re: the individual

When I think of what I’ve been taught in what it means to “share faith,” one of the passages that quickly comes to mind is Romans 10:14-17. If you’re not familiar with it, you can click on the link or you can read. Paul is basically setting up the importance of preaching the word. If one does not hear of Christ, then logically, one cannot believe in Christ.

Far be it from me to argue against the scripture.
What I do argue against, however, is the form in which many view “sharing faith.”

The change in me has been brewing for years. Part of it is the struggle against feeling as if inaction is wrong. Part of it is the struggle against feeling as if the action in its processes and intentions are wrong.

The form in which I have learned to “share faith” is such that it boils everything down to a particular problem that all of man kind is struggling with – namely, death and hell. So then, we write out a few verses proving that man indeed does deserve hell and draw a bridge showing the way out.
What has really jettisoned me out of that presupposition (that all men fear hell and therefore want to seek Jesus) is reading about Christ’s life through the book of Mark. I have been given the opportunity to teach with 4 other guys in our “Young Couples Community,” this summer (which may be another blog all in itself) and I just finished my last week of teach. We have been skirting through the book of Mark. What Mark tends to communicate about Jesus is that what Jesus did to and for people was never the same.

You might call that active listening, in a sorts.

Christ met individual needs. He saw that different people had different problems and would help those people in such a way as to communicate, “you are special, and you are different.”
What has really gnawed on me, then, is that the form by which I have shared my faith so often in the past does not communicate that. There are times when it may well affect another person. By and large, however, people don’t worry much about hell (I do, but many don’t).

People are afraid of being alone.
People are afraid of being unsuccessful.
People are afraid of global warming.

Most people fear something. Most people’s fears aren’t the same. That being the case, Jesus would never talk to me as if I were you – as if you and I had the same question.

The times that I have been able to share Christ, lately, have sort of come out of nowhere. One such occasion was talking to a woman I worked with at a hotel. One of her best friends had an abortion, and she said that Christians that she knew hated her friend for it. The brief of it is that she asked me whether or not I thought the Christians’ hatred was right and whether or not her friend’s actions were wrong.

How does Christ answer to that?
He meets the specific need with compassion and understanding.

How did Gene answer to that?
I said that both of them are wrong and I took some time to explain how Jesus is the friend of sinners.

Thank God that He is.

Of note...

If you haven't noticed that there is a new header on the page, then someone must be reading this to you because you are obviously blind. Laura looked over at me tonight and said "Let's make a header for your blog!"

A little information: the city you see in the back ground is Chicago, one of the most architecturally rich cities of our nation. The figure to the side should be familiar to those of you who live in my fair city. Why yes, it is the god of the forge.

I promise that there will be another adventure posted soon. For now, however, please enjoy the view.

He wasn't much of a runner...

My father wasn’t much of a runner. After a bit of time, he wasn’t much of a walker either. I remember going to my sister’s softball practice in Huntsville. You probably didn’t know my father, but he loved to play games. At my sister’s softball practice, we played a game that I assume he had made up. We would take out a bat, a ball, and a glove. The idea is that he would hit the ball with the bat and I would catch it or run after it. Then, as I’m running towards him, he would drop the bat. As soon as the bat would hit the ground, I would have to stop. At that point, I would roll the ball to see if I could hit the bat with the ball. Almost invariably, I would miss the bat altogether. But, on the rare occasions I did hit the bat, we would switch. Almost invariably, he would hit the bat.

I really don’t think too often about my dad. I dream about him (as evidenced) but don’t really think about him. Over the years, we had some pretty hard conversations. I found out later (from my mother) that a few of the conversations we had while I was in college actually made him cry.

He was a man who tried to seem so hard on the outside. He had a penetrating stare. He had a smile that could melt your heart and a grip that could crush your hand. He seemed so tired so often.

He never knew, but I learned a lot about how to love my wife from him – whether good or bad, I learned. He taught me a lot about what it means to be a man. He taught me a lot about a lot of things.

My hope was that Christ would be communicated to him through the way my wife and I interact and through the way we would interact with our [future] children. I think that it was always hard for him [on so many different levels] to hear of Christ from his son. He had seen my struggles. He was there to see how much of a hypocrite I was while growing up. He saw my vanity, my arrogance, and my inconsistencies.

Was I his stumbling block?
Maybe not.

Part of what scared him was how Christ was changing my life. I know because we talked about it. Part of what scared him was how much of a different man I had become than what he had expected. Part of what [I think] scared him was that he took me seriously. Sometimes I wonder if part of what made him proud was that I wasn’t going to grow up to be like him in so many areas of life and yet so much like him in the areas that mattered.

I miss him.