What Do The Ashes Mean on Ash Wednesday?

When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
--Jonah 3:6 NRSV

I think I’m too suburban to understand Ash Wednesday.

I grew up in the suburbs, while my parents grew up on farms. Their idea of moving up in the world meant being among the first in their families to get a college degree, to take white collar jobs and to live in a place where someone else grew and produced the food they ate each day. I never had my own livestock, grew my own crops or picked my own fruit (except for annual trips to an apple orchard). My food came from weekly trips to the supermarket, and the food there (if it really was food and not made in a factory) came from some mysterious place of which I had no firsthand knowledge. So, the seasons of planting, growing, harvesting and preparing to do it all over again are lost on me.

If I did have experience with agriculture, Ash Wednesday might make sense to me. Ashes would not just be something leftover in the charcoal grill or the fireplace, but rather the result of burning away the chaff left over from harvest time to provide nutrients to the soil for future growth. The biblical idea of repenting in dust and ashes is not an end in itself but a means of burning away what is no longer life-giving and preparing our souls for future growth.

Minister and author James Wind writes:

Lent begins with cold dark ashes and ends in Easter with the spark of bright new fire. For people with no awareness of the ancient practice of burning the fields so that new crops have room to grow, the season has an unnatural feel to it, quite the opposite of its original meaning. For us, ashes seldom carry any other significance than death and tragedy. Small wonder that most in our society turn the other way when clergy get ready to mark foreheads with an ashen cross and say, ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’

For people like me, a generation removed from the farm, the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” have a finality to them instead of a promise of new life. The reminder of mortality seems once and for all rather than an annual event; linear rather than cyclical. I fear death as a negation of life instead of seeing death as a necessary part of living. So, I cling to stuff, behaviors, patterns of thought and lingering resentments which are like chaff, leftover stalks and husks, doing no good laying on top of the soil, preventing new growth. They need to be burned away, so the ash can filter into the soil, so the dust can regain nutrients for new healthier things to grow.

The ashes of Ash Wednesday are not a condemnation or a mark of tragedy but an invitation to new life. When our spiritual ancestors in the Bible mourned and repented in ashes and dust, there was no expectation they would remain in that spot forever. Instead that time of ash and dust was a necessary precondition to reconciliation with God, with their community and with themselves. Just as they burned away the chaff of last year’s crops to grow new ones, so also times of repentance led to new life.

In the comedy we know as the Book of Jonah, the reluctant prophet gives the bad news of divine judgment to the city of Nineveh. Upon hearing the news, the whole city repents and even the king joins in with dust and ashes. Seeing their actions, God forgives them and withholds judgment. Jonah is disgusted at God’s mercy, because he was ready for the fire and brimstone. Jonah missed God’s invitation to new life. In the end, God uses the brief life and sudden death of a plant to teach Jonah the lesson that God wishes new life for all people.

Perhaps, I’m like Jonah (maybe you are too?) seeing ashes as a sign of God’s disfavor rather than God’s invitation to new life. The ashes of Ash Wednesday aren’t an ending brought about by our mistakes but a beginning brought about by God’s grace. Death is a friend we welcome, because it marks the end of things we no longer need, things which hold us back from really living. This truth reoccurs all through our lives until we finally let go of all we no longer need for our eternal new life to be complete.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

The Secret Life of Parents

 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. --Proverbs 22:6 KJV

I hate this Bible verse. Allow me to explain why.

Before my wife and I adopted our sons, I was so judgmental when it came to other people’s children. I believed any misbehavior on the child’s part was the result of their parents’ inadequacies or poor parenting choices. I would see the child melting down in the middle of Target and shake my head at the bad parent who had somehow let things get to this disastrous point. “When I’m a father,” I arrogantly thought, “that won’t be me.”

Of course, when I became a parent, I cursed my former hubris. Every time it was my kid throwing the mother of all temper tantrums in a public place, I could hear my former self judging my current self. My wife and I are good parents, but we’ve learned the hard way that the temperament of a child may have very little to do with their parents’ skills or lack thereof. Now, when I spot a self-righteous parent with angelic well-behaved children in tow looking down their nose at the parents of the child losing their mind in the grocery store, I think, “You don’t even know how good you have it. You think your kids’ behavior is due to your awesome parenting, but really they just got the obedient DNA. You should thank your lucky stars their genes of willful defiance stayed recessive!”

I talked recently with a friend of mine who is a single mother and one of my parenting heroes. Over the years, she has unfairly beaten herself up and blamed any and all kid issues on what she couldn’t provide as a single parent. She shared with me about another family whose kids were friends with her own that she admires. She had always wished her own family unit could be like theirs--intact with two parents, extended family nearby offering love and support, a bunch of healthy kids who succeeded without any apparent difficulties. My friend was rocked with grief when one of the teenage boys in this other family committed suicide last year. For all my friend knows, there were no missed warning signs, no history of depression, no precipitating events, just a horrible and tragic death. Even the families that seem to do everything right may know inexplicable pain beyond measure.

In my role as a minister, I have walked with families in which the parents were hardly parents at all, but somehow their children not only survived their parents’ abuse and neglect but thrived. Likewise, I have known families in which the parents did everything nearly perfect and who exhibited superhuman strength and grace only to have children lost to alcohol, drugs, mental health conditions, crime or death. Sometimes our desire to draw a causal relationship between a child’s actions and a parent simply cannot find fulfillment; there is just no line to draw between the two. It’s a strange thing to realize how much power you have to screw up your kid’s life, yet somehow at the same time so much more is beyond your control.

I haven’t ever written or spoken publicly about my own struggles as a parent. I’m leery of exploiting my kids’ stories for my job. But let’s just say I have them. I’ve had days and nights filled with tears, self-recrimination, and pain greater than I have known in any other part of my life. I’ve learned firsthand the loneliness that comes in parenting when you experience something with a child that doesn’t line up with the happy family pictures shared on Facebook and Instagram by all the other parents you know. I’ve seen the judgmental stares of teachers and school administrators who believe I wasn’t doing my parental job. I know what it is to feel like you are the only one who just doesn’t get the “simple” job of being a parent.

What I’ve learned from my experience in parent support groups I've attended and the confidential meetings I’ve had with parents as a minister, that there is so much pain out there hidden among parents. The amount of shame parents carry over things with their kids that are beyond their control is immense--I know from firsthand experience. The marketplace is filled with countless “experts” telling you what you are doing wrong as a parent, and there are so few to tell you the humbling truth that far more is outside of your control as a parent than within it.

I hate Proverbs 22:6, because I feel like it boils down one of the most complex things a person can ever do--be a parent--into a simple equation: “do A and you will get B as a result.” Oh yeah? What happens when you get C or D or Z or some variable that isn’t even in the alphabet? A kid is not a robot you program; they are mysteriously complex beings set loose in the world, and you as a parent are only one thing among who knows how many more that shapes their course in life. I’ve known too many who have been excellent parents but whose kids made choices or carried out actions that defy all known rules of logic. I believe there is a conspiracy of shame among parents today, as if we all have some kind of unspoken agreement not to acknowledge the pain in families all around us. This secret life of parents is a painful one. I so wish we could risk being vulnerable with one another to tell our secrets.

If you are one of those parents who feels satisfied in your own parenting and how your kids are turning out, trust me, it has less to do with your parenting skills than you think. If you are one of those parents who feels like you’ve done everything wrong and your kids’ problems are all due to your inadequacies, trust me, it has less to do with your parenting skills than you think. Ask around, the secret pain of parents is all around you. You can find it in support groups meeting in church basements, AA groups gathered everywhere and in the hearts of desperate parents all around you on the brink of breaking down from trying to pretend they’ve got it all together.

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

A Eulogy for Terez Paylor, NFL Sports Writer (from a fan)

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.
--Luke14:16 NRSV

Admittedly, it’s a strange thing for a fan to write a eulogy for someone he has never met in person. I never met NFL sportswriter Terez Paylor, who died yesterday at the young age of 37, but I felt as if I had. We only interacted on Twitter as he responded to my messages praising his work and on occasion when he answered a question of mine during his podcasts. That’s not enough to say you really knew someone. Yet, I gained so much from Terez’s writing, his videos and his podcasts, not merely because of his excellent coverage of the KC Chiefs (my favorite team) but because he was so fully himself as he did so. His inner light was contagious. His deep belly laugh was viral in its joy. Life felt more vibrant when I read his work, watched him speak and listened to him talk. He was a part of my life each week, as he was for so many people who loved his work.

Terez became an essential part of my life during a very difficult year for my family and me. The weekly post-Chiefs game podcasts he hosted with the other KC Star sports reporters were a dose of laughter and good vibes my soul sorely needed. As a consumer of sports and sports writing, I can testify it is exceedingly rare in that empty bravado-filled landscape to hear a group of men laughing as friends—a laughter that wasn’t mean-spirited or at someone else’s expense but the kind that comes when people are sharing a passion together. During a lonely and painful year for me, Terez’s laughter was light cast into my shadows. When I shared this in a tweet to Terez and the other writers, their kind responses were a form of grace that was healing.

So, I feel compelled to write a eulogy. It’s what I do as a minister, both for people I know well and for strangers I’ve never met whom I come to know through the stories loved ones tell about them. As I have read the pieces Terez’s fellow journalists have written over the last 24 hours—writers doing what they do when mourning someone special—I have been deeply moved to discover my fan’s experience of Terez is one miniscule point of light within a vast tapestry of brighter lights, similar but stronger experiences of those who knew Terez as friends and colleagues. The genuine humanity we fans experienced from Terez Paylor was not an act, as is  the case with so many in the public eye, but a real representation of who he was in person. That consistency of character is, from what I gather, rare in the competitive field of journalism, just as it is rare in all other areas of life. I feel like that kind of unique generosity of spirit is worth celebrating and learning from, not only for my life but for all of our too-short lives.

Numerous articles and obituaries list Terez’s rise from his Detroit childhood to Howard University to cub reporter covering high school sports at the KC Star to Chiefs beat reporter to national NFL writer for Yahoo Sports. Certainly, his career and rabid love of the game of football is laudatory, but what moves me are the universal declarations of Terez Paylor’s kindness, generosity, vulnerability, sense of humor and laughter. Yes, he was a ambitious reporter who was always stayed to the end to cover a story, ever expanding his already exhaustive knowledge of football, but he somehow did that work while at the same time being a real friend, a trusted colleague and an invested mentor. Here are some of the words his colleagues and co workers had to say about him:

“I don’t know how many people are so good at what they do, yet remain so eager to get better. I don’t know how many people can carry a confidence that could border on arrogance, and be the first to make fun of themselves. He had a confidence you could feel the first time you talked to him, and a gift to transfer that confidence to you.”
--Sam Mellinger, Sports Columnist, The Kansas City Star

“He loved what he did. You could see it in his work. In his mock draft. In his All-Juice teams. He had a wide smile and infectious laugh. When you heard it, you had to join in, even if you had absolutely no idea what had gotten him. To know Terez personally was to be surrounded by joy and laughter. It felt impossible — impossible — to be in a bad mood when you were in his presence.”
--Sam McDowell, Sports Reporter, The Kansas City Star

“Terez made everyone around him a better person and could light up a room with his tremendous sense of humor and brightest of bright smiles.”
--Herbie Teope, Chiefs Beat Writer, The Kansas City Star

“I just loved talking to him. About anything. He just put you at ease. The conversation just flowed. If you ever had a problem at work or in life, he was there to get worked up on your behalf — in classic Terez fashion. He would say something that would make you feel better. He’d make you laugh. It sounds cliche to say that everybody loved Terez, but it was just impossible not to.”
--Rustin Dodd, Sports Reporter The Athletic

“Terez made every jam-packed media room better, smarter and more absolutely joyful just by being in them.”
--Joshua Brisco, Sports Radio Personality, 810 WHB Kansas City (from Twitter)

“He always wanted to get it right. He was warm, honest, fair, respectful, and he cared a great deal about you as a person.”
--Matt Nagy, Head Coach Chicago Bears (from Twitter)

“One of the most genuine reporters I’ve ever communicated with.”
--Derrick Johnson, retired Kansas City Chief (from Twitter)

It is a rare person who makes other people better at the same time they aspire to be better. We are taught in our culture that excellence exists in scarcity. One can only rise if others fall. One can win only if others lose. Yet, Terez embodied the truth that excellence exists in abundance. The best are those who make those around them better.

“I continue to be struck not by how many people have spoken warmly about Terez Paylor but by how many have said variations of “You helped me when I needed it”. Can there be a greater honor for a person?”
--Kurtis Seaboldt, Sports Radio Personality, 810 WHB Kansas City (from Twitter)

“Terez didn’t just help me. He uplifted everyone. He didn’t have to spend as much time as he did with Brook Pryor, Lynn Worthy and me in 2018 our first year covering the Chiefs but he answered every question.”
--Nate Taylor, Chiefs Reporter, The Athletic (from Twitter)

“When I first started going out to Arrowhead to cover the Chiefs, it was honestly kind of intimidating to be in these spaces with no one around you who looked like you. Terez took the time to show me the ropes.”
--Carrington Harrison, Sports Radio Personality, 610 Sports Radio Kansas City (from Twitter)

“Fellow journalists: Let Terez's enthusiasm and eagerness to help others coming up in the biz inspire us to take joy in the mentorship and sponsorship opportunities all around us. Young journalists, especially young journalists of color, were one of Terez Paylor's passions. Let's pass it forward.”
--Jeff Rosen, Assistant Managing Editor/Sports, The Kansas City Star (from Twitter)

“I like to think he knew how very loved he was all over this land: from his hometown of Detroit to his alma mater of Howard University in Washington, D.C., and surely all across the NFL in his job with Yahoo Sports.”
--Vahe Gregorian, Sports Columnist, The Kansas City Star

As a minister, I strive to impart to people what Terez lived out—be who God created you to be. Find your passion, your calling; live it out with joy. Share what God has given you with others, trusting that however much you give away, you will only be given more in return. I don’t know Terez’ religious beliefs or if he had any at all, but from my perspective as a Christian, I believe his love of life, his generosity towards others, his lifting up others’ good work, his consistent ethics, his genuine friendship and so much more are at the heart of who God desires us all to be. This kind of genuine humanity—living out of one’s true self, the true person God created one to be, the inner light that is the spark of the Divine that dwells within us, left there when we were created in God’s image—is contagious. As so many have described, it fills the room with laughter and leaves others feeling more truly themselves once they have experienced it.

I believe that is the way people felt when they experienced Jesus when he walked the earth. It’s too bad all our paintings and pictures of Jesus have him looking so serious, so sad or so mean (not to mention so white!). It is difficult to picture Jesus with a belly laugh. So, that’s why God gives us a person like Terez Paylor, so we can see how good this life can be. The good news is that what Terez grabbed a hold of and lived out in his too-short life is available to you and to me, even if we never quite grasp life’s laughter the way he did.

I will never forget Terez’s podcast episodes where he addressed issues of systemic racism following the killing of George Floyd last year. He shared his point of view with a genuineness and generosity that invited dialogue rather than shrill denunciation. His grace in approaching such a loaded and multifaceted subject as racism in America was masterful. It offered the promise of healing—not the cheap type of healing offered without the integrity of honesty and justice, but real healing that opens up clenched fists and closed minds. Our world has too few such moments of authentic humanity.

In his moving piece about his relationship with Terez, Charles Robinson, Terez’scohost on the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast, write this about him:

“When you got close to him, you learned all the things that attracted people from afar were real. He was kind. He was caring. He had a code about what was right and wrong. He could make you belly laugh, and he was actually much more likely to give you a belly laugh, even if what you said wasn’t nearly that funny. . . Through it all, he always wanted to learn more, always strove to get better. He was unafraid to express curiosity or regret about story choices in a way that most reporters won’t. And he made the people around him want to be better, too. Especially me. . . This is how it usually went with Terez, whether you were working with him, against him or watching him from afar. If you invested the time to know him or his work, he inevitably became a beam of light and you became a blade of grass bending in his direction.”

Whether we are Terez’s fellow journalists who knew him well or just ordinary fans of his work that never knew him in person, we all can strive to be like Terez, living out of our true selves, who we were created to be, shining our beams of light into the shadows around us.

Grace and Peace,
Rev. Chase Peeples

Spiritual Lessons From the Chiefs’ Super Bowl Meltdown

for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
--Galatians 3:26 NRSV

At the end of my sermon this past Sunday, I stated something to the effect that tonight in the Super Bowl someone is going to mess up in front of millions of viewers. What will determine whether that mess up is a failure or not will be whether that player learns from it and turns it into a success.

I had no idea that my words would be more than prophetic. I had no idea that I would be talking about the entire Chiefs’ team, coaching staff and even the people the Chiefs’ pay to squirt Gatorade in players’ mouths! It was a Super Bowl meltdown of epic proportions. The team that played the best all season long played their worst in the Super Bowl. Along with millions of Chiefs fans, I was shocked, not because the Chiefs lost, but that they lost in such a spectacular fashion.

Yes, the Chiefs got blown out in the Super Bowl—by Tom Brady and Gronk to add insult to injury!—but what will determine whether it was a failure or not will depend upon what they do in the future. Will they learn from their mistakes and be better next season or will they repeat their same mistakes next year? Is this loss something they improve from or will it be the beginning of a downward slide of losing more games, blaming others, refusing to take responsibility (it was the refs’ penalty calls!), and shame.

As a minister, I’m never above using popular culture as a means to make spiritual points. I think the lens of sports is a great way to talk about the human condition. A big part of the reason our culture loves sports so much is because it touches on deeper truths about who we are and what we want to be. Is there something we can learn about what failure means from the Chiefs’ loss at the Super Bowl?

What is failure? All of us think we know what failure is and what it looks like, but failure is an intensely subjective label and condition. In a masterful Nike commercial titled “Failure,” video of Michael Jordan walking into an arena is overlaid with audio of Jordan saying the following words:

"I missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed."

Thomas Edison said, “Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” So, failure is not really a failure, unless one doesn’t use that failure to learn, to improve and to ultimately succeed. As Brene Brown notes, “Failure is an imperfect word because, if you take the time and have the patience to learn from your failures, then they aren’t failures any longer—they’re lessons.”

 

Can a Christian Be a Failure? The reason books on leadership, self-help, philosophy, business and yes, religion, have so much to say on turning failure into success, I believe, is they touch on a universal truth about human life: we succeed by failing. For whatever reason, God created us to learn our deepest and most important lessons in life through failure. We learn how to walk by a whole lot of falling down. We learn how to talk by a whole lot of mispronunciation. We learn how to do pretty much everything by doing it wrong a bunch of times before we learn how to more or less do it right. Yes, all of us have gifts, talents and abilities we are born with that affect how well we are able to do some things and not others, but all of us must learn to do most things through failure. If we understand this key concept, then failures are no longer failures but necessary steps in our education of what it means to be human.

 

The problem is that we confuse failures as behavior with failures as identity. Our society labels people as failures or successes in every arbitrary way possible. I drew heavily from social science researcher and writer Brene Brown in my sermon on Sunday. She writes a lot about the concept of shame. Her distinction between shame and guilt was a godsend for me. She says, “Guilt says, “I screwed up.” but Shame says, “I am a screw up.” The difference between the two is huge. Spiritually speaking, I grew up thinking these two things were the same thing. When I learned about the Christian concept of “sin” and the idea each of us is guilty of the ways we hurt ourselves, others, the earth and God, I took that to mean “God believes I am a screw up.” In other words, “God says I am a failure.”

 

The truth of the Gospel is that God doesn’t view any of us as a failure. Oh sure, God knows our weaknesses, our mistakes, our wrongheaded attempts to control the universe as if we were God, our actions that cause harm to everyone and everything, in other words our failures, but God looks at us with love and declares, in spite of all these things, that we are beloved children of God. Period.

 

No matter how we blow it, our identity as beloved children of God does not change. We may feel we are failures, but in God’s eyes we are never failures. So, the answer to “can a Christian be a failure?” is emphatically, one hundred percent, no.

 

As Christians, we worship Jesus Christ, whom by all worldly standards was a failure. The crowds he attracted left him because his teaching was too difficult. His closest followers did not understand him and abandoned him when they needed him most. He was arrested, mocked, beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. By every measure, he was a failure. Yet, we believe what historians cannot prove that God raised Jesus from death and exalted him to the highest position in the universe. As people who revere his story and claim to be following in the footsteps of Jesus, where did we ever et the idea that we had to be perfect or that life would be easy or that we wouldn’t have any failures? More importantly, why do we believe we are failures, when Jesus demonstrates that God works with a different understanding of the word than everyone else in the universe?

 

Whether we are an NFL player who loses the Super Bowl or just an ordinary person watching it on TV, failures are actions of people, failures are not people. From a Christian perspective, even when we believe we are failures, we are not failures at all, because that is not who God says we are. This truth is impossible for many of us to believe much less live as truth.

 

Grace and Peace,
Chase

 

When Christian Hospitality Goes to Court

for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me --Matthew 25:35 NRSV

Last week I read about an interesting court case involving a church and Christian hospitality. A church in Florida. Pass-a-Grille Beach Community Church, in St. Pete Beach near St. Petersburg, has been fined by its small city for allowing beachgoers to park in its parking lot. The church sits two blocks away from a beautiful Gulf Coast beach, and in busy times the municipal pay-to-park lot is full. Several years ago, the church began allowing beachgoers to park in its lot and set up a box where people parking could make a donation. A sign clearly states the donations are voluntary and all proceeds go to the church’s annual youth mission trip. Often, church members, especially members of the youth group, hand out information about the church and their annual mission trip. They even pray with people on occasion. The city fined the church $500 per incident arguing it violated zoning laws (left unsaid was also the possibility the city might lose out on revenue).

Although the case is still going to trial, a federal judge issued an injunction allowing the church to continue to allow beachgoers to park in its lot. The judge agreed with the church’s argument that it was exercising two core values: stewardship and hospitality. The church was using its resources--its building and property--to share about the church and its beliefs. Also, it was welcoming strangers as a part of its Christian faith--the church cited Bible verses such as Matthew 25:35 “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” The judge disagreed with the city’s argument that the church was “not sincere in its religious beliefs and practices.”

I realize that the last sentence has a particular legal context, but I am struck by the language about sincerity. I have been a part of church fundraisers that were “sincere” efforts to share Christian love and hospitality, but I have also been a part of ones that were simply money grabs to help a church make money and close a budget deficit. I’m here to tell you there is a big difference between the two. 

For me, it begs the question if a church was taken to court over a conflict with neighbors or local zoning ordinances, etc. would its actions be justifiable as a “sincere” part of its religious values and mission? I’m less interested in the legal arguments than I am whether or not a church is actually operating out of a sincere desire to care for “even the least of these” with the understanding that when it does so, it is actually demonstrating love for Christ as Matthew 25 teaches. Would a judge find my church or any other given church “sincere”?

If a church is only a club or community group, then its actions, however good, differ little from other groups doing good things in the community. But a church, if it acts like a church, does its good out of a conviction that its hospitality and stewardship are not only commanded by God but that when they are carried out it serves others in Jesus’ name. When a church does so, it is actually serving Jesus Christ himself. 

I would argue that sincerely acting like a church means a church should be actually doing more for its community than the many other non-profit church groups, as good as their work may be. If a church really believed it was serving Jesus Christ himself, wouldn’t that mean its passion, its generosity and its hospitality were the greatest in the community? Sadly, we know this is rarely the case in most churches.

Perhaps it is worth contemplating what would a church's service, stewardship and hospitality have to look like for it to be judged “sincere.”

Grace and Peace,
Chase

I Don’t Believe in a Hate-Filled God Anymore

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 
--1 John 4:7-8 NRSV

I was born with a voice inside my head telling me I wasn’t good enough. Good enough for what? I’m not sure. I was born into a loving family with caring parents. Yet, my earliest nightmares were of someone—whom I didn’t know—being disappointed in me for something I had no control over. I don’t know where that voice came from.

My grandfather must have had the same voice in his head. He is said to have wrestled with shame and anger all his life despite nobody ever describing him as having done anything bad enough to deserve such lifelong pain. At middle age I’ve decided that I have whatever he had, whatever negative self-critical gene lived in his DNA was passed down to me.

Since that harsh critical voice was always there inside of my consciousness, it was pretty easy for me to ascribe that negative judgment to God. From my earliest age I was taught about God’s love, but I always gravitated to the stuff about God’s judgment. I felt like God was always looking over my shoulder shaking the divine head in disappointment. I could never please that God. I soaked up theological messages about what a lousy sinner I was and how I deserved God’s judgment and wrath. That God supposedly loved me, but I could never please that God.

Over time, my beliefs about God changed and I began to realize that negative voice in my consciousness was something other than God. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, it was something I was projecting on to God but really wasn’t God after all. I now know that “God” was emotionally abusive. That “God” was filled with hate. I’ve had a long journey learning to mistrust that harsh critical voice. When my wife can tell I’ve been listening to it again, she tells me, “It’s time to pass the talking stick to another voice in your head. We’ve heard what it has to say, but now somebody else gets a turn.” I smile and try to relax and let kinder thoughts roll through my mind. I’m far from perfect, but I’ve never been as bad as that voice always said I was.

I tend to think psychological critiques of religion that claim God is only a projection of our need for a parent or some other unconscious desire are reductionist in the extreme. Yet, there is some validity to the view that we project onto God our misconceptions. Decades ago, my father gave to me a small thin book by J.B. Philips titled Your God is Too Small. It describes unhealthy concepts people tend to have about God—God as policeman, God as stern parent, God as taskmaster, etc. I have hung onto that book, because of its simple declaration that the harsh, unloving and angry God many people have is not really God.

For some people like me, this misconception of God comes from a kind of psychological predisposition, but for many more it is because of the religious setting they were raised in. I’ve spent most of my adult life in ministry working to proclaim a loving and gracious God, yet it never ceases to shock me when I regularly encounter people who have attended churches for decades where this disapproving wrathful God is never preached but who nonetheless still hang onto the judgmental God of their childhood. When a crisis comes or a person is near death, all the messages about God’s love fly out the window and they return to a God who is punishing them in the present and who will continue to do so into eternity. Why can’t we let go of this—I’ll say it—hate-filled God?

In his incredible book Tattoos on the Heart, Gregory Boyle writes these astounding words:

God’s unwieldy love, which cannot be contained by our words, wants to accept all that we are—nothing of our humanity is to be discarded. No part of our hardwiring or our messy selves is to be disparaged. Where we stand, in all our mistakes and imperfection, is holy ground. It is where God has chosen to be intimate with us, and not in any way other than this.  [Our] moment of truth isn’t in recognizing what a disappointment [we] have been all these years. It comes in realizing that God has been beholding [us] for all this time, unable to look anywhere else. . .The desire of God’s heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure. This longing of God’s to give us peace and assurance and a sense of well-being only awaits our willingness to cooperate with God’s limitless magnanimity. Behold the One beholding you and smiling.

I admit that the idea that God is beholding me and smiling seems far-fetched. Really? The Being who knows me better than I know myself, who knows my faults and mistakes, isn’t at least looking at me with some divine doubts, a raised eyebrow, some measure of disapproval?

It’s bad enough that we transfer our negative thoughts about ourselves to God, but that inner hostility exudes out into our treatment of others. The remarkable statement in the First Letter of John, “God is love,” also comes with this truth that our lack of love for others reveals our lack of knowledge of God. It says, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Our projection onto God of our critical self-judgment inevitably manifests itself in unloving thoughts, words and actions directed towards others.

Terence Grant writes in his book The Silence of Unknowing about the cost to our relationships that comes from viewing God as anything other than love.

God [comes] so we might finally get the picture of the incredible love that has always been given to us. The only real problem here is that we don’t believe this good news. In fact, it’s too good to be true. And because we don’t believe that such a love can exist for us or for others, we hold on to grudges, we repay hurts, we destroy relationships, we commit acts of violence and war. We separate ourselves from the God who can do nothing but love…. As it was from the beginning, God is forever reaching out to us.

For many people, the hate-filled God is the only God they know. They recognize what loving such a God costs them and others, so when faced with the choice of believing in a hate-filled God or no God at all, they choose the latter option. If that was my only option for understanding God, I would choose atheism too.

A number of writers and ministers have asked an interesting question when they meet people who say they don’t believe in God. Instead of arguing with or judging this nonbeliever they ask a simple question, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. I might not believe in that God too.” I’ve had similar discussions myself. It is often a grace-filled moment when I can confess to someone that I don’t believe in a hate-filled God either.

Grace and Peace,
Chase

You are Not Alone

[Christ] himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
--Colossians 1:17 NRSV

Are feeling lonely?

If so, I don’t think you are the only person feeling this way. You are in good company.

My sense is that now that the tumultuous (and violent) election season is over the attention of the media and maybe many of us has turned to the pandemic.  With the volume of presidential politics turned down, we can hear again the cries of pain—physical, emotional, spiritual—that come from living during this pandemic. We can focus upon the hundreds of thousands of lives lost and the stress that comes with the knowledge that an unseen killer could be anywhere around us at any time. Even if we are healthy and living without great anxiety about the virus, I believe all of us still having it in the back of our minds somewhere like an itch we just can’t quite scratch.

I hoped that the vaccines would begin rolling out around the first of the year and by mid-Spring we would see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am grateful for the people I know who have received vaccinations (at least the first dose), but the news isn’t as good as I thought it would be regarding vaccine distribution. There are a lot of issues at every level of government and issues with production and distribution in the private sector. I have come to realize we have longer to wait for this to be over than I had hoped.

Grappling with this reality means we have to once again dig deeper into our already depleted stores of energy, willpower and faith. If you wonder where that energy and strength is going to come from, because you already used up your stores of it, just know you are not alone. Really, you are not in this alone.

When I struggle with feeling alone and isolated, I try to remember that the separateness I feel is an illusion, a product of my limited senses, a result of a wrongheaded belief that I, myself, am distinct from the world around me. Physicists explain that even our sense of self is a construct of our minds. The cells in our bodies are literally changing every second to the extent that the matter that makes us up is constantly being shed, transformed. The microscopic stuff that makes up our bodies is literally always transferring into the stuff around us including the people around us and ultimately even the people geographically far from us. The very matter of the universe is always connected. No less than Albert Einstein wrote about our limited perception of separateness. He wrote, “We are part of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an optical delusion of our mind that we think we are separate. This separateness is like a prison for us. Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we feel connected with all people and situations.”

This interconnected reality is what mystics have always been trying to help us see. The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich said, “We are all one in God's seeing.” This is the truth modern spiritual writers that I resonate with proclaim. Episcopal priest Crystal Hardin writes, “While fear wants us to believe we are alone, faith knows differently.” For me the physicist, the mystic and the minister all are saying the same thing—we are not really alone.

We are interconnected at a physical and spiritual level. This is good news, because when we feel alone, out of energy, like we can’t go on, like we are drained and exhausted, we have the energy, love, faith, hope and all those other good things belonging to a multitude of others near and far to draw upon. This is the process that is happening when we pray for one another. It’s like molecules of energy that pass through the very walls around us—material and spiritual—to connect us one to another. The very love we have for one another is more than just a feeling or interaction of chemicals inside of our brains but a primal force animating the universe.

Christianity calls this primal force of connection in the universe, this energy which connects us one to another, this interconnected network of love which binds us one to another across time and space by the names God, Christ, Holy Spirit and so on. In the letter to the Colossians, there are a few majestic verses that Bible scholars believe was a Christian hymn which the author is quoting. It gets at this amazing truth that all of us is a part of everything because Christ holds all things together and reconciles all things to God. The New Revised Standard Version translates the poetry of this hymn into English as follows:

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation; 
for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created,
things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers
—all things have been created through him and for him. 

He himself is before all things,
and in him all things hold together. 
He is the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have first place in everything. 

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 
and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through the blood of his cross. 

One of my favorite authors, Frederick Buechner, puts it this way about what unites us together. (Please forgive the masculine pronouns.)

Heaven knows terrible things happen to people in this world. The good die young, and the wicked prosper, and in any one town, anywhere, there is grief enough to freeze the blood. But from deep within whatever the hidden spring is that life wells up from, there wells up into our lives, even at their darkest and maybe especially then, a power to heal, to breathe new life into us. And in this regard, I think, every man is a mystic because every man at one time or another experiences in the thick of his joy or his pain the power out of the depths of his life to bless him. I do not believe that it matters greatly what name you call this power—the Spirit of God is only one of its names—but what I think does matter, vastly, is that we open ourselves to receive it; that we address it and let ourselves be addressed by it; that we move in the direction that it seeks to move us, the direction of fuller communion with itself and with one another.

You may feel alone today, but the truth is you are not alone. There is something that is in you but also that is greater than you, something that is in everything else there is, something that connects you with everyone else. We humans, with our limited senses, have moments when we cannot sense this greater reality of being connected to one another. Such moments are frequent in times like the ones we are living in, physically isolated from one another due to this pandemic.

Trust science, trust scripture, trust faith, trust God, trust that you are not alone this day despite whatever it is in you which feels otherwise.

Grace and Peace,
Chase