I was introduced to The Big Kahuna today and here are a couple memorable quotes to chew on as quoted by Danny DeVito's character:

"It doesn't matter whether you're selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or 'How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.' That doesn't make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation anymore; it's a pitch. And you're not a human being; you're a marketing rep."

"I'm saying you've already done plenty of things to regret, you just don't know what they are. It's when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you've done, and you wish that you had it do over, but you know you can't, because it's too late. So you pick that thing up, and carry it with you to remind you that life goes on, the world will spin without you, you really don't matter in the end. Then you will gain character, because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face."

This is my first draft of something that I wrote for church. It's a work in progress and I would love to hear where it strikes you (good or bad).

ANGER

I can still feel it in my chest. As I breathe, I feel the heaviness of the words. “Bryan’s dead.” I inhale to keep going but the breath is faint.

A few hours later, I was face-down on my living room floor. Unable to stand. “Sad” doesn’t cut it. Nor does it explain my violent tears and protests with fists. I was angry. I was furious. He was too young. God was too small.

Many years later…

Similar expression on a different living room floor. Fists beating into the carpet. Tears flinging off my face. How could it happen to them? Didn’t God protect and sustain?


Both of these moments (and many in between) are very real stories from my journey. Both of them led me to a deep place of disappointment with and even furious anger with God. I could not assimilate these experiences into the character of God as made known to me over the years and even in Scripture.

These moments are moments where I seemed to scream, “Why?” Have you had moments like this?

When I ask that question, it stems from one of two places in me:
1. The fact that God seems to be completely unlike me. Because if God were me, God would have done something different! Wrapped up in this is the feeling that God does not care.
2. The feeling that God as I know God is a myth!

What happens when I play this question out a bit in my life is that I usually go to a place that one could describe as doubt-full or fear-full. I begin to fear that God does not care. I doubt whether God is real.

My question is, “Can doubt and fear exist in a faith life of a follower of Jesus?”


DOUBT

Psalm 88 is a Psalm that doesn’t get much press. In fact, I believe that I have NEVER heard of it being read in any worship gathering of any sort. And yet, it is part of what we claim as the Holy Word of God. Here are some of it’s words:
1 O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out to you by day. I come to you at night.
2 Now hear my prayer; listen to my cry.
3 For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near.
4 I am as good as dead, like a strong man with no strength left.
6 You have thrown me into the lowest pit, into the darkest depths.
7 Your anger weighs me down; with wave after wave you have engulfed me.
9 My eyes are blinded by my tears. Each day I beg for your help, O Lord; I lift my hands to you for mercy.
13 O Lord, I cry out to you. I will keep on pleading day by day.
14 O Lord, why do you reject me? Why do you turn your face from me?
16 Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me. Your terrors have paralyzed me.
17 They swirl around me like floodwaters all day long. They have engulfed me completely.
18 You have taken away my companions and loved ones. Darkness is my closest friend.

Did you catch any hope in the Psalm? No. How would you describe faith as spoken from this Psalm? Does it exist?

My answer for that is, “yes.”

The psalmist was on the verge of death. The psalmist did not mince words at his disappointment with God. The psalmist even blamed God for not coming through. God seemed unlike the Psalmist. God didn’t seem to care.

And yet, the Psalmist wrote a prayer to this God. And yet, the writer poured out his heart to this “God of my salvation.” In the middle of feeling the most distant from God and the most doubting of God, I offer that the Psalmist still felt a closeness and a faith that allowed him to offer to God the most intimate spots of his heart.

So, it may be possible that intimacy can happen when God seems most unlike me. Intimacy and faith can actually grow not in sameness but also in unlikeness. When the Psalmist wrote to God, he was frustrated with the Otherness of God. God was not like him and didn’t make sense to him yet he trusted him enough with the most tender of songs.

It is in our very real sense and feeling of doubt (and often subsequent anger), that I offer can still pull us closer to the very One in whom we have these thoughts. I believe that we have made faith a word that implies the absence of doubt…the riddance of anger…the vacuum of the question, “why”. And I think we are missing something.

Peter Rollins writes, “Belief should not be read as empirical certainty. Belief is more than this; it involves doubt, commitment, hope, faith and desire.”


FAITH

Does doubt and anger with God water-down or threaten Jesus’ or the New Testament statements about faith?

James 5:15 says, “Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.”

Matthew 21:21 states, “ Then Jesus told them, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, `May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,' and it will happen.”

These two passages seem to suggest that doubt would limit healing, the work of miracles and the power of God in our world. And that may be true. There is a reality of God that is limited when I doubt what God can do. But both writers here are not necessarily speaking to the absence of doubt; they are speaking primarily to an increased faith.

James calls for pray-ers that choose to believe or have faith in a healing God. Does it mean that these prayer warriors have no doubt in them? Or does it mean that their faith is stronger than any doubt that may arise?

Paul, a New Testament hero (my description, not his) pleaded with God to take away a thorn in his flesh and yet it was never taken away. Was Paul a man without Biblical faith? Maybe we should call him ‘Doubting Paul.’ Or did God simply choose not to grant him his request? And Paul moved forward in faith despite it.

The Matthew passage is even more challenging. What did the disciples doubt? Was it really in God or did they doubt that the power that Jesus displayed in the fig tree incident could be the very same power in them?

Faith is choosing to live as though the God of the Bible is true regardless of circumstances, emotions or cultural trends. Faith is a big enough umbrella to allow doubt, anger, frustration and humanity to fall under it.

As I picked myself up off the floor in my anger moments I was spent. My body was drained. I had said words to God that I was not sure my Sunday School teacher would be proud of. And yet.

God handled my anger. God handled my doubt. My intimacy with God somehow grew in the state of our unlikeness. My faith became rich. Maybe my anger and doubt were the very things that developed my faith.

Comedian and writer Susan E. Isaacs was 40 years old, loveless, jobless and living above a garage when she did what any of us would do: She took God to couple’s counseling. “Either God isn’t personal and I’ve wasted my time, or he is personal and he hates me,” Isaacs tells her therapist. “There’s a third option,” her therapist counters. “God loves you. But crappy things still happen.”

In our anger may be find life. In our anger may we discover love. In our anger may we not hide from the One with whom we’re angry.

God loves you but crappy things still happen.

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

C.S. Lewis

"Well, I think that's a great philosophy Will, that way you can go through your entire life without ever having to really know anybody." - Sean in Good Will Hunting.

As much as I like technology I can be a bit stuck in my ways when it comes to daily practices. However, the Kindle from Amazon has been something that I have been looking into more lately and I would love to hear thoughts from others on it. I understand some strong arguments against getting one like:
1. Who wants to carry around a big electronic thing that only does one thing?
2. "There's just something about the smell of the pages and the feel of a book in your hands"
3. "I Love to go back and re-read my notes in a book, almost like re-journeying."
4. Many books aren't available yet

And honestly, I may be closer to the objections against than I am with moving forward with getting one.

But, is there something to be said for the following thoughts:

1. Environment - is the experience of feeling the pages enough to outweigh the amount of damage done to produce the book.

2. Cost - this has yet to be finalized but could I possibly save money for me AND the church if I downloaded them.

3. Weight - I have been blessed to really only move books 1 time...to Sidney. I now have 10x the number of books that I had then. That means I will most likely have to carry that weight of books and would then demand bookshelf space or storage space at the place I'm going. Would a Kindle help keep me simple?

4. Ease of electronic posting - much of what hits me during my reading becomes something used in sermons, papers, blogs or emails. If a Kindle would ease that my time could be used more wisely.

What do you think? Do you have one?

I would love to play with one at some point if you'd let me borrow one for a day...just email me or comment.

I'm doing a bit of research this next week on "The Lord's Prayer". Growing up Catholic, we said this prayer multiple times each week in Mass while holding hands with those next to us.

Then I went to a Nazarene church and they replaced some words with other words and added some words at the end and there was no hand-holding.

Now, I serve at a Methodist Church and often I can hear different wordings come during the "debts/sins/trespasses" part and the overall volume diminishes near the end as many ex-Catholics do not "finish" the prayer.

So, I have been reading this week in Luke and I came across the passage where Jesus is asked to teach his Talmidim how to pray. Here is how it is printed in the Complete Jewish Bible:

Father,
May your name be kept holy.
May your kingdom come.

Give us each day the food we need.
Forgive us our sins, for we too forgive everyone who has wronged us.
And do not lead us to hard testing.

It's simple. It's holy. And yet we seem to have added a whole lot of words and phrases to it in our current liturgy. I'd love to know why?

It has challenged me personally the last 24 hours in how I communicate to God and about God. Do I add words to make myself sound pious? Do I over explain the things of God in order to justify my fear that others will twist the words to mean whatever they want? Am I more concerned with eloquence than I am honesty?

Here are the words from Matthew 6 to live into today:
5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9"This, then, is how you should pray:
" 'Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
11Give us today our daily bread.
12Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.' 14For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

This isn't a post with information as much as it is a request for feedback. So, please dialog with me if you will.

The above book was given to me last year and HIGHLY recommended by at least 4 other pastor friends of mine in the last 2 years, so I actually decided to read it! Geiger and Rainer do a great job in describing the cultural revolution that is "simple." They then, go on to say that research shows that churches with a clearly communicated process for developing disciples are the most successful. This process must have Clarity (a simple, strategic process), Movement (a plan for helping people journey through the process), Alignment (uniting the whole church and all ministries around the process) and finally Focus (eliminating anything outside the process).

I read it the first time and thought, "wow this would be nice." Serving in a 175 year old church often seems overwhelming when asked to help people grow on their journey. Overwhelming mostly because we have SOOOOO many options. The idea of simplifying them sounds great and being strategic about it speaks so much to my desire to stop doing stupid church stuff. But...

Upon re-reading it and praying, I have lots of issues that I am wrestling with. Can you help?

1. Is there a simple, Biblical process for how disciples are matured? It seems to me that Jesus called people, traveled with them, involved them, taught them, ate with them, sent them, re-taught them, rebuked them, sent them back out, etc. until the Holy Spirit came. Then, they just went out and went nuts. Really, is that reproducable and secondly...

2. How can a simple process allow for flexibility without losing it's simplicity? For example...the authors state that there must be a clearly defined entry point into that process. That seems to make sense. But, almost every church represented uses their big worship as that entry point. That may work on paper, but I am just not so sure that worship is the entry point for a lot of people any more. In fact, my entry point was church softball...actually friendships in church softball. I had a deep sense of belonging established long before I ever worshipped. We are having people come "into the process" through service as the entry point before worship. Am I having a problem with "a clearly defined entry point" because I like ambiguity or because I just don't think it is relevant any more?

3. Instead of investing in a strategic process overhaul, would it be more valuable to begin investing in shepherds for people? The authors acknowledge that programs do nothing for people if "relationships don't bridge the programs." Instead of trying to realign everything in order to be simple and thus less cluttered and more free to worship God, what if we could accomplish the same thing by helping our people help people walk their journey together? If relationships are what moves people, what would it look like if the PROGRAM was completely replaced by PEOPLE? Is that realistic?

Again, I want to hear your thoughts. If you've read this AND Joseph Myers' Search to Belong, i REALLY want to hear your thoughts as I am having a difficult time trying to bring them together.

Thoughts?