I walked on by the man sitting on the bench, and just before I walked through the doors of the store he called out; “Hey!” I turned around and walked back. He thought he recognized me from somewhere, and then spent the next several minutes trying to connect the pieces from where he knew me; which turns out he got me confused for someone else. I stood there awkwardly as he was telling me about his plans to get back to Montana to get his house back, when I finally decided to sit down next to him. He went on about the things of his past; people he knew, places he lived, jobs he had, hobbies, ect. I couldn’t help but sit and think about what words of wisdom I could give this man who seemed to be “lost.” I put lost in quotations hoping that wasn’t a stereotype of some kind. I almost feel ashamed that my mind would much rather ponder about what insight I could tell him rather than just sitting and genuinely listening to what he had to say. I felt so guilty as I tried to get a word in saying: “I got to the private University over there and…” he just kept talking. “I wanted to say that I am praying for…” “have you ever heard Metallica?”…he continued. I shamefully admit I started to feel frustrated, that my grand scheme of reaching out to this man was falling through the cracks, as I couldn’t just get out what I wanted to say…

When he laughed, it pierced through my expectations. It just felt good to hear him laugh. Laughter is not biased, racist, sexist, or prejudice. It has no language barriers, cultural differences, or special requirements. It is something that EVERYONE can understand. As I sat and listened to this man soaking in self-frustration, I realized my “words of wisdom” tonight would get me NOWHERE. Have I figured out just what my purpose is or was, with that conversation, no. But maybe my purpose was not to “practice” ministry (how selfish sounds), and maybe it wasn’t to speak, or understand what he had to say. We always hear stories that start like this: “It wasn’t by accident that I went over to the man sitting on the bench…” and ending like this: “Just maybe something I said will change him forever.” But I don’t think that was the story tonight. I said earlier that I couldn’t help but think of what words of wisdom to give to the man who seemed “lost”, but maybe it wasn’t him that was lost tonight…maybe it was me.

I don’t wanna grow up memorizing “Christian sympathy lines” or using a “homeless charity calculator” comparable to the handy tip converter. I don’t wanna walk past a homeless person on a bench and not stop and listen because I’m too afraid that I don’t have the words to say or the change to spare. Why must I feel this way!? Why is it that I feel more comfortable talking to the stranger behind the counter at Starbucks, but quake in fear when I contemplate my every action walking by a homeless person? This is not a good thing. I don’t see it as some kind of blessing to have to think about this. They are just as human, and just as equal as we are; yet my mind doesn’t want to make that connection! Yes brothers and sisters I am conflicted! I am conflicted because I don’t want to think this way! I don’t want to have this seeker mentality that establishes a hierarchy of social class, because THAT’S NOT HOW JESUS DID MINISTRY! “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20)

As I stood up about to leave, I shook the man’s hand and slipped him a few bucks to help him with a bus ticket. Looking back on that now, I don’t say that hoping for a few pats on the back and 5 heavenly kudos, but because I question why I did. It wasn’t like he asked for it, as a matter of fact he didn’t even hint at it, but it seemed like I somehow opened up a mental “heavenly how-to” file that told me “when in doubt…slip them a few dollars.” Please please please hear me out on this. I’m not trying to degrade giving WHATSOEVER, I’m merely questioning why it felt like such a cliché Christian thing to do, and why, in reality, I have the assets to feed this man for a week, but only reached for a few measly dollar bills to help him buy a bus ticket. I grow more frustrated as I even contemplate why I have to sit and measure for myself the appropriate levels of giving and the conditions that come with them, rather than just doing as I’m told to do; “give to him your cloak as well.” All I’m really trying to do is disconnect the how [much] (we give) from the what (we give), because Jesus didn’t put a NUMBER on giving he just said “GIVE”! “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 24:40)

My purpose for going to the store tonight was to return a DVD. If anyone knows redbox, you would know it takes less than 10 seconds to return a redbox movie. I was inside the store for less than a minute. I turned around and walked back out the same door I entered, and he was gone, out of sight, as if he were never there… His absence from the bench outside of the store put an ache in my heart as I wondered how much damage I did by using my Christian cliché propaganda to “try to make an impact.” Mother Teresa once said: “Every one of them is Jesus in disguise.” I’m not saying his “disappearance” was some kind of supernatural experience, but I can just imagine Jesus watching this whole thing happening, and seeing that empty spot on the bench where I got up and continued my every-day life. I don’t want to picture the tear streaming down his face softly whispering “please don’t leave yet, he doesn’t know me!” As Francis Chan states: “How much do you have to hate someone to willingly not tell them about Christ knowing full well where they will go when they die?” Its time for a change…

I have always wondered why it is so incredibly hard for Christians to open up to other Christians about the things going on in our lives. Besides the obvious stereotypes of us being hypocritical and too judgmental of others, I wonder if there is an underlying fear much deeper, that we never seem to realize until it is us in that certain situation.

A number of years back I knew a guy who encountered some very hard life circumstances. As a result he attempted to take his own life. Long story short, he failed and was then checked into the psych ward at the hospital, pending psychological treatment. The part of this story that broke my heart (besides his life circumstances, I could only hope that is implied), was that every time I asked how he was doing, all I heard were updates on the progress made while in the psych ward. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against modern medicine or the treatment process that can in fact help in the process of treatment. The part that struck me the most was that we decided to disassociate [him] from the struggle he was currently in, and as a result we chose to focus on the struggle rather than the individual.

Here’s where I’m going with this: Sin is Satan’s most effective way to get us to lie to ourselves about who we really are. Sin doesn’t come on a postcard in the mail: [insert sin of choice], check yes or no to engage, please return to address listed below, no postage necessary. We do have a choice in whether or not we want to sin, however I don’t think the choice is that easy to overcome. Like I said, Satan’s most effective success rate has been from coaxing an individual to lie to themselves about who they really are, and that is a loved child of God.

Chances are murderers didn’t become murderers till they were conned into believing that taking someone else’s life would fulfill their own. Thieves weren’t inclined to steal until they were told to believe that having just a little bit more would satisfy that empty hole in their life. Pick a sin, any sin, I’d be willing to bet deep down that every sin is just another blinder pulled over our heads to force us to believe something false about ourselves.

We see people and hear stories of people who are “going through tough times,” yet how many times can we honestly say we think about them rather than their struggle (myself absolutely included in this). We disconnect who they are as a person from the things in life they are going through. We would much rather categorize them as the drug addict, cheater, lier, murderer, or thief, rather than see them as a real human being dealing with real life circumstances.

I called this entry: the [dis]similarities between sin and struggle because I believe we often disconnect the two, even without realizing it. The person soon becomes part of their sin in our minds, and we label them based on what they did or what they are struggling with rather than seeing them as a beloved child of God. Chances are: WE AREN’T ANY DIFFERENT! We may just be better at lying about it to ourselves. We are all human aren’t we? We all struggle with something. God doesn’t see us as the sinners we are, so what makes us think we should see others and ourselves in the same way. We often times forget to see the sin as a struggle. A struggle connotes an effort being made to defeat that sin. We’d rather just write it off as sin so we don’t need to bother checking up on their progress. We’d rather just say “I pray for him/her every single day for their soul,” rather than be the shoulder to hold them up when there’s no one else around.

This probably sounds like some theological paper, or information “we already know.” But I beg to ask why nothing (or so it seems) is being done to fight this? Why do so many people wake up the next morning praying for the hours to pass them by quickly. Why are we so keen on a system of prayer cards and emails when so much more can be done? I wonder if we honestly began to see each and every individual for who they are rather than what they are going through, if we would begin act differently. If someone close to me was going through a tough time that I would be there for them (aside from just praying for them), so what makes the rest of the population any different? Why would we rather put their name down on a prayer card and pass it along to the next person in line? Trust me…I AM THE SAME WAY. This wasn’t written for YOU, it was written for US, the people who are called to be like Jesus.

A good friend once told me: “Love until it hurts, and when it hurts, Love some more.”

The story I told at the beginning hasn’t actually happened. But would you realize it if it were? Have you ever considered that there may be a handful of people all around you every single day who feels the same way, but don’t want to open up because they fear that they will become marginalized and categorized into a psychopathic sin profile. How many people make it through a single day simply because of a smile from a stranger?

“The greatest trick of the devil isn’t to get us into some kind of evil, but rather to have us WASTING OUR TIME. Which is why he tries so hard to get Christians to be religious.” (Donald Miller)

Whose life will you save today?…

Time is a very fluid concept. Many people buy watches for the sheer enjoyment of having something that constantly changes form in one way or another. As a middle school and junior high kid, one of my many material obsessions was watches. There was something about a time piece that I just had to have. Granted, I wanted it to be shiny, big enough to fit my beast of a wrist, and have plenty of “big red buttons” to keep me entertained for hours on end. Although time is such a fluid motion of change, there are aspects of time that are solid and principle. For example, time always goes in one direction…forward. It is impossible, at least by our power to turn back time. And time always moves at the same rate.

Boy was that ever a boring introduction…I almost put myself to sleep writing that; but it was really the only way to put it simply into words. I’m still trying to figure out why here in America, time has become everyone’s ticking bomb waiting to blow up in a second’s notice if we don’t stay on top of it. Time makes me nervous. I’m one of those people who was late enough to school when I was a kid that I absolutely despise being late. I would call it a mental disorder, but it hasn’t been diagnosed or treated in any way so I’ll just say its my special personality trait. I’m so honestly paranoid about being late someplace that I will show up 20 minutes before I am scheduled to be there just because that is the only time I could feel completely comfortable.

I was late to class today. I have to admit it was such a stupid decision to do what I did. Let me tell the story and then explain why I was stupid. I have two classes back to back on separate campuses on tuesdays and thursday. The campuses are spread out so far that my school uses a trolly system to cart students between campuses. It’s about a fifteen minute walk from one campus to another…which happens to be the amount of time in between my two classes. So I decided to be smart and drive to the furthest campus hoping to cut my time in half driving back for my next class…well long story short, I ran into traffic on the way back, circled the filled parking lot, and ended up parking in a faculty and staff lot (which by the way is a big no no). Probably not making that mistake again. As a result, I was 8 minutes late to class. As I got into class my professor was in the process of reading James 1…oh the irony. So I disrupted the class by being late and interrupted bible reading…there goes my credibility.

One of the major phrases I picked up on last semester while I was in South Africa was “TIA”. The phrase simply means: “This is Africa.” I was intrigued by such a culture who put time in its own category, rather than cheaply trying to make it the invisible  big brother. Time to them was simply a means to measure the sunrise to the sunset and have a simple structure as to when to get things done during the day. They don’t have “Time-cards” or “Time-sensitive” mail (to some extent), and the phrase “time to go” isn’t an interruptive goodbye. Their day would be deemed more successful if they spent time pouring life into a fellow South African, even if that meant they made no money and lost profit on their goods….God forbid, thats a cardinal sin in the US. (please excuse my sarcasm) The South African culture seems to be centered around this idea that “we as a whole don’t have any control over time or the circumstances it brings, so there’s no reason to try to control the uncontrollable.” For these people, waiting for a taxi is like a social gathering where they meet up with folks they haven’t seen in a week. The man selling fruit on the side of the road, won’t go home until he’s done talking with his neighbor. Whenever the taxi cab is late to its destination the people look at each other and say “TIA.”

The video at the beginning is a song called “What I’ve done” by Linkin Park. It is almost a complete rewind of the history of not only America but many parts of the world. The song talks about erasing the past of what we’ve done and allowing grace to clean the slate of our bloody history. I find it rather interesting that although they are a secular band, the concept of grace seems pretty consistent with what the Christian faith talks about; cleaning the slate of our sin.

We live in a society so driven by time, yet we spend countless hours updating our facebook or blogs (oops), when 10,000 miles southeast of here people gather around a taxi cab sharing stories of their lives simply because thats how they interact. The only stories we share seem to be done over our black berry phones or three and a half word twitter updates. I find it interesting how the majority of Jesus’ teaching was done in stories, and the only time the bible explicitly says where Jesus and his disciples were going was when it records them actually going there.

This idea of ministry in action intrigues me a lot. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of missions organizations based out of an office building. Don’t get me wrong there are amazing people and things that happen through these organizations, but I beg to question what actually gets done if the only thing that leaves the building is paper and emails. We have been tricked by society to believe that the only difference we can make takes a 7-10 business day time period and a bunch of big whig signatures to even put a small dent in the problems of this world.

Across the street from my apartment complex is a man that sleeps at the bus stop nearly every night. Around the block on the stairs to our neighboring community college is another man who spends his nights covered in newspaper and a few trash bags. More than likely, as I type from this air conditioned apartment room, there are thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children within a hundred mile radius of where I am falling asleep under the smoggy skies of LA. I don’t have much room to talk when it comes to doing anything about it, because I’ve only been able to reach out a few times to people who have deliberately asked for my help, but I pray that changes.

So in the 10 minutes you spent reading this blog entry rather than doing your homework (like me), that was another ten minutes of your life where you could have erased the past from your life by the grace of God and changed the future. I know what I can do…Do you?

Its taken months upon end for me to be able to, and be comfortable with, explaining in words what it is about Christianity today that drives me absolutely nuts. I guess I’ve always been so scared of vocalizing such frustrations for fear of metaphorical excommunication or being shunned from a place so “accepting” as the church. Don’t get me wrong I’m not out to bash the very nature of the church today or claim I have a better solution, because to be completely honest, I don’t. But let me say this. My greatest fear is that the current motivation (whether we know it or not) of the church seems to be to get christians to be more comfortable with Christ, or the place “in which He dwells.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but last time I checked, Paul’s journey through life was anything but comfortable. I vividly remember reading his letters from prison in Philippians, or hearing of his multiple times wearing chains for the word he spread. I know its rather hard for us to imagine a place where we could not freely or openly talk about our faith. A place where prayers before meals would look more like silent implications across the table because you never know who’s watching. Or having our homes raided in suspicion of supporting the underground church. I can’t imagine a world where every word that came out of our mouths had to be consciously censored for religious propaganda so that you wouldn’t be hauled off to jail. You may have heard stories about the treacherous Roman Colosseum where hundreds of Christians were burned alive at the stake for friday night entertainment and used to light Caesars gardens at dinner parties. Can you imagine a world like that today? Well believe it or not…it exists.

Those were the Christians we looked up to in our past. The ones who burned at the stake for the sake of the gospel. The ones who were ripped to shreds by lions for sport. The ones who were more than likely rapped, ravaged, and then murdered because they refused to deny the name of Jesus before a “god” in Roman culture. Let me ask you this…

Do we look anything like our brothers and sisters before us?

Don’t get me wrong there are hundreds upon hundreds of modern day martyrs who have died for the sake of the gospel. To name a few: Jim Elliot and his team, and even more recently Gracia (survived)  and Mark Burnham (May he rest in God’s presence).

It seems as though we are in a constant state of bandaging our wounds of failure and sin, and hiding our scars of our past mistakes for fear of judgement and condemnation. What we often fail to remember is that Christ took two to the hands, one to the feet, one to the head, and one to the side, so that everyone who has wounds could be healed, and everyone who has scars can be comforted. We seem to think come sunday morning we need to look our best to cover our scars, and take communion in order to bandage our wounds. Please don’t misread this part, communion is very important to me and I believe in the power of being reminded of the promise of Christ’s body and blood. But as for what it represents, if we treat it as some kind of remedy for making everything ok the minute we step into church, and walk out feeling fine and refreshed, I believe we are utterly missing the point.

I guess you could say I have a philosophy of the broken. The idea that in our brokenness we are more connected with Christ then when we are pretending to be “put together.” Lest we forget that even Christ, in all his glory, was broken too. We are all a bloody mess, broken to the core, whether we choose to realize it or not. But I can’t help but wonder why we chase some of the stupid things we do. You can build a bigger hospital, but that does nothing if you have no doctors.

So why letters of a cynic? I have always been told my cynicism will catch up with me and bite me in the rear one day; I’m looking forward to that day. I have to be completely honest, I hope my cynical thinking only doesn’t go away…BUT…before you write me off as a typical sarcastic cynical writer, please hear me out on this. I believe cynicism is method of thinking that only looks objectively, without positive or negative bias, at reality. I can’t say I’m going to be right all the time, so forgive my human nature. My prayer is this: that I will be able to look at things from a logical standpoint and think about reality with an unbiased nature, and that I will NOT react with cynicism but with love.

So please feel free to comment, critique, process through, and analyze what I write. Please know I will more than likely respond to your comments. This is absolutely crucial: These are only theories and ideas thrown into a blog, not theological facts proven to be true. I am merely a confused soul trying to figure out what it means to be a Christ follower in a culture where “Christianity” isn’t so popular.

p.s. feel free to throw out ideas on blog topics or questions you want to hear my input on. I’d love to hear from you.

His Hands and Feet,

Jeff