Zach's Thoughts

baby steps

2009-03-01T16:34:00.005-06:00

I prayed today. Maybe that doesn't seem like big news, but it is. You see it's been quite a while since I've prayed. For a long time I hated the way I sounded when I prayed. The words that I would say sounded shallow and cheap, so it was easier not to pray than to subject myself to hearing someone use cheesy televangelist language and realize it was coming from my own mouth. But more recently I have felt like I don't deserve to pray. Despite everyone telling me to "take it to God" and knowing that I should "cast my cares on Him" I've felt that what I did would prevent Him from hearing me or caring about me or offering me the grace, mercy and forgiveness that I've talked about my whole life.

I grew up knowing about grace and forgiveness. I grew up knowing that there was nothing I could do to earn God's grace and that I was totally undeserving of it. I often heard people talk about how they didn't feel like they deserved to be forgiven or have grace extended to them and how they really struggled with understanding that whole concept. I never understood this. I didn't understand how someone could not accept forgiveness. I understand now.

I grew up knowing that all we have to do is repent of our sins and ask God to forgive us and he will! It's our "Get Out of Hell Free" card. How easy is that? It turned out to be a lot more difficult than I ever thought.

In the past few months I have gone through a lot and I have put others through a lot more. I have done this without opening my Bible once or talking to God or asking Him to forgive me. I go to church and sit with my arms folded and mouth closed. I don't feel like I can sing or pray or do the regular church stuff because of what I did. On some level I understand that God is waiting to forgive me, but I don't think he should. I'm dealing with guilt and shame that is at times overwhelming. I feel like what I did disqualifies me from living in relationship with God. But what does that say about how I saw myself before all of this? Believing that what I did makes me now undeserving implies that I saw myself as deserving of God's love before. Something in me believed that I was worthy of forgiveness, or worse, didn't really need forgiveness anyway! I was taught and have taught others that we are all undeserving of God's grace, but in reality I believed that I hadn't done anything that required forgiveness; that I was ok on my own. Of course career Christians like myself know the tricks of the trade. Instead of thanking God for bringing me out of (very bad sin) I would thank God for keeping me from (very bad sin). Or use the words of Jesus when he talks about having an angry thought against someone is the same as committing murder in your heart or looking at a woman lustfully is the same as having sex with her. These were the big sins in my life (at least the ones I would admit publicly...but that's a topic for another day) so these were the things I would say I needed to be forgiven for. But don't we, as humans, create a hierarchy of sins? Don't we see anger, pride, selfishness as unequal or lesser sins than murder, homosexuality or adultery. So when I was filled with pride and only focused on myself I could still play the game and no one would ever know because those were the "little" sins. I could convince myself that I deserved God's love because my sin was tiny compared with what that guy has done.

But now that I've crossed the line, now that I've stepped over into the "big" sins, I can begin to understand what grace really is. Now that I've "been to the bottom" I am starting to see the enormity of the concept of forgiveness. I hope that you can grasp that without hitting bottom, but it took that for me to see what I thought I knew all these years. I can now see how ugly and filthy I was in my pride and selfishness before and how ugly and filthy I am here in this mess. I realize now that it's not that I was worthy then and unworthy now, but that I was unworthy then and am still unworthy now, but mercy is still offered! For the first time I can say that what I did does not make me less deserving of forgiveness. God did not speak to me in His booming voice or in a dream or through an angel with wings and a halo. I believe He showed me His grace and love through the people in my life. I am starting to see that I am no less deserving of love than I ever was (thank you Mum, Dad, Sarah, Greg and the rest of my family). I am starting to see that I am no less deserving of grace than I ever was (thank you Jordan, Tricia, Luke, Dale, Marie, Steph, Graham and everyone else who has shown me what friendship really is).

I am not at the end of my journey, in fact I feel like it's just beginning. I still have some dark days ahead, some hills to climb (to use a term familiar to all those who grew up in church like I did) but I am starting to feel like I can start walking again.

So I prayed today. I'm not ready to use my own words yet, so I borrowed some from a guy who I think I'd enjoy talking to. David. He wrote this after he was caught having an affair with Bathesheba.

Psalm 51
Have mercy on me, O God, because of your unfailing love. Because of your great compassion, blot out the stain of my sins. Wash me clean from my guilt. Purify me from my sin. For I recognize my rebellion; it haunts me day and night. Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgement against me is just. For I was born a sinner - yes from the moment my mother conceived me. But you desire honesty from the womb, teaching me wisdom even there.

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me - now let me rejoice. Don't keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence and don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and make me willing to obey you. Then I will teach your ways to rebels and they will return to you.

Unseal my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may praise you. You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken spirit and repentant heart, O God.

Amen.

Yes to War...No to Children's Health

2007-10-03T10:15:00.001-05:00

This is admittedly reactionary and potentially simplistic. I will probably over-simplify every issue I am about to address, but this just doesn't make sense to me. I am sure there are intelligent arguments for the other side of these issues...not long ago I would have been arguing them myself. However, as my previous entries outline, I have been undergoing somewhat of a metamorphosis lately and some of the things I used to think were right, I am now questioning. I just finished reading a book called The Irristible Revlution by Shane Claiborne and it has done nothing but force me to rethink everything and challange what I once pledged allegience to. Anyway, that may be a story for another time. Right now I'm still steaming about the news story I just read.

A few days ago I read that Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was praying that President Bush would not use his executive veto to quash a bipartisan bill that had been passed by Congress which would provide $35 billion over 4 years to children whose families earned too much money to qulaify for Medicaid but not enough to afford their own private coverage (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_children_s_health). Well her prayers were not answered because today the President vetoed that bill very quietly with no media conference or statement from the White House. This would be bad enough but earlier this week the elected representatives of the most powerful country in the world passed legislation authorizing $150 billion to be spend on the wars in Afganistan and Iraq. Not only that but the bill passed 92-3, included $10 billion for millile defense and over half a trillion dollars for annual military programs (http://www.wmgt.com/node/4583). Half a TRILLION dollars...on the military...while families can't afford health insurance for their children! What is going on!!

I am trying to think of something to write, but I am honestly speechless. They could literally take the $35 billion over four years out of the military spending and not even miss it! How can they not see the problem with this. Even if the military was bringing peace to those countries and improving the quality of life for the citizens, how is it justified to spend that kind of money into those projects and then refuse the relatively small cost of insuring children in your own country? When did the stability for foreign countries become more important than the health of children at home? And if foreign stability is so important what about Myanmar and Sudan? I think we need to look at our priorities and figure some things out. Because this really seems backwards to me...

Finally, a confession...

I was at one time in favor of the war in Iraq. I remember at the time of the invasion I was serving on the student council of my university. By this time it was apparent that the United States was going to lead an attack on Iraq. One of the executive members of the student council brought forward a motion which indicated that bodies' opposition to the war. Me, still in my conservative-because-I'm-a-Christian stage, was the only member to vote against the motion. Now, because I'm a Christian and now am starting to understand what that really means, I would like to change my vote. So let the record show that the 2002-2003 Student Council of St. Thomas University is unanimous in its opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Whew! I feel so much better now! I should write Hillary and let her know that saying you were wrong about Iraq isn't that bad!

That's all I got for now...so, until I'm pissed off enough by current events again...live the life

The Continuing Saga of Jesus' Self-Annihilation

2007-07-10T10:14:00.000-05:00

Doesn't the Christian church have enough to deal with without turning the guns on itself? The Vatican announced today that churches who do not "recognize the primacy of the Pope" are not "full churches of Jesus Christ" (from the Globe and Mail). There is not much in life that gets me really upset, but this is one thing that does. I'm not about to rail against the Catholic church, cause the other side is just as bad (probably worse). And I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of Catholic or Protestant theology. I am going to talk about the epidemic that has paralized the Church in recent history that is threatening to reduce Christianity to irrelevance in the minds of many. Why can't we all just get along!?!

The Church is often so quick to point out what is wrong with so many other religions and to shine the glorious light of condemnation on the sins of the world, but regularly ignores the many planks in their own eye. I can't understand what is accomplished by tearing down another Christian, whether individual or denomination or organization. I mean, do people hear it and say, "You know, I'm really looking for a church that knows how to rip into another church on many levels. I think I may have found that here!" In my mind, it makes no one look good and it makes the Church as a whole appear insignificant. With all the problems that are in the world, hunger, poverty, genocide, environmental crises, war, the Christians are spending time and money beating up other Christians. Way to step up! I don't think when Jesus called us to be salt he wanted us to throw it in each other's eyes.

This is not just a problem from an image perspective, but from a God perspective. Christians are supposed to be the body of Christ, doing His work here on earth. During Paul's conversion in Acts 9, Jesus says to Paul, "Why do you persecute me?" Paul wasn't persecuting the person Jesus. He was the guy who would find Christians in hiding and kill them, so he was persecuting the early Church. But Jesus saw this as a personal attack. So now when one group of Christians is assualting another group of Christians, Jesus has to ask, "Me, why are you presecuting me?" It's ridiculous and as a Christian, this affects me directly.

I'm not saying that I've got this all figured out. There is a large portion of Christians that I cannot stand and sometimes I attack them and I know that makes us both look bad and, more importantly, it makes Jesus look bad. But I hate seeing Jesus misrepresented by the people who are supposed to know him best. We've really got to take a long look at our priorities and figure out what's really important. I don't think it's important to tear other Christians down, especially when there is a world who needs love.

And that's another thing. There are so many people who are hurting and looking for love, acceptance, encouragment. Do you think they are going to look to Christians if we can't even figure out how to love each other? Why would they? We are doing so much damage to ourselves when we attack other Christians. That is why I say we are being reduced to irrelevance.

Look at the group of people Jesus put together when he was here. There were fishermen, business owners, a tax collector, a theif, a bunch of guys who thought too much of themselves, a couple of guys who wanted to use their religion to take over the gevernment (sound familiar?), overall a group of young men who were really screwed up. But Jesus brought them together, with all their different ideas, beliefs and ways of doing things. They were brought together by Jesus. Can we please try to use this image today? We're supposed to be brought together by Jesus. He's the one that unites us, that ties all of this together. The rest of the stuff is just outside, extra baggage.

To all those who call themselves Christians: Please stop attacking other Christians. It's embarassing me. It is hurting us all. And it makes it kinda hard to fulfill the whole
helping-people-thing we're supposed to be focused on.

Please. Let's stop the childish bickering and...live the life...together.

7/7/07: LiveEarth, Global Warming and Jesus; What More do You Want?

2007-07-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

I don't know a whole lot about this big climate change/global warming issue, however I am aware that today, 7/7/07, was the day that over 100 musical artists and 2 billion people (according to http://www.liveearth.org/) participated in the 24 hour, 7 continent concert designed to "trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis." (again from the Live Earth website) I was out furniture shopping with my wife today so I didn't get to see a lot of the event on TV, but a great Winnipeg radio station was playing some of the highlights. Then when I did get home it was on multiple TV channels, depending on which continent one wanted to be a part of. This whole whoopla today has gotten me thinking, but before I get too far into my brain let me outline my knowledge of the climate change issue.

I have seen Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. I also know some very intelligent people who strongly disagree with Mr. Gore's conclusions. Based on what I have read and experienced, I am inclined to say that there is something funky going on with the environment and humans are at least partly to blame, probably mostly to blame. This issue fits very nicely into my transformation from a ultra-conservative thinking, Bush idolizing, fundamentalist to my current centrist, even left-leaning at times, social justice, bleeding heart persona that I never thought possible. It is clear to me that we've really messed up this planet and something serious needs to happen quickly to change things.

But back to Live Earth...I would love to see some numbers on how much energy it would take to put on a 24 hour concert in 8 cities around the world. And then to broadcast it live all day on television. I mean, isn't the idea to turn off the television. So, if I couldn't get tickets to the New York concert featuring Bon Jovi (who was awesome. He sang "Living on a Prayer"...I sang along), Smashing Pumpkins and many others I could sit on my couch and have my TV on and watch the whole thing. And then if I wanted to see what was going on in Rio de Janeiro, I could get another TV and watch it at the same time. Maybe I'm way off here, but this is kinda like having a no smoking campaign and getting 1 million people to light up at the same time to draw attention. Now the website had information and links to groups offering carbon offsets, but I still have to scratch my head on this one.

Second, I got thinking, as I have been for a while now, what should the Christian's response to all this global warming chatter be? Do we have a responsibility to take care of our planet? If so, how much should we alter our lives to preserve the environment? Let me first give my impression of the response of the religious right so far to this issue. At one time in my life I had expressed interest in Liberty University in the state of Virginia. This is, of course, the school that was founded and run by the late Jerry Falwell. Somehow I ended up on a email list to receive updates from Rev. Falwell regarding his school, church and other efforts to bring evangelical Christians together in support of policies that were in line with his interpretation of the Bible (and, it just so happened, the Republican Party). Anyway, not long ago I received an email saying that Rev. Falwell would be starting a sermon series on the myth of global warming. He felt that this was a grave concern to America and he was going to provide the "truth" on the issue. I never tuned in to hear what he had to say.

Now, this is where I'm at, I think. As Christians we do have a responsibility to the Earth. In the creation story of Genesis 1, after God creates everything He says it's good. God gave Adam control over the animals, even giving them their names, and over all the plants. From that time humanity has had a responsibility to care for the earth. This was a pretty good plan that God had. We take care of the earth and the earth will take care of us. We plant seeds, take care of them and we will get food. From then til now we've really messed things up. It's easy to push this off onto fallen humanity and another example of the curse we're living under, but that is too often used as a cop out. We were put in charge of this place and, in my opinion, we've done a really crappy job of taking care of it. Even if we're not at the crisis level that Al Gore and the Live Earth people think we're at (and I think we are) we, as God's children, have to do something about it.

So what do we do? Buy a Toyota Prius. Seriously. No just kidding...but I think we do need to look for ways we can clean up our world. And at the very least we need to be informed about this issue and not get caught up in the rhetoric that both sides use. As this issue grows the battle to be heard will grow proportionately. I really believe that it is important to fight the urge to allow the news to dictate our positions on these issues. We must know where we stand and why we stand there.

So, while I'm not sure how effective the 24 hour concert was in raising awareness, there is a problem and Christians should be assuming a leadership role in this and we're not. The world is looking for someone to take charge here and if it's not the people who have a real relationship with Jesus Christ, who will it be?

That's all from me for now.

Live the Life...let's try to fix this mess

Let's try this again...

2007-07-02T22:49:00.000-05:00

So my first attempt at blogging ended quickly. Things got busy and the blog got lost in the shuffle, but I'm back and ready to get going again. Since my last post I've graduated from college and bought a house with Liz (my wife). We're moving in two weeks...pretty excited about that, but there's lots to get done. The house is in a great location...near everything we need, but I guess that means we're staying here in Winnipeg for a while. I think that's a good thing.

I'm spending some time thinking about the upcoming US presidential election. It's weird how people change over time and this is one example of how I think I've changed in the past few years. I'm really into this Obama guy and that's a huge shift for me. You see it wasn't that long ago that I was one of those uber-conservative Christians who thought that the Republican party was God's party and that was the end of it. Sure they support some of the social policies that are important to me, but I've been wondering if those are the most important, or even if that's what Christians should be spending their time being concerned about. When I see the disaster that Iraq has turned into, hear about President Bush wanting to create a missle shield over western Europe and then today seeing Scooter Libby walk free after being sentenced to 30 months in prison it makes me wonder if the world would be a better place if Al Gore had won the 2000 election.

Because as Christians aren't we supposed to be concerned with helping people? Isn't that what Jesus was all about? If he was here today would he be one of the hardcore pro-life activist, Focus on the Family supporter or would he be hanging out with young women who were hurting because of the damaging emotional effects of abortions? I really think that North American Christians have screwed things up for themselves by getting hung up on same-sex marriage and abortion and issues like this while millions of people are killed in Rwanda and Sudan and we destroy the Earth with our SUVs. Sometimes I am ashamed to call myself a Christian and not because of Jesus, but because of some of my "brothers and sisters".

I think what really got me going on Barack Obama was what he said recently about the American religious right. He accused them of "hijacking faith" and talked about faith being used to "drive us apart". Is that what Jesus had in mind? The so-called "Christian leaders" of the most powerful country in the world using faith to divide. I don't think so. The response from the right? Ann Coulter, a columnist that I used to read often, said "No one with the name Barak Hussein Obama should use the word "hijack" while public speaking." Classy.

So at this point, over a year before the election, before any primaries have been held, I throw my support behind Barack Hussein Obama for President of the United States in the 2008 election that I cannot vote in because I'm not an American citizen. A while ago I thought that being led by my religious convictions meant that I would always support traditional conservative policies. Now I'm not so sure that those conservative ideas are really what it's all about...but my mind never stops going, so who knows where I'll be by the time the election actually rolls around.

Until next time...live the life!

Let's try this blogging thing...

2007-03-05T15:30:00.002-06:00

So this blogging thing seems to be pretty popular. I've never really got into the whole thing, but I'm sitting around on my Spring Break from school and I realized that I think a lot. So why not write down what I'm thinking and post it on the Internet where everyone can read it! I've always found it easier to work through things in my head if I write them down, so this seems like a logical step.

I don't have any expectations about this blog other than that it might help me to think through some things with more clarity. I spend a lot of time thinking about modern Christianity and the state of organized religion in North America. Maybe not the most exciting topic for most people, but it is a major part of my life. I am a Youth Pastor at a growing church in Winnipeg and a senior at Providence College, a Christian college in southern Manitoba. I am a Christian, although I'm not sure I know what that means. What is a Christian? Was Jesus a Christian? If He was here today would He be comfortable with what is being done in His name?

So besides thinking about what's wrong with the Christian church in the 21st century I also love pop-culture. I am a HUGE sports fan and I watch more TV than is recommended for any human. I am addicted to Lost, American Idol and The Office. I really don't know if anyone will read this or not, but at least it's a way for me to write down what's going on in my head.