The embarrassing Ricky Gervais usually convinces me to skip the Golden Globes award show that aired last night. This time, Viola Davis looked so spectacular she was a good reason to tune in. As it turns out, there was another reason, as well. Did you notice a theme running through the nominated dramas?
CAROL
1950s married women find unexpected love and complications.
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD
Furiosa frees sex slaves.
THE REVENANT
Vengeance in the frozen north. Hugh Glass frees a native sex slave.
ROOM
Sex slave and her son escape.
SPOTLIGHT
Sexual abuse in the Catholic church is finally exposed.
I am not sure what is going on. But if the movies reflect our reality at all, we appear to be very angry and sex is not working out for us. We have been abused and our imaginations run to the most heinous of situations. Our master movie makers are creating stories that focus on the horrible. We are desperate for connection, but not that hopeful.
There are things we think and do that everyone knows lead to anxiety and depression. Even though they are somewhat obvious, we still need to list them periodically so we can retrain our rutted brains. If you feel stuck in self-destructive behaviors, unhealthy relationship patterns, behaviors dictated by fear, or you feel like changing your life is a hopeless cause, then one place to start is meditating on changing your mind. If you are a cell leader or a people helper, sympathizing with what is making you feel uncomfortable around someone rather than reacting to it might help them find an alternative way of life.
Here are seven things we might say from the depths of a mind rut for which we need an off ramp. Following each statement are some of those basic things the Bible writers teach as good for making our ways straighter and smoother.
When I was on retreat last week, I felt guilty about being on retreat. Then I read an entry in my journal that said, “I am probably better for the church on retreat than I usually am in my office!” It was a good reminder. I felt less guilty about my luxuriant silence.
My review of my journal kept demonstrating other troubles that disturb my peace. Like how I swing from utter confidence in God to being “daunted” (that is the usual word). Silence overcomes what daunts. To be confident in God in the face of what is daunting takes enough silent time to recognize how God is present as I am present.
I am not sure I had enough time. I stayed in town, so now I remember why people go to the desert. But making the effort to retreat into some silence was richly rewarded, if only for the eight reasons I am about to share with you.
As I meditated on my journal, looking for how Jesus has been leading me, these remarkable moments of grace kept popping up. Sometimes I feel, overall, like life is kind of overwhelming and my journal reflects that. It is like one of David’s Psalms where he is stuck in a cave somewhere and Saul is looking for him — but then there is a paragraph in my journal entry that looks like the end of one of David’s laments when he, too, remembers how God has worked and praises him. “This is troubling…BUT God is glorious.”
I’m kind of enjoying the geekiness (no offence) of Pentatonix these days. So let’s start out with them. They do a cover of Gotye’s big song of 2012: Somebody That I Used to Know:
Apart from telling a good story, Gotye and Kimbra summarize in song what so many people experience every day: being cut off and screwed over. Those are common ways NOT to relate. But a lot of people have experienced so much abuse and have had so little opportunity to recover, that they don’t know how to relate another way. They’d like to love, but they are always getting cut off and screwed over. Let’s talk about that.
In the song, Gotye’s character sings about how she “cut him off.” That’s a common experience in relationships that is worth noting. We could talk about how someone refused sex or did some emasculating thing (another time, maybe). But I want to talk about how people try to disappear their intimates to manage their fears. [More here]
When Kimbra’s character comes into the song, she’s talking about something just as relevant: how she feels screwed over. She is so glad she got free of his unprocessed manipulation! And she doesn’t mind telling him so. Maybe you’ve been there.
The song demonstrates two relationship traits common to people when they are not safe in Jesus and are not aware of the frailties they need to have healed. These two common traits are sinful ways we kill love.
Getting cut off happens.
It feels terrible. Gotye paints a vivid picture of it.
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
That last line hints that he may have caused the cut-off himself, since who sends their friends to get their stuff or who changes their number unless there is some kind of weirdness going on? Were there constant texts? I heard about that a few times lately. Friends did have to send their buddies to retrieve their stuff because the ex might go off.
This movie actually exists
I have a friend who has perfected the cut-off. She says it – you do me wrong I cut you off, you’re dead to me. Most of us would not say that; we’d just do it [even legally with restraining orders]. When we are threatened, we disappear people. We make them nothing. So a lot of us feel cut off. You might feel like a relationship is bleeding right now and you are emotionally wounded.
I am not going to do a big Bible study to respond to all this. I think it is enough to say that our preoccupation with Matthew 18 around our church is important because people have been cut-off and have cut people off. Cutting someone off is the common sinful way to deal with “problem” people and with our own troubled feelings. We cut the feelings and the people off. In an abusive and abused, violent society the laws are all about protecting victims (who are numerous). So the society even teaches us to cut-off.
That’s the problem Gotye’s character has in this song. What he did not do is presume that he was in a relationship in which all the parties are sinners, including himself, and that reconciliation was going to be a constant necessity.He actually says in the song that they discovered that they did not make sense, as if that’s how relationships work – like they are supposed to magically make sense, or the interaction is supposed to be so effortless that they never don’t make sense. That’s very unlikely.
Christians relate with reconciliation in mind. They know they need to be listening for God to make sense of things. They know that their loved one needs to be loved, not to make sense according to some tiny idea we have of what makes sense. I know so many people, including myself, who have spent entire evenings arguing about how their interpretation of what happened an hour ago makes more sense than their mate’s interpretation! Reconciliation is more important than everything making sense.
Getting screwed over also happens.
It is a terrible feeling and Kimbra paints a vivid picture of it.
You “had me believing it was always something that I’d done.”
You did not talk, so I was “Reading into every word you say.”
When we broke up “You said that you could let it go”
That last line has a lot packed into it (which is one of the things that makes this a good song, isn’t it?). Between the lines she is saying, “Now we are broken up and you are still obsessed and angry. That points out how you had been simmering with anger the whole time we were together. I was trying to make that work for you. So I basically screwed myself in your honor. And that makes me angry!”
Sorry to keep using the word “screwed.” But this song is basically about sex. They don’t really get to intimacy. Being used for sex is part of the woman’s pain, I think. “Having sex” in our language right now is not necessarily a term of endearment. “Fuck” is one of the meanest things people say. We “get screwed over” a lot. Sex is often a violation and we are mad about it. A lot of people talk about sex as if they need their rights protected, like they are so shallow that intimacy can be regulated by state law or something – or maybe they feel so hurt they think there ought to be a law.
Kimbra could have helped herself if she had just had one small rule of communication: “Don’t read between the lines.” Clear communication includes the recognition that the other person hasn’t actually said something until they have said it. If you think their body language means something, ask them if it means what you think it means. Don’t react as if you know what they have not articulated. Conversely, communication happens when a person has responded to what you say in such a way that they confirm they heard what you said. Just providing a lot of information and expecting people to find it is not enough. We’re tempted to treat each other like we are websites – “I already laid out all the info, search it. I don’t need to talk to you because I posted it on my timeline. It’s on my blog.”
There is actually a little incident in John 14 where Jesus has to negotiate this process of communication with one of his intimates. Philip says, “Just show me the father. “ And Jesus is a little exasperated. He says, “Haven’t you heard the words of the father in me? Haven’t you seen the miracles?” I suppose Jesus could have cut Philip off at that point. Or he could have remembered Philip’s cluelessness as an example of all the ways his disciples had screwed him over. Instead, Jesus humbly communicates it again, as clearly as he can. Philip is not required to “read between the lines:” “It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” The Lord humbly, clearly communicates.
Christians know that truth and love are hard to communicate because they know how hard it is for them to receive the truth and love of God, who is the source of truth and love! So we are patient with our intimates, and with everyone else. We know we are hard to understand; we know the other person is hard to understand — they don’t even understand themselves! Why get all hacked off when they behave as confused and as detached as they are! Help them! Listen to them! Speak clearly and in love!
There is hope
My favorite part of the video is at the end, when Kimbra stands apart and loses the paint of this unloving relationship. She kind of returns to the state of being naked and unashamed like Adam and Eve were before sin messed them up and they got separated from God and each other. She gets out of the damaging matrix. Now that they aren’t locked in some sinful way to relate, maybe something better can happen. Hopefully, they both learn to practice reconciliation, not just self-defense. Hopefully, they learn to communicate, not just react in some pre-verbal way.
I don’t think Gotye intended for me to get any hope at all out of his sad song. But I am way Christian. I really wanted that woman’s unpainted self to get out of that messy video, so I took it that way. Why not? Jesus is doing the best God can do to call us out of the condemned and condemning ways we relate and into real love. If we let him be present and don’t suck up some bogus narrative, if we don’t cut him off, if we let him communicate, we have a good chance of being restored to love ourselves and even having great intimacy — and great sex.
The literature of the age is film, and a believer needs to study. It is a pleasurable study, especially when the actors or the material are as well-tuned as recent offerings have been. I give you three films today, because the tsunami of the thoughts they are channeling will likely lap at your threshold whether you watch them or not.
Salt
In Salt (undoubtedly so-named so there can be Salt II, as in the arms treaty) the force-of-nature who is Angelina Jolie carries a chase movie through sheer force of will. She is a Russian mole who was planted in the U.S. as a child, awaiting activation by her evil “creator.” Needless to say, she kills all the bad guys in a fit of redemptive violence – which is still a false myth, no matter how many times it gets filmed.
I walked out of the theatre (in the blazing heat) and said, “Note to Angelina. Do not let your however-many-you-have-now children EVER see what Mommy does for a living.” A couple of her murderous looks scared me, and she is not my mommy. Even more, the depth of American paranoia scared me. We can see a terrorist behind every bush and we are sure the government is crawling with ineptitude and corruption. If one is not as lithe as Angelina and in shape enough to sprint through an entire movie, they are doomed. It is all up to you, you brilliant individual. You are the master of your fate and you may need to kill them all for everything to work out all right (or to at least get to the sequel).
Inception
In Inception Leonardo di Caprio wants to get back to his kids. But first he has to implant a thought in a billionaire’s brain and let go of his wife who is living in the depths of his unconscious where he condemned her to exist when he implanted the notion in her deepest unconscious that reality was not as real as the subconscious worlds they traveled together. (Oh, it is much more convoluted than that!) It is the Matrix, meets the Wizard of Oz meets some movie with Barbra Streisand as a therapist.
I walked out of the theatre (in the blazing heat) and said, “THAT, was awesome, I don’t care if I understood it or not.” Apart from the amazing visuals, people will love this movie because they are so in love with their own psychological process. There is a definite parallel with Salt, in that Angelina had what amounted to an “inception” as a child. Plus, the movie Inception is questioning whether the technology might exist in some place less-regulated like Mombasa or Japan that can invade our minds. We’re paranoid about the technology and lack of security (and I think we should be), but we are also so fascinated by our own unknowable selves that we might sign up for Leonardo to explore our dreams and make his exploration into a reality show. We don’t want to “go there” but we are still self-absorbed.
The Kids Are All Right
In The Kids Are All Right five great performances illuminate the ultra-postchristian family for us. Nice lesbian mothers are dealing with the fissures in their long relationship — like sex and unrealized dreams. They meet up with the sperm donor after the teenage kids find him. Painful hijinks ensue. Hollywood is going to tear down any notion of what is now called the “traditional” family if they have to spend every cent they have to do it. Again we see the struggle we are all having with technology – this time the results of lab-produced children. Plus we are again thinking about our dreams, and the limits of our capacity to realize them. One of the teenagers in the film resents being the pawn in the “perfect lesbian marriage.”
I walked out of the theatre and said, “That was cute. I am amazed how good Annette Bening looks without make-up.” Propaganda comes in pretty packages these days — we do love our pills candy-coated. One of the things I noticed, and appreciated, was the way the filmmaker focused on each of the five characters and showed how they were dealing with the moral implications of what was happening in the family. The relational disaster happens and everyone changes for the batter. I enjoyed the hope.
Hang on to your hope
Hang on to your hope if you go to the movies — because someone is out to get you! You may end up as a player in the battles of the unseen forces. They may invade your mind. A technological glitch from your past may rise up to wreck the present. Everything is definitely out of control. I think most Christians I know are being swept along with these same reactions to our era as everyone else. The story-telling technology is the main force that sweeps them, even if the realities they portray exist or not (and I am not even talking about Glenn Beck channeling the realities of his Mormonism).
The only real hope we have of standing against the flow, or at least of surfing it to the end instead of drowning in it, is to get up every morning and secure our connection with the Reality who grounds us in eternity, who won’t leave us alone to stand against the forces washing up on our doorsteps. Jesus saved us and will save us, no matter how big those faces and stories on the screen appear to be. We are that reality in our body; we express that reality in what we say and do. And I believe, in the end, all the other fantasies that try to undermine Jesus will fade into nothingness in his light, just like a door to the sunlight opening up in a dark theater.
The story goes that one of the young brothers among the desert monks went to an elder and asked, “Would it be right if I kept a little money in my possession, in case I should get sick?”
The elder, seeing that he wanted to keep the money, said, “Keep it.”
The brother went back to his place and began to wrestle with his thoughts, saying “I wonder if the elder really gave me his blessing. So he went back and asked him, “In the Lord’s name, tell me the truth, because I am upset over this money.”
The elder told him, “Since I saw your thoughts and your desire to keep the money, I told you to keep it. But it is not good to keep more than we need for our body. Now this money is your hope. If it should be lost, would God not care for you?”
That’s the question, isn’t it? “Will God care for me?” In a depression that is even more difficult to believe.
The gift of poverty
We sometimes talk about the spiritual gift of poverty that is implied in 1 Corinthians 13:3: “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing” and spoken of in 2 Corinthians 8:9 “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”
If you have the gift of voluntary poverty (like the monks in the quote above were working out), then maybe the economic depression we are in feels like an opportunity to trust God and you are excited to see what happens. For most of us, however, we are more likely to be slogging it out in our more typical spiritual capacity. No doubt we long for greater gifts. But, for now, we are trying to do what we must do in the face of difficult circumstances.
It is a good time to revisit what we are called to do when we face poverty. There are some basic ways we typical believers are taught to live:
1) All believers are called to live free from the bondage of materialism and undue attention to personal comfort (Matt. 6:19-24, Luke 12:33-34, 14:33). The goal is to never be burdened with material things and never to be a burden (1 Thess. 2:9). This does not mean individualism or self-reliance, but it does mean personal responsibility.
2) Some people may be called to special divestment of wealth because possessions are a stumbling block to them (Mark 10:17-23). This does not mean that having possessions is wrong. But it does mean that possessiveness can control us. We may also be called to divest ourselves of our high expectations for our wealth and success and reduce ourselves to following what God has for us rather than what the “invisible hand” promises. This expectation may be more controlling than the possessions themselves.
3) Not all giving and not all poverty are examples of the gift of voluntary poverty (2 Cor. 8:1-4, Rev. 2:9). We may need to admit that we need help – that we are involuntarily poor. The greatest antidote to poverty in our society is sharing, and sharing is probably the antidote we are most reluctant to use. Share housing. Share incomes. Come up with joint projects to make money. Individually, we may not all have enough to live on. But, chances are, as a church we have more than enough to live on.
Rely on one another
If we do not help one another, we may not get a more miraculous act of help from God. We often rely on God to move the godless mechanism of the “economy” to help us, instead of relying on his own body – and we are upset that we are not helped. Likewise, the body often has very little imagination for how we are connected financially and we end up sending people to “the world” for help, relying on people/powers who don’t care about Jesus to care like Jesus! In this era of reduced circumstances, we will need to return to a Biblical view of ourselves. For that necessity we can give thanks for the depression.
I think we need to seek a dramatic filling of God’s Spirit in our church, so we can meet the challenges of this day. The first Christians are a good example of how this can happen in a group of people. When the Holy Spirit filled them they followed the Lord’s example of
owning nothing that tied them to this time and place and
distributing what they had to relieve the burdens or meet the needs of others (Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-37).
Right now, we are seeing an increased call upon our compassion fund for food and shelter; I am delighted that we store up money for that use. Many of us already share housing and even incomes – that’s good. Our convictions and skills may be even more necessary this year – because it is an economic depression.
I believe God will help us. Even if we don’t obey him, for our sake he becomes as poor as we are. But to be blessed, we must become poor in ourselves to be rich in Him.
We had a great blessing-of-a-feast last night – turkey, all the accoutrements, Gwen’s famous (or should be) dessert punch, amazing friends and comrades. Now for the fast.
The people of Shalom House have called for a fast today. Our friends over in their West Philly outpost are proactive peacemakers who just seem to get more devoted, creative and assertive all the time! They bless me. At our feast last night, as we toasted 2009 in various ways, someone got us to raise our glasses to the great triumph of shutting down Colissimo’s Gun Shop. Mimi even went to jail over that! In an age where, somehow, the “right to bear arms” has been interpreted as the right to flood the street with weapons designed for personal “shoot outs” and spraying the neighbors with semi-automatics, thank God for young women who don’t take “no” for an answer.
I invite anyone reading this to fast, in some way, with the people of Shalom House and their partners. Don’t eat a Christmas cookie for a couple of hours or send them a check for $50,000 – whatever works for you. And PRAY! This is what they are doing: “In this season of advent, of expectation, we at Shalom House are feeling the expectation of new community members. We are feeling the burden of the longing for Peacemaking efforts to be multiplied among us.” They want to do more and get more house members to do it with them! Thank you, Lord!
As part of their suggestions for what to do as we all pray with them today, they offer a quote from a great peacemaker we should never forget, Oscar Romero: “I do not tire of telling everyone, especially young people who long for their people’s liberation, that I admire their social and political sensitivity, but it saddens me when they waste it by going on ways that are false. Let us, too, all take notice that the great leader of our liberation is the Lord’s Anointed One, who comes to announce good news to the poor, to give freedom to the captives, to give news of the missing, to give joy to so many homes in mourning, so that society may be renewed as in the sabbatical years of Israel.” Someone still longs for jubilee! Someone is not so worn down, defeated, overwhelmed by evil, discouraged by hope-that-ends-up-in-increased-troops-to-Afghanistan, that they can’t still apply themselves to the cause of redemption! Thank you Lord! That is also a feast, and a great motivation to fast and pray.
And Caleb said, “I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage to the man who attacks and captures Kiriath Sepher.” Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s brother, took it; so Caleb gave his daughter Acsah to him in marriage.
One day when she came to Othniel, she urged him to ask her father for a field. When she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What can I do for you?”
She replied, “Do me a special favor. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me also springs of water.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs. Joshua 15:16-19
No selfies in Acsah’s day, but this might be a good snap.
I have a special fondness for young couples starting out together; so this little bit of history in the book of Joshua is kind of irresistible to me. Othniel went on to be the first judge of the judges of Israel. But at this point, he and Acsah (name your daughter that!) are just setting up their own household. They seem to have been a visionary, ambitious pair. That is what I think, at least, when I envision Acsah and Othniel going back to Caleb’s house to get a better deal on her inheritance. All she had was desert and no water — but she had irrigation plans! It appears that she was pushing Othniel, “Go ask my dad for more!” But as soon as they got there, she jumped off her donkey and asked herself! Caleb undoubtedly knew he had a special daughter; he may have seen “that look” in her eye as soon as she rode up and immediately asked, “What?”
She got her water.
The Prayer
You may think it is too much to make a lot out of these little snippets of the Bible. That’s OK. But see if this moment doesn’t make a good prayer for you, anyway. Here is how it works.
We go to our Father and he sees us just as we are. He says, “What can I do for you?”
We say, “Do me a favor, since you know I’ve been given desert. I need springs of water. Give me also springs of water.”
He gives them.
It is something like that. Try praying it. Should I say, “Get off your ass and ask?” Probably not.
But we need to ask because we have some desert! Should we just take what we appear to have been given and make the most of the desert?
I’m talking about the spiritual desert — not feeling it personally, no faith, hope, joy, love, just a gnawing sense of need.
I’m talking about the relational desert – the friendship circle or marriage feels dry, makes me want to try a new city or a new mate.
I’m talking about the political desert – Philly has lots of water but it has lots of trouble: too much violence, too little money in its coffers, too much injustice and corruption.
Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” John 7:37-8
The vision
Being one woman, going to her father for what she needs and ending up with living water flowing from her in the middle of desert places – that seems to me like the best result of all. Taking her husband with her and irrigating as much territory as she can touch seems to be a life worth living. Acsah couldn’t help but ask. Do you do that anymore?
Maybe you think coming to Jesus and asking for living water is entirely too easy. Snippety. You are into much more complicated things. That’s OK. I have nothing for you. I think I get tinier all the time — just a child going to my Father in the place I know to find him and trusting him to give me what he has for me.
As of today Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has grossed $461,318,990 worldwide. Gwen and I contributed to that last week at the over-priced Bridge Deluxe near Penn (but how nice to walk to the theatre!). Do you get what is going on here? Just what is selling all these tickets? I have not been able to get into the books and I have been caught looking at my watch during the movies. What is the attraction?
There is something going on. A bazillion people are concerned that another youngster is threatened by unseen forces and fighting overwhelming evils. Is every movie required to have this plot this year? — By use of some kind of magic (a transforming car, the Starship Enterprise, etc.) young people enhance their developing, misunderstood awesomeness to overcome the evil with the help of their friends, but not at the expense of their own self-esteem and uniqueness.
This propaganda is getting to be old hat. But, if the trailers are any evidence, the expression of it may be getting darker and even more dire. I felt quite educated by the previews before Harry Potter started lumbering into its 2-1/2 hours. I can’t remember them all. The next Twilight was one of them (Bella leaves vampire boyfriend with werewolf boyfriend; danger ensues, but will true love save even the undead?). 2012 was another (John Cusack and Woody Harrelson survive global catastrophe). And there was a creepier, Potteresque something I can’t remember. I was not encouraged, but perhaps enlightened.
This generation has some high expectations of success and happiness and it secretly blames insurmountable, possibly evil, forces for the inevitable shame they feel about their deprivation. That is my lesson du jour. Voldemort gets Dumbeldore killed. My boyfriend wants to suck my blood. We’re all about to be killed by a natural disaster and only John Cusack will survive. Anxiety. Fear. Unfulfilled dreams. Pass the prozac. Or please, pass the gospel. You people need a savior; Harry’s wand is not making it (and it is make-believe, anyway, btw).
The other strand that might be running through these movies is this (OK, this is lesson du jour deux): “I really want someone to love; I want community.” — Life-long school chums who are as weird as I am and know me, and accept me, as I am; the boyfriend who is wild and crazy but who will resist killing me (he’s so awesome) and may kill others for me; the brave survivors who restart the world from their little tribe. Connection, Hope. Restoration. Pass the church.
I have been pondering these two scriptures this morning. They seem to go together.
“Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-9)
“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:1-4)
Our God is like fire.
He burns for goodness and beauty.
He burns against the corruption of his creation.
He burns without consuming the bush, and burns in us to fire our imagination and unshakeable hope.
He burns to consume his enemies and cleanse the situation for new creation.
So I think there is a good way to be “consumed” and a reason to avoid it.
Wary of being consumed
The Christians I hang with are wary of being consumed. I think they have a large-context reason to be wary and a smaller-context one, both of which are well-taken.
The big reason they have become afraid they will be consumed is because they live in consumer culture where it has become one’s civic duty to figure out how to buy a Chrysler. This morning, for instance, I decided to actually look at my copious spam email, sent to get some little bit of my buying power and hopefully get my name on a list for future endless attacks. “Sasha” was offering me pictures of herself. “Mohammed Townsand” was offering Viagra. “Mrs. Mariam Coleman” was offering a donation of $2.8 million dollars from her Kuwaiti Christian husband’s estate. “Evelina Inge” offered me access to the #1 internet drugstore. Those were the highlights, likely to be repeated tomorrow. We are invaded with so many predatory demands to consume, it is no wonder we have developed some thick armor.
The second, more localized, reason to be wary of being consumed is that church structures are often big ideas promoted by aggressive leaders that need troops of drones to perform the duties associated with them. The “mega-church” model for church is modeled on the shopping small, in which everyone can find a place for their self-interest to be satisfied. Producing a Christian mall takes an army of dedicated “needs”-meeters. So one can have a demanding job for 60 hours a week and then be asked to have another one in your spare time and call it being the church. The church is so adapted to consumer capitalism in our country that everyone in it is required to produce some product for further consumers to consume. So everyone just keeps getting consumed.
We burn but are not consumed
There are good reasons to avoid being consumed. When a person enters the church with a shopping list of demands and looks at you like you are the sales clerk, a deeper conversation might be required before you automatically launch into trying to satisfy their desires. They do not have a God-given right to consume you. You are not a product. You are not a donation to their cause. People often have a general wrong idea about the world. If they apply it to you and you go with it, that doesn’t necessarily mean you are being nice.
On the other hand, the bush was on fire, but it was not consumed. We can be so aware of “having boundaries” that we also become unavailable for being on fire! We can get so we are wary of God consuming us. But when the Consuming Fire lights us up, we are not consumed. Much the contrary, the Fire behind creation shines through; we have more substance than what we previously thought of as substance. So when that same person comes at us thinking we are the Christian salesclerk who is supposed to have whatever product they need, we can call their name, by God’s grace (“Sasha, Sasha”), and be a connection with the One they really need.
If one is a burning bush because the Consuming Fire lives in her, please do not leave someone wandering in the foothills of Horeb. You will not be consumed if you offer someone the Lord. Even if they shake your tree or pick at the branches of your bush looking for what they don’t need, you’ll be OK. If we rely on the Lord, and not just our ability to produce the fruit someone thinks they’d like to eat while ignoring the fire calling their name, we’ll be OK. The Lord burns with His own goodness and it has become inexhaustibly available to us in Jesus.
