Technology and the Return of Christ

Today I read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the U.S. Air Force's development of antimatter weaponry and fuel sources. If you would like to read the article you can find it here.

This stuff is right out of the best sci-fi movies and TV shows. Space travel at unthinkable speeds using a fuel source that is so effecient that you could travel across the solar system on just a handful. Weapons that reduce its prey to vapor instantaneously. It got me thinking about technology; particularly the advances we have witnessed in the past 50 years. Remember Captain James T. Kirk's communicator from the Star Trek series? Do you own a cell phone? Same idea (minus the teleportation, of course). The truth is that the fantasy of yesterday is the product of today. Voice activated computers, 5000 song libraries contained in a portable device the size of a calculator, Mars colinization, wireless homes, levitating super trains, fingerprint activated doorlocks for homes, genetic engineering, public space travel...on and on the list goes and where it stops only our wildest dreams can tell. We are cruising down the super-highway of technology towards a seemingly infinite future.

Yet for those of us who follow Jesus, we know there is a moment that is coming (probably sooner than later) that will interrupt our history. A day known only to our Heavenly Father. Namely, Jesus' return to the earth and subsequent reign on the earth for 1000 years, before this world and heaven are disgarded for a new one. Whatever your views on the End Times and the Great Tribulation, I have to wonder what life will be like during that 1000 years. Clearly the Bible tells us that not all people will be a part of the Kingdom during that reign, nor will all of those unbelieving people who were around before the Tribulation be killed off during it. So will technology stop being used and developed? I think it would be ludicrous to assume that upon Christ's return we would, as a civilization, revert back to 1st century A.D. living conditions. So here are some questions (some of which are a little humorous) that come to mind about all of this:

Will technology continue to develop on the scale it is currently today, an if so how far will it go?
Will space travel and exploration still be going on? If Jesus returns while people are on Mars what will happen to them? What about the MIR space station?
Will God put a stop to the use of technology?
Will Jesus have an email address and cell phone number for those who are not in their supernatural eternal bodies (assuming we can communicate with him from anywhere)?
What about modern medicine?
Will Microsoft cease to exist?

I realize these are not questions needful for our lives here on earth or the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Nevertheless, they are fun to think about and if anything may give us a hint as to how close we may actually be to Christ's return. After all; if there is a limit to how far God will let man develop (and we are getting pretty far down that road), how much further will He let us go?
What do you think?

In Memorium: Don North

On Thursday August 26th, 2004 an incredible man went home to be with Jesus.

Don North, a pastor and friend from Oroville, was killed in a mortorcycle accident Thursday afternoon. God only knows why. Don ministered in the Tri-Counties area for nearly 30 years; leaving a mark of humility, substance, and most importantly love everywhere he went. I came to know Don at the annual regional prayer summit held at the YWAM base of Richardson Springs. Don and I most recently worked together on the board of the Center for Transformation Studies, a fledgling graduate program being developed in Chico, CA. While we were growing in our friendship, I was not as close to Don as some of my fellow leaders in the area. His passiong has had a real impact on us...

Don left a legacy of love. While playing drums earlier this year at a conference in Davis, CA I heard Don speak on this familiar topic. During his session he shared what is, in my opinion, one of the most profound statements concerning the Kingdom of God. He said: "God is building His Kingdom on gifts of friendship". Stop and think about that for a moment. If you get the idea here, you will see that there is nothing that happens in the Kingdom of God outside of the context of relationship (more specificially friendship). There is a divine Chain Reaction effect from relationships. One pastor ministers to an elder in his church, who in turn prays for someone at a church service. That person is encouraged and goes home to shares with her husband what God has done...he rejoices. The next day at work he shares of God's faithfulness with a dispondent co-worker whose son is constantly in trouble at school. The mother decides to start attending church again. Her son's behavior improves after attending youth group, where he meets the son of a missionary. One night while having dinner at the missionaries home, he hears stories of God's intervention in the lives of people in Africa...and his heart is runined for ministry. He goes to seminary, is commissioned to Africa, returns five years later, starts a church...on and on the reaction goes. I think you see the point. Relationships become catalysts for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. A few divine relationships can have a much greater impact on humanity than a dozen church outreaches.

Jesus figured he needed 12 relationships to transform the modern world of his time. Don, following in his father's example, saw every personal contact as the possible beggining of something eternal. Whether it would lead to planting a seed into an individual heart or a contact that would lead to a regional gathering, Don saw each friendship as the birthplace of a move of God. Heaven touching earth in the context of relationships. Jesus did the same: joining Zacheus for lunch, interacting with some fishermen from Galilee, or spending many hourse with Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Each relationship had the potential for a divine intervention.

It is the same for us in our lives today. We overlook the importance of relationships, segregating God's intervention into our world from them. One mindset believes that God can be a part of a relationship. Don saw the relationship itself as the invitation for God to intervene. It was the means to the end. This doesn't mean that something is always going to happen, but if you know that God looks to work in relationships, then you perk up a bit...waiting for that divine nudge from the Spirit to discover God's hand in the friendship. I can only hope to see this truth worked into my life. I am not seeking to make friends as some sort of evangelistic agenda. Sometimes what God wants to do in that friendship is to teach me something. Every relationship contains the "elements" that will produce the "chemical reaction" God can use to advance His Kingdom in our lives and the lives of others. We need only be aware of this truth, and in turn watch and pray...that person you meet in the supermarket today may very well change your life for eternity. Are you listening?

Receiving God's Love

Most of you who are reading this will undoubtedly remember the childhood song: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so..." In my adult years I have struggled with message of that song.

In my estimation, there is only a certain level of truth in those words. There is a season in our walk with God where that level of truth is sufficient…but we can’t stay there. You see, simply knowing in our mind (as the song suggests) a stated truth does not mean that we have received it. I would even go so far as to say that believing a stated truth does not mean that we have fully received it. I remember taking a class on counseling in college that utilized case studies as a means of learning principles to apply in real life counseling situations. These brief scenarios challenged us to examine the possible meanings behind what was being described, to find clues in the story that might reveal the real problem, and pick up on wrong perceptions held by different characters.

One case study in particular dealt with a husband and wife scenario where the woman claimed her husband didn't love her anymore. The counselor asks the husband if this was true to which he replied heartily "NO!" So the counselor turns to the wife and asks what the husband had done to make her feel that way. Her response was "he never tells me that he loves me anymore...” at which point the husband chimes in with "I told you I loved when I married you. Wasn't that good enough?" Who was wrong here? Well, before you jump all over the husband let me suggest that they are both partially to blame. You see the husband should have been more vocal about his love and considerate of his wife's need for consistent vocal affirmation. Some people's primary avenue for being shown love is through vocal affirmation. On the other hand maybe the wife should have communicated her need to him many years prior (she may have and then gave up, which would be grounds for examining the husband's responsibility more...but this isn't counseling class).

One the other hand, the mistake the wife makes is that she failed on some level to recognize and "receive" the other expressions of love her husband possibly showed to her (providing, care, gifts, affection, faithfulness, etc.) We all need some form of affirmation; nevertheless it can't be overlooked that someone can say "I Love You" a million times a day, but the proof of that love is seen in real acts of love. We often fall short of truly receiving God's love, because we have become accustomed to hearing that truth stated to us, and in our minds we have stopped there. "The Bible says it, so I believe it and that settles it" becomes our mantra. Just tell me God loves me again, and I’ll be fine. Is this what Paul meant when he prayed for the Ephesians in chapter 3 that they would "be rooted and grounded in love...knowing the height, depth, width, and breadth of the love of God"? Is there nothing more to receiving God's love than an intellectual conviction that leads to a conscious belief? Remember, Ephesus was a church of great accomplishment that had left behind its “first love” (Revelation 2).

A Word About Receiving
Webster defines RECEIVE as “to come into possession of”. By definition, to receive something is to possess it…holding it in your hands, seeing it with your eyes; in a word experiencing it by encountering it first hand. Even as I write these words some of the old cobwebs of theology blow through my mind: “But faith believes in what you can’t see.” “Faith doesn’t need tangible experience in order to exist and faith is all that God requires of us.” The problem with understanding faith as a belief in what you can’t see is that it prevents us from walking in the reality of what we say we have faith in. This is the point that troubled Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, when he would read James chapter 2. He wanted James taken out of the Bible because he couldn’t reconcile “saved by grace through faith” and “faith without works is dead”. Quite simply, it’s one of the classic mistakes of interpreting the Bible…trying to understand God’s word through our cultural filter (in Luther’s case: the filter of works driven Catholicism). What James tells us in the second chapter of his letter is that those who have faith will walk out (works) in such a way that demonstrates that they possess (by faith) what can’t be seen or known by conventional human capacities. No man has ever seen God, as John points out in his gospel, yet we believe God exists. Why? For John it was because he saw God demonstrated through the life of Jesus (John 1:14-18). For us, it is as we see God working in the world through people.

This was the misnomer James was after in his letter…that there are those who stop at believing in their mind, being convinced through logic or environment. This was a trap that kept believers from receiving and walking in all that God had provided. This same trap cripples many Christians in our day as well. Coming out of 500 years of linear-based logic that began with The Enlightenment, we have a cultural filter like Luther did. We have come to value understanding in our minds more than possessing in our hands. Theories are of more importance to us than practiced truth. Perhaps this idea of receiving was what John was referring to in his first epistle when he says:

“…that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life…that we declare to you…” (1 John 1:1-3).

Those who have received God’s love will in turn live as ones who have possessed it by their tangible love for God and love for others. We love God because He first loved us…because we have received His love.

“And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it; then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” – Ephesians 3:18-19 (NLT)

Paul uses dimensional descriptors to equate what it means to understand and experience the love of God. While physicists are pondering the possibility of as many as 10 or 11 dimensions contained within the universe, there are four that you and I can relate to based on our daily experience. Those dimensions are: Height, Width, Depth and Time (length). I believe that Paul was trying to communicate to the Ephesian believers that God’s love was to be experienced in the here and now, or else it could not be fully understood in the life of the Christian.

The Width of God’s Love
Width (or breadth) is the dimension which determines the scope of an object; its range of motion, capacity and influence. A good picture of this would be a fishing net. A wide net, quite simply, catches more fish than a tall or deep one. It stretches through more of the water, crossing the paths of more fish. God’s love is wide…embracing all…embracing sinners of every kind…stretching to the highways and byways of life. When David declares in the Psalms that God casts our sins as far as the east is from the west, not only does he remove sin from us, but there is no sin that cannot be brought to the mercy of His great love. Those who have received the width of God’s love have surrendered to the overwhelming scope of it. They are no longer trying to run around it. They can’t avoid it. They stop fighting against it…they have been caught. Jesus told Peter and the others that he would make them fisher’s of men. These guys knew what fishing nets were. It was their trade. I don’t believe Jesus was telling them they would make converts. He was saying: “by the time I am done with you, you will be able to catch men with the wide net of my love from which no man can escape.” Peter certainly came to know this truth; as must you and I. We must see all men as candidates for the wide net of God’s love. We are all sinners. The type of sin is irrelevant to the love of God. We should rejoice when we encounter sinners of “the worst kind” because even these are not beyond the reach of the net. Besides, weren’t you and I caught by the very edges ourselves?

The Height of God’s Love
The Height (or Zenith) of an object is its highest point. It is the fullness of God’s love. It is the most advanced point. How is it that mortal beings, such as we are, who are not only infinitesimally microscopic in comparison to all of God’s creation, but also frail and sin-stained, have been given access to the heights of God’s love? For Paul to suggest this is truly astounding. There isn’t one among us who feels worthy of such an opportunity. There is something in the back of our minds that whispers “you know this is only a figurative statement…God wouldn’t really share EVERYTHING with you.” God has not reserved the top 5% for Himself, the extremely holy or the angels. He has opened the door of access to anyone who would come. The height of His love belongs to everyone that the width of it catches. The height of His love involves all that He has given extravagantly to us. Whether it is wisdom, resources, anointing, peace, or any other gift He has given it to the nth degree. It is there for us to enjoy. It is there for us to share with others. He has withheld no good thing from us (Psalm 84:11). God is good; he has withheld nothing of Himself from us! Those who walk in the height of God’s love, walk in all that He is and all that He has given to us.

The Depth of God’s Love
Depth, for a three dimensional object, is the direct linear measurement from the front to back. Ultimately, depth determines capacity (volume).

When I consider the capacity of God’s love I am reminded of Paul’s famous words in 1 Corinthians 13. Particularly the characteristics of love outlined in verses 4-7:

• Patient (long-suffering)
• Kind (gentle)
• Doesn’t Envy (not insecure)
• Doesn’t Boast (not better than…)
• Not Proud (humble, knowing its place…)
• Not Self-Seeking (prefers others)
• Not Rude (considerate/sensitive to other’s feelings)
• Not easily Angered (doesn’t take things personally)
• Doesn’t Keep a Record of Wrongs (chooses to see the best)
• Rejoices in truth, not in evil
• Protects, Trusts, Hopes, Perseveres
• Never Fails

Walking in the depth of God’s love is not a momentary event. There isn’t a meter that we are watching so that when someone has exhausted our capacity we have a right to act in a context that is outside of love. We forgive 70x7 times…and then we forgive again. This is about relationships. Are we enjoying the fruit of the depth of God’s love in our relationships with family, church, and the world? Have we compartmentalized our relationships in such a way that we have allocated a certain amount of love for them? Are there certain people we have reserved less love for? Those who are walking in the depth of God’s love have a capacity for others weaknesses that causes them to see beyond the weakness to the person that God loves and has designed great things for. The word Depth, can also be defined as the deepest places of the sea (Abyss), the soul, or of feelings. Those who walk in the depth of God’s love have experienced his far reaching love that meets us even in the depths of human experience. They have the ability to help others who are in the depths of life to get connected to the love that will lift the higher. As Job said: “He will deliver his soul from the pit, and his life shall see light” – Job 33:28 (KJV)

The Length (Time) of God’s Love
“His Love Endures Forever” – Read: Psalm 136 Throughout all time there has been a heartbeat, the greatest of all, that has been like a metronome keeping the events of humankind on temp with the grand purposes of God. It is the consistent pounding of God’s love. All creation resonates with it. Love existed before creation breathed its first breath. Love will remain beyond the need for hope and faith. Those who walk in the Length of God’s love understand that all things are to be brought back in tempo with His heart. This is the goal; everything else is just a means to this end. They understand that God’s love has determined a timetable…there is no need for impatience or panic. God is in control. The one, who began the work, is able to finish it. Every event, relationship and circumstance needs to be interpreted through the lens of God’s love. What is God doing? How does this relate to God’s grand purpose? It is so easy to focus on what the enemy is doing or where human failure is present. Love looks for what God is doing in the person.

In Conclusion As I read through this article I am half excited and half discouraged. I am excited by the greatness of God’s love and how that has been made available to me. I am discouraged by the fact that the ideal state of walking in God’s love seems quite unattainable. My faith seems to fall short. Maybe you have similar thoughts and feelings along these lines. We need to take comfort in the fact that God has us right where He wants us. We are in a process of growing in this love. The fact that Paul prayed for the Ephesians (and us) showed that we haven’t quite gotten there. So, we trust in God…in His love. As we continue to surrender to the fact that God loves us no matter what, and continue to take bolder steps into the heights of His love, and grow in our capacity to love as we have been loved, and rest in the foundation of His love which endures all time and all things…we will be able to say as Paul did: “There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God”. Not just God’s love toward us, but our connectedness to that love. We are joined to it, we have received it, and we live it as those who have possession of the greatest treasure in all existence.

The Open Source Church

One of my favorite websites is theooze.com. The founder of this amazing resource is Spencer Burke, a former pastor of nearly twenty years, who decided in 1998 to utilize the accessibility of the internet to provide a place where ideas and conversations could be shared about the future of the church. In his mini-biography titled From the Third Floor to the Garage Spencer eludes to a subject, which is the center piece of this article, known as “Open Source” in terms of the church. That got me thinking; primarily because I have a background in computer programming and knew that he was referring to a rapidly growing phenomenon in the software world that has been spearheaded by an operating system known as Linux.

It is Open Source that powers the success of Linux and other similar software projects…and this revolution in technology just may be a perfect metaphor for where the church will find it’s greatest breakthrough since the days of Luther. A Brief History of Open Source Open Source refers to the model of building a better software application by making the programming code accessible to the public for review, criticism and most importantly additional programming. In other words, the program is built by the continual input of anybody who can contribute to it. New ideas are constantly added, existing features are improved and over time the very best ideas possible are integrated into the application. The constant inflow of collaboration builds on what has been laid before, literally “line upon line”.

This approach goes directly against the model of corporate software companies (i.e. Microsoft, Apple, Sun Microsystems, etc.) who fight tooth and nail to preserve their “secret recipes” of programming code with more intensity than Kentucky Fried Chicken ever dreamed of. Software codes are hidden, like top secret military plans, from everyone. Everything, including ideas, is copyrighted and monitored by leagues of lawyers chomping at the bit to declare a copyright infringement violation against a competitor or an upstart company. What’s more is that these Open Source programs are not only accessible to the public for change, they are offered to the public for use absolutely free. In other words, these programs are better than their corporate counterparts and they don’t cost a dime. They are constantly evolving; changing, becoming better…and people are contributing their ideas for free. There is no way to deny that this Open Source phenomenon is more powerful than any programmer, or R&D team could ever accomplish. The synergy of thousands of programmers putting their very best in to this program has left traditional software in the dust; or as Thomas Goetz put it in his article Open Source Everywhere from the November 2003 issue of Wired Magazine: “Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation.” On the forefront of the Open Source movement is Linus Torvalds and his Linux operating system. In 1991 Torvalds was a computer science major in Helsinki who decided at the age of 21 to try an experiment. He created the kernel for his operating system and then wrote one of the most famous emails ever, which he posted to a Newsgroup that focused on Unix/Minix operating systems:

Message-ID 1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.helsinki.fi From: Torvalds@klaava.helsinki.fi (Linus Benedict Torvalds) To: Newsgroups: comp.os.inix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Hello everybody out there using minix-I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby; won’t be big and professional like GNU) for 386 (486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I’d life any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them :-) Linus

The result of this email post? Thousands of programmers responded to Torvalds call – this allowed him to build the first version of Linux, which is still growing exponentially after 12 years. Linux, which is still under constant development…has reached nearly 6 million lines of programming code to date. It is so reliable that when the U.S. Government decided to build the fastest computer on earth, the Tetragrid (a network of four super-computers capable of performing over 13 trillion calculations per second ), they designed it around the Linux operating system…not Microsoft Windows, thankfully. It isn’t just free software hounds and governments looking to Linux as a major force in the future of the software industry. Big name corporations, including Dell and IBM, have poured millions of dollars into developing hardware products designed exclusively for use with Linux. In addition, the open source products available today have revolutionized the technological strength of third-world countries where hardware is cheap but corporate software is almost unattainable. It seems that almost overnight, these developing nations are as strong technically as most US corporations…if not more.

There are other Open Source programs out there as well. A web server application known as APACHE is used on nearly 70% of the world’s servers that make up the Internet, the programming language PERL which has dubbed the duct tape of the Internet due to its ease of use by web developers, and SENDMAIL a program that most of the planet’s email is routed through . Open Source is spreading beyond just the world of software. Wikipedia.com is an online encyclopedia that is currently made up of 150,000 entries. Users log on to the sight and can edit existing entries or add new ones. Suggested changes are reviewed by a team of overseers who verify facts and figures…if your changes/additions are acceptable and improve the quality of the encyclopedia you’ll see your work posted online. Again, this encyclopedia is free for public use, unlike Brittanica.com which costs users $60/year or $699.00 for the (insert loud gagging noise here) paper version. The goal of Open Source is to produce the best product possible, without the hang-ups of corporate oversight and legal burdens. Ideally, those contributing to the project are looking to the betterment of society and those who will be using the product. This is seen by the fact that those who are contributing rarely receive any compensation for their time and work. The reward is in achieving a better product, not receiving a healthy paycheck. The question is: Are there things we in the church could learn from this modern day model? Is The Church The Best It Can Be? Is there anyone who wouldn’t answer ‘NO’ to that question? Probably not. But the real need is not in recognizing that we aren’t where we should be, but understanding why and what can we do about it.

What is it that prevents us from presenting the best that the church can be to the world? That is a huge question which cannot be answered in a short paper such as this one. Nor, would I dare to say that becoming an Open Source Church is the one solution that will push us over the top. Yet within that model, of constantly building upon the past through collaborative effort in order to make the future better, we can examine a few things that may be a piece of the bigger picture that moves us towards our best. So…here are a few things, which in my humble opinion are preventing the emergence of the Open Source Church: Insecurity And the number one answer is… To put your “stuff” out there for public critique, evaluation and change takes a tremendous amount of self assurance. If having people tell you that things could be better and this is how they can be better makes you uncomfortable then you are going to have a hard time living the Open Source model. One of the things Linus Torvalds is best at, according to Gary Rivlin, is “separating the idea from the person suggesting it”. In other words, we have to understand that it is nothing personal when your idea is dragged into the light and examined from every angle and found to be flawed. Besides, sometimes it’s the flawed ideas that have something in them that moves us towards a more perfect solution.

In the Open Source model the goal is achieve the best possible idea and use it to produce the best possible product. When you attempt this goal in a collaborative setting there is no room for taking things personally. Insecurity has to be left at the door, and the greater good of the community your product is serving takes center stage. Satisfaction With The Way Things Are From a Christian perspective we have to value the best means of reaching our world, even if that means sacrificing the sacred cows of church structure and evangelism upon the altar of progress…despite the cry of those who don’t want to leave familiar and comfortable behind. We’re Not Aware That Things Could Be Different Leadership That Doesn’t Want To Lose Control What Does An Open Source Church Look Like?

The Unpredictability of God

Hebrews 13:8 - "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever..." - NKJV

Do you like adventure? What is an adventure anyway? Webster's primary definition of adventure is: "an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks" Now take a minute and reflect on your life. How much energy and resources do you spend trying to make your life more comfortable, stable, consistant, predictable, etc. How well do you handle the unknown variables that show up out of nowhere in your life? Do you live a life of danger seeking and risk taking? So...let me ask you again. Do you like adventure?

I would challenge anyone of you to find a person in the Bible who knew, from beginning to end, every step that God was going to lead them through in the process of completing His purpose for their lives. I would even suggest to you that you won't find a person in the Bible who didn't have everything on the line many times over...they were in that wonderful and fearful place where all they could say was: "though He slays me, I will still trust Him..." And that reminds me of Job. Here's a guy who is walking through life and has the testimony of being the most righteous man on the face of the earth...from God's own mouth I might add. He has done everything he knew to do in order to honor God with his life. He had a lifestyle of integrity that blessed and honored all who came in contact with him. And then out of nowhere God allows him to be stripped of everything; and I mean everything. Not just finances and property mind you: all of his children were killed, his health destroyed, and his helpmate transformed into the embodiment of bitterness.

Everything that Job held dear and had worked his whole life to secure vanished in a moment as the devil, walking under God's permission, reduced Job to an oozing, broken down piece of humanity. I don't know about you, but I have had my faith in God rattled by circumstances far less exasperating than Job's were. I wonder if God were to give us a preview of our life, and the trials that would come from serving Him, if we'd still follow Him. What if God said: "Thanks for following me. Now I am going to let you go through what Job did..."; would that change you willingness to follow Him? Oh, don't be so over-spiritual...it's easy to say yes when it is a hypothetical question. Unfortunately for the majority of Western Christianity, our walk with God has become a series of predictable elements. The only hick-ups in our perfect world Christianity is when we face the trials of human existence on this earth (illness, death, financial trials, etc.). Then we run to God for His intervention to set us free from our circumstance. Don't get me wrong here...God delights to provide for ALL of our needs. Yet, I get the sneeking suspition that if we are following the Lord as we should be that there would be a greater sense of mystery, unsurety, and well...adventure.

If Moses standing before the read sea, or Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, or Paul surviving a shipwreck and a viper bite or Jesus forgiving the woman taken in adultery isn't adventurous then what is? I have heard many Christian talk about how Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever as though that "sameness" refers to the fact that He always acts the same, does the same things and is in a word...predictable. I recently had lunch with a good friend of mine, Eric Enns. Eric is the pastor of City Light. While we were talking today he mentioned something about God's creation of man that I felt was pretty profound. To paraphrase our conversation, he said: "What does it say about God that he didn't just put man on earth with a free will by himself, but put us all together with the potential to impact one another's lives...for good or for bad?" Take a second and think about that. God put us here on the earth knowing that we would hurt, betray, reject, and deceive one another. It began with Adam & Eve when "she gave the fruit to her husband who was with her." By the way, Adam was there and did nothing to protect his wife from the deception of the serpent. I don't know about you, but I would honestly not choose to be a part of such a potentially hazardous environment.

We try in life, and also the church, to create "safe places" where people are never wounded, rejected, or abandoned. No matter how hard we try I don't think it will ever be possible to have a church environment that is free of danger. I may not be sure that God wants it that way... We often find as Christians that we are reaching for this spiritual utopia where we have become immune to the sufferings of life and relationships. It becomes increasingly frustrating when something happens that shakes up our "perfect world". This may be anything from being slandered to someone sitting in our favorite pew. I believe the enemy has taken advantage of this to bring us into condemnation and guilt by thinking "If I was only walking closer to God, these things wouldn't be happening to me..." This perpetuates a mode of striving to be better, more faithful, and safer. The cycle can often derail believers into a sense that God has abandoned them or that following Him is too hard. Anyways...this whole dimension of God as creator begs the question: "Why? Why did God set it up this way?" I am not sure I know that answer. As my friend Eric suggested: "God must have an end product in mind for us that can't be reached another way". What does that product look like? Paul suggests in Romans 8:28-30 that "we have been predestined (through opportunity/potential not predetermined fate) to be conformed to the image of God's dear Son..." Now consider Hebrews 2:10, which states "Christ was made perfect through the things that He suffered"?

The flip side of this issue is that God also knew that man would have the capacity to love, bless, encourage, serve and sacrifice for one another. Maybe the best that we can be is to do good, even when we are treated badly. To love when we are hated. To encourage when we are torn down. To sacrifice when we have been taken advantage of. Jesus demonstrated a supernatural love in the middle of intense hatred, deception, and betrayal. Perhaps true love cannot express itself fully without the presence of suffering.