I CALLED IT PRAYER

"Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way." Col. 1:9-10

Do you ever look at the Apostle Paul's prayers and think, "This guy is praying on a whole different level than I am"?

Can you imagine being in a prayer meeting with this guy?

Me, bowing my head: "Lord, please help me get the raise I am going to ask for." 

Paul: "Lord, enlighten the eyes of my co-workers in order that they may know the hope to which You have called them, the riches of Your glorious inheritance in the saints, and Your incomparably great power for us who believe."

Me, again: "That too, Lord."

In the Colossians passage above, Paul asks that God would fill the believers with knowledge of His will. And he says this will come only "through all spiritual wisdom and understanding". 

Seems like Paul is thinking it takes supernatural intervention for us to understand God's will!

See Romans 8:26-27, too - "We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will."

We don't know what to pray for? 

What if Paul is right?

I feel like I have spent most of my adult Christian life:

1) Assuming I know what God's will is (whatever makes life easier for me, usually!) 

and 

2) Suggesting to Him what He needs to do to make it happen. 

And I have called it "prayer". 

TO WILL WHAT GOD WILLS

This quote is from Oden's book John Wesley's Teachings, Volume 4:Ethics and Society, page 29.

"To will what God wills" - what a profound phrase! 

How many of us, if asked to measure our current Christian lives by that standard, could unequivocally confirm that a desire "to will what God wills" composes the very center of our lives?

I don't know about you, but my prayers often feel like an attempt to bend God's will to my own. That seems like it might be a pretty good indication that I have got things backwards!

RULE-KEEPING AND TOILET PAPER

I knew a man who grew up Jewish and converted to Christianity as an adult. His parents remained devout Jews.

He once shared the following illustration of their piety relating to observing the Sabbath. 

We know that the Jewish law forbids work on the Sabbath. The New Testament Pharisees disapproved even of Jesus healing a man's crippled hand on the Sabbath.

When this man's parents came for extended visits, once a week he would find little squares of toilet paper already torn from the roll, folded, and placed on the edge of the bathroom counter ... in preparation for the Sabbath.

This couple feared that exerting the effort to tear toilet paper would cross the "Sabbath rest' line and bring God's righteous anger.

It's an extreme example but it demonstrates several issues involved in any person's dependence on good works and rule-keeping to earn and keep God's approval:

•  Fear. You don't want to make God angry.
•  Uncertainty. You never know when you are good enough or where you might be in the wrong.
•  Self-Righteousness. It gives you bragging rights on the lengths of your devotion. 

But the biggest issue here is this: What kind of God have you devoted your life to if you fear He might send you to hell for tearing toilet paper on the Sabbath?

REWRITE

One way to know if something is an incredibly poor attempt at persuasion is if it can be turned easily on its head in favor of the other side. That is true with the recently popular pro-choice meme which I brought up last night, consisting of a quote from Pastor Dave Barnhart (credited as a "traditional Christian pastor"):

Now consider this rewrite:

The unborn are a convenient group of people to ignore. You don't see their faces. You don't hear their voices. But unlike the incarcerated, the addicted, and, indeed, every other breathing human, they are completely innocent. 

Still, you can dismiss the unborn because they are invisible to you. And they are extremely inconvenient to keep around. Through no fault of their own, they DO make demands on the people around them.

Nevertheless, they are the perfect people to love if you want to follow Jesus when he says, "Whatever you did unto the least of these, you did it unto me."

The unborn are, of course, mentioned in the Bible. John the Baptist "leapt" in his mother's womb when she greeted Mary, pregnant with Jesus. Long before that encounter, King David praised God, saying, "You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Psalm 139:13-16)

Someone must speak up for the unborn, woven together by God and precious to Him, since the unborn are the ones who get "thrown under the bus" (here, a fittingly violent image) for the sake of a mother who chooses not to bear the consequences of a pregnancy.

May God, and we, show her mercy and provide for her needs.  

For the record, I am also a "traditional Christian pastor" type. 

Maybe more so than Pastor Barnhart. 

UNPERSUASIVE

The abortion debate is not just a disagreement. It is a "two movies on one screen" scenario.

People are seeing two very different realities. And each reality has its own echo chamber.

inside that echo chamber, it is incredibly difficult to tell what is a persuasive argument and what it not. As long as it aligns with "our side", confirmation bias will lead us to believe the quote or meme we are sharing on Instagram is airtight and incontrovertible . 

It seldom is. The other side is more likely to see the flaws in our arguments. 

I am not looking to get political here. I am wanting only to give an example of an opinion that seems profound within one side of the abortion reality and incredibly weak and ridiculous from the other.

I've seen the following opinion reposted frequently since last week when the news was first leaked about a possible looming Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade. This post from the pro-choice side flops hard outside the pro-choice echo chamber:

I do not intend to denigrate Barnhart as a pastor. I am a supporter of pastors in general. It is a tough job and pastors take a lot of arrows already. On the other hand, pastors have a high calling and they are not untouchable. They should expect to be held accountable for their words. 

The quote attributed to Barnhart above was from a post he made on Facebook back in 2018.

And it reads like a Facebook post. There is nothing profound or eloquent here. 

And it makes several mistakes if it is trying to be persuasive.

First, Barnhart assumes the worst motives of his fellow Christians: "The unborn" are a convenient group to advocate for. If you are trying to convince someone, it is best not to insult them. 

Then he echoes a familiar trope which I have never seen offered with even a crumb of supporting evidence: And when they are born, you can forget about them because they cease to be unborn. If you are trying to convince someone, show your evidence. 

The unborn are "the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe." This comes across as more insults; it is cynical, judgmental, and arrogant. 

If a person hopes to persuade another, he or she should at least be capable of understanding and vocalizing the viewpoint on either side of this issue. No attempt is made here. 

Finally, if you hope to convince someone, stick to logic. Barnhart's conclusion is a non-sequitur. Why would a Christian need to choose between serving the poor, sick people, prisoners, widows and orphans on one side ... and the unborn on the other?

There is no reason to think of this in terms of either/or. 

It is clearly both/and. 

And the vast majority of pro-life people and ministries I personally know are adept and serious about serving both the born and the unborn. 

So often an argument meant as a "Ha! I got you there, don't I?!" comes across as a "It's clear I haven't thought past my own assumptions."

TWO MOVIES ON ONE SCREEN

My four kids are Marvel movie fans. My wife has seen some of the movies but I don't remember her ever being enthusiastic about any specific Avenger outing. 

Caleb, Hannah, and Sarah were wanting to see the new Dr. Strange movie before the weekend was over. I was game. And maybe because it was Mother's Day, Melissa came to the theater with us.

Four of us enjoyed the movie while one of us thought it was one of the worst movies ever made.

Melissa was aghast. She spent the two hours alternating between covering her eyes and looking disgusted. It turns out that the buzz around the movie - that its PG-13 rating was just inches away from an R - was true. 

I, on the other hand, kind of enjoyed it. (It may have helped that I went in with low expectations.) 

Author Scott Adams writes about a phenomenon he calls "two movies on one screen" - the way in which two intelligent adults can look at the exact same situation - be it personal or political or whatever - and react as if they are seeing two completely different scenarios. 

What strikes one as innocent fun, the other finds deeply offensive.

What amuses one, another finds horrifying.

What impresses one as heroic, another mocks as ridiculous.

And so it goes. 

Through all of life.

As Adams puts it, "Living in completely different realities is our normal way of living." (Win Bigly, 67)

If you assume that you and the person next to you are seeing the same reality, you are oblivious. 

I don't know why it took me 50 years to recognize the prevalence of this dynamic in real life, when it obviously happens at the theaters all the time. 

 

MOTHER'S DAY

Since Samuel is leaving for Atlanta tomorrow morning, our family celebrated an early Mother's Day on Saturday. Melissa said the only thing she wanted for her special day was time together as a family.

We let everyone sleep in and then we were off to Madison, Indiana - about an hour south and one of Melissa's favorite places to shop and sightsee.

Over the last 21 years, Melissa has confirmed that she was created to be a mom. She is a natural. 

Need proof? Look at these 4 young adults she has raised:

(Hardly a dud among them.)

Over the years, Melissa has exceled at all the mom roles:

• Doctor Mom
• Teacher Mom
• Taxi Mom
• Paperwork Mom
• Janitor Mom
• Mama Bear

And, like every good mom, she has done her share of worrying and encouraging and wiping away tears. She has taught our kids about their heavenly Father and has modeled the love, servanthood, and self-sacrifice of his Son. 

Happy Mother's Day, Melissa, and to all the moms out there.

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”      Proverbs 31:28-9