James 24:7

The following is a speech I delivered at Milligan College on the celebration of the 5th year of their MBA program. I gave the speech in March, 2009. 

How To Never 'Work' Another Day in Your Life

In June of 1998 I embarked on a grand adventure.  I decided to leave the pulpit and the lectern behind, turn myself into a “Martian anthropologist”  and enter the corporate world.  At the time I was 48 years old.  I had several reasons for doing so.

First, I had been feeling that there was too great a divide between the pulpit and the pew.   I had the sense that I, and perhaps many ministers, did not adequately understand what life is like for those to whom we preached, those who clocked into the corporate world and gave 50-60 hours or more hours per week to that enterprise.

Second, I wanted to see how the practices and pressures of corporate life worked to shape the character of Christians who worked there.  I wanted to know how the assumptions and practices of the corporate world- i.e. corporate culture- affected those who name Jesus Christ as their Lord.

Third, I wanted to see how Christians went about being Christian in the corporate context.  Did they check their faith at the door because of corporate constraints?  Did they feel prepared to live as Christians in the corporate world or were they unable to cross the divide that seems to exist between 11 a.m Sunday and 11 a.m. Monday?  Or did Christians find ways to express faith in even those environments that frown upon that?

Fourth, I wanted to do what I could to encourage, edify and assist Christians who were serious about being Christian but who were struggling in the corporate context.  I wondered what I could bring from my pastoral and academic background to help anyone I could to be a strong Christian presence.

And fifth, I wanted to get out from behind the church pulpit and the college and seminary lectern to serve Christ in whatever way I could on daily basis in the marketplace. Although there is plenty of important ministry that can and does occur from in those two places, I wanted to be out where people were having to deal with the daily ups and downs, the constant pressures and constraints of the marketplace.

In summary, I wanted to learn everything I could, assist in any way I could and serve in any way I could but do so- not as a pastor nor even a “marketplace chaplain” or “marketplace minister”- but as an employee who happened to have a lot of experience in ministry and teaching in his background.

My adventure as an “anthropologist from Mars” was cut short by a health crisis and, I went back into the pulpit after working for a few years in a couple of Internet based financial services companies.  I can’t say that I contributed a lot but I can say that I learned aplenty. (During my excursion into the corporate world, someone asked me how my “faith and work” project was going and I replied “I’m working too hard to get around to the faith part.”  I mean to tell you that I got a great “education” in the marketplace.)

Even though I am no longer in the corporate world, I have continued to keep up and try to learn answers to my questions from those who are.  One consistent theme I hear- one that is usually expressed as an afterthought- is that many who are in the corporate world wish they weren’t.  Many, though not all, are dissatisfied and looking forward to the day they can escape it.

That dissatisfaction gets expressed in a number of ways.  Some express it in the form of shared daydreams (“If I had my druthers I’d be doing this or that but as it is….”).  Some express that in the form of vision (“I’m doing this until I can retire and do what I really want to do…”)    Some express themselves in terms of the  “daily grind.”  I hear it expressed in a lot of different ways.

Now I admit that I have listened to a skewed sample.  After all, people tend to seek out pastors when they are feeling discouraged.  I know there are some who can’t get enough of their work.  I know that the saying that no one who breaths his last ever says “I wish I had spent more time at work”, is true for many but not for everyone…some can’t get enough of the office. 

Some of what I hear is to be expected.  Part of it is wrapped in our understanding of work as well…WORK!  What is that saying?  “If this was supposed to be fun, it wouldn’t be called ‘work’?”

And part of it might be attributed to that very human tendency to think the grass is greener somewhere else or as the poet Wendell Berry suggests… we seem to always think life would be good if we could be somewhere other than where we are, being someone whom we are not.

And part of that desire to get away from the corporate world may be simply a function of being in a tedious or over pressured job, in a less than stellar company, run by inept people, working for a demanding boss and doing work for which one is not suited.

And then there are those who have compelling personal reasons to leave the corporate world behind: aging parents who need attention, young children at home or other important matters screaming for attention.

However, having spent a lot of years on this side of the pulpit and the lectern and a little time on that side of the pulpit and lectern, I would like to suggest another reason, a 2-sided explanation, for the dissatisfaction so many people feel about being in the corporate world.

On the one hand, people seem to expect more from their work than their work can deliver.  The bookstores are loaded with books that direct you on how to find meaning and purpose and true happiness in your work.  Of course, on the surface there is nothing wrong with trying to find meaningful, purposeful work or even in trying to make your work more meaningful and purposeful.  The problem is that we push that notion too far and seek from our work that which only God can provide.

That we do that is not surprising.  We tend to do that in every aspect of our lives.  We seek more from money, popularity, power and status and our various kinds of relationships than those things can deliver too.  Our marriages, our children, our levels of success and attainment are all supposed to deliver the great end of happiness, meaning, and purpose.  While those aspects of life can contribute to our sense of meaning and purpose, none of them, alone or together, can deliver what we are seeking.

The reason is plain: we can never derive from the creation that which only the Creator can provide.  Our ultimate sense of assurance or security or meaning and purpose or peace, which is part of what we are seeking, can only be provided by God.  To seek those things from the created or by use of the created is the essence of idolatry, which I define as seeking from the creation that which only the Creator can provide.

That is why Jesus cautioned us about giving ourselves to Mammon or placing our ultimate trust in anything within the realm of that which moth and rust corrupts in the realm where thieves break in and steal.  We cannot obtain the eternal from the temporal, the incorruptible from the corruptible, the things of God from the vaults of Mammon.  To seek to do so, as Jesus said, is to build our house upon a foundation that cannot weather the onslaughts of life.

So, one side of this equation, this problem of being people dissatisfied in our work, is that we simply expect more out of work, and so many other things in life, than any of it can deliver.

Then on the other hand we have these inadequate understandings of God, understandings which fit well with our idolatries just mentioned. During the past several years, I have had many opportunities to speak about these things in churches, retreat settings, and classrooms.  In those settings, when I can engage in some conversation with folks, I like to ask people to tell me about their dominant image of God.  I usually get three answers:  (1) God as Savior of the soul, (2) God as Companion in the Garden, and (3) God as the Lord of the Temple.

Those who think of God as “savior of the soul” think that God’s particular emphasis is the salvation of an interiorized soul.  That salvation occurs at a point in time and is accomplished so that at the end of one’s life one can die and go to heaven.  The two important moments for the Christian then are (1) salvation of the soul at a point in time and (2) going to heaven when one dies.

Several difficulties emerge with that view.  First, the focus of salvation is upon the individual soul, not the totality of his or her existence, but his or her soul.  Second, that model offers little guidance as to what that “saved individual” is supposed to be doing between the point of salvation and the moment of death.  And third, there is little emphasis given to the ethical dimension of faith, how the “saved individual” is supposed to relate to others.

People who emphasize the garden variety God must have been highly influenced by that hymn composed by C. Austin Miles in 1912.  The chorus of that hymn, a favorite of many, is “And He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own…”  To them God is a constant and comforting companion, a kind of nurturing presence who listens to them and cheers them and reassures them that He is with them and they are His.

The other group of people, those who favor the temple variety of God, do not say this so much as they live it.  They believe that God usually only shows up on Sunday morning in this building we call a church.  These folks, which are most of us, “go to church” to “worship God.”  Once they are “in church”, the architecture teaches them that the real action is not only “in the church” it  is up front on the stage where the religious symbols are and from whence they are led and taught by something on the order of specialists in these highly sacred matters.

Whatever else might be said about these common visions of God, they are visions of God which require little to nothing of us.  They fit neatly with each other, neatly into our culturally prescribed ways of life, and neatly with our idolatry.  Because each of them is focused upon us- our salvation, our assurances, our schedule-  they do more to fit God into our lives than they do to shape our lives to fit with God.  About the best those visions can offer us is the assurance that  because our souls have been saved and we have given God his due on Sunday that God will follow us through the week reassuring us that we really are “okay”…just as we are.

Well I am here to disavow you of those views.  God is not simply interested in our “souls” and not merely waiting until the day he can punch our tickets for the glory train to heaven.  God is not simply “in church” on Sunday morning waiting for us to show up and sing to him and God is not simply following us around patting us on the head for being good moral citizens of the realm.

God is a missionary…THE missionary…and is afoot in our history, our world, our community, and yes, even your company working to realize his purpose of “bringing everything in heaven and earth under one Head, even Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 1:10-11)   God is at work seeking to “fill all with the fullness of Himself.” (Ephesians 3: 19)  God is at work to achieve the final Shalom, the richness of wholeness, healing, and holiness through his Son Jesus Christ. (Revelation 21)

God is by nature and purpose a missionary and if we are going to be with God, we must learn to “go with God,”- to be God’s co-laborers in mission, to join with the God who is “at work.”

If you, as people who spend hours in the one of the largest and most influential mission fields in the world, will embrace this vision of God you will find that much of the drudgery of “work” will vanish and you will arise out of bed in the morning ready to embrace this adventure of being co-laborers with this missionary God.   If you will attend to this way of thinking about God- a way of thinking about God that is in almost every verse of scripture- your life, in every aspect, will be absolutely revolutionized.

In a second, I will tell you how and why this will revolutionize every aspect of your life but please understand, the point is not YOU.  I am about to tell you the graces that accrue to anyone who adopts this way of life.  However, this way of life is good and right, not because of what it does for you, but because it aligns with the nature and purpose of God.

Here’s a paradox:  the less you make your life about YOU and YOURS, the more you will experience an abundant life.  Isn’t that what Jesus said: the one who seeks to save his own life, to preserve his own life, to enhance his own life will lose it, but the one who lays down his life for God’s sake, for Christ’s sake, and for the sake of this good news will save it, preserve it, enhance it?

So…and this key..:  even though I’m about to lay out the graces of thinking and acting on what I’m telling you, YOU are not the point.  Rather, these graces accrue to you as forms of a larger blessing that comes from aligning yourself with the purpose and intentions of God.  Even though I can’t seem to escape the self-centered reasons for living this way- i.e. the graces that accrue to you- please know they only accrue to you as an overflow of the blessing of serving this missional God. 

So here are some of the graces that come to you when you live this way:

The first grace is that you will live a life of integrity.  You will find that the disparate pieces of your life will be integrated under one overarching mission and you will realize three smaller graces:

First, the struggle to find balance between your life and your work will disappear because you will see that you and your family (insofar as they ‘get’ this) - no matter where each of you goes in any given day doing whatever each of you does in any given day- is engaged in the same work, that of co-laboring with God in the realization of God’s purposes on earth.  Whether you are being a parent or being an executive you are always engaged in the same ultimate mission.

Second, you will see the line between what you take to be “secular” work and “sacred” work disappearing.  All work becomes sacred- indeed, all of life becomes sacred because there is no area of your life that is not aligned behind the great and ongoing mission of this God who is cutting his path of justice, salvation, reconciliation and love in the world.  Whether you are at home, working in a corporate office or coaching a little league team, your eye is always focused on the same thing:  discerning where and how God is moving and discerning how you can join God in that moving.

Third, you will see the distinction between “clergy” and “laity” disappear.  The one behind the pulpit and the one in the pew is engaged in realizing precisely the same mission- the mission of God.  Each may play his or her own role in that but each is clear that there is only one mission- and that mission is God’s.  Another way to say this is that in this way of thinking everyone becomes “clergy” or to be more biblically straight, we all start realizing what it means to be a “nation of priests”.

The second grace that comes to you is that you will discover your reason for being.  You will never again wonder why you are here.  You will come to see more fully not only why you are here but why it matters that you are here.  You will come to see that you are here to join God in the greatest mission there is, the mission of God, and that God has uniquely outfitted you with talent, skills, gifts and experience so that you may take up your part in this adventure of God’s.

You will never ask again: “Is this all there is?”   As you come to embrace the mission of God you will see the truth of that saying that the mission of God is “larger on the inside than it is on the outside.”  In the beginning you may think that God is doing this one thing but discover, once you get into it, that this thing is somehow related to that thing and that thing is related to the other.   (The main thing you will discover is that while you are out and about following God into this situation that you are being brought to life!)

You will not spend another second of your life agonizing over “God’s will for your life.”  Listen…we Christians waste more time agonizing over God’s will for our individual lives!   YOU are not the point…remember?  God is the point!   When you get that you start to ask a different question: “What is God’s will for God’s life and how can I help God toward what God is after?” 

Isn’t that what Jesus taught us to pray when he said: “THY kingdom come, THY will be done on earth as it is in heaven?”  You can begin helping God get what God wants within the next minute or two or you can sit around pleading with God to show you what his will for your life is.  (However, if you choose the latter do not neglect to ask yourself: “If I was God, which condition would I bless…the one where my people are sitting around agonizing over themselves or the one where my people are already out and about engaged in helping me get what I’m after?”)

You will stop yearning to be anywhere other than where you are being someone who you are not!  God is moving where you are and God has prepared you to join him now!  God is here and God needs you…now!

At work, you will wander out among the cubicles no longer seeing people as so many worker bees but rather subjects of God’s eternal love, the very souls among whom and through whom God is working to realize his purposes on earth.

At home, you will begin to see your family- your spouse, your children, your parents- as people just like you, called to become a nation of missionary-priests, each called to join the missioning God.  And you will begin to ask yourself: how do I go about helping each of them to become who God is calling them to be?           And you will do the same with your friends and you will begin to invite them to join you in the grand adventure. 

The third grace is that you will begin to see God show up in your day.  You will become more discerning of where and how God is moving within you and around you.  As you learn from observing the life of Jesus and the contemplation of the word of God just what it is that God is after, you will spend your day teasing out how God is doing that all around you.  And you will begin to think of yourself as one who is involved in the most significant work there is or can be…that of lending yourself to helping God get what God wants more than spending all your time simply getting more of what you want.

I can tell you from personal experience that this can and does happen all the time.  Since I have begun to grow in this way of thinking I have been astounded by what happens in my own life.  Just today I was talking with a woman about how she can use her business success to help us dig a well for a maternity hospital in Nicaragua.  While we spoke I thought about someone I know who is in prison.  I don’t know why it came up but I had no sooner thought about him than the woman to whom I was speaking said: “Can I ask you something that is a bit off topic?”  I replied that she could.  And she asked: “Do you know how I could get involved in prison ministry?”

Now, that’s a little thing, a little moment, but I tell you, when that happens and you start seeing it happening all the time, you quit doubting whether there is a God and you start looking for him to show up behind every rock and tree!  And you start to ask yourself whether why you are doing what you are doing is really why you are doing it!  And you start thinking that you do not so much “have God” as God “has you”!

That happens to me all the time, not because I’m some special person, but because I have come to believe that every day God is out in the community ahead of me and that if I enter my day being prayerful and attentive I will see him duck into this store and behind that person.     

The fourth grace is that your work and your life will be lived as an adventure rather than drudgery.  You will stop seeing yourself as the much-put-upon protagonist of your own story and begin to see yourself as supporting character in the story of God, the eternal protagonist.

That will change how you read the Bible.   You will stop looking at those folks in the Bible as just so many “ robed characters in the Bible” and begin to see them as “characters in the ongoing story of God” and not unlike yourself who is also a “character in the ongoing story of God.”  Those people will begin to feel less ancient to you and you will begin to see them as other versions of you, playing their part in the narrative that God is living on this earth.

The fifth grace is that  you will find yourself entering into risky territory but empowered to do what you are being asked to do.   Like Philip who stood there in the middle of nowhere looking down that desert road at that eunuch from Ethiopia, you will begin to hear the Spirit of God whispering in your ear, “Go stand next to that chariot. Go stand next to that chariot. ”   And you will go forward, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to expect…way outside your comfort zone but living life in the grand missional adventure of God.  You will find yourself engaged in the life of the hurting, standing in the court of the Caesars speaking truth to power.  You will discover the pain of the cross but not without seeing the joy that is set before you. 

Now I know how you business folks are…I’ve been and taught a lot of workplace Bible studies and I know…Some of you, many of you, all of you are saying: ‘Well this is all well and good, but what’s the ‘take away”?   I learned a new word out there in your world: “Actionable”.  You like things that are “actionable.”

So here are the “actionable items”….

(1) Tomorrow is Sunday…As you are driving “to church” tomorrow I want you to say a prayer:   “God/ this the last time/ that I will ever drive to church./  From this day forward/ I commit myself/ to being the church.” 

(2) When you get “to church” tomorrow, I want you to walk up to your preacher and say to him:  “I am committing myself to hold you accountable to help us become a place of missional training that happens to have a worship service and stop being a worship service that has some optional missional “add-ons” for those who want them.”

(3) Then on Sunday night, I want you to sit down with your family and say “Even though each of us will go our separate ways tomorrow, I would like for us to agree that from now on we all serve the same mission- that of helping God get what God wants more than helping ourselves get what we want.”

(4) On Monday morning, before you walk into to your place of employment I want you to pray this prayer: “Lord, make me a beacon of your grace and a channel of your love to whoever crosses my path this day.”  And then I want you to brace yourself for those who cross your path.

(5) On Monday night, as you gather- and this may be the hardest part- as you gather around the supper table with your family ask everyone gathered “where did God take you today and to whom did he send you?”

I can promise you if you will do these things and do them over and over again you will never “work” another day in your life.           

           

 

           

"When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, 'Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?'" (Mt. 11: 2-3)

We do not know why John asked sent his disciples to ask the question of Jesus.  Matthew does not tell us.  Indeed, Matthew doesn't even seem interested in knowing. 

However, that does not stop us from wondering and speculating.  As a teacher once told me: "We believe in the maxim 'where the Bible speaks we speak and where the Bible is silent we are silent.'  However, we also apparently believe in the maxim 'where the Bible speaks we are silent and where the Bible is silent we speak.'"

I know my own doubts and uncertainties.  And, as a pastor, I often hear others express theirs as well.  Sometimes life can be so hard that doubting is the best we can do. I read this text with those doubts rolling through the back of my mind.

I do not know whether John doubted or not.  I do not know whether uncertainty crept into his dank cell or not.   It may have been that John saw his destiny written on the prison wall and sent his disciples as a way to quell their doubts about the identity of Jesus.  Perhaps John was engaged in a bit of "succession planning."

Whether it was because of his own doubts or because of the questions of his disciples, John did send them to Jesus with that question: "Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another?"

My guess is that it is very hard to see the inbreaking reign of God from within the walls of a damp prison or as you are perched precariously atop a three-legged stool and straining to peer through a tiny, barred-up window.

I recognize the dangers of going beyond the text.  Anything I say about John's motives in asking that question would be "arguing from silence."

However, I also recognize what happens to us when we are cut off from the world, imprisoned (if only for a time) in the darkness of doubt, shackled in the chains of despair, and fettered by fears.   What seemed so clearly the case in the carefree daylight is lost in the shadow of the terrifying moment.

"Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another?"

John had heard what Jesus was doing.  (Note: Matthew says that John heard what the Messiah was doing!) But John heard about it in prison.

Perhaps from his own vantage "what Messiah was doing" was not what John thought the Messiah would or should be doing.  Given his wilderness sermons, John may have imagined something more...earth shattering.  After all, John had drawn terrifying word pictures of the ax being laid the roots and of days of wrath coming over the horizon.

Jesus did not say "I AM the ONE" to John's disciples.  Jesus appealed to the words of the prophets, to the images of Jubilee and to the songs of Israel: 

"Tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them." (vs. 4-5; NRSV)

Tell John that miracles abound but also tell him who the recipients of those graces are: the blind, the deaf, the dead, and the poor.  The overlooked, the outcast, the forgotten are being seen, brought close and remembered.

And all of them...these poor...are hearing good news.

God is at work-perhaps in unexpected ways -but working nonetheless.  Look closely and listen...you are locked for a time in your cell of despair but your experience is not the breadth and depth and height of God's working.  The kingdom is breaking through and things spoken of by prophets, indeed the words of John are coming to pass...the world is being turned upside down as the kingdom of God breaks through in Jesus.

We don't know what the disciples of John did after that.  We don't know whether they returned to John or not.  We don't know whether John was satisfied by the reply of Jesus.

However, I cannot help but wonder: Did it cross John's mind what Jesus did not say? Did it strike him that Jesus did not say, "and the prisoners are set free"?

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For resources related to the season of the church year or the Revised Common Lectionary go here.

For a series of questions for personal reflection/small group discussion on the RCL texts for the week go here.

I am often put off by some of the Christmas songs because they are so sentimental, so romantic and so not-my- experience.

Sometimes I feel as if I am going to blow if I hear one more song about holiday cheer, faces all aglow, happy shoppers on their way down glistening, snow covered city sidewalks.

I live in the Atlanta area.  The last time we had snow at Christmas was around the time the Magna Carta was being signed.  And as for happy faces all aglow....ha!...I say, "Ha!"

I see harried faces (even hairy faces!), distracted faces and most of them anything but "all aglow." 

I live in the suburbs.  You see tail lights all aglow.  You see strip malls.  You see enough concrete and black top to cover Rhode Island.  You see power cable, telephone lines and litter.

To many Christmas songs I say, "Bah!"

Unless....unless I hear those lyrics not as descriptions of what is but as yearnings of what could be.

Maybe there could be a day- even here in the 'burbs of HOTlanta"- when there is snow on the ground, happy people scurrying here and there with nothing more than a "Merry Christmas" on their breath.

Hearing those songs in that way may just rescue me from my humbuggery.

Reading the Isaiah texts in the Revised Common Lectionary is really what has rescued me from another season of singing, "Bah, bah, bah, bah, baaaah.." instead of "Fa la la la laaaa."

Listen to these words about the coming the Day of Lord...

"He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn more any more." (2:4)

Or read these words and just imagine...

"The wolf shall sleep with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze together, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (11:6-9 NRSV)

I suspect there were those who first heard Isaiah's words with a "bah" and a "humbug."  They read the paper like everyone else; they watched the evening news.  They worked in the sweatshops and traversed the market places.

No more war?  No more studying war?  No more tragedies?  No more "nature red in tooth and claw."

Bah!

All those folks are gone.  However, the words of Isaiah still stand and give their hope.

Isaiah expresses a vision.  However...and this is important...Isaiah's vision is not simply the poetic expression of wishful thinking or overwrought romanticism.  Isaiah is not Mel Torme sitting at a piano in California in the heat of summer writing about "chestnuts roasting on an open fire."

Isaiah speaks to human yearning, yes.

But the word Isaiah speaks, the vision that Isaiah describes is not Isaiah's word and not Isaiah's vision.  His word and vision are not simply the yearnings of one man or the whole people. 

This is the word and the vision of the God who is faithful and who will do what God promises. 

Advent is the time of yearning...ours and God's! 

Advent is the time when we are reminded that our deepest longings, the ones we offer up to heaven, will be met (and then some) by the God who never leaves us nor forsakes us!

I started preaching 34 years ago just down the road from where I currently preach.   However, between the time I started and now, Gwinnett County, Georgia has changed.... Wait that should be  chaaaaannnnggged.

My agent, Irv, sent me this article.   I love the last line...

"America is changing...get used to it!"

This ain't your grandma's church.

Me: Hi.

My name is Jim.

And I'm a pragmaddict.

You: ("Hi Jim...")

Me: I've been a pragmaddict since childhood. I don't know about you but I found life pretty challenging as a child.  While I always tried to do the right thing, I had a hard time knowing sometimes what the "right thing" was.  I learned pretty quickly that you can never go wrong as long as you do what works in any given situation.

I can think of many instances where I said whatever needed saying, did whatever needed doing, believed whatever needed believing as long as it got me more of what I wanted or needed at the moment.

While they may not have intended it (or maybe they did!) my parents contributed to my pragmaddiction.  

I can remember my dad ranting about this college professor who often wrote a column in the newspaper.  My dad would say, "For such an educated man, he doesn't have the sense God gave a goat."   My dad knew that good sense was equivalent to common sense and that common sense was the sense just about everybody (except certain college professors) had.

That realization came home to me after I got my Ph.D.  My dad said, "Well you've got enough education now to be absolutely stupid." 

You might think he meant that harshly.  Maybe he did but I didn't take it that way.  I took it to mean that I shouldn't get so educated that I ended up sacrificing "the sense God gave a goat."

Even my sainted mother got in on the act.  She was fond of saying, "The proof is in the pudding."  I took that to mean that the truth of matters will always come out in...well...the pudding.  Or maybe that was the wash.  Whatever....the point was "garbage in/ garbage out."  What you put into the recipe yields the resultant dish. 

There seems to be no escaping this addiction to pragmatism.  Everywhere I turn I'm offered another hit:

"What's true is what works."

"You can't argue with success."

Even Dr. Phil is fond of asking: "How's that working for you?" 

Do what works.  When something works do more of it.  If something doesn't work, stop doing that.  

What is the definition of insanity?  To keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result?

See...it's hard not to take regular hits of practical advice...

We pragmaddicts live and die by the dictum: "The truth is what works."  Our addiction continues because, at least within the circle of our own self-interest, doing what works...works.

However, recently I've been trying to really challenge my pragmaddiction. 

For example, whenever I hear myself quoting Dr. Phil ("How's that working for you?") I talk back to me and say, "Why should whether things are working for me be the standard of what makes for the good?"

Or whenever I repeat the pragmaddicts dictum: "The truth (or good) is what works" I ask "works for whom?"

Or, I ask, "who gets to determine what 'working' means?"

Of course, you may be sitting there wondering what difference this makes.  After all, to other pragmaddicts, to live according to what works for yourself seems not like some philosophical idea...it seems like "reality." 

Only people who are "out of touch with reality" or who are "so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good" would argue against the idea that what is true or good is what works.

Well..here's my problem...Jesus, whom I call "Lord" came along announcing the coming of God's reign.  He described those who are receiving the kingdom as those who are poor in spirit, those who are gentle and non-violent, those who are unwilling to see the present world as the best of all possible worlds, those who spend their time working for justice and making peace.

He invites us to visualize a future that pretty much matches up to the Jewish concept of "Shalom"- utter peace and harmony, a condition of wholeness and health and holiness, a circumstance where love and mercy and compassion are the primary virtues.

He (and his followers) painted a picture  where those who would feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, minister to the sick and visit the imprisoned would see themselves as actually doing good to Jesus himself.

He (and those who followed him) painted a future where people were reconciled to God and, as a result, finding themselves reconciled to one another and living peaceably with another.

He (and those who followed Him) even saw the day coming when "new creation" would be the order of the day and we would look forward eagerly and hopefully toward that time when God would plop right down in the midst of us and wipe away every tear from our eyes.

He (and those who followed Him) said we were all invited into that kingdom, that it was ours to receive and that we could begin to live now as if the whole enchilada was already present to us...that is, that we could live peaceably with our neighbors and our enemies, that we could bless those who hate us, and pray for those who persecute us.  

Now...not later...now.

In other words, we could live now as if the future was already a done deal.

Of course, the pragmaddicts out there (and the pragmaddict within) say(s):

"Peacemaking? 

How's that working for you?"

"Loving your enemies? 

 How's that going to pay off?"

"Blessing those who use you? 

Wonder what that will get you?"

"Living today as if God's tomorrow is already accomplished? 

"Say wha-?"

I have to say that sometimes the pragmaddiction seems to suggest that the choice is between living in reality as opposed to non-reality.   In other words, you can live in the land of "good= what works" or you can live in the land of dreams and fantasies.

But then I think, "Well, maybe we should ask 'works toward what end?'"  When I ask that it seems to me that everything Jesus claims works toward the ends of God's kingdom and that sometimes, if not most times, those ends are not the ends that most of us pragmaddicts are working toward.

I don't know I need to think more about it.

For now, I'll say this, "I have come to admit that I am powerless over pragmaddiction and I commit myself to a power greater than myself to tell me how to live."  

Thank you!

You: Thank you, Jim.

This past summer I conducted a Bible study on the Psalms for the good folks from North River Community Church and West Gwinnett Christian Church.  I'm no expert on the Psalms (I'm not expert on anything!) but I have found the Psalms to be of tremendous benefit in helping shape my prayers.  For the next several days, I thought I would share these thoughts on the Psalms with you.

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The Psalms teach us about the nature of God.

While all of scripture tells us things about the nature of God, I believe the Psalms teach us at least three things that figure heavily into our prayers.  The Psalms teach us (1) that God is righteous, (2) that God is faithful and (3) that God is free.

Because God is faithful, we can rest assured that God will "never leave us nor forsake us."  God has been faithful to us, God is faithful to us and God will be faithful to us.  Over and over the Psalmist speaks of the "loving kindness" of God, or of God's "covenant love".  Over and over the Psalmist recalls God's acts in the history of Israel, to testify to God's faithfulness. Because God is faithful, God can be "depended upon".

Because God is righteous, we can trust that God will do what is right.  God will act out of righteous judgment and do the right thing.  God can do nothing but the right thing because God is righteous.

However, God is also free.  Just as we can count on God to always do the right thing we can also count on God to act out of God's own freedom.  I believe that is why we often read the Pslamist crying out, "When, O Lord?" Or, "How long, O Lord?"  Or, "Where are You, Lord?"

The Psalmist knows that God is faithful and that God is righteous.  However, the Psalmist also knows that God is free.  The awareness of the freedom of God, to my mind, is what drives the Pslamist to  make promises or bargain with God.  The Psalmist is trying to get God to make a move.

I often put it this way: "Our problem is not in wondering whether God exists or whether God loves us or whether God will be faithful to us or whether God will do the right thing or not.  Our problem is the anxiety of wondering whether God will show up by Friday at 3."

We pray in light of the faithfulness of God, the righteousness of God and the freedom of God.  While we are willing to grant faithfulness and righteousness to God (after all that is in our interest!) we sometimes struggle with granting God the freedom that is due God. 

We want to depend upon God to do the right thing when we want God to do it.  "Lord, I trust that You are faithful and that You, in your infinite righteousness, will act justly but I also trust that You will do so by the end of the business day Tuesday, September 5th.  Amen."

It seems to me that if we are willing to grant God (what a funny phrase!) God's faithfulness and God's righteousness, that we ought to be willing to grant  God's freedom. 

After all, God is free.

The question is whether we are capable of such trust.