Embrace Me

In our church book club, we just finished the book "Embrace Me". Embrace Me is a wonderful book written by Lisa Samson.

Most of the other reviews I have read about the book do not do it justice. I am not sure I can either. It is hard to review this book because what is most compelling are the plot twists that bring everything together that at one point seems to be disjointed.

I like the book for a number of reasons. First of all, there is a sense of transition of theological temprament in the novel. The novel starts with a pastor of a megachurch that is in personal theological crisis. This pastor is contrasted with the a leader of a Christian communal effort with the poor of the same community. Through contrasting these two churches, it also speaks a lot to contrasting models of church in our own culture. I tend to be more comfortable with a church model with that is not modeled after big business and corperate america. The author subtly shares these sympathies with me.

The novel is a tour de force on the need for and difficulties of forgiveness. The novel illustrates the challenge of asking for forgiveness by an offender and giving forgiveness by an offendee. It is honest and realistic. There were a number of people with significant physical and emotional challenges in the book. Those who were struggling with unforgiveness, interestingly, were also self-abusive. I think this is intentional, illustrating the harm that grudge-holding and not forgiving others plays in our lives.

The characters in the story are well-developed. Valentine is a hard-edged woman who slowly exposes her soft-side to their readers. Augustine is a mysterious man who slowly reveals his deeper self to us. Drew is a jerk, who slowly earns our sympathy and support. And Leela is a beautiful character who we want to embrace, even though she lacks hands and arms.

I don't think this book is as powerful as The Shack, which I believe will have historic and long lasting appeal. I do believe that Embrace Me is a strong work of fiction, and would easily sell outside of the typical Christian market. I recommend it for a fun and thought-provoking read.

(purchase it through the Amazon search thing on the sidebar, and I get a kick back.)

Keithy and Shannyn

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Even when I agree with Keith, I am not a big fan of his show or his way of reporting. But, I was excited to see someone I went to high school with as a columnist and pundit on the Countdown. But then again...doesn't this seem to happen quite a bit with Homer and the creation of minor celebrities?

Jenny frolicking in the snow

 

Jake running in the yard

Jake Marching the Perimeter

 

Jake in the Snow

 

Jake Strining His Angry Pose

 

Jake Yawning

 

Across the Driveway

 

The thing on the right is a bench.

Big Snowstorm

 

This is the tree in the front yard

Eugene Street

 

A picture of the Bravada.

Snowstorm 2

 

Looking at the heating/cooling elements at the church from our yard

Snowstorm

 

This is in front of our house this morning.

Our Budget and Our Failed Obligations

Since the election, one of the things I have particularly tried to do is move away from the politically-driven kinds of posts that seeped into my writing during the election season. Even when I have shared some politically related material since November, very little of it has been editorial in nature. However, this post is both political and editorial implications. An issue has come to my attention in a very personal way that convinces me that I can no longer be silent.

No matter what your beliefs about war and peace, or whether or not you support the current millitary incursions in Iraq and Afganistan,I believe that we all should believe in appropriate support and care for those that are serving in the millitary. And right now, the Pentegon and our Federal government is not doing a good job in taking care of our veterans returning from conflict.

From 2003-2008, I lived in Colorado Springs, CO. With a number of military outposts in the area, I was able to observe and discuss several of these issues regarding the well-being of soldiers from a noticable but detached distance. That changed when the husband of one of my wife's good friends, who is stationed at Fort Carson, returned to Colorado Springs after being hit by an IED as he was slipping back down into his tank.

Soldier Dan lost part of his hand. His hand was above his body as he was entering the tank. At that point, an IED exploded. He lost the side or his hand, and most of his fingers at the top of the first knuckle as he was climbing into the tank. When we first heard this from his wife, we were somewhat thankful. It seemed he had avoided death by mere seconds. In fact he had narrowly escaped death.

What we learned from his wife, who was our wedding's matron of honor, is that he also returned home from Iraq with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). To give the military the benefit of the doubt, we know very little about TBIs at this time. Most wars before this one lacked the technology we have now, and so many more soldiers were being killed. Today, due in part to improved body armour, our soldiers are returning home with TBIs in greater numbers than we ever anticipated.

Soldier Dan's TBI symptoms have clear physiologial effects. His prefrontal cortex has atrophied. This has severely affected his ability to function normally. In many ways, it creates symptoms similar to early onset Alzheimer's disease. Lack of impulse control. Inappropriate social skills and control that come across as very adolescent. Loss of short term memory. A "blanking out" in such a way that the person with TBI just goes into a transe-like state for long periods of time. And then moments of clarity and awareness of what was missed that grieve the TBI patient about what they are doing, and what they are becoming due to their injury.

You would think our military would being doing everything they could to support these soldiers,and to help them get well, wouldn't you? The truth is the Pentagon is not doing nearly enough. First of all, they are only providing limited counseling for these men with brain injury and their families that they return to. Soldier Dan has a six session counseling maximum to adapt to both his traumatic brain injury and the PTSD that he suffers from, and one of those sessions is used just to fill out paperwork. His spouse also is allowed counseling, but they are not allowed any family counseling as part of their care.

A TBI needs rest in order for the soldier not to have permanent brain damage. Yet the military leaders on Fort Carson have soldiers with TBIs working 24 hour shifts.

Despite the loss of part of a limb, and the brain injury, Soldier Dan is already planning on being redeployed next March. His commitment will end later that year, while he is serving in Afganistan. This means right now he and his family are faced with a difficult decision. If Dan reinlists, it means he will be in the military at least another 2 and possible 3 years, and facing another tour. It also means being in combat while disabled. If he does not reinlist, they send him out with another unit 3 months after returning from Iraq with the hand injury and the TBI. If he does not reinlist, he has to serve with new people, and with a mental and physical disability that are not completely healed. And, it also means that he increases the possibilty that he will never heal from his brain injury.

Why doesn't the government offer discharges to people who are permanently disabled? Why doesn't the military care enough about its soldiers to make a stronger effort to help them heal from their TBIs? Why does every military branch of military play this stoploss games with people who have served 3 and 4 tours in the Middle East? Doesn't the military offer anyone disability anymore? How do they expect recruitment to be sucessful if they do not treat current soldiers and respect?

All of this poor care for our veterans makes me very angry. We need to do better.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation--Part 1

Newsletter article for 3/26

The Most Ignored Commandment

After my first year in seminary, I accepted a call to be a youth and children's minister to a medium –sized Baptist church in Powers Lake, ND. Powers Lake was a town of 400 people. The whole town was invested in the wheat industry, and sold their wheat to some company that made macaroni noodles. The chair of the deacon board came to me after I was cleaning up after one of the children's programs. "Clint, are you taking a day or two off a week".

"No," I responded "too much work to do."

"You need to take care of yourself. You need to take a day off. It is one of the Ten Commandments you know. You might to drive to Minot or something and just get away. Don't worry about doing that. Things won't fall apart while you are gone."

It is sad but true. As churches and as believers in Jesus we tend to pick and choose our favorite portions of Scripture. Within that, we tend to pick and choose the sins we tolerate in our lives, and what sins we judge most harshly in our life and in the lives of others. We tend to worry about whether people are enmeshed in sexual sin, whether they have addictions to drugs or alcohol, whether they are honest and generous with their money, but we say very little about Sabbath as churches. We should say more about taking at least one day of rest a week. It is one of the Ten Commandments you know.

We should not be legalistic about Sabbath-taking. Jesus confronted the Pharisees about their legalism with the Sabbath. However, Jesus did not do away with the importance of taking a day off. We may not be able to make Sunday our day off in some of our jobs, but we need to have a day of rest. It is the way God made us.

In one account of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), the Bible says that we should take a day off because God took a day off on the seventh day after creating the world in six days. We are created in God's image. We are created in such a way that our minds, souls, bodies, and families need us to take one day off a week. We need that day to pray and worship, and to spend time with those we love.

In the other account of the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5), God tells us to remember the Sabbath because of the need to remember the Israelite slavery in Europe. When the Israelites were slaves, they were not allowed a day off. They were only valued for what they could make and produce. And they slaved away under the hot sun until the day they died or escaped. In our time, this reasoning reminds us that we are more than what we do and produce as well. We are valued by God for who we are, not what we accomplish. We are human beings, not human doings. Our value does not come from how much money we make, or anything we can put on a resume or brag about to a neighbor. We are valuable because we are God's children. When we are gone, our contributions that will be most important will be how we cared for our relationships to God, our families, our friends and our neighbors. It takes a day off a week to remember that, and to renew ourselves and refocus.

I also believe God also commands us to take a day off to teach us humility. We need to remember that the whole world is not in our hands, but it is in His. We cannot do everything, but God can do anything. We need to take time to let go, and realize that we cannot accomplish all we would like to, and we cannot be everything to everybody. When we put our whole lives—including having the faith to put our work lives—in God's hands, we will find that he is faithful beyond our wildest imagination to take care of us. But, we must have faith enough to take that day of rest and let Him do his work.

Sermon on 3-22--Introduction On Forgiveness

One thing I love about the Bible is that the people that show up in the Bible have the same kinds of questions and struggles to trust and follow Jesus as people like you and I do. Perhaps no character is quite as easy to identify with in the gospels as the person of Jesus’ disciple Simon Peter. Peter often speaks what might be on our mind if we were walking and talking with Jesus while we were on earth. He speaks what we might think, but might not have the courage to voice.

Perhaps, then, it comes as no surprise that Peter asks the question he did. After Jesus gives them a biblical foundation for reconciling with someone who has done something sinful and offensive in one’s church, Peter speaks up. He asks, “How often should we forgive someone? Seven times?”.

Then Jesus answers that we should have to forgive someone seventy seven times. After this Jesus tells a parable to illustrate his point.

He asks us to imagine that there is this king. And financial times were getting a little tight, so he decides to call in some of the debts of people who owed him money. And he found this man who had defaulted on his debts big time. How the collection agencies had not gotten after him we will never know, but they had not. The man owed 10,000 talents. Now a talent is 15 years worth of wages. Which to my calculations, based on average family income in Fowler, ranges somewhere between 4 and 4 and ½ billion dollars.

Needless to say, this servant did not have the money that he owed the king. He was a citizen, a businessman, but not wealthy. He did not have that kind of money. So the day came when the servant’s day of reckoning had come and he stood before the king. He had scraped together a few thousand bucks maybe, but not much more. And the king said that he was going to need to sell the man, his wife, and his children into slavery to begin to somehow reconcile the debt. The servant fell to his knees, begging and pleading to have a chance to find the way to earn this man’s money back. He fell on the floor, he cried, and he flailed around. He begged and pleaded for a chance to make this right.

Somewhere, deep down, this king had a heart. And he forgave this miserable servant. He looked at him and pitied him. Hear that again—he saw the position he was in as simply pitiful, and in a move of extraordinary mercy, the king forgave his debt.


Then a few days later, this servant went down the road, and ran into someone who owed him money, who was also a servant of the king. How much money did this poor guy owe him? Somewhere around 6,500 dollars, if you count a day’s wages by what a substitute teacher makes in Fowler. Well the fellow servant did not have the money to pay back the servant who had just had a debt of billions cancelled. And when our forgiven servant found this out, he assaulted him. He tackled him, and grabbed him around the throat, and began to almost kill this fellow servant for not making good on his debt.

Well, the other servants noticed what had happened and they ran to the king and told him the story. And Jesus says the story ends with the man having his debt reinstated and him being tortured and thrown into prison for what was most likely a life sentence.

In Jesus’ story the king is God. To whom we have a debt we can never repay.
This selfish and pitiful servant is our own pitiful, pathetic selves.
And, the fellow servant that we almost kill is that person that we judge. That person we refuse to forgive, even though we know how much we have been forgiven.
This story that shows up later in Matthew is a story makes the same call on our lives as we put on ourselves when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. “Father God, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”.

Both the parable and the prayer challenge us with the knowledge of two things. First, how desperately we need to be forgiven, and how pitiable and needy we are in God’s eyes. Second, how challenging and difficult it is to be a forgiving person even after we have received God’s forgiveness.

So let us dig a little deeper into understanding what this prayer says. Let’s begin with discussing what forgiveness is, and what forgiveness is not. Then, let us talk about our need for God’s forgiveness. Then, once we have gotten this far, let us talk about what it means for us to forgive others, and why is it is so important.

Sermon Part 2--What forgivness is and is not

Forgiveness is acknowledging a sin as wrong, not excusing a sin as if it never happened.

Have any of you ever had this conversation? Someone does something that they feel bad about to you. They say, “I’m sorry”

You say, “It’s ok”

Anyone ever had that kind of conversation? I bet many of you have. And I bet most of the time you were telling the truth. But this saying, “It’s ok” is saying that what happened did not hurt, and did not matter. Saying, “Oh, it is no big deal” is not forgiving. It is excusing.

When we do something wrong, it is a big deal. It is sin. We don’t come before God and say, “Forgive us our sins”, and hear him say, “No problem”. No. Instead we hear Jesus crying out from the cross, “Father forgive them, they know not what they are doing.” Sin is serious business. It is serious enough that God wants us to acknowledge our sins. Our sins are serious enough that God wants us to confess our sins to Him.

And when we come before the Lord and confess our sins, we often at the same time ask him to excuse us instead of forgiveness. We go into all the reasons why we really are not to blame for what we have done wrong. We plead our extenuating circumstances on why we have done the thing that we have done. Our bad temper. The evil things that the person had done to us that justified what we have done to them. Our low self-esteem. Our loneliness and unhappiness. Our poor health, or the lack of rest we got the night before. We poor on these excuses when we say to the Lord, forgive us our sins often times. Asking God to forgive us and accept our excuses at the same time.

But Jesus commands us to come to God and say, “Father forgive me. God I was wrong. I did what was evil, and I need your forgiveness”.

Often when we are asked to forgive someone else, it goes the other way. We think we are supposed to forgive and forget. To wipe the slate clean, and to pretend like nothing ever happened and what happened did not matter. When we forgive another person, it does not mean that we pretend like nothing ever happened. When we forgive someone, it means that we acknowledge what they have done. We acknowledge what they have done that is wrong as wrong. And then we choose not to hold it over their heads. We choose not to get revenge. We choose to not try and set things right. We choose not to put them in their place. We choose to kill that resentment against them. And we choose to release them from that “debt”. And we leave them to God to judge.

Also, because forgiving is not excusing, forgiving does not mean we live without boundaries. You may be a kleptomaniac. And you may have stolen money from me in the past. My forgiving you does not mean I should feel obligated to leave my wallet on the table and walk out of the room. Forgiving does mean that I don’t hold your sins against you, and that I stop keeping a running list about why you are a bad person. It means that I start hoping for the best for you, instead of having secret fantantasies that some evil befall you.

This brings me to my second point in understanding forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a verb, not a noun. We think that forgiveness is a feeling we posses. A state of being. It is not. Forgiving is something that we do. We learn to forgive by acting as if we have forgiven someone. We forgive by choosing to forgive someone.
Forgiveness is a continuing action. Most of the time it is something that we choose to do, but something that we must recommit to over and over again.

Let me, in vague terms in order to protect the privacy of those involved, share how I have done poorly with this forgiveness thing and how I have done it well. Because I do often fail in doing forgiveness well, but when I have chosen to follow Christ’s way, he has blessed me.

There is one person in my life that I find hard to forgive. This person has hurt me. And they have not hurt me once, they have hurt me over and over again. They call me names. The spread lies about me. They have a certain amount of power over people, and they use this power recklessly. They would pretend to be my friend, and then betray me. Not just once, but over and over. And when I think about this person, it is hard for me not to wish evil for them. To wish this person would lose their job, be discovered for the fraud that they are, and to be punished for being so self-absorbed. I fantasize about telling this person exactly what I think about them. I fantasize about punching this person in the face. I want this person to feel like a failure about everything they have done in their entire life.

Then there is this person that I forgive well. When I have an opportunity to do good by this person I do, because they are my sibling in Christ. I pray for this person. I drive along in my car, and say that maybe my wife and I should try and spend some time with them, because I think that they feel lonely. When they ask me for support, I offer it to them. Even at significant personal sacrifice. And I do this despite the fact that they have done some things that have hurt me very deeply, and I do this despite the fact that I know I cannot trust them. They have even taken things I have shared with them in confidence, and shared them with others in a public setting. And they have not always been kind to my wife.

Strange thing about this. The person I described that I forgive well, and the person that I have a hard time forgiving at all. They are the same person.
This is because forgiveness is a process. It is a choice. It is something that we choose to do. It is something that we act upon. It does not mean that our feelings of anger and resentment go away. It means that we have chosen to release that person from the debt that they owe to us due to their behavior.

And forgiveness is something we cannot do without God’s grace. Which brings us to our discussion of God’s forgiveness.

Sermon Part 3--God's Forgiveness

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we use the word “debts”. This word debts is the most literal translation of the word used in the passage.

You see in the time of Jesus, rabbis spoke of sins in terms of debts. And each sin was a debt that put a wall up between you and God. And each good thing, that built a bridge between yourself and God. And the hope was that you could do enough good things to build that bridge over the wall of your sins and to God by the good things that you have done.

When Jesus asks us pray “Forgive us our sins” he asks us to pray that God will knock down that wall that stands between us and him. When Jesus tells us we are to pray asking God to forgive us our debts he is saying something very powerful. He is telling us to ask God to come down and break down that barrier between us and him that keeps us at a distance, so that we can be in right relationship.

When we pray, forgive us our sins we are saying that we are powerless to manage our lives, to manage our relationships, to do anything that is good enough to bridge the gulf that we have created between us and God. When we pray forgive us our sins we are asking God to step right into our lives and knock down the walls and strongholds that keep us from God. And to make us new. We are admitting we are powerless to handle our sin on our own.

We are like that pitiful, pathetic man who comes before God with 4 billion dollars in debt and no way to pay what we owe. We need intervention. We need help. We need to pray, “Forgive us our sins”. Not just some of us, all of us. Me. You. You. And you too.

There is no excusing our sin. There is no making it cute. There is no saying it was just “natural”. No. We cannot go there. We must cry out for help. We must cry out for mercy. Or we will be trapped in a prison of our own creation.
And when we pray, “Forgive us our sins” we find that Jesus has died to break down the walls of hostility between us and God. When we seek the bridge that connect us with God’s love, we find the bridge is actually a cross. The cross of Christ.
We pray forgive us our sins because that is what Christ came for, to set us free. To pay our debts. We know that we are pitiful, pathetic, and lost without Jesus. His kingdom is about forgiveness.

Which brings us to forgiving others.

Sermon Part 4--Forgiving Others

For many of us, the hardest part of the Lord’s Prayer is the little clause, “as we forgive our debtors”. We wonder why God had to put that in this model prayer that he gave us.
It is hard enough to admit we are powerless, pitiful, and hopeless. That takes humility. But now God asks me to forgive as part of my forgiveness. Why?
You know, I do know people who refuse to pray this prayer. They change the words, they tweak them just a little bit, so that they don’t have to say it the way it is written, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”
There is a lot I do not understand about what God is doing here, but I do know a little bit.
One thing I do know is that God’s forgiving comes first in the prayer. Jesus could have had us pray, “Lord, I am forgiving others, so please forgive my sins” He didn’t.
We are not capable on our own of forgiving and experiencing forgiveness without the grace of God. It is God that must break down our walls to offer us forgiveness so that we may be forgive. God’s forgiveness comes first, and then our ability to forgive grows from that.
Yet there is a sense somehow that if we really have experienced God’s forgiveness and new life, that our willingness to forgive will come out of that. Because we will understand God’s goal in the word. To set us right. To set relationships right. To bring about reconciliation. Wholeness. Not just new life for us individually. But a new community, a new eternal community. Something that we are supposed to pray for and participate in. And if God’s primary reason for coming to earth was to forgive us, then it makes sense if we are truly committed to following him, we will commit to being forgiving people as well.
That may take time. That may take work. It may be a process. But it is a commitment you make when you receive God’s forgiveness. That you will not just try and posses the forgiveness you have received, but that it will spur you to forgiving acts all around you. And that you will at least make an effort to be forgiving, however imperfectly you may do it. Why? Because that in addition to that wall you have erected between you and God, you have placed these walls between you and others. And God’s must have full reign to knock down those walls as well.


I say all this, but this seriousness of God’s call to forgive..it haunts me. Because there are a lot of times I don’t want to forgive. I don’t want to love. I don’t want to be reconciled. I just want to be right. It haunts me as well, because I know how imperfectly I forgive. And sometimes I doubt whether my forgiving will just leave me more exposed and vulnerable to being hurt again. And I don’t want to do it.
And I know deep down in my soul I must go to the cross. I must see Jesus hanging there, blood dripping from his brow. I must hear him suffocating and barely able to gasp another breathe. I must see his bruises. I must hear his groaning. I must stand there, and I must not run from it. And I must know that it is my sins that put him there. It is the evil I have done that placed the perfect son of God on that cross. Suffering and dying. And at that moment I must cry out for forgiveness, because I put him there. Jesus is paying my debt.
And while I am there, while he cries out “Father forgive them, they know not what they do” I must bring all of my sins to his cross. Including my selfish grudges and my lack of forgiveness. And with his blood dripping down I must lay that unforgiveness at his feet. Because if I don’t, I don’t recognize what he has done for me. If I don’t forgive, I make a mockery of his suffering. If I don’t forgive, I am saying I am more righteous and more holy than Jesus, who is begging God to forgive them at this very moment. Forgive us Jesus says. Forgive them Jesus says. And as I hear Jesus say that, I realize that it is not just about me. Though it was my sins that put him there, it is the whole world he has come to forgive. And my unwillingness to forgive is standing in the way Jesus’ having that other person experience Christ’s forgiveness through me. So I must bring that person to this cross too, even if only through my imperfect attempt to offer forgiveness like my Master.
Help us Lord Jesus. Amen.