Part 5 - What then shall we say?

If one of the major parts of our translation of Christ and faith to a world that doesn't understand is owning it ourselves, what do we do when we don't own it? More precisely, if I have to wait until I have a perfect (or even nearly perfect) practical understanding of grace or salvation or hearing from God or meditation before I say anything about it, then when will any of us ever say anything at all? Partner that question with the reality that we have been commissioned by Christ to go make disciples, and that Paul implies that people can't become disciples unless they hear the truth and we potentially have a real pickle.

So what then shall we say?

I think we'll all be better off if we START by saying that we don't have half the stuff figured out that we think we do. Our first conversation could start with the phrase, "I'm not an expert, but here's what's happened to me..." and then we're sharing what we do know for certain... our experiences, our stories, the hope that we've found in real life situations. When our discussions begin with our stories, at that point we become experts. And not just experts, but experts in the things that really matter. I don't believe anyone is truly converted by arguments. You may change their mind for a short while, but in the long run you have failed to capture their hearts. Jesus didn't woo Peter, Andrew, James, or John with a theological construct for the Kingdom, He captured them with a vision of a bigger catch. You may not like my theology and we may not agree on one single bit of it, but when I sit down and share with you honestly what I've experienced of God in my life, you may not understand it and you may even have a different explanation for it, but it's my story. If you trust me and you believe I'm a person of integrity and sound mind, you will have to wrestle with my story and square it up with the person that you know me to be.

Again, it comes down to the person that I am. I don't expect someone's translation to be perfect. I expect it to be authentic, meaning that I expect it to be honest and born out of a true experience. I don't want to know what you believe about God, I want to know who God is to you. That's translation that can't be argued with. It can be rejected, but it can't be argued with.

So back again to the point of articulating or translating that which we're not experts in (sorry for the digression). I guess the answer is simple. Don't pretend to know more than you know. Offer what you understand, or what you've read, or what you've heard... but don't offer it dogmatically. Because whatever the words you're saying, when you speak without love... you're not translating Christ... no matter the words you say. Say what you know, share your convictions with conviction, challenge, stretch, and face up to people. But remember that the truest translation of what you believe doesn't come out of your mouth. It comes out of your life. Then, when all the discussion is done (or better yet, before it even gets started) go get coffee together or go get a meal together or go hit golf balls together. Before you talk about eternal security or open theism, talk about their family or their job or their bowling score. Then they won't be a dialectical adversary, they will be a real person with a real context and a real story. Then they'll feel the comfort to ask you what sanctification means... and you'll feel comfortable telling them that your'e not really sure. You'll feel comfortable because they're you're friend. And friends can be open and transparent and real with eachother. And that's the truest, realest, most faithful translation of the Godhead that I could imagine.

But don't stop speaking and cop it out to not understanding. Go get understanding. If you don't know God well enough to speak about Him, they by all means find someone who does and stick with them. Not so that you can pick up the lingo, but so that you can be in a place with someone who has experienced Him. When you touch Him and taste Him and feel Him all over you... then you will have something to speak of. When He has met you in your darkness... you will speak of the light with conviction. When He has mended your brokenness... then your discussion of wholeness has authority. But you won't need to wield that authority, because you'll understand both the brokenness and the wholeness... and your life will have found perfect and complete redemption. Then the Kingdom will be within you.

So here's to long conversations and faithful interpretations in life. May your life speak more loudly and more clearly than any words you ever utter. May your speech and your life point faithfully and truly at the One you hope to find. May your steps be your own, and may they tread new ground. May your risks pay off... if not always in success, in a great story eagerly shared. May the circle of ones you love be forever expanding. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you. Feel the Love

Part 4 - Your actions are speaking so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying

Translation means making sense of words that I understand for others who don't understand. Generally we speak of translation as going from one language to another. In learning to "speak" Christian to a world that doesn't understand it, the highest principle of translation is pointing to Christ and giving our words a context that makes their meaning totally understandable.

The problem is that I know not of what I speak.

Honestly, "Christianese" has become such a part of our Christian subculture that when we talk about grace, forgiveness, hearing the Lord, salvation, holiness... we're talking about what we don't really understand. By "really understand" I mean practically understand. That's why we don't make much sense to the world around us. We're talking about things we don't know.

I'm a language guy. If I were to go sit in a doctoral level math class of some sort, I would be able to take notes and pick up some words. I could probably then go to a dictionary somewhere and find definitions of those words and know their meanings. But it would take about 11 seconds in conversation for someone to realize that I don't know what in the world I'm talking about.

That's where we as Christians lose our credibility. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who is trying to use words they don't really know? They'll toss in a nice $5 word, but they use it in an awkward way? Or when you talk to someone about baseball and they say something that let's you know they're really stretching? What's your first thought? You may not write them off or dismiss them totally, but you certainly wonder why it is that they're going out on a limb to sound like they know what they obviously don't.

There's no greater thing that needs faithful translation that issues of faith. There are no more important words that we could convey than grace, community, salvation, hope. The problem is that we've talked and even shouted these words with such reckless fury without making sure that we know what we're talking about. If we want to be faithful translators of grace... we must first be people of grace.

But none of that will become possible until I'm willing to first own up to the fact that there's a disconnect in what I say and what I am. Until my life is integrated, and salvation means that I've truly been saved from the things that are killing me, when I talk about it to someone else, they won't get it. The stories of people who have tried God and found Him wanting is an indictment not on God, but on my failure to embrace Him fully. I quote Galatians 2:20 about being crucified with Christ before going to the cross. So those outside the Church misunderstand what God asks of us.

We gather in communities which are scripturally mandated to bear one anothers burdens, and we divide along understandings of gifts and inspiration and the fate of those whose lives fail to bear fruit, and we point at the other camps and call them wrong. Then we "witness" to people about God's desire to bring them into families and place them in community when they see our communities as weekday programs where we gather with people who dress the same and talk the same and make the same income as we do. We talk about the mission in the context of weekend trips that make us feel like we've played our part in the game, but we don't turn off our phones so that we don't miss the opportunity to take another step on the ladder ever upward.

I'm also always aware of the plank in my own eye. It's funny that my job... and by that I mean my source of income... is to build communities for the sake of spiritual formation. Yet I am feeling the pangs of brokenness because I know not of what I speak.

I think I need to stop talking about translating for a minute... and starting understanding the things that I'm hoping to convey. Maybe then I won't have to say anything. I believe in the Church. More precisely, I believe in the Spirit which quickens the Church. I don't hope for perfection in the Body, because then I couldn't be a part of it. But I do hope for integrity. I hope for the gentle gradual clensing of the cultural muck and grime that I've picked up as part of a global organization that's sometimes political and sometimes ethical but always portraying something about the God that's called me out of where I was and into something beautiful.

My mandate to translate is as strong today as it was on the day that God captured me. But it has to begin by embodying the message that won my heart. On the day that God woke me up, I didn't need to hear about Grace. I was in the middle of it. May my translation begin by first taking up the towel and washing the feet of those around me.

Chapter 5 - Then should we be silent?

Part 3 -

What do we do when two different people come to the table with conflicting translations of the same idea or word? Is there an objective test to determine which translation is the best available?

First of all, the word "objective" is a bit scary, especially when it's dealing with language. Language is an art. It's not easily quantifiable. It's fluid, in motion, changing, dancing, evolving. That's why Shakespeare can be such a daunting task... the words he said aren't the words we would say.

So when it comes to defining words and ideas for the purpose of translation there's no getting around the dilemma of occasionally deciding between two or more conflicting and even contradictory definitions or responses to a certain word or idea. So how do we choose?

...Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them... Matthew 7:20

Jesus equates the legitimacy of false prophet's message with fruit, saying that a good tree can't bear bad fruit and vice versa. For purposes of translation, the measure of a words worth, relevance, importance should be the fruit that the idea or concept will bear when applied. When talking about words or ideas that relate to God the translation that produces the best fruit (result, situation) for the greatest number of people for the greatest amount of time should be accepted as the best translation for a word or idea.

Therefore the greatest definition of grace is not the definition which allows me the freedom to chose my own destruction through my actions, but the definition which takes into consideration the self-destructive choices that I make, and turns those choices into positive results... or good fruit.

The words that we use have immediate implications for every life because before they ever have the opportunity to be translated, they must first be rooted in something "real." If we LIVE a definition that falls short of Christ, we portray a broken and faulty image of the one we follow. The consequence for those outside the church are dire, but the consequences for we who hold those definitions are possibly more dire, because we will face the charge of not being good stewards of what we have been given... a faithful portrayal of Truth in the person of Christ and a Divine Helper in the Holy Spirit.

The point is... what we say matters very much, especially in matters of faith and practice.

As the Church we have been entrusted with the Hope of the world. We have been given the keys to the Kingdom, and we have a resonsibility and a charge to take those keys an unlock every door that stands in the way of people getting to Christ. Paul asks the question, "how will they believe if they do not hear?" The rhetorical answer is that they won't. We're always saying something and what we are saying affects what people are believing. We're always communicating. We believe something about Christ and grace and truth and life, and what we believe is manifested every day of our lives. Christ came and translated God for us in images and stories that fit His time and His culture. His goal was to make God accessible to us. If He didn't speak the language of the people He was trying to reach, His mission would have been a failure. But His message wasn't limited to the words, "greater love has no man than laying his life down for his friends," His message was the fulfillment of that love. In a sense, the words He said were signposts so we would recognize the God He was trying to show us.

I've taken a long time to say that it doesn't matter if we have the most dictionary faithful verbal definition of Christ and the Church and matters of faith if our lives are devoid of the context to process them. The important work of translating what we say (salvation, grace, hope, sanctification, prayer, etc.) is meaningless futility if we don't live the Truth at a level beyond what we say. It must first be in us, before it will ever be intelligible coming from us.

So what are the words that you say that don't have meaning or context in your life, and what translation does that give for the passers by in your life?

Part 4 - Culturally speaking...

Part 2 - Flesh Speaks

Language is a great tool to help us share the things that mean something to us. Words give us the freedom to express life, love, hope, and myriad other emotions and experiences that fill our lives.

But language isn't perfect. It comes up short. The crazy thing is that it comes up short in different places for different people. Take for instance the word "stewardship." It's not an uncommon word. I'd guess that a good number of high school seniors would have atleast heard the word before. But you may not have the same understanding of "stewardship" that I have. The first time I heard the word, it was related to a fund raising campaign to build a church. Stuffy men we knew from church wanted to help us be good stewards of the money God had given us by helping them to build a fancy new building and parking lot. Never mind the fact that my father had been out of work for a year and we were... struggling. So my first taste of stewardship wasn't a tasty one.

And each of us could tell a story like that whether in the church or out of it, words get mis-shapen and misused and all along the way, beautiful ideas and thoughts crumple and wrinkle from misuse.

That's a sad thing, simply for language sake. But when we're talking about eternal things, it's even more sad because those things really matter.

Grace
Peace
Hope
Love

Each of those words means something, and they probably mean something different to you than they do to me. Atleast in their shades of meaning. These words have eternal implications, so how do I handle them? How can I talk about grace to you if you have no context, no understanding, maybe even no real exposure to the idea of grace as I understand it.

...And the word became fl esh, and dwelt among us... John 1:14

It's important, I thnk, to understand that all ideas and concepts originate with God. I believe that everything has its beginning and finds its fulfillment in God, so Grace & Peace and all the others are His ideas. Even words like hate, darkness, prejudice, and despair are ultimately defined by God or His absence in a place. In order for any of us to even have a hope of getting it, we had to get it from him.

You think it's tough to communicate with someone from a foreign country... try communicating from the divine to the fallen. But God, in His wisdom and love found a way to communicate... to translate if you will, what He was (Grace, Love, Truth, Purity). He put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood (John 1:14 Msg).

Scriptures talk about Christ... image of the invisible God, the exact representation of His being... so many other things that point us to the fact that who Christ was is crucial to our understanding who God is. Christ is the translation.

I think the important thing for me now is that the best way for me to communicate grace to someone who may not understand it... or may think they understand it, but understand differently from me... is to live it. To give it flesh and dwell in places where it can be reckoned with.

That's where the Church has lost a lot of credibility. We talked about love and the poor, but we didn't do anything. Let us first be gracious, then preach grace. Let us first be forgiving, then preach forgiveness. Let us first live with the hope of forever, then talk about hope. Most of all, let us first hunger and thirst after righteousness... then and only then will our lives cause others to hunger and thirst as well.

I'm still wrestling with this idea of translation. So far I think 1) it's not enough to say words to people who may not understand or have any idea what I'm talking about. That's not polite, and it's most certainly not effective. 2) A concept modeled is a concept translated... partly.

Which raises the question... probably for Part 3... if a concept modeled is a concept translated, what happens when two different people act two different ways and both call it the same thing... which is right? Which one has the better translation?

Part One - the words we say and the words we don't

The doctrinal statement for my church and my denomination state that the word of God is divinely inspired and that the original manuscripts as they were originally writen by the original authors (called autographs) are infallible in all matters that they address. It's interesting that they have to stipulate that the autographs are inspired and infallible. Why the distinction?

Translation.

I'm not the person to give a history of how the scripture has been preserved down through the ages, but it's really an amazing thing to read and understand. From meticulous monks huddled over parchment counting letters and syllables, with seemingly ridiculous rules about ends of lines and ends of pages, and all of that... it's a remarkable thing. It gives me a lot of confidence in reading the Bible that I'm reading what was intended to be written.

But it's not the same. Words don't translate well. The well-worn biblical example of the English word love can be translated by several different greek words with different shades and implications... all of which make a difference. It doesn't render the scripture unreadable or incomprehensible, it simply removes some of the shades of the original language.

That's why language is so important. No bones about it... I'm a language freak. I think language is this amazing gift from God. But like any other gift, it's a stewardship. We have to use it wisely. Another side benefit of my love for language is that I have a very real understanding that language is imperfect. Words aren't enough to convey all the meaning. That's why so much gets all jacked up in e- mails. Language requires a life to give it context. So in effect, we can't be separated from our words, we're all language. We're all speaking, all the time, even when we're not saying anything.

But do the words we say and the lives we lead speak clearly, or do we get lost in translation? This is never more important than when it comes to issues of faith. Matt Singleton asked the question of me, and it forced me to think about it and really take a look at it. The problem is that I grew up in a church culture, so most of the time I'm not even 100% aware of when I use the words that may not be understood.

This is just the beginning. Everything is still loose ends right now. But I want to delve into this more deeply in my brain. I also want to hear all of your thoughts on this issue. When has language (verbal and non-verbal) gotten in the way of understanding God? Think hard, reach deep, let it fly.

Wrecked...

Have you ever played with a microscope. You know how you have to turn the coarse adjustment knob until the thing under the lens gets somewhat visible, and then there's the fine adjustment knob to bring things into crystal clarity? Yeah. Sometimes life is like that.

Left to its own devices, over long enough time without being touched or tweaked... just out of sheer neglect, I think microscopes will go out of focus. You don't have to do anything, it just happens. In fact, it's the NOT doing anything that makes it happen.

I look back on my past few posts, not so much with shame or guilt, but with sadness and regret because those are days that I won't ever get back. Ever again. They are gone. They no longer exist, they are written on the winds of time. I won't say they were wasted, because they delivered me to this point.

This is a point of Coarse adjustment for me. The reason I was frustrated, angry, disillusioned, grouchy... I had sin in my life. There was a time when I would have wanted to soft sell it or make it more palatable or whatever, but not today. Today, in a moment of clarity, I realize all that the stupid, selfish, ridiculous sins in my life have cost me.

They have cost me opportunity. Business people understand opportunity costs. I don't think Christians do enough.

I spent the last 3 days at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit. Say what you will about Willow Creek and the machine and the campus and the seeker sensitive and the church lite and the whatever it is that you may choose to say... my life is in clearer focus now than it was 3 days ago.

The fine adjustments are coming. I know it. I feel it. I believe it. I'm waiting for it. But here's the things, very rough, that I walked away with.

1. He knows me. Don't skip past this, because I did and it is important. Jesus is more than your savior, He's more than your leader, He's more than a cosmic guide. He knows you. Intimitely.

2. People are all that matter. That's it. Not my program, job, spiritual gift, anything else if it doesn't point to, edify, and make people better.

3. People are best when they know God.

That's all. Even as I read it, it doesn't seem earth shattering. Except that the implications for what I do with my minutes hinges on how well I center my life around those truths and others like them.

If I give my life to building His Kingdom, then my minutes and my life will mean something. If I give it to anything else. It is a wasted moment that I will never get back.

The Kingdom of God is within me.

The Kingdom of God within me finds its best, most beautiful, most glorious, most God honoring manifestation when it is given completely, totally, sacrificially, and wholly to those who don't know Him.

I am wrecked for the way that I've ordered my life around the other things.

God forgive me for my wasted moments. Give me the grace to stand above the sin that has held me down. Give me your eyes for the people who don't know you yet. Let me live in the constant and complete awareness that where I am... you are there. And you know me.

Alright... so my last post may have been a bit reactionary and whiny. It was morning and I"m not a morning person. So I don't want to diminish some of the ideas, but maybe looking back I wish I was a little bit less whimpery.

Still the idea is one that I can't get away from. Looking back over the past few months, it's been there... God is not defined by my definitions. God is. Steven Curtis Chapman said God is God and I am not. There's a lot of truth in that little statment. But it's a lifetime of learning it.

I guess now that I'm several hours removed from the frustration, I see that the discovery of God is in the wrestling of Jacob, and it's in the facing of the scary man outside of Jericho. Without facing that guy, we never get to see God.

It's the different facets of God (if that's a good word for this). We meditate on the 23 Psalm and love to get the pastoral image of Father, making me to lie down in green pastures. The God who ordered Saul to slay every one of the Amalekites including animals, women, and children is not a God that I constantly seek out in my quiet times.

But it's the same God. I can't choose which God I follow. I have to take Him or leave Him. It's the taking that's tough. Because the comfort that comes in the nestling arms of my very big Father finds fulfillment and ultimate realization in the fiery eyed God who seeks out and destroys those things that try to kill me. As God loves me and holds me, He is violently opposed to what would steal, kill, and destroy me.

"The wages of sin is death."

Yeppers. Those things that kill me are in me, and they are me. That's why sometimes I feel like an object of wrath. That's why I'm so uncomfortable with the blazen eyes of the Lord of Hosts. Because those eyes are fixed at the things in me that are killing me and rotting me from the inside.

Honestly, I hate sin. I hate what it does to me, I hate the inherent distance that it brings my relationship with Father, and I hate that it's all over me and so many times I feel powerless to change the things I hate most. It's an ugly thing.

It's easy for me to focus on topics of conversation and teaching like advancing the Kingdom. It's difficult to realize that the Kingdom is within me. What areas of my life is the Kingdom advancing in me? It's easy for me to focus on a mission of salvation, of bringing light into dark places. It's difficult to face the dark places in me. What areas of my life are increasingly being changed by the light?

I see the effects of sin in my life all the time. I see it in the way I relate to my wife, my coworkers, my favorite people in the world. I smell the stench of death in people at my church whose marriages are being ripped apart by abuse - physical, emotional, and substance. But the hesitancy to face up to that in my own life translates neatly into my hesitancy to face up to that in those who have allowed me to have some small role of influence in their lives. I fear legalism. I fear the label of hypocrite. I fear that they'll turn in anger and ask me what right I have to look into their lives when my own life bears the scars.

But more than anything, I think, I fear dying spiritually because I was scared to face those things in me. I fear seeing people live lives of meaningless fritter because I never held their hand as they walked away from death. I fear living a life where no one points out the marks of decay in my own life, and helps carry me away from the grave yard.

Jacob wrestled with an angel, earned a limp, and became the father of a people. Joshua met a warrior who he feared, and led a triumphant band of warriors into the promised land. There's power in the battle. Fight on.

GRRRRRRRRRROWL

I have moments where I want to just throw things in frustration. I hesitate to say the word anger because that word has implications that my self-control fruit is less than developed and certainly a week or two short of ripeness... but I guess the fruit never lies.

You know the story where Jacob wrestles with the angel and gets his hip broken and ends up limping for the rest of his life? I wonder what was going on in his brain during the wrestling match? I wonder if there was a moment when he didn't think he was going to make it. I wonder how it started. Did the angel just walk up, tap him on the shoulder, and sucker punch him? Was it a giant bear hug tackle from behind?

What about the time when Joshua was standing outside the Jericho walls and this fearsome guy comes and stands by him. Joshua freaks out because the guy is obviously intimidating and scary, probably 6'5" about 260, wearing the full battle gear with a scowl on his face. Joshua's the one with the faith right? He and his partner Caleb brought back the grapes on a staff 40 years earlier and told the whole tribe of Israel that they could take the land. Then all of a sudden here's this guy who might make him reconsider. Joshua asks the question... "tell me sir, are you with us or are you with them?"

I hate it that I'm not able to reconcile in my brain that the guy I'm wrestling with carries a blessing, or the scary dude standing over my shoulder is really an angel in the army of the God that I'm trying to follow. It bothers me that I don't recognize the places and the ways that He shows up. It bothers me that sometimes all I want is a blessing and instead I get a wrestling match. When I feel like I'm doing the thing that God wants me to do, the only people I seem to see are the dudes whose armor is thicker than mine, whose muscles are more well developed than mine, and whose glare is more convincing than mine.

I have this sense that the Kingdom of God is supposed to be the most powerful force on the planet, but my own flesh and bawdy desires regularly wrestle it to the ground and pin it for a 3 count. The disciples wanted Jesus to restore the Kingdom of Israel. They wanted him to set up a literal throne in a literal place with the help of literal angels. They wanted a show of power, force, might. They wanted demonstration. They got Christ, and Him crucified. I don't know how to talk about that. I don't know how to make that the guiding principle in my life. I don't know how to find comfort in a God who wrestles with His chosen ones, leaving them limping.

Joshua didn't recognize God at Jericho, but the walls still fell. When Jacob woke up after his stairway dream, he said, "Surely the Lord was in this place and I didn't know it." Atleast I'm not the only one. Sometimes it feels like a party game to find God in all the cute little places in the world. Sometimes I just have to admit that I just don't recognize the landscape.

Part of me looks at these times and finds frustration that God doesn't work in the formulaic ways that I want Him too. That would be an easier list to keep, and an easier way for me to trudge forward on my own. The other part of me has the heartfelt conviction that I don't want a God who always meets my expectations. I don't want to be God, because I could never surprise me in the ways that He does. I could never find endless ways to turn wrestling matches into blessings, and holy fear into a Kingdom conquest. Perhaps it time that I take my messiah fantasies to the cross and just listen. That would be a nice change of pace.