When I Finally Get to be "Unpaused," or, I See a Chance...

NEW! Now you can listen to the author read this article here: The Scrawling Shepherd reads "I See a Chance"


Friday, March 27, 2020

Yesterday I posted an article which you may have seen. If not, you can find it here: Why I am On Pause, and Why I am Okay with It.

Today I want to write the article I thought I was going to write yesterday when I sat down to write. I've been thinking about the current circumstance we're sharing: a dramatic response to a critical threat to our health. We've been put "On Pause," as we're calling it in New York. You may have a different name for it: self-quarantine, shelter-in-place, lock-in, or any number of other words or phrases.

I'm a teacher, and this circumstance has dramatically affected my work, and my way of working. We're figuring out how to continue teaching and learning over distance, using technology in most cases. Early into this experience, I began thinking about how this dramatic change will outlast the current crisis. Even when we come crawling out of our metaphorical bunkers, blinking in the bright light of day and looking around to see who else is still standing, we may never again go back to whatever was "normal" just three weeks ago.

And that got me thinking wider still. Churches, like schools, are figuring out what HAS to be included in "church" experience, and what we can do without, even if only temporarily. Our home groups have been reading and discussing Francis Chan's Letters to the Church and his observations about how we've come to expect certain things in our experience of church that aren't really lining up well with what Jesus and His apostles described, designed, and established. It has been challenging, convicting, sometimes embarrassing. But how to fix it? It's almost like we need to start over.

Start over. Huh.

I see a chance here. I see an opportunity to restart. To get a "do over." A Mulligan.

I see a chance to finally, finally, put some distance between the church and that ugly label, that ugly sweater we keep wearing even though nobody likes it, called "hypocrisy." "The church is full of hyprocrites." I've heard it all my life, or at least it seems like I have. And as soon as I try to deny it, to say that "well, it might be true of them, but it's definitely not true of me," I get that all-too-familiar poke of the Holy Spirit's conviction and I have to withdraw my objection, my deflection, and put that ugly, smelly, scratchy sweater back on again.

But I see a chance. I see a chance to take that old mildewy, moldy, scratchy, smelly sweater out to the firepit in my back yard and burn it on a funeral pyre. And once I get it burning in a big, roaring, purifying, consuming fire, let's rummage around and see what other ugly things have been clinging to me that I can also use to feed the Refiner's fire.

I see a chance for a fresh start. A new beginning. A clean slate.

I want to be a different kind of Christian, a different kind of follower. I want to be the kind of follower of Jesus that doesn't attract labels like hypocrite, or judgmental, or exclusive, or prejudiced, or bigoted, or any of the other negative labels that have been attached to Christians in our culture. If I am going to be criticized, let it be because I have been trying to follow the example and the teaching of Christ as shown in God's Word, the Bible. Not legalistically, like the Pharisees of Jesus' day that were the first to carry the label of hypocrite. But lovingly. Let that be my legacy.

I'm Just a Nobody. (This is a live link to a music video by Casting Crowns, with Matthew West.)

It shouldn't have taken a global pandemic to get my attention. There's been a pandemic going already, from the early days of human history. It's transmitted by birth. It's the original STD. It infects EVERYONE. It has a 100% mortality rate. Nobody is immune. No one escapes or avoids it. It reaches everything, everywhere. It's responsible for every other illness. It's the root cause of every war, every act of cruelty. It gives birth to fear, hatred, mistrust, untruth, lust, rebellion, violence, addiction, abuse, poverty, hunger, thirst, and every other awful thing that is a part of the history of our world. It goes by many names, but I call it sin.

We've been dealing it with for so long, we have stopped talking about it, stopped fighting against it. We've found ways to become comfortable with it, to anesthetize ourselves against its worst symptoms, and otherwise ignore it, pretending it isn't lurking there, waiting to kill us. Because it does kill us. All of us.

That's the first truth of the Good News, the Gospel. We are all sinners.

Doesn't really sound like very good news. And by itself, it isn't. The good part starts with point #2: God loves us. Even while we were still sinners, God loved us, and gave His Only Begotten Son do die for us.

Jesus Christ is the Cure for this fatal disease! Look unto Him, all you to the ends of the earth, and be saved! Isaiah 45:22.

I see a Chance. Do you see what I see? Come stand next to me. Let's see if we can take this chance together. Maybe we can do it better, together, this time.