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What I learned in Denver

“Don’t look back ‘cause you know what you might see.” – Oasis, D’you know what I mean?

Allow me a moment to be sentimental and reflective, I’m less than 72 hours from leaving a city that has challenged everything I thought I knew about myself. I’m not even sure how to put my time here into words, my soul has aged so much the last eight and a half months that sometimes it feels more like eight and a half years. Other times things have happened so fast that it feels like a dream, those moments that you savor. The ones you play back in your mind over and over just because you have to remind yourself they were real and you don’t ever want to forget that and the rush that came with them.

Things like:

Your first night in your own apartment on your own 1000 miles from everyone you know.

Helping a friend film a movie all over the city.

Staying up 38 hours just because you don’t want the night to end.

Drinking coffee, lots and lots of coffee. Not because you like it, but because you love the people on the other side of the table.

Watching Brad get out of a parking ticket.

Parallel parking on a hill.

Poker nights with the guys.

The drive to and from the Men’s Advance. (As well as the event it’s self.)

The crisp cutting chill of the morning air as you watch the sun rise over Garden of the Gods.

The joy of having Spanish class cancelled by snow.

Helping Katelin hunt for a phone.

Learning you’re capable of doing more than you thought.

Understanding that being mature doesn’t mean you’ll ever stop being a kid at heart.

Friday mornings with Owen at the office.

Going site seeing with the Denver 2011 church planting team.

Spending New Years with people you didn’t even know the year before and loving every minute of it.

Wearing a wig and dress for history class.

Going to bed exhausted but thrilled about the idea of getting up in the morning.

Moving furniture with Brad, multiple times.

The site of the Front Range covered in fresh snow.

Getting signatures to start a student group.

Standing at Red Rocks and looking out over the entire city.

Being on 17th Street facing the TIAA-CREF building, my favorite view in the entire city.

Riding through downtown on the back of Mau’s scooter.

Riding RTD.

First Friday’s in the Santa Fe art district.

Driving to and from Colorado Springs at least once a week.

Every Sunday I spent at High View.

All these things impacted who I am, and left a permanent mark on my soul. I can’t explain how or to what extent, mostly because even I don’t know the full answer to that question, but I know they did and I know I’m a better person for it.

World Peace and Sin

I had an interesting conversation about war and world peace with a friend of mine the other day that made me realize that how you view the human condition has a lot to do with what you think people are capable of both morally and socially.

My friend, who I’ll refer to as “Bob”, basically had two suggestions as to how war should be eradicated or at the very least, kept to a minimum. The first thing Bob brought up was that with so many countries possessing nuclear weapons that instead of fighting wars countries should go straight to the negotiating table since they know that there’s a possibility that their entire nation could be whipped out. His second idea was that if you made it so that war was no longer profitable it would be less likely to happen and if it did it would end quicker. To ensure that war isn’t profitable Bob suggested that everyone in the warring countries have their salaries reduced to the lowest pay grade in their countries military.

While I’m all for world peace I do have a theological problem with it, namely, sin. I know sin is not a popular idea in today’s culture but it is THE problem, it always has been and will continue to be until Jesus comes back. Pride and self-centeredness were the original sin (Gen. 3) and can still be found at the root of all other sin, in this case war. Because I believe in sin and the effect it has on the entire world I don’t believe you can ever find a formula that will usher in world peace no matter how badly I may want it. I’ll use Bob’s two suggestions to show how sin makes world peace unattainable.

The idea that you can somehow make war unprofitable is highly unlikely. War will always generate money, even if you do somehow manage to enforce a salary cap on an entire nation people will find a way around it. Because our own comfort and security is what we most value we will find ways to enhance it, in this case through some backwater way of gaining extra money. This is also the kind of environment that organized crime and the black market thrive in. Anytime you outlaw or limit the availability of an item, or in this case people’s ability to buy them, an illegal form of obtaining them will emerge it’s a simple matter of supply and demand. (Prohibition anyone?) This means that by implementing a law you thought would improve the human state you’ve actually made it worse and caused people to delve deeper into the baser desires of the human soul.

The reason people will never sit down at a table and negotiate is because both sides are only concerned about getting what they want, not about what the other side wants. Say, for example, one country wants to invade the other one so it can have access to the other countries natural resources free of charge. There is no way you can successfully negotiate that situation so that everyone comes away happy, one side thinks that they should be given something that isn’t theirs and the other side thinks they should keep what is rightfully theirs. This almost always leads to some form of armed conflict with one side trying to take what they want and the other side endeavoring to hold on to it.

More and more though wars are fought over ideology and less over physical territory, which leads to a real problem if you believe that people should believe whatever works for them because you can’t say that either side is wrong or right. Both sides are standing up for what they believe in, which is what their belief system teaches them to do which makes them both right if you believe you should do “whatever works for you”. Without an absolute right and wrong it becomes impossible to call war a bad thing, really the only people who have a right to call war evil are the ones with a moral code that has a clear standard of right and wrong.

As Christians we believe that the morale code laid out in the Bible is the only one capable of producing the right heart attitude to properly view our world. The world we live in is torn and shattered by the curse of sin (Rom. 8:20-24) and the only one who can restore it to sinless perfection is Jesus. For those of us who believe this we should be leading the way towards finding humane peaceful ways of resolving conflict, not because we think world peace is an achievable goal in this lifetime, but because we believe in the one who will one day come forever destroying sin and thus bring world peace.

Bigger than my body gives me credit for.

I think one of the most beautiful things about the Gospel is the fact that it allows us to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Once we are brought into right standing with God through the person and work of Jesus Christ, we are taken from living an existence built entirely around ourselves busily trying to carve out a kingdom for our own fame, and swept into something bigger, more extravagant, and eternally lasting. The Gospel sweeps us away into something that has been in motion since before the dawn of time and is, in fact, the driving force behind all of history. Namely, the reconciliation of creation with its Creator and the glorification of God in all things.

I was reminded of this several times today in little ways that I am a part of something that has been in motion long before I took my first breath and will continue to be long after I cease to breath and I find a great deal of comfort in that.

The Idol of Love

“Cause maybe you’re gonna’ be the one that saves me.” – Oasis, Wonderwall


Love. We live in a culture that loves love, or at least its idea of it. We sing songs, read books, and watch movies that exult the idea that when you find that “special someone” the rest of your life will be perfect, that they’ll save you from everything about your life that you hate and the rest of your life will be some thrilling, romantic adventure filled with passion and excitement. The problem is that it’s not true. People of the opposite sex may make good friends and spouses, but they’re terrible saviors. No matter how much someone loves you, they will fail you; and you, in turn, will fail them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a friend, a child, or a spouse they will be unable to fill the void in your soul that desires to be loved. They can’t, they weren’t created too. We were created to love, and be loved, by God Himself and anything short of that will never satisfy us.

That doesn’t mean that loving other people deeply is a bad thing. That feeling, that emotion, that desire was given to us by God. In one of the most astonishing passages in the Bible God actually says that Man being alone in his perfect, sinless form is a bad thing. (Gen. 2:18) So God created a helpmate, someone who could provide companionship, Woman. (Gen. 2:21-23)If that wasn’t mind boggling enough He says that when two people are joined together in marriage they become one entity in God’s eyes. (Gen. 2:24)

So if love, marriage, and romance are all good, enjoyable, life giving, God ordained things then why are they bad things to desire? They aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with desiring to “fall in love”, get married, and share your life with another person. The problem comes when you make the pursuit of love and romance the primary purpose of your life. Our relationships with others are intended to be the icing on the cake, not the cake its self. Anyone who’s ever eaten too much icing knows what happens. You get a stomach ache, your body doesn’t function properly, and you just feel lousy in general. Likewise, when we focus all our energy on finding happiness in relationships with others, instead of communing with God through the person and work of Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we will grow dissatisfied, angry, and frustrated.

In short, love is something to be enjoyed, not worshiped.

Looking for answers

“It’s hard to argue when you won’t stop making sense.” – Snow Patrol, Hands Open

I don’t know if this is peculiar to me or not (I suspect it isn’t) but every once in a while the pile of things in my mind labeled “Complaints and questions for God” gets so full that I can’t take it anymore and I have to go somewhere and have it out with Him, regardless of the fact that I never win these yelling matches. I don’t really care about winning anyway, I’m looking for answers and a reminder that the fact that I can’t make any sense of these things doesn’t matter, God knows exactly what He’s doing. Honestly the scariest thing that could happen would be for me to actually win a yelling match.

So I went down to The Garden of the Gods today to watch the sunrise, vent, and get some answers about why God seems to have turned me into His own personal piñata for the last month. I got all my answers before I even had a chance to say a word. I seriously could have gone home after less than a minute with every question answered.

It was still pretty dark out when I got to the park so the entire would was painted various shades of grey and black, there was a little bit of low hanging fog, and a fresh layer of snow on the ground. It was like walking through a dream, there was a part of me that kept waiting to wake up. I walked up to the base of the “Kissing Camels” formation and immediately felt stupid. I looked straight up at the towering wall of sandstone and felt my own smallness and the silliness of my questions. The only question that wasn’t silenced by simply standing there was answered by the snow. I had prayed for a thin layer of snow to simply act as an accent, and I got it. I felt a little like Gideon with the fleece. (Judges 6:36-40)

The funny thing is the snow was the only clear answer I got. I didn’t get any reasons or explanations for any of the other questions other than the fact that God is bigger, stronger, and wiser than me and everything He’s doing to and through me is for my good and His glory; and I’m okay with that.

What is a Christian?

What is real Christianity? We can toss around a lot of heady theological ideas, pithy sayings, and lame jokes but the reality is that trying to tell someone what their walk with Christ is supposed to look like telling a parent how to raise their kids. You can give some good pointers, but in the end it comes down to the personalities of the people involved.

We often describe Christianity as a “personal relationship with Jesus” but then deny people to make it personal too who they are. Instead of allowing them the freedom to express the unique skill sets and gifts that God provided them with we try to turn them into a cookie cutter version of what we think a “good Christian” looks like. (When someone finds this so called “good Christian” let me know.) While living by a set of rules may seem to make things easier it actually robs us of the true beauty of what Jesus accomplished on The Cross. When I became a Christian God didn’t swap out my jeans and t-shirt for a suit and tie. He did, however, swap out my self-centered, sinful, degenerate heart for a heart that desires to please Him, and confesses and repents of sin. How this works its self out on a daily basis varies widely from person to person. My personality and context, for example, is very different from my mother’s thus “being a Christian” looks different for the two of us. I’m a 28 year old man at an urban college campus in Denver. My mom is a middle aged woman living in east central Indiana. Because of this trying to apply what is an effective way for my mom to live out The Gospel within her context would crash and burn if I tried to act, talk, and live the same way in my environment.

There are common traits that all Christians should share although the way they get fleshed out may look very different. The most basic beliefs of Christianity include believing that we’re all born sinners, that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are the only payment for that sin, that the Bible is the Holy, inerrant, divinely inspired word of God, that cannot be added to or subtracted from, and that we are supposed to live our lives in light of these truths.

Trying to apply a formula to something that was meant to be crafted around a unique, personal relationship will only bring despair when we fail, or pride when we succeed, but never true repentance and joy.