Musings

On Freedom

by Brett Westervelt

I just returned from six weeks overseas, studying at a university in a country under authoritarian rule. It was a fascinating time that I find myself cherishing more with each hour back that passes. Before going there I had thoughts of a police state with lots of rules, an ineffective economy, and people continually marching in formation dancing in my head. I expected to love the individual people while disrespecting the government.

A strange thing happened in my time there. I did love the people, their lives suddenly becoming far more interesting to me than my own. I also, though, came to respect this place and, to a good degree, the government in charge there. Of course I did see the pain that an authoritarian regime fearful of losing control can cause. Some policies felt inefficient, others ignorant. Everyone’s voice should be heard, their votes counted; because, as Aristotle once described, the best kind of government is a democracy (considering the evil of mankind). Power, easily corrupted, needs to be split between a chorus of voices, divided into a variety of hands.

This philosophical truth doesn’t change what I experienced this summer: a government waking up every day with an unthinkable number of people to feed; a government that does a pretty remarkable job at doing so. A place that while often not fair, was remarkably peaceful. A land becoming more and more prosperous, raising the water in the sea and causing every individual’s boat to float higher.

A friend of mine there asked me if freedom was the most important thing to Americans. I thought for a second before replying. “No I don’t think it is. Freedom is foundational, it’s this thing we’ve always had (at least in my lifetime). It’s something we take for granted, until it is taken from us.” He was a bit surprised that something he wanted so badly was worth so little to our country, but he was remarkably understanding. It was I that was taken aback. I was embarrassed to think of something so valuable as simply to be expected.

I’m not sure if it was irony or just bad timing (my life has been full of both), but we return to the states just in time for the 4th of July, the day when everyone is most proud to be an American (where at least we know we’re free). We gorge ourselves on patriotism, genuinely thankful, I believe, for our rights and for the lives spent defending those rights. It’s both an important remembrance, and a bit nauseating to return to.

America is a place where freedom is the norm for 365 days each year, a freedom in such great supply that we meagerly celebrate it with a day, some fireworks, and a few apple pies. If our freedom is so cheap, I wonder, what do we use it for? Sometimes we use it to harm, manipulate, and take advantage of others. There are laws in our land of course, but there’s a lot of freedom to be had before such laws begin to be constraining. Other times we look for stricter laws (usually in the wake of being harmed by a lack of them), perfectly willing to trade liberty for safety. This makes another part of us upset: the part that prefers to use freedom to erect a wall of privacy. In these times our pursuit is of “the American Dream” – a nice job, a nice house, a nice wife, a nice family. This nicety is often at the expense of good or challenging, it is a life of comfort. Of course we rarely find this life, and when we do, rarely are we satisfied with what we once thought of as all we could ever want. In times like these we tend towards manipulating, taking advantage of, and hurting others; all attempts to get more. This brings us back to the beginning of this cycle of freedom won and lost.

And while it’s not as simple as I just made it out to be, it really is a cycle. Freedom isn’t ever an end; it’s a beginning. It’s the fullness of opportunity, not a series of steps to follow. Noble at its outset, when placed in the hands of malice, it quickly becomes twisted – suddenly a viable instrument for evil. A free society tends to head in two directions: its people either develop enough rules and regulations to maintain control or its people do whatever it is they feel like doing. The first removes freedom and replaces it with law, the second tramples freedom with some individual’s choices crushing other’s. Both require change, the renewal of these unalienable rights. We fight to push this boulder back up its hill, only to have it roll right back down again as our gaze shifts inward.

Our country ultimately tries to strike a balance between total control and complete anarchy, hoping to find freedom-for-the-most-part in between. This is a delicate balance at best, easily tipping from one side to the other depending on the topic or the era. (Terrorism. Sex. Poverty. Traffic Control. The Economy. Foreign Relations. Alcohol Consumption. Free Press. Guns.)

You will ultimately feel controlled (but relatively safe) in some areas of your life, and free (to help and be helped, to hurt and be hurt) in the other areas. This is a freedom lacking any inward transformation. A freedom, which unredeemed, will continually cause strife.

Someone proposed a solution to this once, but it seemed ignorant and naïve to most. To love God (the one true one) with all of your heart, soul, and mind; and to love your neighbor as yourself. Let the one being who is truly good and truly in control provide the proper framework and guidance, use the remaining freedom to think of others interests and concerns, trusting that you will be taken care of in the process.

This did work once, until this fear of being ignorant and naïve set in. Adam and Eve ate the fruit. The seemingly inconsequential bite of a too-common food reverberated; not so much in the action as in the choice that caused such a taste to hit the tongue. It was a choice of betrayal, of choosing self before all other relationships, with the relationships that define self lost in the process. Humanity gave up these ideal relationships with God and fellow man, things that would soon seem idealistic. Pipe dreams. Adam and Eve took power into their own hands, using this power for their own independent pursuits. Freedom was dealt a death-blow, a deep wound we haphazardly fight to patch.

There’s No “Our” In Team. (But There Should Be.)

by Brett Westervelt

I don’t know if life has been more chaotic for me of late or if I’m just growing up, but I'm finding myself in prayer a lot more these days – about things big and small. This feels mildly foolish at times, like when I find myself praying for professors to email me back about last-minute letters of recommendation for graduate school. It starts to feel like magic when I receive these much needed emails a few hours later, after having heard nothing for several days. I know that prayer is neither foolish or magical, but I experience these contrary feelings quite a bit when thinking things in my head, and trying to think them in the general direction of God.

For a while now, since a kick in the pants by Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy, I’ve been in the habit of praying the Lord’s Prayer each morning, as meditatively as my oft-distracted mind will allow. It’s not magical, as some would like it to be, but it tends to bring good scriptural perspective to my days. It goes something like this:

My Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come, Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give me this day my daily bread,
And forgive me my trespasses,
As I forgive those that trespass against me.
And lead me not into temptation,
But deliver me from evil,
For Yours is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory forever. Amen.

About a month ago, I had this realization, which I’m going to go ahead and blame on the grace of God. I suddenly remembered that this wasn’t the way Jesus had taught us to pray at all. His prayer was vastly different, profound even:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name
Your kingdom come, Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For Yours is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory forever. Amen.

The difference between “our” and “my”, between “us” and “me” is subtle but substantial. How often I pray for myself and only myself before moving on to thinking about myself all day long. And that’s on a good day, when I value prayer and trust God to hear what I’m thinking in His general direction.

The “our” perspective in the model Jesus gave us is entirely reflective of His desire for us the church: that we would be as one body, with various different parts and He at the head. The Lord’s Prayer does a great job of helping us think in terms of God as the good king, leading us to submit our puny kingdoms to His reign and rule, but remove the our’s and replace them with me’s and I have a whole other problem entirely. I have a world where God cares all about me, and just about me, even when me is at the expense of us.

So of late I’ve been trying to pray the other Lord’s Prayer, the original one, in a meditative way to begin my day. It’s been amazing to experience the regard for others that ends up in my head, and how various friends and family members and community situations come to mind as I ask for God’s rule in our lives, for His daily provision, for His protection from evil. I admit that like all prayers the whole process still feels foolish at times and magical at others, but it is not a lonely pursuit in the least.

All Chained Up With No Place To Go

-OR- Freedom From The Inside, Out

by Brett Westervelt

A friend and I were sitting out on the patio at Peet’s Coffee the other day, taking in a little foretaste of fall weather divine, talking about the gospel and the resulting freedom that we’re supposed to feel from living under grace. It was for freedom that Christ has set us free.

We were talking about how hard it can be to actually feel set free from our depravity. It turns out that shouting “I’m free” at the top of your lungs doesn’t tend to get you much further than a few furrowed brows and some curious glances.

I find it interesting that we tend to measure the quality of our spiritual life by checklists of activities: church attendance, quiet times, minutes in prayer – easily quantifiable things, the rules and norms of Christendom. There’s not a whole lot that’s overtly relational in that list, not a whole lot that sounds like freedom. In fact we often feel utterly enslaved to these things, and to the expectations to be a good person, a certain Christian typecast. Instead of enjoying and figuring out how to be free, we have rushed to make up some new rules to follow. I think this might be because actual freedom is a bit unsettling. I’m free, so now what am I to do exactly? It’s nice to have a way to measure performance, to feel on top of things.

My friend compared it to when Lincoln abolished slavery. All of these slaves, formerly with little hope and with no ability to make their own decisions were suddenly set free. They had opportunities, they could go anywhere, travel freely; and yet a fair number of these remained where they were as indentured servants. They had lived lives of slavery for so long that they had no concept of freedom.

A story in Mark’s gospel account came up, about when Jesus healed a demon-possessed man. According to Mark the man “lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain; for he had often been retrained with shackles and chains, but the chains were wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.”

This guy was a danger to himself and to the people living around him. Bruising himself with stones. Howling. The best the townspeople could think to do (to protect themselves, but also him) was to chain him up, to physically restrain him from tearing himself apart. His unchained freedom was wrecking havoc, and the best solution was outward force. Even if these chains had held (they hadn’t), this would have been a sad existence for this man: alone, on the outskirts of the city, living among the dead.

Jesus of course had different designs. He knew that the man’s troubles were internal – demons controlling his ravings – and he cast this Legion out. Jesus provided a lasting freedom for this man, an internal healing that allowed him to again be a part of the society around him. Jesus actually sent him back to the towns, to proclaim all that the Messiah had done for him – the mercy and freedom that Jesus had provided.

We live in America, “where at least I know I’m free.” The problem with the freedom that we experience is that it’s not so much freedom as a delicate balance between license and law – external forces that allow us to do what we want, selfishness and depravity in tow, as long as our actions don’t hurt others too badly. Those lines of permissibility are being continually redrawn, much like the hemlines of actresses in movies and on television. Cultural acceptability is continually being reformed.

Jesus was always valuing the internal over the external. Complaining of white-washed tombs and cups only washed on the outside, speaking to the heart of the law (love God and other people) more than the guises of it. He healed outcasts so that they could again be a part of their community; He forgave our sins so that we could again have a relationship with God, and so that we might experience relationships with others founded on the kind of enabling grace that fallen creatures such as ourselves need.

Instead of inner transformation we often run to external devices, our moral measuring tapes, unsure of what freedom entails. I wonder what we miss in our continued pursuit of slavery. Are the actions that we would label “Christian” a reflection of the internal freedom only Christ can provide, or are they simply a new set of chains and shackles, ones that won’t hold for long?

Sent

by Brett Westervelt

We’re moving. Always moving. Going from one place to the next, filling our lives with activity – here, there, and everywhere in between. From space we must look like an ant farm, mostly moving about in elegantly timed patterns, scattering in a thousand different directions in the face of surprise or despair.

So much of this activity is an attempt to find a home. We’ve been displaced by our failures, by the dislike and mistrust of others, by the tragedies of a fallen world. We took our inheritance and set off for greener grass, only to realize that what we were really searching for was the place we had set out from.  A bite of an apple began a long journey, filled with dusty trails but also with God’s providence, with brief glimpses of home along the way.

The Gospel provides our road back. It is a path paved by the death of the Christ, as betrayal comes at great cost. The journey is one of faith – a continued recognition that our home is often more unseen than seen. Take a look around and you will see a thousand explanations as to why we’re here. Paths to health, wealth, and the successes of mankind. These hopes are fleeting at best, empty at worst.

You’ll only find one explanation, though, as to why we’re here if home is really elsewhere. Our aimless wanderings have scattered us across the earth, but our redemption has left us where we are, for now. God aims to turn our wandering into opportunity. Having brought the light of the gospel into our lives, He asks us to bring this light to live life by to others. To point the way home. 

We set out on our own accord, but redeemed, we are sent.

Content Mastery

by Brett Westervelt

A conversation between Martin Luther and his congregate, as recounted by Derek Webb:

A few in Luther’s congregation came to him one day and asked, “Pastor why is it that week after week after week all you ever preach to us is the Gospel?” Implying certainly, we’re ready to move onto something else, certainly we know this by now, why is it that you continue to preach it to us week after week?

Luther responded, “Well, because week after week you forget it. Because week after week you walk in here looking like a people that don’t believe the Gospel. Until you walk in looking like people truly liberated by the truth of the Gospel, I’m going to continue to preach it to you.”

Growing up I was an avid Sesame Street watcher. Big Bird and the gang were the formers of my formative years: teaching me the alphabet, helping me develop basic math skills (primarily counting), and giving me an insatiable craving for cookies.

I walked away from each day’s encounter a bit smarter; these foundational skill sets a bit more ingrained. There was of course repetition involved. The Count was always finding “one, two, three apples ah, ah, ah,” Cookie Monster was never afraid to remind me that “C” was for “cookie.”

Imagine if I pretended to know the alphabet after one show, or worse yet, if the Sesame Street cast and crew only gave me one chance to learn these things. We’re done with the letter A, we covered it in last week’s episode, remember? “A” is for apple. We told you already. We’re moving on.

All of this repetition, saying the same things in different ways (even the same ways), seems to go out of style at about the same age that imaginary friends do. In school you only repeat subjects if you fail them miserably the first time around. If you’ve read Les Miserables once, written a paper on it, and watched the movie in class it’s assumed that you’ve gotten all that you will ever get out of the story of Jean Valjean.

In our relationship with God we often take this same approach. Oh, I’ve already done a study on James, or I found the sermon boring today – I’ve heard those things before. New information is the soul of the information age. New content is currency, bringing with it the praises and book sales of the consuming public. Being prolific pays.

The thought that hearing or reading or seeing something once is akin to learning is chilling; especially when the modern rendition of Christianity is often more informational than relational at its core. My married friends would never tell their spouses, “I love you” once or twice and assume that they’ve said it enough. Neither would they say that they don’t need to hear it since they already know. And yet we so often pretend to know the Gospel (the story of God’s love for the world corporately and for me individually), wishing to move on to bigger and better things.

I’ve been experiencing the Gospel much more like the alphabet these past few months. Hearing and speaking what is true over and over, none of it assumed. Telling people that God loves them; that God has lovingly created them and is in the process of redeeming them, justified through Christ’s blood, sanctified through the Spirit’s work.

My community has repeatedly, and from different angles, spoken these same truths back to me. WIth honesty they have spoken of the good they find in me, not assuming that I already know those things to be true. Shedding light on the fallenness they see as well, with humility, not assuming I’m completely aware of these things either. Reminding me of the source of living water, of the shepherd worth following. The result is that I know and believe the Gospel more every day when I wake up. I follow Christ more passionately, because I’m continually reminded how much he loves me.

Art is helpful in this repetition. Paintings and poetry and films and music have a way of repeating truth in a way that still feels meaningful, in a way that isn’t so easily boxed in and “mastered.” It’s no wonder that God created a world and gave us his Word in similarly not-understood-at-first-glace forms. These are things worth exploring, not fearing and needing to control.

“Jesus loves me, this I know” is a tune often forgotten where it really counts: deep in my soul and in my resulting actions. Repetition is a good thing, especially when it’s the Gospel week after week after week. This is liberating.

Complexity

by Brett Westervelt

The other night I watched the movie Primer with several friends. If you haven’t seen this film, you should, but I’ll leave a proper review for a different venue. Primer is not an easy movie to understand; in fact I left quite unsettled. It all came at me a bit too fast, without the proper narrator asides or flashbacks to let me know what was really going on. Just tension.

The kind of tension that leads the nocturnal nerd in me to read posts on message boards from equally curious people with far more time on their hands. As I began to read plot analysis and scene by scene breakdowns, I started to feel a sense of loss. In attempting to understand every detail I found myself understanding the movie’s point less and less. Dissecting a frog can be helpful in figuring out its inner workings, but it also tends to take the life out of it.

I sometimes wonder if our attempts at dissecting the Bible are the same way: bringing a sense of knowledge while removing all of the life.  You’ve heard it said that God’s word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. This sounds mysterious, exciting, a bit unsettling. It makes me want to read the Bible a lot more than I do. Of course, it also makes me want to look up a verse on peace or understanding in the index at the back, so that I can diffuse those emotions and move on with my day.

When I look at the Bible, I see a series of books and letters important enough to be copied for years by hand, letter by letter. Words pregnant with mystery and understanding, life and death. Stories, poetry, prophecy, heartfelt asides between apostles and churches. Quite meaningful really.

Then I look at the veritable textbook of a Bible I have sitting on my shelf: full of cross-references, clear interpretations of confusing passages, and a concordance for looking up every mention of the word recompense. I think this reflects the importance of the Bible, I’m just not sure it retains the meaning of it. Great, valuable thought has gone into understanding this great, valuable book; it’s just that this wealth of information makes my own need to know seem much less valuable. Dissecting a poem will help you understand it, but handing all of these interpretations to someone else will not help them love it.

Over the past few weeks, a friend and I have been getting together to read Luke’s Gospel. We’ll head over to Spider House, grab some coffee and a table, and start reading. Out loud. He reads for a bit, and then I’ll read for a bit. We’ll stop every now and then to talk about what we find fascinating or what we don’t understand or what we’ve never noticed before. Often we’ll be reminded of events taking place in our own lives. Occasionally we’ll stop and pray.

Reading Luke’s words about Jesus and his message, I am refreshed and challenged, even though I’m sometimes left a bit confused. (It’s coming at me a little fast, without the proper flashbacks or plot analysis.) I feel this urge to get out a commentary or to do some cross-referencing, but I avoid it. The tension I feel pushes me to keep reading, to understand more.

I find myself not only reading things that are true, but I also find this truth to be full of emotion and meaning. It feels very much worth believing. I am amazed at the faith of Zacharias and of Mary and of the Roman centurion, surprised at what their trust in God says about my own. I love seeing Jesus’ clear sense of mission coupled with his demonstrative love of individual people.

I suppose we’re reading the Bible as literature, nothing extraordinary. Though in reading its words (in context and without Cliff Notes) it’s impossible to escape how much more than literature, or a textbook on life, the Bible really is. Living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword…

Maybe the reason people have a hard time picking up the Bible is because someone else has already picked it apart.

Dropping off the Baggage

by Brett Westervelt

The other night my friend Jeremy and I were discussing a talk that we had just heard on relationships. As in the dating kind. Jeremy’s married, so he’s pretty much through with the whole dating thing. (Though I’m pretty sure he still goes out on dates, just with the same woman every time).

Jeremy’s theory on dating is that as soon as you “make it official” and start dating someone, you pick up a bunch of baggage simply from adopting the term “dating” for your relationship. As a boyfriend or girlfriend, you assume certain emotional duties and behavioral obligations, some of which are good and some of which are bad. The problem, in Jeremy’s opinion, is that they’re all assumed… as in, they don’t need to be talked through or communicated about, they just happen. They’re just there.

By calling my relationship with a girl “dating” or calling her my “girlfriend”, I don’t have to be as specific with her on where we are at or where the relationship is going. I actually need to do very little communicating. I might even forget to do things like tell this girl what I like about her, simply because the title of girlfriend seems to say it all for me.

Yesterday I was talking with another friend of mine. He doesn’t really believe the things the Bible says about life and who God is. Part of the reason for his disbelief is that some of the people he’s known (or at least known of), who term themselves Christian, do things like applaud the death of a person solely because that person was caught up in the sin of homosexuality.

I find it problematic that pretty much anyone can assume the title “Christian,” no questions asked. People can say that a person isn’t a Christian, but that quickly turns into people arguing about who’s a real Christian and who’s not… and that can get both ugly and murky real quick. My friend isn’t a big fan of reading or research, so I think when someone tells him they’re a Christian he pretty much takes their word for it.

I sometimes wish I could follow Christ, but not call it being a Christian. Not because I’m embarrassed or ashamed of the Gospel… more so because I believe the Gospel to have the power to really change lives, and I feel like calling myself a Christian tends to bring more baggage and less open-ended conversation.

Being a Christian automatically makes me a Republican who hates people that are immoral (forgetting that we all are in various ways) and spends 30 minutes each day reading My Utmost for His Highest. I guess such publicly assumed perceptions are true of any label you give a person; I just wish that wasn’t the case with “Christian.”

Even more worrisome, I think, is how my assumption of the title Christian tends to affect my actual relationship with God. It’s as though I’ve agreed to four points in a contract, and signed my name on the dotted line; as though I’m set. Jesus tells me I should love God with all my heart and soul and mind, and love my neighbor as myself. Paul tells me I should work out my salvation with fear and trembling. If all of this is so very much relational, why does “accepting Christ” feel so much like being knighted?

And maybe that’s actually a good analogy. It seems that back in the day becoming a knight started with a ceremony that marked an irrevocable change of one’s identity and responsibility. It seems today, though, that anyone can become a knight, as long as they’re mildly successful and British. It’s kind of like the difference between dating and marriage.  Dating feels good, but is very vague in terms of actual responsibility. Marriage is a very clear vow: for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, as long as you both shall live…

Marriage is one of the predominant metaphors God uses to describe our relationship to him, individually and corporately. Husband and wife. Christ and the Church. It just seems like somewhere along the way the Church decided it’d rather just date.

In response to "Not So Happy"

Sometimes if I (Will) really like a comment I post it. Such is the case with Brett's comment on Bob' article, "Not So Happy":

Bob...thanks for the words. I've been thinking about this "compulsion to be happy" as well lately. It's as though there's this pressure to make Christianity atractive, to represent God well... and in that our churches fail to present God (and relationship with Him) rightly. I mean I have heard pastors quite a bit that say "walking with God isn't easy, it's not a trouble-free life;" but the songs sung, and the messages spoken, and the bible-studies offered would often suggest otherwise. There's this fear that if I have a personal relationship with God and I'm not doing good, then God might not be good.

I don't think this is just a church thing though, it's an our world thing too. If we entertain ourselves enough, the real problems of life are easier to ignore. We want to feel good, not bad... and so no one wants to spend tons of time around a downer. Sad people with problems demand something of us - compassion, help, or at least uncomfortable words we don't mean... whereas happy people don't need anything - they're already happy. We even smile in all of our pictures, so that we will be on the record as one of the happy, non-messed-up ones.

I heard this interview with Ryan Adams, where he was being asked about the writing process of one of his songs. The interviewer asked, "how do you know where to start?" And he responded:

"You weep. I couldn’t write [the song] for weeks. I think I lied in the bath at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel in LA for a week…and just cried. I couldn’t touch a guitar for forever… and then I healed up enough, I healed up a little bit…and then it started happening again."

I don't really cry, ever; but I'm trying to embrace the importance of sadness a little more these days. It just seems like, in this world, pure bliss is ignorant.

So this is the New Year...

by Brett Westervelt

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. Maybe that’s because it seems like that’s what everyone does at the beginning of the year, and I don’t like fitting in. Maybe that’s because I like to succeed, and resolutions tend to be a breeding ground for failure. Regardless, I’m pretty much done with the whole “I’m going to eat/exercise/read/sit-up-straight less/more/sometime” thing.

Last new year (the beginning of my discontent), I went for the lofty but easily attainable: “learn more things”… and ended up feeling pretty good about the results. This year, though, I have an entirely different goal: to do less.

Not in a be-lazier sense, but in a chew-each-bite-21-times kind of way. I tend to live life like the often-referenced kid in a candy store. I have a lot of interests, I like a lot of people, I have 30+ favorite bands… and I’m always finding new interests, meeting new friends, discovering new music. It never (or rarely) occurs to me that the new will come at the expense of the old. Why eat some of the candy when there’s all of the candy?

What ends up happening is I do more things less well. I have more friends, with each one being less of a good friend. I read 5 books about the Bible, at the expense of reading the Bible. -OR- I attempt to read the whole Bible in one year, miss a day here or there, and end up needing to speed-read through the Psalms in two days to keep pace… and I miss all of the poetry therein.

I’m not sure why I try to do so much. Maybe I’m worried about missing out on the next new really great thing, even though I have no idea what that is. Maybe attempting to showcase a lot of different talents gives me a great sense of worth. Maybe having a lot of friends is easier than being committed to and supportive of a few.

In spite of my high hopes and good intentions, the new additions almost always push out or diminish the old. Sometimes that can be a good thing like when taking photographs replaces my 8th-10th hours of sleep, or when loving an enemy replaces hating them. Most of the time though, my doing more involves me consuming at the expense of savoring.

That’s why I want this year to be about doing less, going slowly, and repeating more. I’ll see the same movie multiple times at the expense of seeing every movie. I’ll spend a lot of time with a few friends: getting past initial pleasantries, all our good stories, and the silence that follows. I’ll be a Wilco devotee, trying to figure out what Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is really about, at the expense of a few Franz Ferdinands.

I think my relationship with God will benefit most from doing less, more. Because God stands outside of time, is unchanging and eternal, I often make the mistake of viewing my relationship with him that way. I view it as something I can always go back to, or spend more time on later.

I think that’s why the Word says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Being still is difficult in my world of airplane, cell phone, Google convenience. The temporal, insignificant, seen world drowning out the eternal world I belong in.

The Honest Truth

by Brett Westervelt

If I asked you what the most important thing in relating to someone was, what would you say? Common ground? Communication? Love? A sense of humor?

The reality is, without honesty, true relationship cannot exist. At the very point that what I think and what I say I think differ, you can only relate to a fake version of me… even if the fake me is just the real me, slightly twisted. True relationship is suddenly off of the table.

I recently heard someone say, “The only acceptable way to approach God is honestly.” And, “The only inappropriate way to approach God is dishonestly.” Unless we approach Him devoid of facade and pretence, relationship is futile.

It’s the same way in our conversations with others about God; about his Gospel. As you walk with God and live life, you’ll have opportunities to talk about this most important of relationships. In a world of pressure to convince and desire to not screw something up, talking about God is a daunting task… Though, in a world of honest relating, the words flow as easily as if you were telling a story. The Gospel is a story, the story of God’s love and desire for relationship with us, best told through the eyes of your experience.

If I’m honest about this most important of relationships, I have to confess that there are things about God that I don’t get; things that confuse me or even anger me. Things like, “if God is in control, why would he let a tragedy as great as the tsunami of last week happen?” There is a defense for why such horrible things happen…but if I’m honest with myself (and with you) I have to say that Apologetics ring empty for me in the face of all that death and destruction.

One thing we know is that God did not intend for the world to be this way. Eden was perfect. Not just in it’s lack of sinful man, but in it’s creation as well. I mean it didn’t even rain there. It didn’t need to. With Adam and Eve’s first betrayal of God, nature itself became broken.

In some way all of the bad things in our world, from natural disasters to cancer to lust, all spring from our brokenness and the brokenness of this place. It makes me long for restoration, and I believe that’s what God wants to do. God brings good out of everything (Genesis 50:20). I’ve found that even in my sin, God brings good about by showing me my helplessness. It’s maybe the same way with natural disaster. We are, as a world, helpless to the evil and broken that has engulfed us. But we have an eternal help and hope in God, and the saving work of Jesus Christ.

These are the things I would begin to say if asked how such tragedy could fit in with something as hopeful as the Gospel. I would say those things, because those are the things I know to be true, the ways in which God has let me halfway understand.

You might be tempted to brush such tough questions to the side, or to prove you’re right at the expense of the honest thoughts floating through your head. Don’t be. An honest “I don’t know” is sometimes a part of letting someone experience your actual relationship with Jesus. The one that they can actually relate to.