I had never heard of the pastor from Australia with the unpronounceable last name before his story broke a couple of weeks ago, so I didn’t have an emotional attachment to his apparently popular song. I also don’t want to diminish the damage his sin has done to people who trusted him and the Body of Christ around the world. His lies caused an immense amount of pain to a great number of people and there are no excuses for him and there can be no rush to cheap forgiveness. True forgiveness is rarely fast and it is never cheap. That said, I think his song is more poignant now.
Full disclosure, I generally don’t like the Hillsong-y type songs. I find them kind of… stupid. The lyrics never say very much and what they do say is flat and trite and doesn’t really move me. Whatever, I hope I’m mature enough that I don’t have to like every song we sing in order to sing God’s praises. It’s not about me.
But now the story has broken that the disease that this man is trusting God to heal is not the cancer he is elaborately lying to everyone about, but something else; something deeper, something more sinister, something that endangers not only the body, but could destroy body and soul.
I can’t imagine the depth of fear and dread that would make someone try to pull off a charade like that but I can imagine not wanting to show people what I’m really like. I can imagine wanting people to like me, to think I’m smart, or good or worth something more than what I think I’m worth. And I know that this fear and doubt is real and dangerous and deadly and tougher than I am so I need a cure for that dis-ease. I need a healer who can bring me peace.
Now the song has layers. Now the song speaks of something bigger even than cancer to source of our inner conflicts. We fear, so we lie and we hide. But nothing is impossible for Jesus. Even making of us brave people who are able to love, live, and forgive.
I was having a late night conversation with my wife not too long ago and we were talking about, well… pretty much everything, mostly a project that I’m working on about church.
Some background for our conversation. People leave Church. Not just my church or your church but Church. They do this for a variety of reasons. Some are big and dramatic, some are subtle and draining, some we can call good, bad, whatever the reason, they drop out of community with God’s people. Now, I know many people in this situation and most of them would still call themselves Christians and many of these claim that they would like to be part of a church if it was … something.
The basic plot of the story is this: Person A meets Jesus and becomes involved in Church, there is a period of happiness and contentment, at some point there is a conflict, large or small, where the Church fails to be what “A” expected it to be and they remove themselves.
If this seems like an incomplete story, that’s because it is. I know so many people who have run this far in the story who are still God haunted or church haunted, longing for a community they know intuitively should exist but seems incredibly difficult to locate. I could write more but you’ll have to wait for the book.
I can speak to this story because I lived it. I can tell bad church stories with the best of them and it amazes me everyday that my faith survived where it died in so many of my friends. More amazing to me is that I feel a deep bone call to serve this Bride that has left me scarred. The problem is that I did this young. My conflict and rejection of the church happened early enough that by the time God dragged me to Bible College at 22 I had been angry and fighting for close to a decade and I was tired. I had to figure out a way to live with God’s people or break the other way and, for me, that just wasn’t an option.
So when I hear people talking about leaving church and their anger and ambivalence and how they feel lied to and ripped off, I understand it. I really do, but sometimes it sounds adolescent to me because that’s the time in my life when I was going through this. Most of the time I manage to not be a jerk in this, but I feel myself categorizing people and I don’t want to be that guy. People walk their paths at their own pace in their own time.
So for me, the lesson of the day is patience. Patience for you, patience for me, patience for God who is working in his time to bring about peace for all of us who seek it.
I’ve been published over at wreckedfortheordinary.com. You can check it out, but if you want the version with the word penis in it you’ll have to read it here.
In case you’re wondering it amuses me to write the word penis often enough to get false traffic here. If you googled penis and found me Jesus loves you!
Seriously, he does. I’m not joking about that part.
Anyway, wrecked for the ordinary is pretty cool. Thanks guys.
By now most of you have heard about the murder that took place on a bus between Edmonton and Winnipeg. When things like this happen people sometimes look to me as a pastor to answer questions. Questions like where is God when a psycho stabs a random guy to death on a bus. Questions like that don’t have satisfying answers, or answers that heal. Answers don’t heal anyway.
Here’s what I’ve got.
This world, this planet is sometimes very big and at other times very small. It is a place of amazing beauty and wonders and also great dangers. But this world is never enough. It’s not big enough for our joys, not for our sorrows nor for our anger. When we lose someone, no matter how, we never feel we have had enough time, or enough conversations or space to make all things right. When someone is taken from us, no matter how, there is no amount of vengeance that will satisfy. This world is not enough.
So if this world is not enough, what is? Eternity. This world, this lifespan of however many years we’re granted isn’t enough because we were designed for more, life that goes on eternally. All we are is too much, we don’t fit here.
So we look at and hope in an empty tomb and a better kingdom and we long for the day when, like Sam Gamgee waking up after Mordor, we ask “Is it over? Has every sad thing been made untrue?” any the Answer that heals will speak an overwhelming “Yes”.
