pastorchin’s weblog

The word sin has lost its meaning in our culture. Wonderful tasting foods are marketed as “sinfully delicious.” Sin is sexy, exciting, fun, and thrilling, and greatly misperceived as “something fun and enjoyable that God doesn’t want me to do.” We rarely think of sin as the source of all we hate in life … of all that steals, kills, and destroys. 

Sin at the core is choosing my will and ways, despite what God declares about his will and ways that lead to love and life. Basically, when I don’t trust that his ways will get me the life that satisfies, I choose my will and ways — that’s sin. To most, it feels like no big deal because it’s the way of the world. To God … it feels like adultery. 

by John Burke

Relevance has little to do with externals. It wasn’t the Samaritan’s clothes, vocabulary, nationality, or wealth that made him culturally relevant (see Luke 10:30-35). The Samaritan and the Jew didn’t even worship in the same way or in the same place (John 4:20). Yet all these barriers were broken as love was embodied in bandages, compassion, and coins. 

To bring it into our context, relevance isn’t about the brand of clothing we wear or the music we listen to. It’s not about our vocabulary or even the exact shape of our theology. These are externals. Relevance is fundamentally internal. It’s having the courage and the grace to look at a wounded man and stop to help. From that internal decision flows our relevant actions. As depicted in the story of the good Samaritan, what makes us relevant is our love for God and people. 

by Kary Oberbrunner

Everyone has been betrayed by someone, some more profoundly than others. Betrayal is a violation that strikes at the core of our being; to make ourselves vulnerable and entrust our well-being to another, only to be harmed by those on whom our hopes were set, is among the worst pain of human experience. 

Sometimes the way God treats us feels like betrayal. We find ourselves in a dangerous world, unable to arrange for the water our thirsty souls so desperately need. Our rope won’t take the bucket to the bottom of the well. We know God has the ability to draw water for us, but oftentimes he won’t. We feel wronged. After all, doesn’t Scripture say that if we have the power to do someone good, we should do it (Prov. 3:27)? So why doesn’t God? 

As I spoke with a friend about her painful life, how reckless and unpredictable God seems, she turned and with pleading eyes asked the question we are all asking somewhere deep within: “How can I trust a lover who is so wild?” Indeed, how do we not only trust him, but love him in return? There’s only one possible answer: You could love him if you knew his heart was good. 

(The Sacred Romance , 70)

Notice that all the great stories pretty much follow the same story line. Things were once good, then something awful happened, and now a great battle must be fought or a journey taken. At just the right moment (which feels like the last possible moment), a hero comes and sets things right, and life is found again. 

It’s true of every fairy tale, every myth, every Western, every epic—just about every story you can think of, one way or another. Braveheart, Titanic, the Star Wars series, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. They pretty much all follow the same story line. 

Have you ever wondered why? 

Every story, great and small, shares the same essential structure because every story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being—what pioneer psychologist Carl Jung tried to explain as archetype, or what his more recent popularizer Joseph Campbell called myth. 

All of these stories borrow from the Story. From Reality. We hear echoes of it through our lives. Some secret written on our hearts. A great battle to fight, and someone to fight for us. An adventure, something that requires everything we have, something to be shared with those we love and need. 

There is a Story that we just can’t seem to escape. There is a Story written on the human heart. 

(Epic, 12–13)

We live now in a culture of expertise, so completely second-nature to us that we don’t give it a second thought. Cutting-edge advances in science and technology – ever sharpening, ever thrusting forward – are now available to anyone with an internet connection. If our doctor gives us grave news, we naturally get a second and third opinion from specialists. Businesses regularly hire consultants – experts – to help them get the edge over their competitors, and churches have jumped on the bandwagon as well. It’s become one of our shared assumptions, this reach to “find the expert,” and I wonder if its part of the reason we do not understand nor recognize a true Sage. In business circles experts are sometimes even called sages.

They are worlds apart.

A Sage differs from an expert the way a Lover differs from an engineer. To begin with, expertise quite often has nothing to do with walking with God, may in fact lead us further from him. “The reason your church is not growing is because you’re not marketing yourselves properly to your intended customers.” On a human level, that might be true, might produce some results. But wouldn’t it be better to inquire of God why the church is not growing? 

Now of course, there is nothing wrong with expertise – per se. I’d be the first one to find the best heart surgeon in the country should my son need heart surgery. And yet, why is it that we seem to have so few Sages in our midst? Is it that they don’t exist, or might it be that our near-worship of expertise has pushed the Sage to the sidelines? Given mankind’s inexplicable reluctance to rely on God, and nearly limitless ability to rely on anything else, can you see how the culture of expertise actually plays right into our godlessness, despite all our protestations to the contrary?

The Sage communes with God – an existence entirely different and utterly superior to the life of the expert. Whatever counsel he offers, he draws you to God, not to self-reliance. O yes, the Sage has wisdom, gleaned from years of experience, and that wisdom is one of his great offerings. But he has learned not to lean upon his wisdom, knowing that often God is asking things of us that seem counter-intuitive, and thus his wisdom (and expertise) are fully submitted to his God. 

The experts impress. The Sage draws us to God. He offers a gift of presence, the richness of a soul that has lived long with God. 

(The Way of The Wild Heart , 266, 267)