but a human with a skeleton in my closet and with just as much sin in my life as them. I’m not any better just because my sin is in an area that I consider “less bad”!

Don’t get me wrong: I won’t want to talk abortion down and pretend it’s “ok somehow” if you “have good reasons”. Definitely not.

But I am deeply convinced that condemnation is the wrong reaction. Just as it is wrong to slouch down our shoulders when facing the high abortion numbers or get to aggressive and moan now bad this world is, or to believe that an annual demonstration in Berlin might change the situation.

 

Change is necessary.

And we are responsible for it!

We don’t want these women to have an abortion? Well, I guess this means that we must offer alternatives. It’s not enough just to say “But it is sin.” or “But God doesn’t want that.”! Pushing these women, who are in a severe emergency situation, under more social pressure is just as wrong and just as sinful to me.

We don’t want these women to have an abortion? In that case us Christians must finally discharge our social calling and responsibility in this world and help these women – be it by counseling, by accompanying them to professional helpers, by pasturing, by practical support – or, if they still choose abortion, by friendship, real, lived relationship, prayer and forgiveness.

We don’t help anybody by condemning people.

But when we love and accompany, when we finally start doing what Jesus would do, we would help everybody.

 

I know this isn’t only true for abortion.

And I know that I fail and condemn just as much in other situations and with other topics, that I am just as unkind and harsh.

Because of stupidity, helplessness, hurt or pride.

Here, I can only ask for forgiveness. If you are one of those that I have treated– or will treat – like that: I’m sorry. I really am.

Despite all the shame about my own behavior I know that we have a gracious and merciful God who doesn’t only forgive our transgression but also helps us to do things better in the future. That’s what I hope for and build my life on.

And as I experience this grace and also make use of it every day, I also want to learn and practice to give it to my fellow men every day.

 

Who am I to condemn those people around me?!

Who is really the culprit, who is the victim and who is the parasite?

I don’t know. But I know who is my judge. And I know that I will stand before Him specklessly and legitimately despit all my transgression and guilt, because Jesus carried my sins on the cross, because He paid for me and because I know that my redeemer lives and has freed me from death and for eternal life by His resurrection.

Do we really want to continue condemning? Or shouldn’t we finally start to spread these wonderful news and bring hope into hopeless lives?!

 

God bless you.

Woo-Christians

Do you know what a woo-girl is?

Let me tell you. Woo-girls are the kind of women that take any chance they can get to show their enthusiasm for whatever or whoever by shouting a loud “Woooooooo” – however trivial the trigger may be. If you need a more detailed or more vivid description, you can find one here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEAYNnUMNaI (you really should, as it is hilarious)

 

That kind of people can, however, not only be found in pubs, at campus parties or in US-sitcoms but also in the Christian scene.

I call these – somehow strange – animals of God’s farmstead “Woo-Christians”.

Woo-Christians can be found in all denominations and in any shade or color.

Very loud Woo-Christians, for example, that are way too motivated to woo well can be seen in white gospel choirs. Here the woo sound is meant to say: “Look at me, I’m white but my heart is black. Gospel is running through my veins and I’m brimming over with life. I know how my black brothers and sisters feel!” In general they are harmless but make a major contribution to the entertainment and amusement of the spectators.

It’s actually the quiet Woo-Christians that worry me. They don’t wrap their rapture in “Woo”s but in verbal or more or less argumentative storms of enthusiasm. And there are so many reasons for that. Both for positive and negative woos.

 

How I know?

Fasten your seatbelts….I used to be a Woo-Christian myself.

Yes, really! My Christian life began on a soil that was extremely fertile for woos of any kind. And therefore I was in the thick of it.

Want an example?

When I was about 17 years old, rumors went round that Proctor& Gamble was run by Satanists. The tale was that you could see it very clearly and obviously on the package of every L’Oréal hair-care product. The way to insight was really simple. You only had to take a hair-care product tube, turn it upside down and watch it in a mirror. With lots of fantasy you could clearly see that the ringlets on the package could without doubt be assumed to be “666”. And it wasn’t only me who know that, it was everybody. Woo-Christians can be paranoid in a very creative way…

Want to hear more?

Another thing that really every Christian in my environment knew (or had to know) was, that the peace sign (also known as CDN-symbol) is anti-Christian. I was told – even indoctrinated – by several people that this symbol was a reversed/ shattered cross, which obviously was totally anti-Christian. Who could have doubted that? Mainly, as we didn’t have internet back then and couldn’t counter-check things as easily as we can today.

As a fact, the CND-symbol is a stylized combination of the letters N and D of the wigwag system, which are meant to stand for “nuclear disarmament”.

Here you can see very well, how easily a meaningful symbol of a meaningful political demand can be demonized, including declaring all representatives of that movement “henchmen of evil”.

 

In a similar manner, books, movies, preachers etc. can be and are promoted by Woo-Christians as “something that every good Christian should have read” or “something that every good Christian should stay away from” in a heartbeat

When I think about my behavior (and my naivety) retrospectively, I can only shake my head in disbelief. As we were nothing but a small group of teenagers from the boonies, our boycotts didn’t have any effects – and I’m really happy about that.

In my opinion it gets both dangerous and unfortunately harmful when Woo-Christians make it to the public or show up in big crowds.

 

So many bands and musicians have made lots of money by not disclaiming rumors on their being a re-born Christian late or not at all. The only reason for many of my Christian teenage friends to listen to Britney Spears was, that she had proclaimed she was a Christian. Finally (!) there was a star on heavy rotation who called himself a Christian and also stood up for abstinence before marriage.

We all know how this story ended, as we could all watch it almost live on the media….that was somewhat embarrassing. But dangerous?

I think it is very dangerous when people pretend to be Christians but then choose a lifestyle that has hardly anything to do with what the Bible teaches.

I don’t want to judge the private life of celebrities (or anybody else) but I am sure there are some singers or actors that pop into your mind because they don’t really make the grade they should when they call themselves “re-born Christians”. May God open their eyes, heal their souls and have mercy.

 

And it is even more dangerous to me when politicians claim to be Christians and then don’t meet the requirements they set up themselves, that aren’t aware of the responsibility they take over by trying to win an office  saying “I am a Christian”.

How shall the world understand that a US-president that calls himself a “re-born Christian” but practices a kind of politics that harms the environment and thus God’s creation, which  – as a consequence – suffers from the effects of sin (Romans 8)?! How shall I explain to a Non-Christian that a president refers to the embodiment of grace, justice and love of neighbor, who is Jesus Christ on the one hand but misuses religious “arguments” for an unjustified war and treats human rights with contempt in a big detention camp in Cuba? How shall I explain to a non-believer that this is not what Jesus told us to do and that Christians aren’t self-righteous hypocrites?! And that those Christians that voted for him aren’t automatically evil persons but people that were so busy with shouting “woo” after the candidate’s mention of Jesus as his “favorite philosopher” that they got completely uncritical and thus blind and deaf for facts?

How am I supposed to tell non-Christians in Germany that a Federal President that comes from a party claiming to be based on a Christian worldview and anthropology, and that calls himself a Christian repeatedly lies, reinterprets truth and breaks promises in a situation that is about his credibility and reliability?

And how can the timid and yet sad attempts be explained when Christians don’t even listen to if somebody calls himself Christian or not but always present themselves as Robin Hood-Woo-Christians that (despite their own well-filled pockets) always cast the lot of those that seem to be suppressed by the state? Christians that – just like all the other Woo-Christians – don’t take the Bible as the basis of valuation for their behavior but get cast away by the spin of mass media and join into those hysterical “the state is bad and unjust”-roar of the masses instead of following their calling as Christians to pray for the state and its politicians (see Romans 13:2; 1 Timothy 2:1-3; Titus 3:1).

I find it extremely difficult to succeed in damage limitation when talking to non-Christians. All of us Christians are really good in presenting ourselves as driveling idiots that run after anybody claiming to be a Christians or shouting “justice, wooooo!” the loudest.

Jesus obviously knew very well why He sometimes also called his disciples “sheep”. Sheep follow the crowd without thinking. The difference is that sheep recognize their shepherd by his voice. Woo-Christians don’t. They run away from everything that rudimentarily looks like a wolf, even when it’s the shepherd dog and run after anybody looking like a shepherd, even when it’s a sheep stealer.

 

But how could that happen? Why aren’t we able anymore to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, to apply God’s standard?

I think it’s because we don’t know and often don’t care about God’s standard anymore. At the same time the Bible tells us quite clearly in Ephesians 5:8-10 that we shall walk as children of light by trying to concern what’s pleasing to the Lord. And in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 it says that we shall “test everything; hold fast what is good”. We are expected to test everything. Everything! This also means all those things that sound or look so good and so „Christian“. Testing and challenging things feels inconvenient for some Christians and you can be ill-reputed as a “skeptic” quite fast. But still: We shall and we must test things. Doesn’t the Bible teach that Satan loves masquerade as angel of light? That he is a liar and confuser that wants to jerk us around? (John 8:44; 2 Corinthians 11:14)

Why do we ignore the things written in the Bible but listen to the things newspapers and TV tell us?

I think we must come back to reading the Bible intensely and understanding it. We must start acting like David again, seek God and make His ways ours. Only if we do so, we can understand His truth. We must make Him the measure for our thinking and acting, follow Him with all our heart and trust Him (“Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” Psalm 86:11). And we must come back to understanding that we don’t only have to follow God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength but also with all our mind (Mark 12:30)!

Our mind enables us – when focused on God and filled with wisdom by the Holy Spirit – to test, to challenge and to evaluate things correctly. We must follow Jesus on all levels, with spirit, soul, strength and mind first in order to get enough wisdom to abandon Woo-Christianity and to estimate things correctly (2 Thessalonians 2:15; James 1:5-6).

I know the temptation of getting carried away when everybody is running into one direction is huge. And I don’t even want to try telling you I’m better than others. But maybe I have got insight in something here that others still cannot see, while they have understood something I’m not grasping yet. I don’t want to judge and I don’t want to be derogative. But I think it is both important and right to be critical, to train differentiated thinking, to question things and to be in opposition to those surrounding you rather once too often – also, or maybe mainly then when you are surrounded by Woo-Christians that want to tell you that “this is exactly the truth everybody must have read/seen/voted for”.

 

There is only one truth. And that is Jesus Christ.

Nothing that isn’t in conformity with His life, His actions and his word can be virtually true and real.

And then it hasn’t deserved a woo. Not even a small one.

Jesus in contrast, His actions and His word deserve all our exaltation.

He thrills me.

His word thrills me.

I want more of Him! No. I want everything, I want to experience Jesus in all His fullness and have Him in my life! I want to be filled with His Holy Spirit, act in His authority and recognize and evaluate in His wisdom who or what glorifies Him or doesn’t.

God is awesome.

More awesome than any band, any author, any party, any system, any hair-care product, any chocolate bar or anything else that might make us woo.

Let us seek Him, find Him and experience Him. In all His fullness, power and glory.

 

May God bless you. Woooooooooo!