Divorce: Helping a brother through that valley

Only a perfect sacrifice was allowed to be brought to the Lord. Praise the Lord that He came and stood in my place, because I could not even have made an acceptable offering of myself, much less serve Him in holiness. There are things about Kevin Knox that are broken, and those things will never be set right on this side of Jordan. I thank the Father, the Son and the Spirit that He has done everything necessary to save me, a cripple, and am amazed beyond measure - almost beyond belief - that He did it out of burning love and not just out of divine self-obligation.

The two biggest dreams of my life were to be married, and to work in the kingdom of God. The two biggest mistakes I ever made in my life were marrying the wrong woman and joining the wrong church. They both bore their deadly fruit starting on the same day in 1997. I made both of those mistakes because of unique faults deeply engrained in my character. At the time that I chose my wife and my church, I was thrilled because the things that led me to choose them were unique in me, and very "deep." In the naked light of hindsight, the fact that those deeply rooted things were character flaws is clear.

I am solely responsible for my divorce.

God forgive me, I am not ashamed of my conduct over the last nine years, as this thing began brewing and eventually fermented into the bitter cup that I am now drinking. There are still a few dregs left, and may the Lord grant me grace to drink them with an attitude that befits a man who both is redeemed by Christ, and who chose his poison.

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In my first post, I tried to talk about marriages in general, and their ends. That will not be true here. One thing you learn in divorce is how unique everyone's story is. If you are reading this, and you have been through a divorce, please forgive me if I say something as fact that was absolutely not true in your case. Please correct me, too. I think the odds are good that I will talk about divorce again in my life, and I do not want to hurt its victims with loose phrases, so don't let me get away with them.

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It was in year 10 of our 17 that my wife announced that she was following a new-age guru. Some day I might tell the story of what was going on while she made that announcement, but let's pretend it doesn't matter. I was floored. I confronted her, and forbade her to do this. I was the head of the house, and this was my responsibility to God and to her. Don't get me wrong. I was as kind and understanding as I could be, but I was firm. Right was right, and wrong was wrong, and this guru was wrong. I would not allow this thing in my home.

That was a mistake.

I exercised headship without leadership. Leadership understands that people do things for reasons, and tries to get to those reasons. Extract the root, and the fruit dies too. Misapplied headship can issue orders without understanding. It doesn't have to, but it often does. The things it says are factual, without being edifying.

She even obeyed me, but she bore the damage.

I tell about this day, because that was the day my confusion began. Before that day, I was riding the wave - I had it all. After that day, the wave was trying to throw me under its massive force. Before that day, I was surfing in the sun. After that day, I was trapped on a narrow surfboard, balancing for my life over a million tons of angry water driven by the force of the deep sea's struggle with a distant moon. Nothing had really changed, but suddenly it was all beyond me.

I am something of a coward. That day, I saw the grapes of bitter consequence being squeezed into the cup, and even that the cup was almost full. I knew evil was coming, but I did not know which evil it would be, how I could react, what I could prevent, what I could endure. And ignorance was not blissful.

Along the way to that day in 1997, my opinionated personality had brought a lot of fire down from the church onto my family. My wife was as opinionated as I, but she has vastly more social graces. She would have been fine, but the waves I stirred up kept washing over her. There were many times that she felt I left her hanging out there, unprotected and alone, amongst the wolves of the church. Her resentment toward me was growing.

Over the next two years, My wife and I made discoveries about our church that made it impossible for us to remain. The leader was dishonest, and the church was all about this leader. It took two more years for me to finally accept that this dream was shattered. Those two years took far too long for my wife. She had believed the church to be empty off and on all along, so my slowness to give up on it hurt her. In Jan 1999, we formally pulled out.

In March 1999 we also learned that the church had conspired to cover up a sin against our family that happened years earlier. Any reasonable person can see how deeply my wife was cut that I had brought her into a place that would hurt her so badly, for so long, and that I would still be so hesitant to leave.

[Brother, if you are reading this, and your wife is being hurt by a church, either fight or leave.]

Leaving that church castrated the loftiest dream and goal of my life. Truly, everything I had lived for since I was 17 (1981) was gone. Forever. I could see that everything I had lived for was a lie. It was not just that church that was a lie, but my very dreams were lies. It was the deep wrongness of my dreams that had drawn me to that church in the first place. I had thrown everything away to live a dream that was now exposed as a nightmare.

I was not a lot of fun to live with as I came to grips with these things.

I was officially in the valley, and I had neither map nor compass.

And my wife was done obeying my commands about new-age gurus. She knew that I had put her through 12 years of hell, and she needed something helpful and living. She was pleased to continue with me, and I was pleased to have her, but we were no longer yoked together. We could not be.

We continued in remarkable agreement on politics, child rearing, food, and the hundred other little things that make up daily life. We drifted on values, though. I remained puritanical, while she relaxed. She had conformed to my standards to a large degree over the years. That eroded.

She felt herself to be living with a man who had sacrificed her to a twisted little church, and who was bound up in a repressive morality. She also was living with a man who would not share her joys and excitement as she learned new things every day about what spirituality really was, and how life was meant to be lived.

Beyond all that, I had my fair share of the mortal flaws of any fallen man. She began to take each of them very personally. One day I cooked a gravy. I thought it was fine. Humans would consider it horrible, but I can be pretty flexible on foods. When I served it to her, she exploded. I had not cooked a bad gravy. I had cooked a bad gravy at her.

My point is that she had grievances that were only growing worse. Her discomfort in her own home was growing, and neither of us had any clue where to find relief. All the old truisms were true. We looked happy. Heck. A lot of the time, we were happy. We just weren't yoked together.

We were baffled. We did a lot of fun things together still, but this was the only meaningful thing left between us. We didn't talk about it often. There was not much to be said.

I thought about it every day, pretty much all day. I waited and I prayed. But I offered no leadership. I didn't know how. I got promoted to my first position of leadership just a few months before she left. I have learned things from that position that might have made me able to hold that marriage together, but at the time I was clueless.

Every day, for seven years, my subconscious was fully occupied with the shattering of those two dreams. And my thinking was wholly unprofitable. Nothing I thought contributed anything toward a solution. I imagine it is like being in prison with a sentence of unknown duration. Anything you do will die there in that prison with you. You are not even sure whether there will ever be a reason to draw breath again, but you keep breathing anyway. I kept thinking, hoping, and and praying.

I also have to say that I still enjoyed being married to her during these seven years. We laughed, enjoyed movies, enjoyed lots of little things, and enjoyed each other. The pain in our hearts began to leak out into our lives, but we both disciplined ourselves to keep the unpleasantness to a minimum. We were both very loving, even past the last day. It was easy to enjoy each other.

Many marriages don't die like this. I thank the Lord for this grace given to us. I don't know how I could have survived what many tender people have to survive as their marriage dies. May the Lord have mercy on those whose spouses are not so kind.

I never thought about divorce. It was simply not an option that crossed my mind. I would be released from my prison when one of us died, or when I turned away from the Lord, or when she turned toward Him. (One of those was not an option. :-)

Not thinking about divorce did not help in any way.

[Saint, if divorce might be in your future, think about it. Only a clear eye and a clear mind with wise counsel can hope to heal that which is broken.]

I knew she was thinking about leaving before she did. I brought it up one idyllic day we spent together, and she really did not know it was on her mind. She denied it. That's OK. We had both been denying for a long, long time. What else could she do?

A couple months later, there was a guy from work. She had lived honorably with me, and not violated our covenant, but now it was time for her to move on. She moved from my bed to his, and it was over. Upon my request, we jointly filed for dissolution.

I won't go into "how I took it." If a friend had called me every waking hour of every day to check up on me, and been there for every meal, and for the going to bed alone, and the waking up alone, I would still have gone through it alone. Everyone who goes through a divorce goes through it alone. That's the nature of the beast.

At the time, I was not in a church. I fear that this was a mercy. I don't know that I could have survived being ignored by the people of God. I think it was easier to go through it without hoping for help from a church. I am admittedly a little skittish about the body's gifts in the area of love.

My bosses at work were both blessings to me, and a couple friends from NorCal were there for me whenever I called. In all these nine years, the Lord has been faithful, and I trust that He always will be. Still, I find that it really is harder to believe that the Lord is faithful after seeing my wife walk away. Not because He could have stopped it and didn't, but because lovers leave. I have given Him plenty of reason to leave me, much more than I gave my wife.

[The worst thing you can tell a divorcing person is that the Lord rejects divorce. When He rejects divorce, he rejects them, and they cannot bear that burden right then. It is too much. The Lord hates divorce, but not as a sin - as a tragedy befalling His beloved child. Please, please don't ever turn the Lord against a saint in their mind by your words.]

If divorce comes, write off two years of your life. I was told this by a counselor, and she was right. It takes at least two years to find your feet again. Life becomes a roller coaster of desparate lows and subterranean lows. Their are fleeting moments of laughter, but there is too much confusion for there to be real joy.

[To all you who know how to quote, "the joy of the Lord is my strength", "This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice" and "whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are pure, blah, blah, blah, think on these things," I quote you this:
Prov 25:20
Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.
I did not say this to your face, but I resented those words. They burned like fire. There were two people who endured enough with me to earn the right to encourage me like that, and they didn't have to. They stayed with me until I could see the joy for myself. May the Lord spare you from being given your medicine when your day comes.

Weep with those who weep.]

I have not mentioned the word "disdain" in all this. That is no accident.

Know that disdain was there. May the Lord forgive me that disdain which I poured upon her, and her that which she poured upon me. The Lord will judge which of us is victim, I cannot.

Yes, she left me for another man, so the good book says that I am scot-free. She might say that divorce was her release from 17 years of disdain from me. She might say that far from scot-free, I am the party who brought this all down on her head. I brought her into a marriage promising safety, and instead look what happened to her. May the Lord have mercy on us both. Any debt she owes me is close enough to cancelled by that which I owe her, and I have been forgiven vastly more by my Father than I could ever forgive her. I cannot justify myself. I can only run to the sacrifice of Christ, and wrap myself in the Lambskin.

As I wrote yesterday about "victims" and "perpetrators" I was overwhelmingly aware that only in the rarest case does one party in a divorce not consider himself or herself the victim. The best divorces have two victims in each other's eyes. My ex and I both consider the other to be a victim of this divorce as much as ourselves. It has helped. It has helped the children. (I am not going to talk about children and divorce here, but I can recommend a book.)

[This should be obvious, but I will say it. Don't try to help a victim of divorce by demonizing the partner. Present the facts, by all means, and let them comfort the victim, but insulting the ex does not help.]

I did not equivocate about victims and perpetrators yesterday, because I know that Christ does judge in these cases. Christ does know and believe that there was a perpetrator in our marriage, and a victim or two. He judges truly, and by His death and providence He offers mercy to us.

It is in His judgement that I will find my course laid out before me.

Do you know where I am going yet?

I'll give you a hint.

1 Cor 6
1 If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord's people? 2 Or do you not know that the Lord's people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!

Will I remarry?

If I were a member of a church that could judge angels and the world, I might know the answer to that question. I hope I would at least know whether a remarriage would be an offense before God. Am I free in my case to consider remarriage or not? The scripture says it is legal for some, and not for others.

If the church cannot judge in this matter with the mercy and wisdom of Christ on earth, it is not worthy of the name "church." A divorce is a dispute that we take before the ungodly for judgement, and try to keep out of the sanctuary as much as possible.

May the Lord spare every divorcing couple from a church that judges without mercy or without wisdom.

I will return to this matter in post #3.

You should give a divorcing/divorced saint the truth. Was that saint a victim? Pronounce blessing and freedom upon him or her. Was that saint a perpetrator? Confront him or her, and command him or her to make right reparations. Lift the cloud of doubt, and let the truth set the captive free.

There were some saints who did this for me. They did not know my wife, so it was hard for me to rest in their judgement, but it helped. I am not confident enough to publish their thoughts here, though.

In the end, the cup of consequences must be drained.

So how can you help a brother?

You cannot save a him from reliving every moment and every decision that brought him to divorce. You cannot save him from the awful loneliness that will be his lot. He earned it, and it is his to experience.

• You can assure him that his emotions are understandable - appropriate if you will - by weeping with him (figuratively is fine :-).
• You can assure him that His Lord loves Him the same today and tomorrow as He did the day He marked him off in Christ. God knew and paid for your brother's sins because He loved him, even though He knew that he would make these mistakes, and that this day would come. God still loves him, and always will. God does not retreat or abandon His children - ever. Not for anything. Not for divorce. Not even for failing to handle a divorce well. God doesn't just still love your brother, He is still "in love" with your brother, completely, and committedly.
• You can tell your brother the truth, and what the truth means. He made mistakes, but nothing to deserve this. Or he has committed a grave injustice against a girl who did not deserve it, and he needs to make it right.

A few of these thoughts have lived in a vacuum, and this is the first time they are seeing the light of day. As such, I know they need refinement. I hope they are profitable to you anyway.

Divorce: What Does God Allow?

This post is not a part of the leadership series, but I can hardly talk about preventing divorce without talking about surviving it. I arguably know diddly about the former, and am so far still doing the latter.

There are several things to talk about, and I will do two of them in this one post. The first is my position on the scriptural, legal rules around divorce. The second is how to live through it. The third is how the church should react to divorce.

Update: I have over 2000 words on the scriptural argument around divorce alone, so it looks like this post will only cover the first point.

Is Divorce Legal Before God?

Divorce is not a sin. It just isn't.

Of the divorces I personally witnessed, in every case one person was sinning by causing the divorce, and by not deciding to mortify his/her disdain for the spouse. I have seen cases where both spouses were equally wrong, and cases in which one spouse truly was almost innocent. I have seen cases where the disdaining spouse filed, and cases where the disdained spouse filed.

I always default to respect for the disdained spouse who files. We are such chameleons that it is hard to know who is right and who is lying, but for an abused spouse to file can be the hardest, and the rightest decision they will make in their whole lives.

I know of marriages where staying would have been an affront to God. In those cases, filing might even be a qualification for leadership, not a disqualification.

Once sin has broken the marriage, there is no sin in legally leaving it. There's room for debate about what makes a marriage broken or merely damaged, but Jesus declared that there are times when the marriage is broken.

I have personally known very few Christian remarriages, so my opinions on remarriage are weaker. Jesus made room for remarriage, and I believe that He did so because it is a good thing. The old testament says that remarrying the spouse you divorced after that spouse has been with another mate is an abomination. As such, I tend to believe that remarrying the spouse who divorced you is usually a bad, bad idea.

I am against reconciliation after either spouse has moved on, and will actively counsel against it for 3 reasons. In reverse order of priority: 1) The departing spouse needs to know that there is no road back while they are making their decision. It may give them pause. 2) The scripture says so. 3) The abandoned spouse needs to be able to close that door, paint it over, and know that they are safe. They will never again have to wrestle in that particular pit of alligators. That man or woman is gone, and will never be allowed to get close enough to hurt them that way again. Never.

I will also note that I cannot think of a divorce that I witnessed in which one or both of the spouses did not leave the Lord. That is a hugely significant fact in my mind.

OK. That's my opinion, and I know it's a minority view. For the record, my views on this subject have not substantially changed in over 20 years. My divorce has refined them a little, but not reversed them on any point. Let me lay out the scriptures that took me here.

Matt 5
31 "It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

Obviously, this is the biggie.

Before we can look at what these two verses mean, though, I think it is important to pull in some of the context quotes that surround it.

28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.
30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.
34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all:

Estimate the number of times you have heard someone quote the sermon on the mount with regard to divorce, and proclaim with certainty that no one should ever divorce, and even more certainly never remarry. Now, count the number of times you have heard someone recommend gouging out an eye or whacking off a hand. Is there any correspondence?

What can we learn from this?

Someone is slanting this message for some reason.

The verse plainly says that divorce in the case of adultery is legal, and that remarriage is as well. Jesus was tightening the screws on the Pharisees because they thought marriage was a trap from which they needed occasional release. I call a Pharisee to the stand:

Matt 19
1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. 2 Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"
4 "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' [a] 5 and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' [b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
7 "Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"
8 Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery."
10 The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry."
11 Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others have been made eunuchs; and others have renounced marriage [c] because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

What God has put together let no man separate, but when it is separated it is not justice, mercy, or wisdom to require a victimized spouse to continue to be victimized. Nor is it just, merciful or wise to require a divorced victim to spend their remaining years alone. God does not treat His children like this.

Sexual immorality tears asunder that which God has joined. I grow frustrated with blatherings about not divorcing for "a one-night stand." I have never seen a divorce over a one-night stand. Divorce is always about disdain, and disdain either flaunts its conquests outside of marriage or protests its disappointments within the marriage. No happy couple could be torn apart by a one-night stand, so why torture the victim of a divorce by questioning whether or not they have been hurt enough to warrant giving up on the marriage? Why do that? They are having a hard enough time wrapping their mind around the fact their life is about to be shredded and used to line a kitty-litter box. Accept that this is not happening because they got bored.

Notice verse 10. The Pharisees were driving this discussion, but when the question gets really touchy, it's Jesus' own disciples who are asking it!

The disciples are appalled that Jesus might ask them to go through their whole lives with just one woman. They would rather be lonely all their lives than risk dying trapped in a marriage to a woman grown inconvenient. This custom of the Pharisees had taken over even the decent men of the day.

So Jesus stands against this type and custom of divorce. He speaks the simple truth. Divorce, excepting for adultery, is a cause of adultery. Divorce in the case of adultery is completely permitted, as is remarriage. The parallel passage in Mark does not mention the exception for adultery. There are those who put great stock in this ommision, but for the life of me I cannot understand why. Whatever. The single sentence quote in Luke from this whole discussion also omits the exception, but Luke omitted 9 other verses of this discussion too. Again, this ommision does not daunt me.

I enjoy the answer of Jesus to His disciples in verse 11. They suggest that they would be happier to live single if they cannot divorce for trivialities. He accepts their magnanimous/sulking offer, and proceeds to tell them how to fulfill their lofty goals. That is good for a healthy chuckle!

1 Cor 7
10 To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. 11 But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.

This verse also omits the statement allowing divorce in the case of adultery. Now I begin to sound like a broken record if I say that I don't care whether he forgot it. So, I will look at the verses that Paul references. Remember that he says he is quoting the Lord with this command.

Duet 24
1 If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, 2 and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, 3 and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, 4 then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

First, and most obvious, God allows divorce. Paul is quoting God's law, but it must be understood in the context of God's law. What God has put together, don't tear asunder, but if it must be torn there is a legal way to do so.

Second, the divorced woman is allowed to marry again, even though she was divorced for a trivial cause (not adultery.) You will note that she is described as, "defiled." It is the fact that she married again without the cause of adultery that makes her defiled, not simply the act of remarrying. Jesus explained this in Matt.

Finally,

Jer 3
8 I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries.

God gave divorce to us, because He knew that sometimes it's the only answer. He divorces Israel. It was not His preference, but when she tore asunder that which God had joined, He did not sulk forever. God closed the door, and moved on. He divorced her, and opened the way to marry another, a spotless, bride.

The context of Jer 3 is God calling Israel back to reconcile their shattered marriage. That chapter and the passage from 1 Cor 7 both seem to say that I am wrong to resist marital reconciliation. Like I said, I am not as strongly convinced on this subject as I am on divorce, but my opinion is entirely one way.

I offer 2 answers to that objection.
To Jer 3) This is really no argument. God's call to reconcile with Israel failed. Israel would not return to Him, so I take Jer. 3 as proof that I am right. Reconciliation does not work.
To 1 Cor 7) In almost every case of divorce I have ever seen, the departing spouse left the Lord. I heartily believe this is because they never knew Him. Therefore to reconcile with such a spouse is remarrying Christ to Belial. It is better to live alone than to go through that, and better to have bamboo shoots under your nails than to go through it a second time. So, again I am convinced that trying to reconcile after either party has "moved on" is not a good idea.

In the case that a departing spouse were to return whole-heartedly to Christ, I could possibly entertain the thought of not totally opposing the reconciliation. That spouse would have an uphill struggle winning my recommendation, though. I would set my face against him and test him over and again. Forgive him? Sure. Trust him? Let him earn my trust, and it won't be easy. The first clue that he is merely hoping to return to a safe bed, rather than to the Lord, and he's gone.

I probably need to balance some of my pro-divorce rhetoric now. I really am not in favor of it.

Malachi 2
10 Do we not all have one Father [b]? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another? ... 14 You ask, "Why?" It is because the LORD is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
15 Has not the LORD made the two of you one? You belong to him in body and spirit. And why has he made you one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. [d] So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.
16 "I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel, "and I hate it when people clothe themselves with injustice," says the LORD Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

It is a sin to the wife or husband who is unfaithful. It is God Who is watching, and God Who hates divorce. Such unfaithfulness will not go unpunished.

But must we punish the victims? When we tell them they should live the rest of their years alone, do we do the kind of justice God will commend?

I don't think so.

So, I allow divorce, favor remarriage, and discourage reconciliation after either party has lived with another mate.

May the Lord cover me if I am wrong.

The next post will be a little more personal, and will try to describe the confusion that is a real divorce.

Leadership: The Opposite of Denial

Divorce is a strategy employed by mere mortals to find happiness when their current situation seems hopeless.

I say that because it is important to know that divorce is not an irresistible natural disaster. In California (Northern CA, thank you very much) we always knew that an earthquake might be just around the corner. In Louisiana they knew that a hurricane might some day strike. What did we do about it? What could we do about it? When it comes, it comes, so we just live in denial and wish for the evil to stay away. We might even pray ineffectually about it. Everyone had a couple extra gallons of water on hand, but there was nothing to be done except leave, and we wouldn't.

If divorce is a random tragedy that sweeps in on the unsuspecting like a force of nature, with no warning and no hope, then there is nothing to be done. Most people just pray ineffectually, try to act happy, and hope it "misses them."

This is a horrible strategy for a couple, but it also seems to be the church's.

The church teaches us that God will preserve the marriages of His children when they have faith in Him and in His plan. That is to say that they teach the men to be the heads of the family, and then as long as the women submit rightly there can be no divorce. They back this primary tactic up by teaching that divorce is an offense against God so heinous that He will lay aside both parties for life unless they reconcile again. They are probably still saved, but the Lord cannot use such broken vessels.

[Here is where I pretend that you are questioning my observations.]

When was the last time the average American church told its wives to submit? When was the last time the average American church taught the congregation how to know whether their marriage is having normal problems, or is headed for divorce? In my experience, the answers to those questions are, "2 weeks ago" and "never." Your mileage may vary, but if so I doubt it varies by much.

Do you want to know how to tell if your marriage is headed for divorce?

I am a diesel mechanic and programmer, not a marriage expert, so give this all the weight it deserves, but it is pretty easy. The emotion you are looking for is disdain. When one spouse holds the other in disdain, the marriage is dead and just waiting for someone to pull the plug. Anger, rage, jealousy, adultery, addiction, abuse, passive aggression, isolation; all symptoms - all mere contributing factors - flesh wounds, if you will. The fatal blow is disdain.

I don't have this just on my own wisdom. In Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell relates the research of a social scientist around marriage. He taught his graduate students to recognize hundreds of human emotions captured in still photographs, then had them analyze video tapes of 10 minute interactions between couples who were trying to save their marriages. They looked at thousands of frames, one by one, and categorized all the emotions each spouse expressed for even the briefest of moments.

They found that of all the emotions that were expressed in those sessions, one was an almost perfect predictor of divorce. When one spouse showed disdain for the other, even for hundredths of a second at a time, the marriage was likely to end in divorce. As I listened to this story, it described my situation to a Tee. Over the last two years, I have only heard confirmation for that scientist's conclusion.

None of this should be a surprise to a Christian. The opposite of disdain is love - the bond that keeps a marriage healthy.

Anti-I Corinthians 13
4 Disdain is impatient, and harsh. It envies, boasts, and is proud. 5 Disdain willingly dishonors others in public and private, seeks its own benefit, and is easily angered. Disdain remembers every wrong. 6 Disdain delights in evil done toward others, but is discouraged when others win. 7 Disdain expose others, covers its own back, gives up on people, and eventually walks away.

Every little bit of that poison eats away at the tender bond between a man and a woman. The slightest inkling of disdain can set trust back for months. And we are all guilty of it at one time or another, to one degree or another.

Is there any hope for any of us?

Rom 7:25
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Yes! Yes, there is more than hope. There is salvation!

But I cannot give you the formula. (And not just because I failed at it myself.)

You have to find it. You have to fight for it. You have to want it with all your heart, and be willing to search it out. There's no golden prayer followed by an, "Ah-ha!" moment to save a marriage. There's learning how to run patiently the race set before you with wisdom asked for and given by God.

But now you know your enemy.

Can you take this information, and put it to use? Divorce is not a hurricane doomed to make landfall somewhere, but the natural death of a marriage poisoned by disdain. Can you find ways to earn and give respect? Can you draw a line in the sand and no longer accept being treated like a child? Can you serve in obedience, and find that you have learned to love?

The Spirit that lives within you, and the Lord Jesus Who overcame death to bring us abundant life, and the Father Who knows our needs before we even ask, can grant grace to overcome in this struggle. He does grant wisdom to those who ask. And He strengthens the feeble knees. You will not overcome in this struggle by your own strength, but by His.

The first step is that you must dismiss denial. You must be brave enough to stop "wishing" and "hoping" that the hurricane is going to miss you. You must take inventory of your marriage, and learn vigilance for love and against disdain.

If love is the opposite of disdain, leadership is the opposite of denial.

Our marriages need leadership.

• Leadership uses every tool it can find to get the job done.
• Denial hopes the problem will go away.
• Leadership counts the costs of each option, and picks the best one it can.
• Denial counts the cost of speaking up.
• Leadership makes mistakes, hurts people by accident, and gets in trouble.
• Denial has organized, comfortable deck chairs from which to watch the Titanic sink.

It takes courage to lead, even when you are clearly following the Lord, even when the Spirit is enabling your heart. Gideon didn't preside over the deaths of the Midianites without overcoming terrors springing up in his heart. He overcame his fear by faith. Gideon trusted the Lord to do what He had promised.

Remember, though, that Gideon did not just teach his people to put their enemies to flight in the Lord. When the Lord put the Midianites to flight, Gideon led Israel in pursuit of them, captured their leaders, and had them put to death. So it is with disdain in our marriages. When the Lord gives a victory, pursue disdain while it is in retreat, find its root, and cut off its head.

Leaders find the will of the Lord, practical strategies, and courage to implement them. Leaders also make mistakes. It's a risk we have to take, because denial is the more deadly mistake. The wounds of a friend are faithful.

One last thing.

Free our wives to lead. I do not assault headship in the marriage here. Live within the pattern of headship the Lord has delivered to you so far, whatever that might be, but still the woman can exert leadership. She is a helpmeet. The only other Person described as a Helpmeet in scripture is God Himself, and when He is described by that term, He is saving His people from disaster.

Helpmeets are allowed to do that.

Husbands, lead. Wives, lead. Overcome denial with the Truth, and let the Lord teach you practical ways to face the disdain that has slipped into your marriage.

If you do this, the Lord has greater things in store for you even than saving your marriage.

Picking the Next FHC Topic

"Picking," "Announcing," - poTAYTo, poTAHTo.

Actually, I use the word, "picking," to draw out the fact that I'm not sure whether to go forward with part 1. I am hoping for input.

We have talked about the the perfect church, but that was kind of a high level view. (Don't forget DK is doing The Perfect Church right now. He just posted installment #3 of 5.) I am now thinking about the kind of leadership that can make that church happen.

What does it mean to lead in the body of Christ?

Before I get there, though, I know where the path runs; it leads right through the family. Both of the main passages on picking elders start off with an evaluation of the candidate's family.

That is a touchy subject for anyone.

Approaching it as a divorced man with one unbelieving child and another struggling is somewhere between nervy, daunting, and asinine.

But I am not exactly alone in being a divorced believer. I have heard that the church's peformance in this area is statistically the same as the world's, and that the church actually exceeds the norm for society in general in child and spouse abuse. Of course, statistics being somewhat less reputable than damned lies, it is hard to know whether Christians are really doing better than society as a whole. It seems to me that we are not.

Given all that we now know about Rom 8:4, it is impossible that we should be doing so poorly in this critical area. If the Spirit enables us to live out the righteous requirements of the law, then we should all still be married, and happily at that. I'm just not seeing it happening.

So, why not?

Or, should we just say, "It's the fall. Bad things happen to good people. We're not perfect, just forgiven," and walk away? Is there something the church can do to prevent this trend? More weekend retreats? More sermons on submission?

Here's my mind on the subject of whether I should post on something for which I am utterly disqualified:

• I think we need to talk about this, if we are going to talk about the church. I think we need to talk about what the church is not doing for marriages that allows so many divorces. I think we need to talk about how the church should approach the divorced.
• I don't know what to say about it. I don't really even have coherent thoughts together yet, though I can sense them at the edges of my vision.
• If anyone thinks that we should not talk about this, then we will start there.
• If anyone thinks that we should talk about it, but that I am not the one, then I will ask you to post on your site and I will happily comment over there and shut up over here.
• If neither of those things happens, then I am going to try to screw up my courage and start a discussion. I will actively admit up front that all of my experience is of failure.
• I will be writing about other divorced people, not myself, as much as possible to keep the topic from getting too wierd. I post some pretty "out there" stuff about myself, I know, so I think that it would be wise to exercise a little discipline on this one.

Thoughts?

Remember, the long term topic is leadership in the church, but before we get there we have to take a longish trip through the family in the church.

Shorthand: Just because

At 3:55 am last night, I woke up from a dream recorded in the previous post. I really, really wanted to write it down, but dreams are so fragile, that even turning on the light can make you miss parts of them.

Fortunately, I know shorthand, and can do it with the keyboard. You never know when these things might be important ;-)

I whipped out my trusty BlackBerry, and started clicking, right there in the dark. (Andreia would understand.)

So, for the approximately none of you who will be amused by this, here is the raw shorthand record of the dream as BlackBerry'd at 4:00 am.

--


I met her af seg h nu apologia saddle lhr-rk patrn.
Ab 45. Z wore a brown suit hg wh h jakt unbuttoned. Her hair was ha mdl-ajd zrt bt fmnn, nd her fas ws lind laftr. Her zus kd b run n, bt wnt wl whh sut.
Hre o us wnt f a ride. At one pynt Z trid to do smhg nd misd. N frustration, z hru an oranj at h tail o Her horse. T rold al h wa dwn to h CVS. I kd not hlp bt notis ha t ws less han dvin to do so.
Z jogd al h wa dwn to CVS nd pkd up her ornj. Z had hre, nd stood dwn hr aprnte lkg f a wa to zo us ha Z ws God,
Ftunte, I had a rakt wh m. I held t n my ry hand tltd dwn to kac her hro. I ws scared o hw fast t myt kom, bt I stnd n. Z hru, nd t amazge hit h rakt wh enf topspin ha t spun bak up my leg nd nto my pokt.
Z dd smhg amazg f my fnd.
Z had one mor ornj.
Z lkd at h sky nd ht.
Nd ht.
Hn, z hru t so fast t tore nh air, nd h seeds kam out, splt, nd hit boh our rakt strqs. Hy wnt strat up nh air ab 20 fet, hn fl nd landd on our ceks as h fst drops o rain fom a strm ha ws j startg.
W lafd wh utr, cildz dlyt, as God kam gglg bak to Her horse,
I wok up, nd j had to rit hs.

Other people's dreams are boring, but...

I will tell you mine anyway. I will not be offended when you ignore it.

---

I met God at some sort of ranch. I was admiring the new "Apologia" leatherwork pattern on a new saddle, and She walked up.

She was between 45 and 50. She wore a brown pants suit with the wide lapel favored in the late 80's. Her hair was that middle-aged short but feminine and not completely gray. Her face was deeply lined with laughter, and was totally comforting. Her shoes could be run in, but went well with the suit.

God, a buddy and I went for a horse ride. I don't know who the buddy was, so it must have been you. :-) It was just a pleasant ride in the country - no lessons, no point, just joy. At some point God dismounted, and tried to do something that didn't quite work. She laughed and threw an orange at her horse's tail. The orange rolled on down the hill about 200 feet to the CVS drugstore that was naturally situated out in the middle of nowhere.

I could not help but notice that the whole incident was less than divine. It was merely wonderful.
God jogged all the way down to the CVS, and picked up her orange. She was down the hill from us, and She had three oranges. I don't know how, but I could tell that She wanted to show off a little.

Fortunately, I had my tennis racket with me. I held it in my right hand, angled downward to knock her throw out of the air when it came. I was scared of how fast it might come, but I knew she would somehow hit that racket from 200 feet away, and I stood in! She threw, and it hit the racket with enough topspin that it bounced down to the ground, then spun itself up my pant leg, and into my pocket.

She did something equally amazing for you, but I could not remember it when I wrote this down.
She had one more orange, but two friends with Her.

She looked at the sky, and thought a little bit.

And thought a little bit more.

Then, She threw the orange so fast that it tore in half in mid-flight, and the seeds were scattered from it. The seeds alone came and hit the strings of our tennis rackets, then flew straight up in the air about 20 feet. When they fell back down, they landed on our cheeks as the vanguard of a cloudburst of large raindrops.

We all three got soaked, and just laughed with utter, childlike delight. God came giggling back to Her horse, and I woke up.

---

I was just so happy when I woke that I had to write it out and post it.

Yesterday's amusements

There was no post yesterday, because I was off talking about debtors at Better Bibles Blog. Specifically, I was opining on how to correctly translate "opheilema" in the Lord's Prayer.

For those of you who don't know this, that's a lot like me lecturing on knitting. I have spent a couple hours at a spinning wheel, but that don't make me no fiber-arts expert! They were very gracious and if you think that kind of thing is interesting, you might enjoy the chat.

There are three posts in the works for today. We'll see how many I can get out. (Of course, one of them looks like this, but that's just me. :-)


Ftunte, I had a rakt wh m. I held t n my ry hand tltd dwn to kac her hro.

Movies: The Promise

All day today, I could not sit still for more than 10 seconds without finding myself asleep again. That made "movie night" with my little girl more than a little bit scary. There's very little less fun than struggling to stay awake and to enter into an experience with a distant teen.

From the credits forward, I never blinked.

I would love to share opinions of this movie with ya'll if you get to see it.

It is not a children's movie, but it is never gratuitous. If you like art movies, you will like this. If you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the beautiful visions, you will love this. If you like conflicted love stories, this will get to you.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Suddenly, though, I am dealing with the whole "every time I blink I'm asleep" thing again.

Night ya'll.

:8( [Which means embarassment]

I was so embarassed at church today!

One of the dear middle-aged ladies in church today was sharing how much it hurt her that her daughter was being fooled by the Da Vinci Code. She was beside herself as evidently she is in doubt of her daughter's salvation anyway, and now this daughter is actively angry with the church for all the evil it has perpetrated.

The good news is that she has agreed to read Josh McDowell's book on the subject, so she may come out of all this stronger.

Her story really connected with me, because my daughter is causing me heart palpitations, too. I said so during the meeting a couple times.

I went up after the meeting, and gave her a hug, and she was still a little verklempt. She looked up at me and thanked me for not saying that her daughter was obviously not elect. She said that would really have hurt.

[[[[[------ shame! ------]]]]]]

:8((((((((

I was horrified, though I didn't let the moment become all about me. I just told her that I did not believe that way, and got back on the subject of staying in prayer for her daughter.

I believe that everything is predestined and I also believe that we pray with passion for our loved ones. I won't trouble you here with how I can believe those two things together. It's just true. I pray for my daughter, and I could never, never conclude that a single soul was "not elect". It would be a blasphemy for me to look at any person created in the image of God and judge that I could quit praying for them because they were obviously not elect. God forbid that I should ever take a prerogative that God even forbids His angels. (Matt 13:25-30)

We are going through Romans 9 now, and the teacher knows I am a predestinationist. That makes it pret' near impossible for me to sit in complete silence. Honestly, though, I am not trying to change anyone's mind on the subject. I am more there as a circus oddity - a freak if you will - so I am not surprised if I come off as a bit of a monster to them, just disappointed.

If any of you wondered whether I think anyone is beyond God's power to redeem, or whether I believed that our prayers are pointless, I hope that you now know that I don't.

Metamorphosis and Connection

Just a quick followup to that series of posts from so very long ago.

I read the other day in The Week about the rise of the megachurch. It was really quite interesting (and mercifully brief - The Week's forte.)

I was amused to discover that I probably think the megachurch is about the best idea going. I think I could be at home in one if they would just change one thing. Instead of having a bunch of intimate small groups that revolve around a charismatic leader, they should have a charismatic leader that revolves around, supports, and enables a bunch of small groups.

If the small groups were the center, and they had a decent preacher, I think the pattern would be powerful.

I hate myself for liking something so popular, but there you have it, I guess.

The second thing is that I answered the questions I needed answered when I started writing that series. I feel like I'm getting a handle on my direction for the church. That helps.

When I started this blog, I did it anonymously. I chose to do so out of the usual discomfort, and also because I was not ready for some of my old friends to find me. I needed to have my head on straight first.

After that series, though, I cannot think of any reason to remain anonymous. So, if any of ya'll are ever near Columbus, OH, just look up Kevin Knox in the phone book. I check my voice mail at least twice a month, because that's about how often I use the phone, but I'm home every now and again. You might catch me.

I'd offer a bunch more revelations, but I doubt there's much more I haven't already said.

I Love Bread - or - How being ground into dust is a good thing.

Lev 23
10 "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest. 11 He is to wave the sheaf before the LORD so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath. 12 On the day you wave the sheaf, you must sacrifice as a burnt offering to the LORD a lamb a year old without defect, ...

15 " 'From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. 16 Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the LORD. 17 From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour, baked with yeast, as a wave offering of firstfruits to the LORD.

This is the coolest thing. There are so many things I love about it.

Tonight I was doing step one of making bread, and remembered how much I love this one particular moment in the process. Next thing I knew, I was remembering this whole story.

The Israelites knew this as a law. We know it as a prophecy, because it is fulfilled. (All of the appointed feasts are fulfilled, except one.) Every year the tribes of Israel acted out this prophecy, and had no clue what they were doing. They believed that God liked to see His children waving sheaves of grain and baked loaves of yeasted bread. Of course, I would be pretty jazzed if everyone I knew stopped everything they were doing to wave some sandwiches toward me, but God is above all that. Really.

Here we see the seeds of the gospel planted, and then harvested as believers come to Christ. Christ is the Seed (in the John 14:24 sense) Who was planted to bring forth many seeds. The harvest is alive. This harvest is Christ in us, and it is displayed before God. We are purified by the sacrifice of the Lamb, and held up before God and all the world to display the wonder of Life reproduced in us by God.

But that is not enough.

50 days later that life, that food, us, we are ground and crushed and blended together. Today, we call this the church.

Each grain suffers alone, and is destroyed, but it happens to all of us at once. We all suffer at the same time. The kernel is mashed, and then blended, brother with brother, sister with sister, and brother and sister together. We become the finest flour.

But that is not enough.

This lump of flour must be made into bread. Let me skip over the yeasting for a second, and come back. My favorite moment in all of bread making happens after a few minutes of kneading the dough. Kneading bread dough involves folding all these little bits of wheat dust over onto each other, again and again and again. You start with a wet, frankly nasty, lump of wheat mush and you start folding. You try never, never to cause a tear in the mush. You just keep connecting mush from one side of the lump with the mush from the other side. Gradually, the mush begins to get sticky. It sticks to everything. It becomes genuinely unruly. They don't call the sticky stuff in wheat, "gluten," for nothing.

Then suddenly, it's over. The gluten takes over, and the wheat only sticks to itself. The lump no longer sticks to anything. It goes from being a slimy lump sticking to every exposed surface of the world, to a smooth, round loaf.

It's the closest thing to magic I've ever seen.

You keep right on kneading. You just keep folding that loaf in on itself until not one grain of that loaf could possibly be parted from its neighbor.

But it's not enough.

Yeast is added to the flour. They just finished the Feast of Unleavened Bread a short time ago, in which yeast is the symbol of sin. It is natural to assume that yeast is sin here as well, but it's not. I think I may be alone in this interpretation, but I don't care. God is asking the priest to wave this yeast before Him. It is holy.

Yeast here is Life - Life added to the loaf. The Holy Spirit working in His church. Yeast is added at the very beginning, long before the mush has begun to be kneaded, but you cannot tell. It is only after the kneading has strengthened the bread that the yeast can make Himself known. We need to be so tightly bonded to each other that the release of the Spirit is captured and expands us, making us rise like a loaf of bread.

But it's still not enough.

From that one lump of dough two loaves are made; one wheat, one yeast, one lump, two loaves. Israel was looking for a city made without hands, and they performed the story of that city here without even knowing it. The first loaf is the church before Christ, and the second is the church after He was manifest - we are that second loaf. The two loaves are made from the same wheat, the same Yeast, the same kneading, by the same loving God.

And then, those loaves are cooked.

And that is enough!

And do you know what happens to those loaves?

Our Priest enjoys them! He eats those loaves.

20 ... They are a sacred offering to the LORD for the priest.

After all the work our High Priest lavishes on us in love; after the Spirit is kneaded into us with great care; after we have been joined to each other through suffering, through folding, and through fire, we become an aroma to Him, and a sweet taste in His mouth, and a deep satisfaction. We are truly made deep joy to the infinite God by the mercies of His grace and labor over us.

I love bread. I love the church.

Romans 8:4 - Fulfilling the Righteous Requirements of the Law

Romans 8:4 TNIV ...in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

The Question:
How is it that we fulfill the righteous requirements of the law?

The Players:
Travis, Danny Kaye, Milly (and hubby), codepoke, DugALug, Japhy

The Rules:
This study is the product of everyone's input. As such, every word may not be blessed by everyone who contributed, but we all reached the same general consensus. Codepoke did the editing.

Introduction:
We have been given the opportunity to accept the gift of salvation, but we are by no means saved unless we act upon that invitation. As for what we do after we accept Jesus Christ, we cannot expect "living by the Spirit" to just take hold of us; we must act.

"[Who] was neighbor to the robbers' victim?" He answered, "The one who treated him with mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." (Luke 10:36-37)

Jesus did not say "correct" and pat the man on the back. He told him to "do likewise". We cannot take the example of Jesus, the perfect human, and frame it and put it our wall and say we are living in the Spirit. We must live in the Spirit!

References:
(All links are to the KJV. The KJV is more or less equally disdained by users of all other versions, and Blue Letter Bible is just easy to link. ;-) The actual quotes are from multiple versions.)

James 2:18 But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do
- I see this as saying that deeds/works are a legitimate litmus of true faith.

Gal 5:19,22-26 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness... In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. Let us not be conceited, provoking one another, envious of one another.
- In contrasting the "works" of the flesh with the "fruit" of the Spirit, Paul is showing how the law exists because of the desires of the flesh, but "there is no law" against that which is driven by the Spirit because the Spirit produces only good fruit.

Col 1:21-23a
And you who once were alienated and hostile in mind because of evil deeds he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through his death, to present you holy, without blemish, and irreproachable before him, provided that you persevere in the faith, firmly grounded, stable, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard.
- Paul seems to be telling them that, while Jesus's sacrifice on the cross has made life in the Spirit possible for them, they must "follow the Spirit". Jesus said that himself: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." (Mark 8:34) We must follow, not just stand by and watch.

Mark 1:17 (NKJV)
Then Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”

Philippians 3:14 (NKJV)
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

- Jesus uses the term 'follow'. Paul uses the term 'Press'. These are not the words of a spectator: these are words of action. I believe the Holy Spirit quicken us to action. Japhy quotes Galatians about the works of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit. This scripture shows us that 'good works' are the biproduct of a Spirit-filled life. What we do by our own effort cannot be clean or 'good'. This is what Isiah said:

Isaiah 64:6 (NKJV)
But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
- If we live by the Spirit, good works will follow us and the Law will be of no matter. If we live by the flesh, we will never be able to live up to the Standard that God has set in the law.

Acts 23:1-51
Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, "My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day." 2At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. 3Then Paul said to him, "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!" 4Those who were standing near Paul said, "You dare to insult God's high priest?" 5Paul replied, "Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: 'Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people."

James 4:10-13 (New International Version)
11Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?

Mat 7:17
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
- The fruit does not make the tree, the tree makes the fruit.

2Cor 6:16 - 2Cor 7:1
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in [them]; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
- Holiness is a real part of our calling.

Tit 2:11-14
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
- The grace of God teaches us to obey the law. First the law taught us to come to Christ, and then Christ teaches us to fulfill the law. We ought to be cleansed.

Rom 9:31 & 32
But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because [they sought it] not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that Stumblingstone;
- Though we are to be cleansed, it is not in order to please God. Those who attempt to please God by righteously following a righteous law use Christ wrongly. Christ is to be the Cornerstone and Foundation of all our works and all our life. But if we are are fulfilling the law on our own, we are not founded on the Cornerstone. Instead, when we follow the law to please God, the Cornerstone is made a Stumblingstone to us.

Gal 5:4 & 5
Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
- Justification is by faith, not the law. We are made righteous before God by our faith in the work of Christ, and Christ makes us clean in this world by the work of the Spirit.

John 15:23 & 24
23 Jesus replied, "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
- We obey Christ's teachings, and our obedience flows from the love we have for Him - or it doesn't.

Discussion:
My husband had an example of how the Catholic church says that you can only take communion in the Catholic church, and no other, if you are Catholic. That’s man made - not from God. I used to laugh at the Catholic church for that. Jesus wasn’t of a "church" He traveled to cities and spoke the Word. If he walked into the Catholic church could Jesus take communion? (Man’s lines in the sand again.)

We have to live in the Spirit, not just live our lives day after day following only man’s laws. We must live in Christ for life.

I did a study on Colossians called "Crammed with Christ" a while ago and I basically came up with three conclusions.
1) Live according to the Law and try to attain righteousness that way
2) Be crammed full of Christ and attain His righteousness,
3) Or choose none of the above and live believing that righteousness is not needed. (atheists, agnostics…).

Col 2:9-14 states that the circumcision of our sinful nature is done by Christ. The passage also states that the circumcision by Him is a direct result of us “having been buried with Him in baptism” leading to our being “raised with Him” in the same nature as Romans 6:4. By faith, I can know that Christ has circumcised my sinful nature at that point and I am henceforth “given fullness in Christ”, or in the Greek “pleroo”, (literally meaning “to cram”). That’s where I get the title of my study “Crammed with Christ”.

There are levels of faith. There are levels of passion. There are levels of many spiritual things. But If Christ is in you…He is in you all the way, filling you with His life and love, and giving life to (our) mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in (us)." (Rom. 8:11)

The liberty of being free from the consequence of the law leads us to worship. So following the law is now an act of understanding rather than an act of obedience.This was one of my points on my blog post:My La La Post

God is after our heart and we are instructed to be more Christ-like. That means seeing things as Christ sees them.Thus, living by the Spirit is allowing God to mold or shape our heart so that our entire lifestyle and outlook will be an instrument of praise towards God.

As the Good book says: Faith is counted as righteousness.

The Bible clearly says that, as redeemed saints, God's Words are enscribed on our heart. These words give us understanding that is impossible without God's input. In the end, I really believe that God changes my perspective on life. The path of following the law is available to us through asking of and submitting to the direction of the Holy Spirit.

John 1:14 (NKJV)And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth

This scripture says God is tied to the Word. So understanding the Word is to understand God. I would have to say that understanding the Word is inclusive of the law. And thus, understanding the law is good. I believe that this understanding is impossible without the Holy Spirit. Without sounding circular, I contend that following the law is at the quickening of the Holy Spirit.

Paul is saying that while our flesh exists in the framework of the law of sin, our spirits exist in the framework of the law of God. It is possible for our spirits to do works in the law of the flesh, but it is not possible for our flesh to do works in the law of the spirit. We are no longer governed by the power of the law of sin (which is death) because of our salvation in Christ Jesus, but we are still able to commit acts which violate the law.

Christ was the first person through whom the requirements of the law were truly met, and so we now have the model of Christ to follow.

The desires of the flesh are opposite the desires of the spirit; you cannot serve two masters at once.

I've heard contention between "works" and "faith" as far as salvation is concerned. There's one side that says faith in Christ is all that's needed (and they base this on a few lines from Paul's letters) and another side that says faith alone is not enough.

Ephesians 2:8-9 is the oft-quoted excerpt: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast." Harping on this, they neglect so many other things written by Paul and others (e.g. James 2:14-17), as well as the teachings of Jesus himself (e.g. Matthew 25:31-46, "whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me").

But moreso, they confuse the meaning of Paul's words. It is not by works that we are saved, it is through faith. That faith then works in and through us to produce good works, by which we justify the grace and salvation given us by Christ's sacrifice.

We all sin again (sometimes the same sins) after we have asked God for forgiveness. But God knows our hearts; He knows when we're sincere and when we are not, He knows when we are truly sorry for our transgressions and when we secretly delight that our behavior has made someone else just a little more unhappy than us. God knows human nature, if not only because He created us, but because He took our form in Jesus Christ.

And it's because we have Jesus as a model to follow that we're not hopeless; he was like us in every way but sin: he was tempted, but did not give in, and that meant he followed God's will, even to his death. That is the example we are given to follow: a life of obedience to God's will.

So, to sum it all up, now that we have been given this great gift, let us sow our faith like seeds, that it yield a harvest. Christ followed the will of the Father, and that is the example we have. Christ told us to spread the gospel, to make disciples of the nations. I don't think we can ever hope to accomplish that by never sharing the fruits of our faith (that is, good works inspired by the Spirit) with others.

Conclusions:
I don't often hear sermons about obeying the righteous requirements of the law. The focus is always on justification, and how we are justified by faith. The focus is on believing unto salvation.

This verse, and this study, put justification in focus. The day we find out we are declared righteous before God is the beginning of a journey, not the end of all works. We begin to open ourselves to the working of the Spirit. We put off the dead works of the flesh. We are cleansed, not just before God, but in this life. Paul failed to attain righteousness in this life, but he did not just wait passively for it to come to him. Paul "pressed":

Phil 3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

So, we fulfill the righteous requirements of the law by the Spirit's work in us. We don't work toward this end because of any fear. We are justified in Christ, and appear before God as His righteous children. It is because we love Him that we work to obey His commands. When we succeed, it is because His Spirit moves in us, transforming us and making us alive to the things that our new nature loves. Jesus did not leave us alone in the world, but sent the Comforter to walk with us the whole way.

Titus 2:11-14 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Da Vinci Code

That is the last time you will see me willingly mention those 3 words on this blog.

Is anyone else completely bored with this whole kerfluffle? It's all I can do to read the summaries of the posts about this one book. I'm 100% sure that I have nothing to add to the discussion with all the great information out there now ... over and over and over again.

Just whining.

I suppose it's only fair to quote the site that has given me the best information on DVC, and that has helped me move from curious to DVC'd out so quickly.
The Christian Cadre
Da Vinci Code Page
CC's othercott suggestion: Go see Flight 93 on the day DVC opens.
CADRE COMMENTS BLOG

Back, and none the worse for wear

I recommend that if you have to get up at 4:00 to put in a 16 hour day, by all means try to lay in bed awake from 11:00 until almost 1:00. ;-) It sure worked for me.

Not much to say. We got 223 voters through our machines in 13 hours of the ~750 in our precinct. Over 30% turnout for a midterm primary with no issues on the ballot is respectable. The new machines worked well. Only 2 or 3 people really hated them.

Being a presiding judge was interesting. It's only the second time I've ever worked the polls, and 3 of the 4 judges I was overseeing had a combined 70 years of experience or some such. It was vaguely unsettling to have them waiting for me to come back from the bathroom to figure out how to handle a provisional voter. They seemed to be happy all day, though, and I don't think anything went badly wrong. One of the judges said her buddy quit because of the last pj, and she was glad that she had decided to give it one more year, so that was cool.

Besides, we closed out our polls 5 minutes faster than the other precinct set up in the same room. That's how they really judge you. :-D After 13 hours of voter processing, they only care how quickly you can get them home.

It was fun. It wasn't a "rush" like back in 2004, when we had lines stacked out the doors for fully 14 hours, but it was pretty wild being "in charge".

And I got some reading done in "Ante Pacem". The man makes me think!

The Gospel in 4 Characters

That's 4 written characters, pictograms really.

Maeghan has posted some of her research into how some of the bigger, richer words describing the gospel are written in Chinese. Language is so very intriguing and heartwarming, and these pictograms open up a whole new window on the subject.

Imagine if every time you thought of being reconciled to God, you pictured yourself as an ox whose horns had been removed. Wow.

Thanks, Maeghan!

The Symbol of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Surely, this is not an original thought, but I will think it nonetheless.

The Tao is a big deal for most people. In everything good, the seed of evil. In everything evil, the seed of good. This makes great sense! The Tao is really right on. In the most awful of deeds, you can find evidence that the person who committed it knew that their evil was evil. And that knowledge is a seed of future good. It probably won't grow, but it's a seed all the same. In the most altruistic deed is the possibility of future reward or vainglory.

This is it. This is the symbol of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

When a man understands it, he attains as highly as he possibly can on his own. He has mastered godlike-ness as well as ever he will. This is what satan sold to Adam.

So what is the symbol of the Tree of Life? What is the symbol of Christ?

Count to 10 before you answer. :-)

No, I don't believe it is the cross.

Neither did the early church. Berger Pearson reviews Ante Pacem by Graydon Snyder. I have Ante Pacem, and highly recommend it (though I last read it over a decade ago).
Snyder argues that the specific Christian symbolism of the cross did not exist before Constantine. He refers to the “striking lack of crosses in early Christian remains,” and states that the crosses that do appear in Christian—and Jewish—art are “crypto-crosses” and are not symbolic of the crucifixion of Jesus.

The images of the first churches were happy. Jesus is pictured as a happy, happy man, and so many of the things happening in the images were joyous. That's how and why the church went 300 years without using the cross as its symbol. 300 years! 300 years ago, the 13 colonies were still happily paying their tiny little taxes to Great Britain, and George III would still not be born for another 30+ years. 300 years after the death of Christ is a long, Long, LONG time for the church to live happily without using the cross symbolically.

Snyder finds in ancient Christian art, these symbols:
... the lamb, anchor, vase, dove, boat, olive branch, orante (a female figure depicted with outstretched arms and hands upraised in prayer), palm or tree, bread, Good Shepherd, fish, vine and grapes, and the cross.

The fish made the biggest impression on me. Forget the Ixthos fish. That came much later. The original fish is a great picture of Christ and of the church as well. The sea is figurative of death, so a fish alive in the midst of death is a perfect picture of Christ and His church living in this world.

So, what do you think our best symbol is?

Posting and commenting may be light

Yep, instead of blogging tonight, I am listening to an EXCITING DVD about how to be the presiding judge at a poll precinct for the upcoming Tuesday, May 2 primary.

Golly, folks.

I get to get up at 4:00-ish to be on site before 5:30 so I can be organized and awake for the other 3 judges, and then I get to drop my stuff off sometime after the polls close at 7:30. And I think they will frown upon me connecting to the Internet to keep up with our conversation threads. ;-)

So, Monday I will chat as usual, I imagine, and then disappear behind the moon for a while.

I worked the polls for the big Nov 2004 event. That was pretty exciting. For this, I expect to have to bring a book.

40 Days

Have you ever had the same revelation over and over, and it's new every time? I'm not talking about wonderful stuff, either. It's like a recurring nightmare that I keep forgetting. A few weeks later, I have this little revelation again, and it's like I have never had the thought before. Then a deja-vu thing starts rattling around, and suddenly it dawns on my that: A) This is hardly original, and B) I am more than a little daft. :-)

It seems that every time I think about the suffering God has ordained in our lives, I end up thinking about how most of the suffering is in the waiting. We wait on answers, on events, on faith, and on deliverance. And much of that waiting seems to be done on an empty stomach. Some day, He will deliver. And so we wait, seemingly endlessly, in a dry place.

And after the long wait, a strange, unexpected thing happens.

We have to fight for our lives!

??

But this is exactly in keeping with the scriptural pattern.

Luke 4
1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
3 The devil said to him, ...

At the end of 40 days of fasting, Jesus was hungry.

Then, and only then, the devil tries Jesus three times. The 40 day wait was an integral part of the trial, and there was nothing that could substitute for it. We are talking about the Son of God here! It seems like He might have better things to do with His time than growing weaker while waiting for a final battle with the devil!

But He didn't.

Waiting on God and the battle seems to be a part of the pattern of life that He has allowed in this age.

In the Army, they used to remind us that the march was only to the battle. While training, it gets to feeling like the march is the battle. It's not. After you march for 40 days, you get to dig in and prepare for the actual fight, and that is where we are truly tried.

Now, I just need to find a way to be able to remember this little lesson for more than 3 days!

Gal 6
9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

(Uh, I haven't already blogged this, have I?)

(FTR - life is pretty sweet these days. These thoughts are not born out of any suffering :-). Just praising the Lord for the fight He waged.)

Stumped and Stamped

Over at the Funnest Place on the Internet, Rich has me stumped. I mean the kind of stumped that doesn't even know where to start at getting unstumped. He has found 3 possible answers to the question, "Was Jesus Forsaken by God?" on the cross. The first answer is the standard one that we all got in Sunday School, but #'s 2 and 3 are pretty stout.

While you're there, just check out some of the things he does to keep his loyal subjects entertained :-). Like this gem from January. NATIONAL MASCOT CHALLENGE CHAMPIONSHIP or his inimitable lists.

And Congratulations to Danny Kaye who has stamped his name on the blogosphere for a full and utterly unpredictable year! I don't know anyone else who has gotten the word out on Iraq, tackled the perfect church, and discovered the reason for the Internet.

Which Singer Do You Follow

The song, "Which Jesus Do You Follow?" has been filling up the Christian radio waves here in Columbus, OH. I guess the real title is, "My Jesus", and I guess I'm not supposed to copy the lyrics over here, so I will link them, and copy individual lines that interest me.

What do ya'll think about this song?

There are parts of it that I like, but mostly I find it offensive. Which means that I must be one of the comfortable Christians that Mr. Agnew is blasting. That's OK, I guess. Perhaps the Spirit will allow my conscience to bite me at some point.

Of course, it almost goes without saying that I love the violin in this song. ANY song that has a violin doing THAT is going to be on my favorites list. How they make those strings weep like that is beyond me, but I could listen to it all day.

Blessed are the poor in spirit
Or do we pray to be blessed with the wealth of this land
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness
Or do we ache for another taste of this world of shifting sand

Great stuff.

I want to be like my Jesus
but I'm not sure what that means to be like You Jesus
Cause You said to live like You, love like You but then You died for me
Can I be like You Jesus?
I want to be like my Jesus

This is stunningly beautiful. This is true. I could sing and pray this all day long.

But, there's so much pointless harshness in this song.

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet would stain the carpet

Um. No. When the unwashed enter our church, people get confused and scared but flock to them anyway. I have never seen a person who had not bathed in a week enter our church, but they were surrounded by people trying to make them feel at home. If a dirty, bleeding man stumbled into our church, he would immediately get our couch - I'm sure of it.

So, why insult like this?

But the Word says He was battered and scarred
Or did you miss that part

Hmmm. In a song about the mercy of our Lord, Mr. Agnew is going to rely on sarcasm.

If Ephesians says to imitate Christ
Then why do you look so much like the world?
...
He spent His time with thieves and liars

So, Jesus looked so much like the world that thieves and liars were comfortable with Him, but we look so much like the world that Jesus would not be comfortable with us. That sounds awfully Catch-22ish to me.

He spent His time with thieves and liars ... and sluts ... and the least of these
... I think He'd prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd

Interesting. I had to look up Beale St. It's a famous hang-out for blues musicians in Memphis. I think on the radio he says, "High St."

I get it. I know what he is trying to say, but I don't think it's true. I fear Phariseeism, but the days when Pharisees hung out in churches are dying out pretty quickly I think. And, I doubt highly that Jesus hung out with thieves, liars and the like for long. They left their selfish lives, and started loving God, or they moved on from Jesus.

He loved the poor and accosted the comfortable ... the rich ... the arrogant

I don't see Jesus accosting anyone, except those who violated His Father's house. Maybe I'm wrong on this one. I see Him responding to those who tried to reject the Truth or accept it half-way, but I just don't see Him being obsessed with them. They come to Him for rejection. He does not accost them.

Anyway, I think "Asleep in the Light" might be fun to compare side-by-side with "My Jesus". I loved AitL as a kid, and don't know that I would feel quite the same about it if it came out today.

Nah. I don't think Keith made so many blunders.

It's been on my mind.

Hmmmm. Link rot

Turns out that if you change the title of a post, the archive links fail. I may be able to fix it by rebuilding the index. Just thought I'd make note of this little blogger quirk, though.

(Discovered while mining through the Romans 8:4 posts to put together the final study. The ball has been in the air for a while, but I have not dropped it!)

Update.
Yep, republishing the entire blog did fix the broken links in the archives. It would not, however, fix any permalinks that had been set up outside of this blog. On the ridiculously slim chance that someone were to permalink to a page of mine, I would hate to break it by changing the post title. Therefore, I will give up the idea I was playing with of changing the post title whenever I wanted people to know what I had updated.

You link and learn, or you don't link long.

Science - They have discovered fermentation

Scientific American announced this morning that they have discovered that Bacteria Render Beans Easier to Digest and More Nutritious

Amidst using a bunch of really long words, and telling about how rats get stronger, they tell us, "Such lactic acid bacteria are already used to help create products like yogurt." In other words, you should ferment your beans in fermented milk products so that you can get more nutrition and less gas from them.

Duh.

Revolutions - lasting?

The Economist does a survey in every issue. This week's survey is about the New Media - blogs, wikis, podcasts - versus the Old Media. Very cool. It's about 10 articles long, and starts here.

The final article begins with this quote that I found really, really solid and completely new to me:
AS A rule, some people, such as Jacobins, tend to be more enthusiastic about revolutions than others, such as monarchs. Another fairly reliable rule is that revolutions abrupt enough to be associated with a single year (1642, 1789, 1848, 1917) tend to cause trouble but rarely bring lasting change. By contrast, revolutions gradual enough to be associated with a name (Renaissance, Reformation, Industrial Revolution) often do have enduring effects. A third rule, or hypothesis, might be that revolutions seem never to be entirely for the better or the worse, but somehow manage to combine both.

Nope. I had never noticed that, but yeah. That groks.

How long I have longed for a revolution in the church! Now I know that I am hoping for a nice, patient, slow one.