Hebrews 11:1

By Luke Barnhart for Relevant Magazine

“I wonder why we listen to poets, when nobody gives a f—?”

I don’t think I can write the word that finishes the phrase in question. I was driving home from Nashville and listening to one of my favorite traveling albums. The stereo was loud and I sang along to the music of Wilco when it came to the line in question. I’m not sure why I paused, but I’m glad I did, because it ignited a winding train of thought, one idea leading to the next, like the interstate that would inevitably lead me home.

I must admit I love this line of the song: such a poignant, weighty question. So what if he had to use an “extra special” word to drive the point home? That is what makes it all the more emphatic and well … poetic. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a huge fan of swearing. But there are times and places where a well placed word just seems to fit for some reason. Regardless, something inside of me made me hesitate at the prospect of singing this one word, alone, in my car, along with my deafening stereo. What was it?

As a young boy growing up in a Christian family—living in a small rural Christian community no less—you learn a few things about what it means to be a Christian. Of course there is the part about following Christ and trying to make your life resemble His in some way, but even more so, being a Christian means you go to church on Sunday and you don’t do one or any combination of the following: smoke, drink, swear, or get close to having premarital sex (holding hands is permissible).

I’m thankful for the way I was raised. It kept me out of trouble and saved me from tallying a list of regrets in my adolescent years that would be difficult to overcome later in life. Nowadays, I believe myself to be beyond such trivial matters as petty legalism and the childish beliefs of my past. But as I sat and questioned my inability to sing a single word along with the music, I wondered if I had really overcome my small-minded legalistic view of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Was it my conscience speaking, or like Pavlov’s dogs, was I simply responding instinctively to a familiar stimulus?

The questions that began to eat away at me as I maneuvered through the flatlands of southern Illinois gradually broadened in scope, like the colorful orange and red horizon over the miles of farmland spread out before me. The music continued to play but my mind was elsewhere. Why is it that the issues I learned as a child, which were indeed very black and white—even separated the sinners from the saints—had now somehow become so thoroughly gray in my young adulthood? Why can’t I swear alone in my car if I want to? I’m old enough—can’t I have a drink every now and then? Even sex becomes a different kind of issue on a college campus.

As all of these questions rattled around in my head, I instinctively returned to another staple of my junior high youth group days: What Would Jesus Do? I’ve later come to realize that although the WWJD movement was essentially a fad and a commercially profitable one at that, the question, although leaving a slightly bitter aftertaste in the wake of its popularity, is still most useful and important at times. In fact it may be the most important question of all. I considered Jesus sitting in the passenger seat of my car, bobbing his head to the music along with me. Imagine my shock when he suddenly appeared there, acting as if nothing strange had just happened. Imagine when I finally managed to lift my jaw from the floor—me—the first person to speak with Jesus face to face in 2,000 years! Then I work up the courage to speak, and the first words out of my mouth are… “Is it ok for me to cuss in the car by myself when I’m singing along with the music?” How ridiculous would I sound? I actually played it out in my head. I ask the question. He replies by asking what a cuss word is or simply by saying, “Seriously?! That’s the first question I get?”

My mental dramatization only served to further convince me of the absurdity of my quandary. Why do we get so worked up over things that don’t seem to matter in the end? And if they really don’t matter, why don’t I just drink and swear like a sailor, engaging in all sorts of promiscuous, morally gray activity? An answer came to me in the form of an idea that had been welling up in me for quite some time without my notice: the graceful Christian.

Although the idea wasn’t fully formed, it had come to me in a sermon a few weeks back. Of course it wasn’t a new idea—they never are. But it struck me immediately as profound and critical. When I use the term “graceful Christian” I am speaking of grace in both the ballerina and the religious sense. In fact, I believe the ballerina grace may be achievable only by way of divine grace.

The graceful Christian exists, to borrow a concept from Gerald May, amidst grace as the very context within which we live our lives. It means God’s grace, the only thing guaranteeing us even our next breath, spurring us on to live in a manner worthy of the grace we have been freely offered, even immersed in. I could swear if I wanted to, and maybe not even feel morally astray, but what would I accomplish? What would I be telling other people about myself? That I had no better words to use? I could drink to elevation, but I’d surely wind up doing or saying something I’d regret. How graceful would that be?

The point is not to live rightly by some detailed code of conduct—far from it. What I am speaking of is graceful life—the free will of humankind drenched to the bone in God’s abundant grace. Some people say there’s no freedom in religion. Jesus said there’s no freedom in enslavement to our own selfish desires. Time after time we find ourselves returning to the prison cells where we no longer belong. Confinement and legalism can be comforting, but only for a while. Sooner or later we realize we are no more capable of earning our salvation than a smelly old sock is of walking to the washer and cleaning itself. Grace beckons each of us; true joy and freedom are its constant companions, inviting us to live as we were meant to live; inviting us to live as we desire to live. This is the invitation to the life of a graceful Christian, and we’d be foolish not to accept.

By Hannah Proudler for Relevant Magazine

I grew up in a Christian bubble. As the daughter of conservative-schooled seminary graduates, I experienced Christian summer camps, hand-made coolots, traditional hymns and at least 18 summers of one-piece swimsuits.

I could not imagine a world where notes could be written on notepads printed without a bible verse, or where a refrigerator magnet did not say “Bless this Home.” Christian stores, Christian school, Christian bracelets, Christian music, Christian books; everything in my world was “Christian.”

At the age of 18, I took my dad’s adage of “when you’re in my house, you play by my rules,” to the next level, and decided to experience the life that everyone around me seemed to be experiencing. Starting fresh in my own place, I started giving in to temptations that my only weapon over was so-called wisdom suggesting “the Bible says not to do that.” For me, God’s word was a rule book, and as far as I was concerned, I had already played by the rules and I still felt empty.

I began accepting invitations to stay after hours at the restaurant where I worked to drink. I wanted my identity to be in a society of acceptance, and I certainly wasn’t finding acceptance in Christianity. Instead I only found a set of rules, a formula telling me what not to do.

I didn’t know what to say the first time someone offered me drugs, so I said yes. I was not equipped for things like that, because in my world, in my bubble, only “bad” people did that. We weren’t “those” kind of people.

Well, what are “those” kind of people? It turns out I am one. Bitter from life in a church where nothing seemed realistic, I took cover in things that seemed logical to me. It did not seem logical that “we,” the fundamentalist Christians, could be so passionately pro-life but simultaneously so anti-life! We marginalize the “outsiders” of the faith. We don’t associate with anyone who would bring us down. Life sometimes doesn’t look so pretty, and to truly show someone what God’s love looks like, I believe, we have to be willing to reach them there. But I hadn’t been taught that.

What I had been taught were twisted half-truths. I remember specifically being told as a child to not be “unequally yoked.” What was at the heart of that was nothing more than racism blanketed by twisting God’s word. I was taught that this equated with not mixing race when you date or marry. What kind of wisdom is that to impart on a child? I felt so betrayed with so-called truths such as these.

As a child, hearing the popular phrase “God helps those who help themselves” became something to aspire to. It was the old pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that became something to strive for, a way to make it on your own-except for the fact that God helps those who cannot help themselves! It was more twisted truth leaving me reeling.

Unfortunately, I learned otherwise the hard way. After an “escape attempt” under the guise of a marriage that quickly failed, I realized that I had no coping skills to deal with the things life kept throwing at me. Despite every attempt to pull myself up, I kept failing miserably. The standards I grew up under were crumbling around me, and I found myself feeling as if I had no boundaries, no limits to the things I would seek comfort in.

After being honest with myself and with God I realized that I could no longer try to be the general manager of the universe. I had embraced everything, and lost myself under it all. At that point, I reached out for the first time, and felt grace, a grace that embraced me, this covert girl meeting darkness, often during the light of day. God instead shown his radiant light into my darkness and I learned for the first time that I have value being created in Christ’s image, and that my identity was not based on any group I associated with, what city I lived in or persona I adopted.

I felt recognized for the first time, and it felt great being so honest. My unstable nature suddenly became one of assurance as I realized that God allowed me this path so that I could see what true salvation looked like. It wasn’t anything I could obtain. It was only something He could give.

What that meant for me is that I no longer had to push the envelope to see if God would still accept me. Each time I ask God to meet me where I’m at, He says, “I have.” I hear God say to me “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matt. 11:28, The Message).

And that is life outside a Christian bubble. Perhaps we need our bubble burst. I don’t recall stories of Jesus only ministering to the church. In fact, I recall more rebuking of formulaic theology than rebuking the lifestyles of those in need. We all need to be reminded of what it is about Jesus that is so radical. He offers grace. He offers love to those who will seek Him with reckless abandon—and reckless is something I have covered.

Radically, I don’t feel abandoned anymore.

By Brandon Andress for Relevant Magazine

How can Jesus, in one breath, say that a characteristic of his discipleship is that of peacemaker (Matthew 5:9), but then in another breath say that, “[he] did not come to bring peace, but a sword”?

This seeming contradiction has caused great confusion. This scripture has been used and abused by Christian religious zealots and fanatics as evidence that Jesus condones violence. I’ve often wondered if it’s possible that this line has been misunderstood and taken out of context when measured against the language of the old testament prophets in their understanding that God is working for shalom (oneness and wholeness).

Jesus had every opportunity to wield the sword, but never did. It’s odd. Why did Jesus tell his followers to “never resist an evil person,” and further, to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”? Who would he use the sword on? Who would his disciples use the sword on? The answer is no one, except Peter, once.

After Judas kissed Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane the guards stepped forward to arrest Jesus and Peter cut the guard’s ear off by sword. Jesus said, “put your sword back in its place.” and, “do you not think that I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” Jesus made a military statement to describe how he could respond then says, “but how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must not happen this way?” The way of Jesus was not the way of the sword it was the way of the towel (of self-sacrificial love). Always loving, always pouring himself out, always giving self-sacrificially and without responding the way the Kingdom of the world responds.

Early in Jesus’ ministry he had the opportunity to use the power of the sword. Jesus said that he was going to do it God’s way. Not by force, not by violence, but by the cross. The one act that stops the vicious cycle of violence and is validated by the resurrection (not death and violence winning, but by life through sacrificial love). Love always wins and triumphs over evil, but not with the sword. And the way of the sword was not the way of Jesus.

If a sword is what Jesus came to bring but we do not have any evidence that Jesus ever used a sword violently, then it is possible that it may be symbolic. Scripture describes God having a double-edged sword for a tongue (Revelation 1:17), his words being even sharper than a double edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), and his words being the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). If we are consistent, you get this idea that a sword, symbolically, refers to truth, the word of God.

Jesus came to bring truth. The word of God is sharp, it divides, even to the point of dividing people who are close to each other. Why? Because the truth is not accepted or pursued by everyone and many stand against the truth. By Jesus just “being” he created conflict because he is truth. The paradox as we know is that the truth of God brings peace (shalom) to those who seek reconciliation through Christ. Peace is founded on the truth of God revealed in Christ. Jesus did not come to bring peace, came to bring the truth of God and through that comes peace.

By Sierra McConnell

A favorite pastime between my best friend and I is to compare the culture we were brought up in with that of the one we are currently living in. We both come from fairly liberal societies in the north and, for the time being, are stuck in an ultra-conservative society in the south. We have both grown up learning to love everyone, regardless of who they are, where they come from, what they believe or what they look like. Neither of us were brought up by atheists, Satanists or any other “heathens” most people think our parents must have been. We were both taught that God’s Word is Truth and that the Father loves the entire world enough to send His only Son so that people could believe in Him. We both have left the church in pursuits of other things at one point or another in our lives, but we both still held these things we were taught throughout our wanderings off of the path. We were both very aware that when we arrived to our school in the south that people were going to be more conservative and we would meet a considerable amount of other Christians.

We never thought we would associate Christianity with unloving.

We’ve met hundreds of people claiming to be Christians. They are militantly pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-war, anti-gay and very Republican. They only listen to music that says Jesus at least twice per song, and watch movies that have no violence, swearing, sex, and (most importantly) do not question the religion they have grown up with in even a small way. The vast majority of these people tell the world that they must be like them in order to be saved. This scares me. Not for myself, really. I’ve learned to block out a lot of things in the year that I have lived here. It scares me for the people here and those who are going to be told they’re going to hell for not believing the same way.

There’s nothing wrong with having any of those beliefs. While I don’t necessarily hold to all of them, I have no problem with others having different beliefs than I do. I do, however, have a problem with people saying that these beliefs are biblical and the same that Jesus would hold. I cannot see the justification for protesting in front of abortion clinics, yelling things like “slut,” “murderer,” and whatever else to women while claiming to be a Christian. I cannot see justification for claiming to be pro-life before birth but being anti-life by being pro-death penalty. I don’t understand how these people, who claim to be Christians can shun the homosexuals or prostitutes because they are “sinners in need of a savior,” as the prayer goes. I’m fed up with hearing that as Christians we should not be associating ourselves with these or any sinners, that we must have a great “fellowship” with other Christians who believe exactly the same way as we do, who don’t challenge us to think. That’s not what this whole Christianity thing is about.

Aren’t we supposed to love everyone, regardless of who they are? Loving those who don’t believe the same way I do makes me a non-Bible-Believing-Christian. Does being a Christian mean that I am not supposed to love everyone? If it does, I don’t want any part in this anymore.

There has to be a better way.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”” (Matthew 22:37-40, TNIV).

Love God. Love your neighbor. That is what this thing, this belief, this faith, this life is about. Why, then, do we find it so hard to love? Why do we have such a hard time with being around those who don’t believe like we do?

I think sometimes we get so caught up in our Christian culture, we create these false images of Jesus in our minds. We see Him dressed in khakis and polo, only being around those who praise Him most, never with the broken, the losers, and the ones that society rejects. We feel that while He is too holy to be with these people, we also feel that it is our obligation to try and save them ourselves. Jesus does not want us to stand on our soapboxes, claiming hell and damnation for everyone who doesn’t agree with us, telling them they must be saved. We have thousands of tracts we could give them to solve that problem for us. Jesus does not want us to ask them if they’ve ever told a lie, thought a lustful thought, or hated someone with the air of righteousness, as if we’ve never sinned, and then tell them that liars, adulterers and murderers go to hell and they are right along with them.

Think about it. Jesus would not tell us to do things like that. God would not tell us that we are too good for others.

As North American Christians, we need to repent of making God in our own image instead of being made in His image. We need to repent of making Jesus out to be one who condemns instead of saves (John 3:16-17). We need to repent of showing the world only what we are against instead of what we are for. We need to repent of letting a beautiful faith be turned into a synonym of hate.

By Emma Sciantarelli for Relevant Magazine

The best way to truly understand the miraculous nature of the love of God is to find one person with a heart harder than stone and love that person with all your strength. Only when love is completely one-sided—lavished abundantly yet refused immensely—will one begin to understand the heart of a God who loved us while we were still sinners.In recent times I have become involved in the lives of seven Nepali boys, ages six to 14, formerly residents of the street. A product of all things that are street life, my kids use drugs, lie, steal, cheat and fight on a regular basis. Most street kids become beggars before the age of six, marijuana smokers before the age of eight and users of heavier drugs—mainly smack—before the age of 10. Through the process of pulling my boys off the streets, enrolling them in school and giving them another chance, I have had my doubts. Will the boys ever be able to really change?True love is not motivated by potential results. Love does not choose to act when the risks are low and the benefits are high. Love loves because it cannot help itself—it has no choice but to give anything despite everything.

Although love has the power to foster change within the loved, it is not dependent upon this change. Love unceasingly thrives upon itself—no matter what reaction its presence warrants.

Opposition does not encumber true love. The defining character of true love is its ability to stand alone and unhindered, steadfast and resolute. Love remains constant in the moment of trial and unchanged amidst resistance. Although the object of love’s affection may push away, true love does not retreat.

There is a war within 12-year-old Rashon unlike anything I have ever seen in an individual. In a good moment, he is the most loving, considerate boy of them all. He works diligently in school, and his eyes shine with the goodness of a child. Yet, within a split second, the swelling rage of a vicious heart overpowers his goodness

“I no love you—I hate you!!! You no good guys. You no giving me smoking! I no like reading school; I want sleeping street every night! My life no good; I no care,” Rashon screams at me on the bad end of one of his many pendulum swinging emotional lows, “I want every day smoking! I sleep street and every day coming crazy and using.”

Rashon cups his hands around his mouth pantomiming the way street kids inhale glue before he bends down and lifts up a corner of the linoleum flooring of his room. In defiance, Rashon takes out a small bag of marijuana he has been hiding and smirks as he holds it before me. Almost as a challenge, he begins to roll.

My flesh wants to cry out, “After I have sacrificed so much of my life for you? After all I have done for you? After I’ve taken you in, built you a home, made you a bed, given you a life—this? This is how you repay me?”

God quiets my head and love forces me to look deep.

Did you become involved in the lives of these boys for repayment from them or out of obedience to Me? What is not clear about love’s unconditional nature? Before you cared for Me, I loved you. Even still you defy Me—you turn your back on My love—but My love for you remains steadfast. If My love for you had been contingent upon your response, surely I would have left you long ago.

Before me stands the same rage-filled child, yet seen by God’s eyes. I now see a little boy fully aware of the evilness of man but has experienced nothing of the goodness of God.

Suddenly my anger is replaced by a love not my own, and, despite that only moments earlier I wanted nothing more than to scold my rebellious kid, the only words that come out are, “I love you, Rashon.”

“I no love you,” Rashon continuing to smoke, throws his metal chest across the room. His clothes and books spill out as the box hits the wall. “I love you. If you smoke everyday, I will love you.”

Rashon runs at me and begins beating me with his fists in attempts to rid himself of this foreign thing called love. “I no love you. I no want you love me.” “Rashon, no matter what, I am going to love you. Break everything in this room, and I will still love you. If you don’t love me, that’s fine. I still will always love you. If you run away, I will love you. If you stop going to school, I will love you. Nothing you can do will stop me from loving you.”

“You talking, I no listening. You love me; I no care. I no love you,” shoes begin flying and posters torn from the walls. Before I knew God’s love, I wonder how many times my actions said the very same thing to Him.

And yet … “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, TNIV).

By Rob Foley

The view you will get right now from any window here in Maine reports imminent change; the leaves display a variety of colors from God’s palette, and the air outside is crisp and increasingly complimented by the smell of wood-burning fireplaces. Sleeved shirts wrap summer’s bare-skinned arms, and shoes now cover feet that recently ran unfettered across green lawns. With autumn here and winter quickly approaching, I am reminded that each day is a catalyst of time and that we are all subject to its progression. I’m also drawn to reflect upon how that time is spent–the seconds and minutes that, when summed up, create the years of our existence. If the Lord sees fit, we will wake up in the sunlight of another tomorrow, which could be a Monday or a Friday or a Sunday, but that will always be whatever day is next in line. Enough of these days gone by, we find ourselves having lived through yet another season.

What do we do with this time, you and me? We work, that’s for sure. We go to the grocery store. We watch the news, read the paper, take out the garbage and pay more than we should to put gas in our cars. We cheer for the home team, mow the grass, walk our dogs, and pay more than we should for a coffee down the street. We cook dinner, go to church, brush our teeth, and bed down for the night. We meet a neighbor at the end of the drive and small talk for a bit before we move on to the next thing. We drop a coin in a tip bucket for a street side musician and keep moving on. We kiss our loved-ones goodbye for the day or bump fists with our friends, and with the warmness of their faces still on our minds and our brown-bagged lunches in hand, we walk away to the next thing or person or place that requires our presence. We do these thing, and life goes on. Do we ever stop to listen to our lives, to hear the time as it is being passed, to listen to our footsteps as they coincide with the ticking and tocking of any clock that has a beat?

We often see our lives as a routine of organized dullness, and are sure that the going and coming commonness of them is so out-of-the-spotlight that there could be nothing very much Holy about them; just something upon which time has an effect. It is at this point that I think we have been dulled by a slow-moving, ever-inching lie of the world that tells us there is no grace and no hope, and that our lives are only lines of activity that abruptly end one day. But it is exactly grace that our lives are full of, and because of it that we have life to begin with. Author Frederick Buechner puts it this way in his memoir, Now and Then: “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

What might we hear if we do listen to our lives? What would meet our ears if we put them to the rails of our existence? I think we would at least hear the distinct sound of being human; being lost and in constant need of a savior to lead us, relieve us, and offer us an eternal out. We would hear fear, insecurity, fragmentedness and a craving for intimacy, but also joy, laughter and the satisfaction of friendship. The human condition is no doubt what we would hear, which, in a way, is itself a holy thing. God himself–the Holy One–created us, and what created thing does not reflect a little of its creator? I think God knew that if we listened long enough to our lives we would hear the dysfunction of human fallen-ness. He knew that it would be more than we can handle, which is why he provided Christ as the Messiah, who himself heard the same human condition when he listened to the woman at the well, to Zacchaeus in the tree, to Nicodemus in the dark of that ancient evening, and to the thief on the cross. To each of those people he offered himself as a response to what they heard of themselves, just as he is the response to what we hear of ourselves today.

We are no doubt subject to time’s progression–we cannot escape it. But time is subject to God. What if we were to interpret time more as a reminder of God’s constant presence as He was, is, and always will be on earth and in us rather than so much as a deadly countdown to the end? What if we could accept the ticking of time as Christ’s own heartbeat pumping through the blues and grays of our days, the high-rises and lattes of our lives? If ever we could stop long enough to let our minds stand still, away from the humming beehive of our mass culture, then we might be able to hear how our own heartbeats tell of a Holiness that was, that is, and is to come–that is the response to who we are and how we are.

I have a confession to make – I suffer from foot-in-mouth-itis.

While the medical profession in North America has yet to officially acknowledge this term I’m sure there are countless other people who unfortunately share the same infliction. It could be an ill-timed joke, a well meant joke that is worded the wrong or or just flat out dropping the ball and saying something I shouldn’t, all of my friends and family know that my lips are basically a timebomb waiting to explode.

Trust me, I’ve tried to my hardest to fix this problem but it seems like there’s nothing I can do.

While reading through articles on Relevant – yes, I’m still slowly reading through the articles on my RSS feed – I came across a gem from Joey Spiegel where he opened his article by writing:

Ever found yourself in an argument that you later realized wasn’t worth it? I have. I can’t shut my mouth sometimes. If somebody says something that pushes my buttons, my initial reaction can be fierce and divisive. As a Christian—and as a pastor—I struggle with this.

Whoa, hold up!

You mean those cool, calm and collected people whose sermons I soak up each Sunday suffer from the same affliction?

Knowing that I’m in good company helped me tremendously in dealing with some regret over some ill-timed comments that I’ve recently made. Thanks Joey!