The Knowledge of Christ or His Character?

I have been smart for as long as I can remember. I learned to read at an early age. I did my sister's math homework in elementary school for fun. I could win every game of Clue before I hit the minimum age on the box. I have no doubt that God has gifted me with a strong intellect.

I have also always been known for my intelligence. Even when I am determined to "not act like a Bible School student," I inherently tout a vocabulary and knowledge level unfitting to my location. I have, in fact, requested a Greek New Testament during a study of Galatians and mentioned Kierkegaardian existentialism in a cozy conversation about contemporary culture. I am a nerd in the finest sense.

Knowledge is a wonderful thing. With my particular field of study, I am blessed with an opportunity to grow in knowledge that grows my faith and helps me understand the complications of my religious heritage. I am able to study seven perspectives on sanctification in their minute details and synthesize it for people who are not taking graduate coursework in theology. I am growing in the knowledge of Christ with every book that I read and class that I take, and for that I am immensely grateful.

Yet, for the past year, I have been convicted that my character is not on par with my intellect. I have my favorite sins, my character flaws that I settle into on a consistent basis. I treat others in ways that do not reflect Christ and I boast in unworthy things within my own life and about my friends. My character still needs conforming to the image of the Son.

In this past year, I have grown as a Christian. I am a more loving and humble person than I was a year ago, even if I still have a significant amount of work to do. I am more aware of my impatience and my ungratefulness. I am striving to be a more thoughtful and truthful person. I am seeking out a life that looks like Christ alongside of the knowledge that I am gaining.

Two weeks ago, I got into a lively conversation with a few of my classmates about complementarianism. One student, a female minister in the Seventh Day Adventist church, was unfamiliar with the term. Another student, from an ultra-conservative Bible school, explained, "Basically, complementarians think that women can't have any involvement in the church and should be submissive to their husbands." As a complementarian, this definition bothered me. It seemed tantamount to egalitarianism being described as "women who want to displace men from the church and who are defiant in the home." While you may find a complementarian or egalitarian who thinks that way, it is a gross error to describe the movement that way.  So, true to form, I spoke up. "I'm not sure that's a fair interpretation. I'm a complementarian, albeit, a soft one. I would say that women are able to serve the church in many ways. Spiritual gifts are given without regard to gender. However, women are unable to serve in the positions of pastors or elders. Likewise, women are to submit to their husbands but as one submits to an equal. They are not to be subservient."

In the context of an academic conversation, what I said was fully appropriate. I offered a definition and ascribed my beliefs alongside of it. However, explaining that women should not be pastors to a female pastor is not exactly wise. She gawked at what I said and made a few mocking comments, but we both ended the conversation as class started with no further conversation.

In the time until our next class, I thought about what I had done. I realized that what I said had personal weight and was not said delicately enough for the personal implications it entailed. I did not clarify that those feelings did not mean I have a disdain for women pastors or that I think what she is doing is sinful. I thought for a long time about how what I said was valid and how maybe it was the wrong context. I did not think about apologizing.

Yesterday, we returned to class after a long break for Thanksgiving. At the end of class, my friend who is a female pastor, approached me to apologize for the way she responded to my views. She apologized for the lack of willingness to listen and how defensive she acted.

She exhibited the character of Christ. Even in a situation in which she had been wronged more than she had wronged me, she apologized for what was ungodly of her.

I am grateful that she initiated. I was grateful for an opportunity to apologize for speaking without regards to her feelings or the implications of my words. I was glad to allow the tension to sit in the air and for us to both realize that our differences in theological opinion held far more meaning in practice than on the page. Thanks to her initiation, I was able to model Christ a bit more, to love with a character of a Christian.

For most of my life, I have led with my knowledge. Before you know my Christlikeness, you will know my knowledge of Christ. I long for things to be the other way. Rather than needing to backtrack over my words with a humble apology, I would like to lead with a spirit of humility in order to introduce my knowledge. I want to have the character of Christ be what I am known for, not my knowledge.

Lord, teach me how to live like you. Let my life points to you more than my words are able to. May you be glorified in my actions. Teach me how to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit so that I may truly conform to your image day by day.

Cashmere Security Blanket

My wardrobe is my security blanket.

Volunteering in the toddler nursery at church, I come across children who have an unusual attachment to a particular item. Charlie carried around his Thomas the Train t-shirt and is only comfortable talking to me if he is speaking on behalf of Thomas. Nathaniel sits on a blue mat holding a hard plastic bus and insists that he needs his bus if he cannot have his mom.

I have a closet.

I recently was offered a teaching position at a local undergraduate school. For various reasons, the decision of whether or not to accept this job was overwhelming. The changes it would force on my life for the next six months would be stressful, however, opportunities like these are not to be ignored. Instead of addressing these pros and cons, however, I talked about wardrobe.

"I don't know if I should take this job, Andy."
"Well, let's talk about it. What things are concerning you?" asked my sweet boyfriend who is especially good with handling with toddler-esque breakdowns.
"I don't have any teaching attire." I said, my words muffled by a blanket I had recently buried my head underneath.
This was met with a "you can't be serious" stare which I knew was focused on the blue fleece where my eyes should be. I pulled my head out of the blanket long enough to say, "But I don't!"

This is how all difficult decisions are made. When I do not know what to do, or how to handle a situation, I run through my dresses and shoes and conclude that they are simply inadequate. I think through my collection of cardigans and skirts and try to conclude what in my wardrobe fits the upcoming task.

Today, I attended the funeral of a fourteen year old boy in my church whose family frequently volunteers with me at church events. Their son died unexpectedly from a heart attack last week and I am at a loss for words on how to express my sympathy. I have no words, no actions which are adequate in the face of this tragedy. No tangible service I can render them in order to feel like I have sufficiently shown my condolences. I feel utterly incapable of caring for this aching family.

I spent the past 4 days debating my wardrobe. Are heels too sophisticated for a morning funeral? If I wore this black dress, would I have an appropriate sweater to accompany it? Is it wrong to wear purple tights to a funeral? Should I remove my neon nail polish to express my sadness?

It's not that these things matter. If my sweater didn't match and my tights were neon green, no one would think twice about my appearance. Nothing I wear or do not wear will change the focus of the day nor will solve the despair in the room. But it helps me. It helps me process the events without belaboring my emotions. It gives me something tangible to work on so that the overwhelming stress of reality might be mitigated momentarily.

Today I chose to wear a black sheath with a charcoal wool cardigan and a pair of nude flats. I wore waterproof mascara and put tissues in my purse. These are things I could prepare for and control. As I sat towards the back of the sanctuary, I could not have prepared to hear a fourteen year old boy crying as he told us all the things he would miss about his best friend. I could not have prepared for a mother's honest words as she told the whole church that she would give thanks for her son's life at Thanksgiving, but would still be angry at God for taking him away. I could not have controlled the tears which streamed down my face.

Choosing the right cardigan, like talking to your Thomas the Train t-shirt, does not make the scariness of the moment go away. Thomas can't change the fact that Mom and Dad have left you with strangers in the church basement. Likewise, my cardigan can't take away the sorrow that filled the church this morning, but it did make it a little easier to walk in the door. It made it a little easier to look at a picture of a handsome 14 year old resting on top of his casket and it made it a little easier to face the difficult reality that is death.

Security blankets don't change the situation at hand, but they do give you an opportunity to step back from it. So as long as there are difficult choices and painful days, I will continue running through every item of clothing in my closet in hopes of having some answer on days swarmed with unanswerable questions.

Insufficiently Orientated

School Orientation: noun, 1) an introduction, as to guide one in adjusting to new surroundings, activities and people. 2) a dreaded period of time which all new students must undergo and which will cause said students to find every opportunity to skip events which do not take attendance.

I am starting graduate school tomorrow. In order to help me orientate my life in this new stage, Trinity invited me to a two-day event entitled "New Student Orientation." Over the course of these 16 hours, I imbibed numerous cups of free coffee, consumed rainbow sprinkle-encrusted donut and listened to many jokes interspersed between a modified reading of the student handbook. I laughed, I met new people, I learned a little.

I also thought a lot. I thought about my peers -- who they were, where they were going, what they hoped for. I thought about myself -- who I was, where I was going, what I hoped for. I thought about orientation. I thought about adjustment.

You see, all school orientation is essentially the same. There are mandatory seminars that contain essential information that many students will deem unnecessary for their own lives, even if it is immensely important for them. There are seas of coffee, in order to supress the urge to fall asleep while the faculty is talking. There are jokes, which serve the same purpose. There are name tags which offer others the most vital truths about you: Name, Major.

I am grateful for orientation. I see its intrinsic good in directing me to see what the ethos of a school is and to finding my way around campus. I appreciate the low-stress atmosphere to meet future friends and peers, the chance to start having more conversations about Kierkegaard than Chronicles of Narnia. Yet, at the end of the day, I wonder if it might be ineptly named.

Orientated: adj. to be adjusted with relation to surroundings, circumstances, facts, etc.

How are we to be orientated to seminary? How can 16 hours adjust us to the thousands of pages of theology we will read? How can it adjust us to the yearning of our hearts for God who will sometimes feel unbearably close and yet at times feel so distant as to be unreal? How can 16 hours prepare us to encounter God in new ways with new people and new thoughts in a new place? How can it know the hearts of those of us in the room? How can it speak to the particular experiences each one of us will have?

I was asked today if I had been sufficiently orientated. Besides from the expected -- knowing where my classrooms are, meeting my advisor, etc, I could not say yes. This is no fault of Trinity, in fact, they did everything they could to make me feel loved and prepared and welcomed. However, the task they set in front of them, to orient students to seminary, was doomed from the start.

I am starting to study the book of Jeremiah. I've only gotten as far as chapter 2 (which I warn you, is not a good stopping point), but within those chapters, God is, more or less, orientating Jeremiah. God calls out to him "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I  consecrated you I appointed you a prophet to the nations... to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak... See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant...They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you to deliver you" (Jer 1:5, 7, 10, 19). That's it. That is about as much orientation as Jeremiah receives before going and telling his people that God is going to allow them to be conquered and that God has seen their unfaithfulness -- things which he does not say gently.

What's my point? Jeremiah is not given a lay of the land. He's not given friends. He's not introduced to his peers. He is told three things:
 1) God had called him before he even knew of God. He was given a mission which was not his to reject.
2) He was told, in blunt terms, what lay ahead. It was not handed to him with rice krispie treats and coffee, but bluntly warned that he was to do the will of God to "pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow." Jeremiah was told how hard it would be, even though those words would never prepare him for the task he had.
3) He was given confidence that even when all seemed to go wrong, God was there for him and would protect him.

Jeremiah's orientation was not nearly as delicious or fun as my own but it was sufficient. May God choose to orient me to what lies ahead both in school, in ministry and in life so that I may know that he has called me, that he knows my path and that he will be my guide.

Blood, Wine and Tears

If you've gotten to know me over the past few years, you have surely learned one thing about me: I cry. A lot.

I cry whenever someone dies in an episode of Bones or when a couple breaks up on How I Met Your Mother (even though I know they will be married by the next season). I cry when Madeleine L'Engle describes holding her grandchild. I cry when I watch the news. I even cried when I read this story on bizarre Olympic happenings in Runner's World (Strange But True - Runner's World).

Morale of the story: I am emotional.

Sometimes, my tears seem wasted, as they appear for fictitious events or common moments. There are times when they give away the feelings I wished no one knew I experienced. Yet, sometimes, my tears are rightly placed and give expression to feelings I cannot put into words.

This morning, I served communion at my church. Truth be told, the experience is kind of strange. I always find, that I stumble over the words after my rapid-fire repetition of them. I told someone that the cup was "the body of God broken for you" and worried that I had made some grave theological error and rested in the knowledge that my words do not void the truth behind the elements. I try to make eye contact with each member and tell them the truth of the sacrament, but struggle with the proper expression. Communion is a celebration, so I smile. Yet, communion is the remembrance of the Cross, the cost of sin, and so my eyes give away my internal confusion.

Sometimes, I wonder if anyone else thinks the same things. I struggle with the physicality of communion each time I partake of it. Do I take the cup before or after the words are spoken over it? Do I respond? Should I make eye contact? Do I smile? This is just a short excursion into my over-active mind.

Serving communion this morning, however, was a particularly special opportunity. My church recently taught a communicants class and had three children take membership vows and declare their faith in Christ. As a symbol of their faith, they were invited to join at the table and, for the first time, eat the bread and drink the cup that reminds us of Christ's death until he returns again. I had the honor to watch two of them receive this means of grace.

You see, these young siblings came to the front of the church with their father. After the blessing was said, he gave his children an additional explanation and guided them through receiving the elements. I saw their faces and the mix of emotions it conveyed. I saw the nervousness in the wrinkles at their eyes, their joy by the slight of their lips and the curiosity in the fullness of their eyes. I saw on their face a simpler, purer form of my own mixed feelings.

Watching these children take their first communion reminded me of why communion is such a gift to the church. I saw in them the fullness of its meaning both in its tragedy and its joy and was consumed with emotion. In them lives the same Spirit that dwells within me. Together, we have the same hope for the salvation of ourselves and the world around us. Their faith is congruent to my own and glistens in the innocence of childhood. Watching them take communion reminded me that the flurry of emotions I feel when I eat and drink in remembrance is not misplaced but a realization of the gospel.

So, as they took their cups and headed back to their pew, I stood at the front of the church proclaiming, "The blood of Christ shed for you," to each congregant with tears welling in my eyes and a smile stuck on my lips, realizing that not all my tears are misplaced.

 I'm re-teaching myself Greek. At first, it was a fun refresher that made me feel confident in my abilities and marvel at how much I had retained from my classes two years ago.
Then I hit chapter 10 and realized I knew less than I thought. Chapters seemed denser. The workbook, more laborious. I started putting off translation working, realizing that it was time-consuming and painful. I'd find myself flipping through the index for para for the 100th time. I'd grow frustrated with the paradigms. Annoyed with words like ora, which seemingly has fifteen root variations.

Yet, for all the agony I go through, there are the pieces I translate that remind me why I do this. It was the last piece to translate before I could close the book and call it a day. Sentence 10 of Chapter 22. 'Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, You are not seeking me because you saw miracles, but because you ate from the bread and you were satisfied."

And you were satisfied. I let that part of the sentence reverberate in my head, savoring that sentence. I looked the passage up in my handy dandy pocket size ESV to verify that I translated it correctly and it read, "Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves."

Jesus says this to crowds the day after he had fed the five thousand. In my head, the plot was always more like dinner and a movie. Jesus divvies out some bread, everyone chows down while he talks from the mountaintop about being the bread of life and they listen, but they focus more on their eating than his words because they are uncontrollably hungry.

In reality, the crowds had eaten and filled their bellies. As my sister retold this biblical story in one of her own short stories:
 We were many and we were hungry but he gave us the five loaves and two fishes that he had turned into many and the many of us uttered many prayers of thanksgiving for the many bellies no longer rumbling and aching and
squealing with hunger.  We gave thanks especially for our own quieted bellies.  We stretched out in the grass on our backs, sunning our full bellies.

As the story goes, the people relax with their full bellies, enjoying the bread that is satisfying their hunger. But, when their stomaches start to growl again, they find Jesus again, to make the rumblings go away so they may not be consumed with their hunger. 

I wonder how often I do the same thing. I wonder how often I go to God because something is wrong and he has proven faithful in it in the past. I wonder how many times I've missed him in the quest for his gifts. 


I am too easily satisfied. May I learn to seek the one who eternally satisfies instead of laboring for that which passes by.

Website Launch

I hate to do this to y'all when its been MONTHS since I blogged, but this is a photo that needs a URL for a website I'm launching.

Enjoy the photo.