God, what is it you want me to be doing with my life? Nothing. You’re fine. Isn’t there something I’m supposed to be doing? No. You don’t have to do anything. Just do you. It’s fine. Ummmm . . . Okaaaay . . . So I don’t need to be doing anything. And you don’t want or need anything from me. But I’d kind of … Continue reading “You Don’t Have to do Anything . . . “
Hey all, I just wanted to let you know that you can read my short story “Mountain Climbing” over at the Burnside Writer’s Collective today. If you’re not familiar with The Burnside Writer’s Collective, they describe themselves as “an online magazine for Christians looking for a connection with the world outside of franchise Christianity.” So, yeah – a good fit. I’ll be back with another … Continue reading Check Me Out at The Burnside Writer’s Collective Today!
Some years ago my husband was driving through our small town’s business district early in the morning and happened to observe a hawk catch a rabbit. After nabbing the cute little bunny, the hawk alighted on a nearby light post and began ripping into the little thing’s soft belly. What struck my husband was that the rabbit was still alive and struggling when the hawk … Continue reading Warning: God Can Be Ruthless
Back when I was a kid, I would hear the words of Jesus telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us and wonder . . . do I have enemies? Did the popular girls at school who seemed to be snearing at me all the time count as enemies? How about the teachers who kept insisting that I do my … Continue reading Making the Most of an Enemy
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate . . . even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” ~ Luke 14:26 “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life of the ages.” ~ John 12:25 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, … Continue reading Hating Life
If a man mints many coins from one mould, they are all alike, but the Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned all men in the mould of the first man, and not one resembles the other. ~ Babylonian Talmud
I am not the first to say it, nor is this the first or last time I will say it, but one of the foundational errors of most Christian theology is that it begins with the fall of man rather than with our creation. When we start with the fall, we ground our identity and understanding of ourselves in sin and brokenness. And the Christian walk which comes out of this foundation is duly oriented to this sin and brokenness. But this is a grave error. The story of you and me and every human being ever doesn’t begin with the fall, but with an almost breath-taking premise: that we are made in the very image of God. This is reality. It is who we are. It is our true identity.
If we believe that we are defined by our sin and brokenness, then the claim that who we actually are is the very image of a mighty, loving God is absolutely scandalous. “Oh no,” we say, “I’m merely a sinner saved by grace. A lowly worm in whom there is no good thing. I am nothing and God is everything.” But go back and read your bible from the beginning. God’s purposes are clear and no where have they been changed or removed: “Let us make man in our own image.” If we are not in reality the very image of God, then God’s work has been destroyed, The enemy has stolen what belong to God and taken it for himself. God is not an all powerful, victorious God if we aren’t walking, talking, living, breathing images of God.
The problem we have – and which scripture makes clear – is that we do sin and others sin against us. Continue reading “Who Are We? (Your Answer is Probably Wrong)”
In Trotter family lore, the years of 2010-2012 will go down as the time of the great breaking. Because everything we owned broke. In a relatively short period of time we had a TV, a VCR, three DVD players, two cars, 4 kitchen chairs, our refrigerator, dishwasher, dryer, washing machine, nearly all of our plates and glasses, a kindle, two laptops, a business and what little was left of our financial stability break. (I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things.) It got so bad that one day I went to take a drink of my coffee and the handle of the coffee mug I was using broke off in my hand. Seriously. We just started laughing about it after a while.
It was also the period when my marriage broke and my husband and I separated for about 7 months. So, lots of breaking.
When events pile up like that, it’s often not a coincidence. There’s a reason for it. (For the record, our house was only 7 years old and one of the laptops was just over a year old. This wasn’t simply a matter of things just getting worn out and breaking.) While we were separated my husband actually prayed about why everything we owned was breaking. He came back to me with what he believed he had been told. The reason things were breaking, he said, was because he had been the glue holding our material world together. When he left (or at least checked out), there was no glue left to keep everything from breaking.
When he told me that, almost without thinking, I blurted out, “but I don’t want broken shit that needs glue to keep it from falling apart!”
Now, glue has its uses. If nothing else, it can be a stop-gap to hold broken things together for a while longer. But it’s not a permanent solution. Things are always weaker at the spot where the glue is holding it together. And it can’t do anything to keep the next break in a different spot from happening. Duct tape may hold the world together, but eventually, broken things need replacing.
It seems to me that humanity has been depending on glue to hold everything together for a long time. We’re broken and our world is broken, so we just keep gobbing on the glue. We want money so it can hold everything together for us. We fight wars and each other, thinking that will preserve us. We lie and cut corners to cover the gaps between what is and what we need it to be. We lose our tempers, use intimidation and control others to keep them from tearing our world apart. We seek pleasure and comfort to fill in the breaks in our souls. We hold grudges and see others as enemies to shore up the weak spots where previous breaks have occurred. And we pass on the glue from generation to generation.
When God tells us to do something – not worry about money, not judge, love freely, give up our lives – we say “that’s nice” and go right on playing with our paste. Continue reading “Let’s Stop With the Glue Already!”
If you’re a regular reader, it’s probably hard to imagine a happy-clappy Rebecca, but honestly, I haven’t always been a broken, whiny, suffering Christian. In fact, for most of my adult life, I was pretty darn happy, although I never was very clappy. Unless there’s a good gospel-worship band going and I can get as clappy as the next gal.
Sure I had my ups and downs. Sometimes I was really unhappy and even fell into a serious depression once before. But those were passing phases, really. Most often, I was happy in the face of challenges and sometimes life was reasonably decent enough that I was simply content. Ah . . . those were the days.
One of the things I learned during those years was that I’m a much better Christian when things are going well than when they aren’t. As you may have noticed, when life really sucks – like way more than is normal for a life to suck, sucks – it doesn’t bring out the best in me, faith-wise. I get angry with God. I complain incessantly. I delve into despair. Bitterness crops up. I question every choice I ever made – especially the one to follow God. I feel betrayed. I complain. Did I mention that I get angry with God?
Yes, it is true that sucky times teach me a great deal. I grow in them. I’m sure it’s all for the good. Maybe. But really and truly, if you were to ask me when my walk with God is most faithful, most intimate and most life-giving, it would be during the good times. Hands down. And as is so often the case with me, it turns out that this is a little weird.
Many Christians who have had the experience of following God in hard times find that it’s actually easier to be faithful during those times. When life is crushing us, we are forced to depend on God completely. Not being able to do anything else, we may spend much more time in prayer, calling out to God for help. We rely on scriptures for comfort. And then when the clouds clear and life gets easier, and we don’t have to be so dependent, aren’t continually calling out for rescue and don’t need so much comfort, many people’s relationship with God kind of falls off. Continue reading “Keeping Faith When Life is Good”
When my oldest son was 2 1/2, we were driving home one day and from the backseat I heard a little boy voice say, “Fuck!” Thinking quickly, I told him, “that’s right honey – truck! There’s a truck over there.” He repeated “fuck” several times and I kept saying, “that’s right honey – truck!” Finally with a note of confusion in his voice he said, “truck?” Yup. Truck.
Now, where ever would a sweet 2 year old kid of mine ever hear such a word? From me, of course. I do try not to swear (much) in front of my kids, but it happens. Most days. I know you think I should at least have the decency to feel guilty about it, but I don’t really. I swear. I like swearing. Swearing plays an important role in every language that’s ever existed. Sometimes nothing but a well planted swear word will do.***
Although I’m perfectly comfortable with swearing, there is a verbal tick I used to have that I wanted to get rid of but just couldn’t seem to manage. I frequently used God’s name as a curse word or as part of a string of curse words. It was so automatic that I couldn’t seem to stop. It seems like a fairly minor thing, but it really bothered me. Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain being one of the commandments and all (yes – I know the command can be understood to refer to something different, but still).
There was a time in my life when my inability to stop using God’s name as a curse word made me feel awful. Like a terrible, awful person of low character and lower self-control. Now here’s the thing about a person feeling like an awful, terrible person: that feeling never comes from a Godly place. Scriptures tell us that it is Satan’s job to accuse us – that is to offer an explanation for or story about our behavior which makes us look like terrible, awful people. Feeling like a terrible, awful person is what happens when we feel condemned. But “no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus”.
The reason the enemy loves to use the tool of condemnation is because it hides the truth of who we are from us. You and I and every other human being is an image bearer – one who reflects God himself. And the enemy knows that if we ever discover this truth and learn to live out of it, the jig is up. All his work will be destroyed. But if he can convince us that our sin and weakness defines who we really are, then we may putter along, trying to fight our urge to sin but never really owning, much less living out of the glory which is in us. Now, sometimes the enemy will overplay his hand and the condemnation a person feels for their sin will actually lead them to seek God. But that’s fairly rare and it’s such an effective tool most of the time that it’s well worth the risk for the enemy to keep condemning us. (This dynamic is also why we are not supposed to judge. Even when we are correct about another person’s sin, when we judge, we are doing just what the enemy does. We are telling someone that their failure is a reflection of them. It’s not. It’s a reflection of sin which is not part of who we actually are.) Continue reading “Condemnation is One Curse Word I Won’t Say”
I’ve come across a number of Christians lately who are questioning the impulse to elevate love above any other concern. Love is too soft and squishy, they say. Love becomes an excuse to avoid hard things like confronting sin and enforcing discipline. One writer even asked if we are in danger of making love an idol. (Perhaps he hasn’t gotten to the part where the bible says that God IS love?!?)
I have something to tell you about people who say that love is squishy, soft, a cop-out: quite clearly, such a person has never actually attempted to love unconditionally. Loving unconditionally is the hardest thing any human being can ever try to do. Confronting sin? Upsetting friends and family? Setting boundaries and rules? Pffftttt . . . . Those are the simplest, most natural things in the world for the fallen human mind to do. Loving unconditionally? That WILL DESTROY YOU. It will cost you EVERYTHING. You will DIE if you try to do it.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” ~ Matthew 16:24
These Christians who warn against love are right to be afraid of it. But not because it’s soft and squishy. Just the opposite. Unconditional love is the hardest, heaviest cross a human being can bear. It sent Jesus to his death. He warned us that it would divide “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
In fact, unconditional love is so hard and so dangerous that I’ve had mature, devout, loving Christians who I respect warn me against it. One man told me to never ask God to teach me to love people the way he does. It’s impossible, he said. Another woman told me the same thing about the sort of love described in 1 Corinthians 13. It’s impossible.
Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” ~ Matthew 19:26
The Upside Down World 