There are moments in my life when I hate to admit that I was right.  There are moments when I want to be wrong, when I will do just about anything to be wrong.  This weekend held one of those moments for me.  Let me explain, in a recent blog post, I predicted that Jennifer Knapp’s recent admission to being a lesbian would erupt into a full-fledged battle in the culture war.  I wanted to be wrong about my prediction.  I would have preferred that my analysis of the underlying event and everything about ir was incorrect.  Sadly, it was not to be.

On Friday night round one in the culture war slugfest that is the Jennifer Knapp dilemma took place.  It happened on Larry King Live of all places.  It included Jennifer, Larry King, Bob Botsford, and Ted Haggart.  The event was cordial and polite with all parties in this round attempting to be on their best behavior, (I guess aiming for style points from the judges mostly).  The politeness with which it took place might allow one to think it was not a bare-knuckled brawl of the highest order, which it was.

It was a polite brawl is the best way that I can describe it.  All the people involved looked exactly as I figured they would, cheap dime store caricatures of who they were.  Everyone looked petty and small in my estimation.  No one came out looking like a rose.  Everyone took serious wounds coming out of the altercation.  The cause of Christ was set back on Friday night.  And new reasons to think Christians are mean-spirited were given to anyone watching that needed one.

It was hard for me to watch.  I wanted to yell, ‘just shut up’ at my television, but I couldn’t, as the rest of my family was sleeping at the time I watched it.  I wanted to turn it off, but I couldn’t.  It was like watching the train wreck you know is going to happen that eventually does.   It made me sad.  And I think it made all of Heaven sad.

Let me explain why…  Everyone involved made the work of the Kingdom all the more difficult as a result of the broadcast.  It made it harder for people truly trying to help their neighbor wherever they find them.  It made it harder for anyone carrying a cup of water in the name of Christ.  It hardened hearts, and closed ears.  It cast mud on the name of Christ, and left every believer trying to be about the calling of their creator with a black eye.

There were no successes as a result of the broadcast.  It wasn’t possible for there to be any.  Why Mr. Botsford went on the show at all is beyond me?  He knew he wasn’t going to be able to change Ms. Knapp’s mind.  He knew he wasn’t going to convince her with rhetorical flourishes and sound logic.  It just wasn’t in the cards.  She wasn’t going to break down in tears and repent on national television.  If the goal was to convince Jennifer on the subject of Biblical truth, then going on Larry King was the wrong venue for it.

These sorts of things have to happen in private.  They have to happen in the context of a relationship.  It is only in the comfort and security of a meaningful relationship that one person can share truth with another one, with any hope of success.  This is something Mr. Botsford I assure you already knew.  Which leads me to ask, why did he go on the show at all?  Why did he seek the confrontation?  I don’t know the answer to my questions right now.  I can only guess at his possible motives, and my mind won’t let me assign pure ones to his actions.

The right way to handle this issue is to show the love of Jesus.  People have to know how much you care before they will ever care what you think.  People of faith need to be expressive of the love of Christ to the wounded and the broken among us.  We need to live the lessons of the parable of the Good Samaritan.  That man didn’t ask how the victim came to that place.  He didn’t query the nature of the victim’s perspective on hot button issues to determine whether or not his neighbor was worthy of his aid.  He rolled up his sleeves, and cleaned his wounds, and bound his injuries.  He took the man to a place where he knew aid could be rendered to the injured, and the paid for the care.

So our response to these issues must be…  We must hold the broken and the battered.  We must help them with their wounds.  We must take them to the healer, (which we aren’t by the way), so that they can get the care they need.  In this description, you haven’t heard one ounce of judgment or condemnation.  That isn’t our role.  That isn’t ever going to be our role in these situations!  Our only role is to be there in the midst of pain and agony.  Our only role is to share the essential nature of our spirit with those in need.  Our job isn’t to judge or condemn.  Our job is to be the hands and feet of God’s grace in difficult circumstances.

It won’t be easy to do this.  We won’t feel comfortable in the process.  Our lack of ease or comfort with the task at hand doesn’t relieve us of the requirement of doing so.  It makes the clarion call upon us all the more urgent to step up to our task.  The more we love without pretext, and share the wealth of our hearts without precondition the less the stereotypes and caricatures will  fit us.  The less we act like heartless bullies on steroids, the more we will be able to help people and actually advance the Kingdom of Christ.

Acting in this fashion doesn’t justify the sin of others.  It accepts that our role has nothing to do with judgment or condemnation.  The task of making people aware of their sin, the righteousness of God, and judgment to come belongs to the Holy Spirit.  Our impersonation of the Holy Spirit is pathetic at best, and comes off as petty and thuggish.  We have none of the Holy Spirit’s deft and delicate touch.  We are the spiritual equivalent of a bull in a china shop in these circumstances.  We need to seek first to love and to comfort those in desperate need of the Grace of Almighty God!  Anything less doesn’t measure up to the calling that has been place upon our hearts, minds, and souls.

Did you or your children ever play little league baseball? Can you remember a time when only the winners of the league (and maybe 2^nd and 3^rd place) took home a trophy? Perhaps like me you have a hard time with the recent trend of participation trophies. I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way someone got the bright idea that every kid who bought a pair of cleats should get a trophy. Rewarding the kids who work hard, practice and hone their skills is no longer a priority. Why? I’m not sure. Perhaps we’re trying to spare the feelings of the losers. Perhaps the virtue of participation really is more important than the concept of winning. Personally, I think this is a bunch of bunk. Maybe a kid can’t hit a fastball. So what? Let’s help him find his own gift; maybe it’s playing a tuba or swimming. Maybe she’s a natural born writer or scientist. My point is that we should award the kids in an area that they deserve recognition. If every kid that runs onto a baseball diamond gets a trophy, the trophies become somewhat meaningless, right? What’s so special about winning a trophy if everyone gets a trophy?

Right now you’re probably asking yourself what this has to do with pantheism. I’m making a point – trust me.

The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy defines pantheism as follows:

Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position. Broadly defined it is the view that God is everything and everything is God. A slightly more specific definition says [that] pantheism … signifies the belief that every existing entity is, only one Being; and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it.

This concept of pantheism is common amongst Eastern and New Age religions. Whenever you hear a person talk about “The All” or “The One” you can rest assured they are espousing a belief in pantheism. If I am being honest, the idea or thought processes behind this idea are valid. A person who expresses a belief in pantheism is normally trying to convince others to respect nature. The argument is that we should care for and respect nature and other people because all of it – man, rocks, mountains, trees, animals and etc. – are all part of “The All.” Everything is God so we should treat everything with the proper respect.

This all sounds great doesn’t it? The problem is that this isn’t the Biblical view of creation. Rather, the Bible teaches that we should be able to recognize God based on His creation. Our appreciation of creation and nature should cause us to fall on our knees and worship the true, living God. We may discover the general attributes of God by examining His creation; for instance, He is a God who appreciates beauty, love and friendship. He is a God who loves painting glorious skies and landscapes just to watch our mouths fall open in wonder. However, we must not confuse the Creator with creation. These revelations that can be found in nature are general. If we want to learn the specific attributes of God we must study the Special Revelation found in Scripture and in the person of Jesus Christ. When we confuse the general and special revelations of God we are making the same mistake that Paul addresses in Romans 1:25, “[We exchange] the truth of God for a lie, and worship and serve created things rather than the creator.”

I would take it one step further and suggest we are in violation of one of the Ten Commandments.  When we worship creation as if it were God we are creating idols. Yes we should respect, preserve, and care for our environment; but only because it is a gift from God, not because it is God.

If we consider all of creation God – you are God, I am God, the trees are God, Squirrels are God and etc. – than there is nothing special about being God; much like little league participation trophies, God becomes meaningless.

Look at it this way … if everything is God, than nothing is God. Pantheism is akin to atheism in the sense that God becomes unnecessary. I prefer to learn about the real, living God as revealed in the Scriptures. Yeah, it takes more effort and more dedication than simply pronouncing that nature is God, but it is more rewarding in the end.

From the nearly the beginning of human history, man has been trying to put God in a box.  This what our finite temporal minds do best.  By nature, we attempt to identify, classify, catalog, and quantify all we encounter.  It’s not a bad thing, honestly.  It was even part of Adam’s charged ministry.  And insomuch as we do this in the physical realm, that’s fine.  It’s our fundamental nature to do so.  It keeps us safe and healthy at the same time.

The problem begins when we take this nature and attempt to apply it to God.  It leads us to say that God is X, or whatever X happens to be based on our flawed and incomplete understanding.  God strongly condemns this practice in many places.  He rebukes those who would follow him from trying to cast him into an image, any image for that matter.  This is in no small measure, because any image, idol, or icon of him fails utterly as an expression of him.

This hasn’t stopped humanity from trying.  The Israelites demanded idols to worship in the desert.  They even turned the Ark of the Covenant into an idol of sorts in one of their confrontations with the Philistines.  In both cases, God handed down some of the harshest discipline in the entirety of the Old Testament, (with the notable exceptions of the Sodom narrative and the captivity periods).

Those examples stand out in stark relief and should prevent us from repeating those tragic mistakes.  Sadly, however, they do not.  Our modern, or post-modern if you prefer, intellects are stilling trying to cast God into a box.  We try to intellectually understand God in concrete terms we can easily absorb.  We attempt to lay hold of the infinite with our pathetic finite brains, and cast for ourselves a mental idol that we can easily make sense of, rationally understand, and work with.  We try to boil God down to some ‘cookies on the bottom shelf’ pabulum that is easily digested by the broadest cross-section of humanity.  It’s what we humans are good at, despite divine commands to the contrary.

My own personal experience speaks volumes to how tragically misguided these efforts are.  In each case, God seemed solidly bent on confounding the box in which I had constructed for him to reside.  I would believe God to be this, that, or the other thing.  I would construct a systematic theology to support this frame of reference, and I would then proceed to live life from this place.  In each and every case, I would feel sure I’d constructed a solid framework which God could work from and reside within.  And in each and every case, the framework would collapse of its own weight, because God either didn’t know the role I’d written for him in the construct, didn’t care to play by the rules I’d codified for him, or wanted to frustrate my every effort to build a box for him mental or otherwise.  As to which one was the most proximal cause of my frustration, I’m sure I won’t know this side of Heaven.  I do now believe that it was a little of all three.

And so it is that I am no longer a spiritual box builder.  I’m tired of building a thing only to find out how pathetic a job I’d done at building the container.  Today, I find myself enthralled by the mysterious nature of God.  I swear that the older I get the more mysterious God becomes.  And the older I get the less interested I am in box building and systematic theology construction that effect to explain God.  I’ll leave the box building and systematic theology construction to the younger crowd.  I don’t have the energy or the desire for it anymore.  I am, today at least, content with the description God gave to Moses, “I am that I am”.  Nothing more works, fits, or effectively applies.

Who am I, after all, to describe effectively a being that exists, a part from the confines of this mortal coil?  Who am I to attempt to rationally explain a being that at its very core is not rational?  I wasn’t there at the moment God turned the lights on by the simple act of a spoken declaration of will.  And it’s unlikely I will be there when he turns them off to replace them with the glorious radiance that is his fundamental being.  I wasn’t there when the God that doesn’t change yet somehow remains mysterious laid the foundations of this world, and all the others.  And, unless I am wrong, I won’t be there when he reveals the new Heaven and the new Earth, (at least in the flesh).

So I am left only to accept that God is, and that my life should be lived from a place of acceptance of that immutable truth.  I shouldn’t posses the wantonly arrogant hubris that believes the Bible gives me anything more than enough information about God to find faith and belief for that God.  To do so is absolute folly, and dare I say utterly foolish.  The Bible is not a handbook for understanding God.  It is not a biology textbook that quantifies God in realistic terms.  It does not function to provide a vivisectionist’s guide to dissecting the divine.  Rather it provides the evidence that confirms the existence of that God, and the route by which that God can be interacted with.  Anything more is vain folly and narcissistic arrogance that places more worth on the spirit of man than his creator confers himself.

Hope as it turns out is a cheap slut, or so my current situation would lead me to believe.  Allow me to explain…  I awoke this morning to find a situation that looked very promising in my email.  A company that I submitted a resume to for a completely different job, (for which I was absolutely unqualified), had done something very interesting.  Rather than toss my resume, they compared it to their other openings, and contacted me regarding a possible match.  In the preliminary discussions everything looked hopeful.  I dared to believe that this was THE ONE, that this was a providential opportunity that was going to lead to gainful employment.  I dared to hope.  I dared to believe.

It seemed like everything was going well.  I updated my resume as requested by the human resources staff at the company.  I asked for prayer from the people closest to me.  And everything looked like it was going to work out.  Until all hope was extinguished when the person I had been dealing with asked for more detailed revisions to my resume, and included the resumes of the other candidates in the process to show me what he was looking for.  It was at this point that hope fled like the virtue of a prom queen after the prom is over.  And I was left with an unbelievable situation and I was surely stunned.  The other candidates completely blew me out of the water in terms of qualifications, experience, training, and job knowledge.  They had advanced degrees, and decades of experience I could only wish to have.  One was even on the development team for the most current release of the product this job entails supporting.

And so I gave in to the dark despair that lurks in the recesses of my spirit.  I was left with a number of questions regarding the quality and nature of my faith.  The Bible says in many places that God cares for all of his creation.   Jesus himself repeats this theme in his ministry also.  I believe this to be true, and yet I wonder about God’s provision in my immediate context.  I am fearful about the future.  I accept the Bible at face value that God has a plan for my life, and yet I am frightened about its timing and implementation.

I wonder if I am a liar when I say that I believe in God’s word on this subject, yet reside in such a dark and despairing place.  I wonder if it is sinful to be fearful that God won’t fulfill his promises.  Am I a hypocrite when I exhort others to believe in God, when my faith seems to be so shallow?  Am I the wrong man for anything God may have planned for the future, when I am compelled to ask these questions?  Should I just accept the counsel of Job’s wife and ‘curse God and die’?

And yet in my darkest times I was reminded that God is sovereign.  I was reminded that despite my circumstances, God still sits on the throne.  I was uplifted to know that in spite of all the wind and rain that is buffeting my situation the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being that created the universe by the simple spoken declaration of his will still exists.  The power to confirm all that he has promised still resides in his spirit. 

If I do nothing more than retain the belief in those things, I will have succeeded in surviving the test of this moment, for surely it must have been a test.  I was compelled to remember always, that my timing isn’t his timing.  I was encouraged to remain steadfast in accepting that God pays for what he orders in our lives.  He protects all that creates with the same power that said, ‘let there be light’.  Those that God has entrusted into the care of my life, matter to almighty God.  I matter to him at the same time.

This moment might seem to some to have been trivial.  It might seem like much ado about nothing.  I assure you that it wasn’t.  The substance of my very soul was tested this morning.  I was weighed on the scales.  I can only pray that I didn’t come to the place of remembrance too late.  I can only wish that my despair wasn’t as costly to me in the long term as I fear it might be.  The path out of despair this morning was painful and difficult, but I came out of the place.  And I know I didn’t reside there or walk out of there alone.  The spirit of God was there trying to comfort the whole time.  It was this same spirit that provided timely remembrances of God’s word and promises.  And it was this same spirit that carried me out of the land of despair when it was time, my feelings regarding hope notwithstanding.

Just over two millennia ago, a member of the trinity took on the robe of flesh, set aside his right to be God, and became fully mortal.  He entered the flow of events and our world in the way every being has entered it since Adam and Eve.  An obscure teenage virgin gave birth to God in the most humble of circumstances.  She gave birth to God amongst the livestock, because there was absolutely no room anywhere in the entire city for them.  The spirit that was there at the moment of creation that participated in the founding of the world was relegated to being born amongst the animals.  The God that participated in Genesis 1:1 was relegated to a place of poverty at his birth.

The first smells that entered God’s nostrils of flesh were most likely the stench of manure.  The prince of peace was subjected to a stink that we modern humans avoid at all costs.  He was wrapped in rags of cloth and laid in the place from which the livestock fed.  The co-owner of creation, at his birth, was left among the marginalized and the dispossessed.  It is important in viewing this scene not to view it with rose-colored glasses.  It is important not to see this in soft fuzzy lighting with an eye toward some nostalgic perspective.

God entered the world into squalor.  The scene at his birth was likely a chaotic one.  It is unlikely that Mary and Joseph were alone in the cave that functioned as a stable.  This place was likely filled with other poor travelers that couldn’t find lodging anywhere in Bethlehem. It is unlikely that this place had been cleared of animals.  And so it was that God came into the world among a crowded cave filled with the flotsam and jetsam that made up the bottom rungs of Jewish society at that time.   The stench of sweaty, unwashed people most likely mixed with the foul odor of the livestock and their decaying offal to create an overwhelming odor that I honestly cannot begin to imagine.

This moment at God’s birth was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah regarding, “A great light” and “Unto us a son is given”.  Our modern minds tend to focus on the great chorus of angels that heralded the birth of the Messiah and the Magi that came from the east.  We tend to try and avoid focusing on the stable in which the Christ was born.  And yet it is in this humble cave that an amazing event occurred.  A teenage virgin, engaged to a carpenter, gave birth to the prince of peace there.  And the miracle of this season took place.  The miracle that affirmed God’s will for his creation was brought to fruition there.

It is puzzling that the creator of the universe chose such a lowly place to enter the world he created.  The God that parted the Red Sea, gave Daniel comfort in the lion’s den, provided the support for Meshack, Shadrack, and Abednigo; entered the world in a place, and a time that none would have expected.  God confounded the expectations of his people as he began fulfilling his promise of a messiah.  The birth of the Messiah was primarily witnessed by livestock, the unlucky, the dispossessed, and a small band of shepherds. Not exactly a proper court for the King of Kings, but it is what God selected.

The moment of the birth of the Messiah was an amazing moment in time.  It was a majestic event that happened in the midst of manure.  I cannot help but be awed by it.  I cannot help but be left speechless when I consider it.  The march to the cross began in a stable filled with the fragrant aroma of decaying fecal matter.  The nostrils of the Messiah were filled with the stench of this life from His very first breath.  The stench of our sin, and degradation was in his nose from the very beginning.  And God didn’t run from it, or select a different place to avoid it.  God chose to step into this life in the most humble of circumstances and be exposed from the very beginning to the stench of our existence.  He chose to seek out his creation at its most raw and basal level.  He didn’t shrink from the appointment with us.  He welcomed it, he invited it, and he took it squarely head on, beginning with the moment of his birth.

In a lowly cave in Bethlehem, God came near to us two millennia ago.  He has chosen to abide with his creation.  He has chosen through substitutional sacrifice to impute value into his own, to impute his value into his own.  He chose to draw near to those capable of hearing his voice.  And he has never left us since.