on church, faithfulness, and 2020

I wanted to write some sort of mid-year reflection post at the end of June, but with all that has happened in 2020 I had trouble knowing where to start. I’ve been pregnant for all of 2020 so far (and then some), for example; I lost my mother-in-law to cancer when the New Year was just 12 days old. This, on top of the chaos and crisis worldwide and nationally and individually and personally that none of us is quite unaffected by. So here we are in August, and I’m still gathering my thoughts.

I would describe this year so far as one long, existential earthquake. Life is being shaken up, and even as I brace for more aftershocks, I’m looking around to see what’s still standing, what’s crumbled, and what has fallen into place in a new way. Some of the things that have been broken or altered must be grieved, but maybe others had been outstaying their welcome, and it’s high time we celebrate letting them go? Maybe somewhere in the rubble we’ll find the perfect space to build something new?

I think this conversation is happening everywhere in some capacity, but my real prayer is that it will happen in the Church, and in the individuals who make up the Church. I’m praying that one of the goodbyes of this era will be the dismantling of some of the worn-in traditions of how we “do church” so that space can be made for us to BE the Church.

I’m convicted by the fact that so much of what we’ve preserved of church through the pandemic has been the least important parts, while what really matters has been lost. Some of that is merely the nature of social distancing, but some of it is also laziness, consumerism, and poor priorities. I speak for myself as much as anyone: when it became possible to tick the “go to church” box by merely opening a Facebook tab, without even the accountability of looking into someone’s face and saying hello, that’s all I did—and sometimes, not even that.

COVID-19 has starkly revealed that in the United States of America at least, our deficiency is not access. It’s abiding in Jesus. Even before there was a virus to require it, we could “go to church” remotely anywhere we wanted; we could choose any preacher or message we wanted; we could even round it out with our personal favorite style of worship music. But we have little understanding of how to love one another, meet each other’s needs, commit our time to prayer or fasting or feasting together, confess our sins to one another, reprove and forgive and reconcile with each other, serve the community together, have difficult conversations that matter, or teach one another the Word. And showing up for an hour and a half on Sundays to sing and hear a sermon isn’t teaching us any of it.

We have scrambled to hold onto the man-made structure of church, but it’s the real stuff of following Jesus that gets lost along the way.

What better time than our current upside-down reality to take stock of what is really important and to let go of what isn’t?

Jesus didn’t teach church. He taught abiding. He taught obedience. He taught love.

He didn’t ask us to prove our dedication by showing up and checking the box once a week—He asked us to follow His example and lay down our lives, every single day.

If that sounds as overwhelming for you as it does for me, take heart: We are not called to lay down our lives for everyone in the world, or even everyone in our church. Jesus already did that (hallelujah!). Our call, instead, is to lay our lives at His feet, and allow Him to use them in the specific places and for the specific people He has given to us. When He Himself was finite and human, limited by the same time and energy that limits us, He didn’t do everything for everyone—rather, He faithfully led and served the twelve disciples that God gave Him (John 17:6). He showed love and compassion for multitudes of others along His way, but always He prioritized and protected His call to the twelve.

Likewise, most of us are called to something far smaller and humbler than we often expect, like the handful of souls that make up our own families, not the hundreds who make up our church or the thousands who make up our city or the millions who make up our nation.

But faithfulness in even these very little things can explode into worldwide impact. We have countless Scriptural examples of rich harvest coming from a few small seeds—and the twelve disciples of Jesus, with you and I here 2,000 years later as their disciple-descendants, are just one of them.

God is not afraid

I’ve learned a lot about life and people throughout the current pandemic, as I’m sure most of us have. But the one big thing that I keep noticing again and again is that fear invariably outworks itself in the form of control.

I’ve observed this in my own life before: the need to force all my unruly ducks into a row somehow because of my anxiety about some issue, or life in general. Over-exercising, under-eating, or rabidly purging belongings out of my house are some of the ways it shows—all of them poorly disguised attempts to control something.

I’m seeing it in just about all of us now.

In fear, some of us try to control the narrative we take in about the virus: we will only hear the parts that serve our desired and carefully curated point of view, and find ourselves “experts” or news articles to silence the rest.

In fear, some of us try to control the behavior of those around us: we will mock and shame people who are making different choices about social distancing than ourselves, or those who feel differently about the measures taken by our governing authorities.

In fear, some of us try to control our minute-by-minute experience of the extra time we have at home: we will keep to a rigorous schedule, strive after endless self-improvement, and attempt to force Covid-19 to serve our purposes.

All of these are understandable to me. It’s comforting to feel like we have the upper hand on our unseen threat. It’s comforting when other people’s choices align with our own. It’s comforting when the “experts” agree with us. In these we find a sense of security—albeit an artificial one.

And something else has become more understandable to me: The question, “Why would God let ____?”

I’m no stranger to this question; I’ve asked it plenty of times myself—but I have struggled to understand why it’s the question that so often stands between people and God. Those who reject God often seem to use some form of this question and its unsatisfactory answers as their justification for doing so. And it makes sense now.

Because if we were God, we would control everything we possibly could. Our basic state as human beings involves some level of fear. This, I believe, is the reason the Bible so often refers to us as sheep: not because we are fundamentally idiots, but because we are fundamentally terrified, knowing full well our own helplessness, and it leads us to make some fundamentally idiotic choices. So if we were God, we would have stomped down Satan before he even had a thought to rebel. We would have created compliant robots who would never dream of eating the forbidden fruit. We would have set ourselves up as the tyrannical dictators of an unthinking population—it is the only way we could avoid feeling threatened.

But God is not afraid.

God is not afraid, therefore God doesn’t have the same innate need to control that you and I do. He is not like us. In His basic state, He is utterly sufficient by Himself; the angelic legions could abandon Him and the entire world could reject Him and He is still enough. He is relational, yes, but He is also Three in One, so even His relational nature can be satisfied without us. He did not create anything because He needed a power trip—He created it all because He wanted to, and He has given His Creation the gift of choosing what they want, too.

Why would God let only some people be saved? Because only some people choose Him, and He is okay with that. God is not afraid.

Why would God let something bad happen to someone good? Because we don’t all live in robotic bubbles, unaffected by the hurtful choices of those around us or before us, and He is okay with that. God is not afraid.

Why would God let evil exist in the first place? Because He invites us to know Him for who He is—and an important part of His character is His omnipotence. His power isn’t threatened by any opposing force, even one that costs Him dearly. God is not afraid.

And would we want Him any other way? When we acknowledge our own powerlessness, it becomes all the more soothing to know that we have a God who is both utterly powerful and utterly fearless. He doesn’t need to squelch every little threat with overbearing pseudo-control because He has real power, and He is entirely unthreatened.

All of our little controlling behaviors in light of the current world are normal and understandable. But they’re also unnecessary and can become destructive. If our God is unafraid, what have we to fear? What threat does a different viewpoint or a flexible schedule or even a novel virus hold? Our treasure is not in the opinions of others or in the achievements of this world or in life itself—it’s in Him. And He’s not afraid.

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Want to learn more about who God is?

The best place to go is to the Word. The Bible is the story of who God is, and who God is changes everything for you and me.

To that end, I have a couple resources that may help you get started in your journey through the Bible:

• The Bible180 Challenge is an opportunity to read through the Bible in 180 days, according to a thorough chronological schedule. You get a day of rest each week as well as an email offering accountability, support, and the very best study resources I’ve found to help you understand what you read. You can also use the Bible180 Challenge Journal to help you focus, stay on track, and build good study habits!

• Bedrock: A Foundation for Independent Biblical Study is a comprehensive textbook/workbook that will teach you how to dig DEEP into each of the seven types of Biblical literature. It’s a great next step for anyone who feels ready to surpass the typical milk of sermons and Bible studies, and desires to learn how to serve themselves on the meat. Find it on Amazon.

the Lord will provide

Each time I read through the Bible, a different theme sticks out to me. In the past, it’s been the fearsome nature of God or the lasting pattern of Sabbath rest. It’s as if each time I travel from one end of this amazing tapestry to the other, a different color stands out against the rest, begging me to pause and see it and let it seep into me.

(This is one of the major reasons that I’m an advocate of reading through the Bible at a fast pace, and often. Learn more here.)

We are just beginning Leviticus in Bible180 2020, and the color that I can’t stop seeing woven through every scene and story and law so far is the color of God’s wildly generous grace. The deeper I wade into the story of the Bible with each passing day, the more this particular hue splashes over my understanding of every verse. Stories that I have read and studied for a lifetime have become new since I noticed, as if for the first time, the color of grace running through them.

One such story is one that I, admittedly, used to hate: Genesis 22, which my Bible titles, “The Offering of Isaac.”

Every interaction I’ve had with this chapter, whether in Sunday school or in a sermon or on my own, has left me with something like this as a key takeaway: WATCH OUT BECAUSE GOD IS GOING TO ASK YOU TO DO SOMETHING TERRIBLE AND IF YOU DON’T DO IT YOU’RE NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN!

I can still feel the fear and guilt sweeping over me from all the times, as a kid, I thought about what I would do if God asked me to literally sacrifice something I loved so much. I remember lying awake at night in tears of anxiety, afraid He would demand my sister or my parents or my horse. This story painted God as an cruel and unpredictable tyrant who could turn my life upside down on a whim, and if I protested, I’d go to hell.

What my painfully black-and-white child’s mind could not discern through the chaotic din of fear was that this is not a story about my performance under God’s tyranny, but about God’s wildly generous grace in the face of my lack.

God asked Abraham to offer his only son whom he loved, Isaac, as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah. Abraham rose early in the morning, packed the supplies, took his son, and obeyed. And yet when Isaac asks, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham does not say, “You’re it.”

He says, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8).

I have spent my life marveling at Abraham’s faith and courage to obey when the implications of that obedience were so heavy. I thought, “This is what it means to be a Christian—to be willing to do whatever it takes to make God happy.” I was wrong.

Abraham’s faith and courage don’t come from within himself, from a steel-willed determination to do whatever it takes. His faith is not set in his ability to pass the test. His faith rests, instead, in the generosity of God to provide for Abraham what he himself does not have to give: a lamb for the burnt offering.

This is what it means to be a Christian: to trust that God has provided for Himself the sacrifice that His holiness requires, because even the very best we have to give is not adequate.

Abraham was willing to give his only son, whom he loved—but God provided for Himself a ram in a thicket instead, a foreshadowing of the day when He would offer His Son, His only Son, whom He loves, for us.

Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.”

Genesis 22:14

I have learned that following Jesus does sometimes test me beyond what I believe I can endure. But it is not a pass/fail examination to measure how well I perform and whether I deserve the name “Christian.” It is rather a testing by fire, as if of metal—it reveals what is in me, and purifies me of weaknesses. Christ took the ultimate pass/fail test when He generously drank the cup of death so that my standing before God need never fall into question again.

God is not an unpredictable tyrant, and that is exactly why Abraham could obey this unthinkable command. He already knew God’s promise to multiply Isaac into a great nation, so even as Abraham himself was being tested, his obedience counter-tested God to uphold His word. He knew God for who He is, and counted on Him to remain consistent with His character. It was never about Abraham’s special abilities or extra-strong faith or track record of obedience at all—it was always about who God is.

Wildly, generously gracious.