The Divine Inheritance

"For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish." Esther 4:14

"Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession." Psalm 2:8

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Matthew 6:2-4

"“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." Matthew 6:19-20

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." Matthew 13:44

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate." Luke 15:22-24

"The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name." Acts 5:41

"Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." Romans 8:17

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:37-39

"Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
--- The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis


On the first day of this month, it was announced that Osama bin Laden had been shot and killed. My response to this was to weep and pray for my brothers and sisters in radical Islam and to write a short essay expressing such sentiments as I experienced that night. The events, discussions, and works of the Spirit that followed continue to astound me weeks later, and I firmly believe that May 1st, 2011 will endure as one of the most important days of my life. Among other things, the event has encouraged me to commit myself to the spreading of the Gospel in the Muslim world, especially among the radical branches of the religion, through prayer, financial support, my writings, and perhaps even missionary work if God leads me in that direction. This is a manifestation of my sincere desire to see God glorified and His love shared with others, but it is also part of my yearning for the inheritance promised to me.

This past semester I also was led by God to read the story of His chosen people, beginning in 1 Samuel and ending in Jonah (not counting books of prophesy), and one of the most prominent themes of this grand story was inheritance. At one point, I read a commentary from the editors (if that's the right word) of my Bible on the time devoted to describing how Ahab and his wife had a man killed in order to take his property in comparison to what appeared to be much more serious crimes. At first, Ahab had tried to buy the property (a vineyard if I recall) from the man, but he had refused because it was unlawful to sell his inheritance in the Promised Land.

At an earlier point I was struck by the inheritance which David had in the abundant blessings of his reign and his bloodline, which was chosen to be the bloodline of Messiah Yeshua. This inheritance, which was God's delight to bestow upon him, did not extend merely to David but also was laid upon his disobedient descendants as the Lord promised that the lineage of David would endure. The power of this blessing can easily be seen when we compare the rules of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. In response to Solomon's wickedness, God had divided the Promised Land between Israel, ruled by Jeroboam, and Judah, ruled by Rehoboam, the son of Solomon and grandson of David. Both kings had defied God and given their kingdoms over to the worship of pagan idols (interestingly, Jeroboam had chosen to do this after he had been saved from a long and bloody war by the then-current prophet, who had told the enemy troops to stand down because it was God's will that Israel be divided) but Jeroboam's entire family was wiped out after only a few generations while Rehoboam's line continued not only to exist (there are probably descendants of David running around to this very day) but to rule Judah until the entire Promised Land was delivered over to Babylon. In fact, Rehoboam's grandson, Asa, proved to be of the same nature as David and he continued to rule Judah long into his old age whilst the kings of Israel were dropping like flies.

Next there was the inheritance of the prophets, particularly of Elijah and Elisha. Through various people, events, accounts, and books, God has been leading me to a longing for the power of the Spirit as a regular part of my experience of Him, and so when I read of the ancient prophets I did so with an understanding (though it is a vague and incomplete understanding to be sure) of the sheer glee with which Elijah, filled with the Spirit's power, outran the chariot of the king. It must have been a moment of incredible reverence and joy when Eli realized that, in a time when God seemed silent, the Lord had spoken audibly to this little boy under his care. And who could describe the cheerfulness with which Elijah ordered gallons upon gallons of water, in the midst of a drought no less, to be poured out over the Lord's sacrifice? I began my reading of First and Second Kings with the belief that those who perform miracles simply follow God's plan, but as I read of Elisha's spontaneous exercises of miraculous power it seemed to me that the Lord had invited him not simply to respond to His commands, but rather to take on the supernatural authority of the Kingdom of Heaven and become an active participant in the advance of that Kingdom. No wonder Elisha had asked for a double-dose of his mentor's spirit.

Finally, there was the love of Israel that the Jews had when they went into exile. Read through the accounts of their scatterings from and returns to the Promised Land and it will become clear with what absolute joy the Jews took up their inheritance. Before his passing, the senior Mr. Rubinstein once came to one of my classes and said that to this day the true home of every Jew is Israel and that he had seen some Jews break down into tears upon coming to the Promised Land.

Today, with the New Covenant of Messiah in place, we also have an inheritance in the Kingdom and we should respond to that news as joyfully as the ancient Jews of the Persian empire responded to the news that the Promised Land was to be given back to them. Before I was a Christian I found this idea repulsive, feeling that it was wrong to pursue love or righteousness with rewards in mind. Today, I am even more skeptical of self-centered ideas like self esteem and such, but I am also overjoyed by the inheritance promised to me by Christ. After all, is it not supreme arrogance to belittle that for which God has bled and died, even if that is one's own self? If Christ is preparing a treasure in my name, is it not sinful disobedience not to rejoice? Besides, this treasure is one in which only sanctified heart can delight.

And this is an inheritance to be chased after here and now. Our inheritance is in the Kingdom of Heaven to be sure, but while that Kingdom will never be fully realized this side of Judgment, it is nonetheless present in the mortal world.

The Inheritance of the Evangelist
Remember how I started this post? Remember how I said God has led me to dedicate myself to the spread of the Gospel to Muslims? This is where that plays in. Christ said that we are to be fishers of men and that we are to reap of a harvest we have not sown, and I for one am overjoyed at this prospect.

Islam is currently the second largest religion in the world and after Muhammad, the man it holds in greatest reverence is Isa la Messiah. It is a religion rooted in the Biblical tradition but it is also one founded upon works, with (I suspect) a declining sense of hope as the radicals fail to deliver victories and the West continues to outshine the nations that once considered it an ignorant, backwater corner of the world. According to Carl Medearis, missionary (if that is the right word) and author of Muslims, Christians, and Jesus, reports numerous occasions on which Muslims, including a member of Hezbollah, were overjoyed at the opportunity to learn about Isa from him or to receive a book of the Gospels as a gift, and J.P. Moreland claims in Kingdom Triangle that thousands of Muslims are acknowledging Isa as their lord and savior each year.

In the developing world, the Church has been growing at explosive rates. According to Moreland, there were twice as many Western Evangelicals as Nonwestern Evangelicals in 1960 and by 2000 there were four times as many Nonwestern Evangelicals as Western Evangelicals. Through the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit and the outpouring of Christ-like love, the Church has been growing in leaps and bounds in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

And this harvest is not just overseas. For over a thousand years the vast majority of the Kingdom's struggle has been not over nonbelievers, but rather over nominal Christians, the lukewarm believers. However, ever since the Enlightenment, mainstream Western culture has been drifting slowly away from Christianity. Today, American culture and academia are largely apostate and even in the Bible Belt people are getting tired of "playing church." As I recently told a fellow believer, it will not be long now before secular America stops being apostate and starts being pagan, and I am absolutely ecstatic about the harvest that will follow. Once the last vestiges of Christianity are gone, what will be left to protect the agnostics and atheists of America? Communism and fascism have both failed miserably in their promises of a secular utopia, naturalism and postmodernism are both incapable of providing even the slightest spiritual nourishment or sense of purpose or even the capacity to condemn murder as objectively wrong, and secular humanism promises a purpose to life but fails to explain how such an abstract thing could exist and has no answer to the end of all mortal things which both science and religion assure us is to come. As an ambassador of Messiah, I am eager to exemplify a life given over to the Kingdom, and as a writer I am equally eager to demolish the secular strongholds all around us.

The Inheritance of the Theologian

Read the history of western philosophy and one thing that you will find will be the constant fading and reviving of skepticism. From the ancient sophists to the postmodernists of today, our ability to see and interact with objective reality has been called into question again and again. Even Socrates, the first great enemy of skepticism, claimed that he was largely ignorant even though he believed that knowledge was somehow available. The whole of humanity is starving for the knowledge of goodness, of meaning, of God and we are in the joyous position of possessing precisely that knowledge. In fact, while this is certainly not the only way the Bible can be read, it is clear to anyone who has desired wisdom that the whole biblical story, from Genesis to Revelations, is the story of God going out of His way to deliver us that wisdom which we could never have achieved on our own!

Look at the doctrine with fresh eyes for a second. G.K. Chesteron and C.S. Lewis both remarked on the uniquity of it, on how it was right on the bullseye that any decent thinker could land an arrow near but not a single mortal mind could ever hit dead-on. Chesterton compared it with what we knew of nature, specifically the human body. We have two eyes, two hands, one symmetrical nose, two ears, two feet, and one symmetrical mouth and all of this conforms to our usual sense of logic and educated guesses but then you reach the heart and you find that there are neither two hearts nor one symmetrical heart smack dab in the center. The doctrine is just like that: it fits in perfectly with our usual good sense, except for the exceptions. It has too many simple truths to be dismissed as nonsense and far too many paradoxes to be dismissed as obvious or shallow.

Then there's that spectacular balancing act. Chesterton compared it here to the difference between the balance of an orderly, marble pillar and that of a huge, rugged boulder like those you see in Arizona which stand for centuries on stones that are probably not even a tenth of their size and which always look like they're about to topple over at any moment. A human philosophy can be home to a saint who fasts and prays and sells everything he owns, a common man, or a zealous knight willing to kill and be killed for his convictions, but it cannot house all three. Only the doctrine of the God who made all three men can find a place for all three men. Only in the teachings of Christ and His followers can I find the power to despise the sin and set every means of destruction in my power against it while still loving the sinner and pouring out every imaginable mercy and blessing upon him.

I first came to my inheritance in the Bible and the collected works of the Christian thinkers of the last two-thousand years with fear and reluctance, still holding on to the comfortable secularism of my childhood and early teens. Then I fell in love with it. In fact, having fallen in love with Christ, I seem to find myself in love with just about everything.

The Miraculous Inheritance

It's hard for me to write on this topic because I am still so unschooled on it. However, while I have never performed any healings or spoken in tongues or prophesied, I have seen God at work, seen His guiding hand, and heard (I mean this metaphorically, though I am well aware that there are others who can say it literally) Him speaking to me. And at the end of the day, hearing from God is what all miracles are really about. The important thing isn't power or a vanished tumor, but rather the opportunity to be part of an interactive relationship with God, one in which we get a direct line of communication both ways as well as a clear view of his workings in and around us.

Basically, everything that happens in a relationship takes the form of either action or communication. When we receive visions, prophecies, omens, guidance in Bible readings, words of wisdom from fellow believers, and audible or emotional messages we are receiving communications from God and when we see healings, exorcisms, sanctification (the miracle of second birth), and more unique miracles such as those of multiplication we are seeing God's actions. Both miracles of communication and action are vital to the Christian life because it is through them that we see God's perfect love and wisdom play out in our lives; more than that, we see His love respond to us. To be sure, many miracles are perfectly good things in their own right (so far as anything besides God can be good in its own right), especially gifts of prophecy and demonic deliverance for these express the authority of our Father over all earthly and infernal powers, but the main significance of miracles is that they constitute a closeness to God which all of humanity has yearned for since the Fall.

The Inheritance of the Transformed Heart

The first time I ever really desired to be humble was when I read C.S. Lewis' description of a humble man in Mere Christianity, which reads "Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody.Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all." That was the first time I ever yearned to let go of my ego, to stop obsessing over myself.

That is what the promise of the transformed heart is all about, it's about letting go of all the worthless worries and values of the sinful flesh and the growth of love. It's all about the grim necrosis of pride being purged so that we can stop worrying about finding ourselves and actually be who God made us to be. It's about life and love and passion and unimaginable joy. It's about being filled to the brim with holy breath of our precious Father.

Christ in Pursuit

"The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?"

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." 

--Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, by C.S. Lewis

What image does that quote give you? How does it feel? To me the second quote invokes an image that I find absolutely inspiring.

I see Christ mounted on a horse, hiding Himself with a billowing cloak and a scarf that wraps around the lower half of his face. He rides through the night down dirty streets and alleyways packed with garbage, over muddy puddles and heaps of rotting waste, in the cold rain and the unkind wind, amid the highest of obscene brows and the most base temptations. His clothes are fraying and covered in all manner of filth and what little there is of His exposed skin is caked in mud and shit. His hands have conformed to the reigns and his legs are bruised from the long, long ride.

And underneath all this there is a terrible intensity in those barely visible eyes. The cloak and tunic relent for an instant in their struggle against the wind, exposing His forearm. It is scarred and bruised yet the thing is thick with muscles, with lean sinews and the strength to overturn mountains. Beneath the scarf He pants loudly. Only slightly concealed by the cloak, a sword is sheathed at His side. He draws the blade and a cloud of rust rises from it. It is long and heavy and chipped in places and it cuts the air now with a whistle and now with a roar.

There is a barricade up ahead, a wall of fleshly habits, worldly influences, and infernal power. The vast accumulation of sickly passions and words of articulate madness, all held together by a viciously ornate chain, leans against the perimeter of a polished, obsidian fortress. It is manned by ancient gods, by the angels of the vast emptiness who waited at the gates of Eden and ravaged the outcast bride when she finally emerged. They have my blessing.

He circles the stronghold. The air is astir with His movement and the power of His breaths, His heartbeat, His very presence in any area for so long lights up the sky with thunder and lightning. And this when He covers Himself. He has interrupted a royal feast in the pursuit, and a company of saints has been called to the walls. They raise up swords and shields and goblets from the feast and as He rides by He strikes His sword against the signs of their allegiance. The ringing of Heaven's armory shakes the fortress, makes the angles of the pit clutch their ears in agony, and penetrates to the deepest of my sanctuaries.

There is a rush of feral spirits and He strikes them down in a single stroke. The whole Earth trembles and the stones resonate with a song of praise as the display of His might. He calls the gatekeepers by name and commands that three doors be opened. They are swung wide and in He charges. Into the stronghold. Into the place of all my sin. Into the labyrinth of my degenerate heart of hearts.

I run and run and still He pursues. He is always behind me. I close a door on Him and with three knocks He reduces it to dust. Other times He leaves it up, but even then He is never far. He knows these corridors better than I ever could and at times I see them conform to His will. He is large enough to pass through even the tiniest of cracks.

And here's the thing: He is being kind. He is coming to bring me home, though I have forgotten it for the tiresome perversions of the very pleasures He made. He wars against me because He is for me. And how else could I keep running or the stronghold remain standing but for His mercy? Did the walls balk Him? Did my approval have such power that the fiends who keep me could stand in His full light? Did my feet outrun Him? He has come to take me home but He has also come to make me choose home. He will slowly seal me in the trap and force me to see the full truth, but if I still spit in His face He will turn away and leave, or at least for the moment. But I don't spit.

He impales me on that sword, cast from the iron of His own blood and the spear by which His sides were pierced. He stabs straight into my heart and out comes rich, brilliantly red blood that is so full of life and so long forgotten. I gape at it in wonderment; I had forgotten how beautiful that nectar was. And then He teaches me to die. Pinning me to the wall with that wonderful, terrible blade, He teaches me to truly die as only one who has truly lived can die. One so unlike myself who was born into faded and drunken death and built his home inside a tomb. I died to my unlife. I am dying still.

And it is a blessing.


"The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation."
---C.S. Lewis

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
---Romans 8:38-39

"We love because he first loved us."
1 John 4:19

Prayer for Al Qaeda

When I was trying to organize "Prayer for Al Qaeda", I kept running into the major difficulty of organizing things on facebook so I decided to postpone it for a week and announce the whole thing at my thursday night bible study. I then wound up napping through the first hour or so and then rushing there on my bike. I was wondering whether or not to make the announcement, since I had been planning to do that at the beginning, when Bob (our group leader) said something that directly related to the prayer conference, perhaps several things if memory serves right, without having ever been told about my plans. I wound up announcing right then and there that I would try to hold a mini-meeting at the end of the bible study that night for the prayer conference to find out what general times worked for people and who was interested. This was only part of the group though, since we divide up based on age after worship, and so I then had to go make the same announcement to everyone else with only fifteen minutes or so left before we had to leave anyway. For an introvert like me, this was terrifying. In fact, no one actually wound up coming to me to discuss times due to the last-minute nature of the announcement but a friend of mine did come to me to invite me into the group's leadership and he recently told me that this was inspired by the willingness to step out there that I demonstrated that night.

In the end, I wound up giving up on the idea of trying to "organize" the prayer conference, having seen God constantly encourage me and yet frustrate all my plans, and decided to simply set a date, put up flyers, and trust God. When the time came, I was the only one there, having been notified beforehand by some people that the time didn't work for them and then learning from other people who had expressed interested that I called up that they weren't able to make it for whatever reason. The friend who had invited me into the leadership later apologized for not making it and told me that he had been working on an essay and lost track of time and when I attended the bible group that same night, we were low on attendance then too as a result of illness and finals. I suppose (though it is possible that some people came to attend, held the conference, and finished up without my ever seeing them since I hadn't met them) that the flyers failed to attract anyone and I noticed that one had been torn down beforehand (which I felt a little proud of).

However, I did not feel discouraged by this. The note that had sparked the whole thing had gotten quite a lot of attention and I think it led to some prayer on its own (in fact, one of my old highschool teachers actually shared it with his class) and the very morning of the conference I got into a discussion on facebook with someone who had seen my note and taken issue with it. In addition to that, this had been anything but a waste when it comes to my own spiritual condition. I had taken risks (something that is absolutely vital to a life of faith), seen my expectations unmet, and reacted by sitting down to pray for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the western church, the underground church of the Middle East, and the anointing of missionaries and witnesses to those in radical Islam with the conviction that if anyone had shown up while I was praying I would have the conference with them and if not I would catch the next bus home. In other words, I had learned an invaluable lesson as an ambassador of Christ and I have been emboldened by my own boldness. At the same time, I trusted in God's promise that faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains and firmly believed that the Church's desire to reach out to our Islamic enemies was not over and neither was my involvement in it. Somewhere along the lines, I made a commitment to become an apostle to Al Qaeda, whether through direct missionary work, my writings, prayer, financial support to the actual missionaries, or any combination of those methods, and I will continue to pray for my brothers and sisters in radical Islam as well as the saints of the church of the Middle East who regularly risk their lives for their faith. In fact, if God does not tell me to do otherwise I intend to a prayer meeting every May 1st and invite others to do the same until the Church reaches out in love to Islamic jihadists on such a level that all the hatred of the region and the secularization of the West cannot hide it. When that happens, I'll hold a prayer meeting twice every week.

Mourning Osama bin Laden

On the first of May, 2011, the president of the United States of America announced that Osama bin Laden was dead. The speech that followed was one carefully devised to avoid offending anyone deemed worth trying not to offend and part of this watering down involved the claim that bin Laden was not an islamic leader but simply a mass murderer. Now, obviously I do not believe that Osama bin Laden spoke for all or even most Muslims, but I do believe that if there is one courtesy every ideological enemy deserves, it is to have their truth-claims acknowledged. Osama bin Laden held to a particular view of God and God's law which concluded that unbelievers should be forced to obey islamic law and he believed that by acting on this he was being righteous. The man was a human being who loved and thought and hated and sinned and worshipped.

When the news station inevitably started playing old clips of bin Laden, I tried to look at his face and understand just who he was. I can honestly say that I didn't see any hate there. There might even have been a bit of serenity at a few points. This man led others in prayer, had children, and sent soldiers he may very well have loved to their deaths. Did he ever feel giddy adoration for any of his wives? Did any of his soldiers ever come to him afraid and did he then tenderly comfort them and then pray together with them? When he though of what he believed his duty, how much hate was really there? When he thought of God, how much true reverence was there? What was the life of this horrible, sad man?

Osama bin Laden was born into wealth and he left his comforts to hide out in caves and do what he believed was God's work. And he believed God's work involved killing Americans and Jews and even other Muslims. I know many people find this infuriating but I myself find it sad. I think it is a terrible tragedy, greater and more shameful than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. And what is saddest of all is the thought that there are thousands more just like him. There are even teenage boys and girls who will blow themselves up in living out that heart-rending tragedy. The thought brings tears to my eyes.

But the thing that makes me sob openly (I'm not kidding here and I'm not exagerrating either) is the thought that when they go to hear our response, they hear exactly what they expect. They hear and enemy. They hear condemnation. They hear the words of those who do not understand. It makes me want to go there, to run across continents and swim across oceans and run up to them and shout at the top of my voice "JESUS LOVES YOU AND SO DO I!!!!!" If I am shot down on such a mission then that is better still. What greater glory can there be than to moan with one's very last breath "I still love you; I still forgive you"?

This is my prayer for Al Qaeda and the Taliban: that God's love would be poured out to them. I pray that the Church would wake up and recognize the thousands of sad and lost and lonely men and women that are so desperately in need of our love. I pray that for every Muslim who "martyrs" himself or herself for the sake of condemnation, there would be ten Christians who walk straight towards certain death for the sake of forgiveness. I pray that they would come to feel like lions trapped in a den of Daniels or a Pharisee begging for merciful hatred from a crowd of Stephens. I pray that wonders would emerge and that warring angels would be sent on their behalf. I pray that the children of the soldiers of Al Qaeda and the Taliban would grow up in a church so full of faith and love that it would put the rest of us to shame. I pray that the descendents of todays terrorists would have the faith and love and wisdom to one day come to encourage and admonish my own descendents.

I pray that during this very hour, God would annoint apostles to the terrorists. I pray that the Spirit would come upon the Church and awake a new wave of servants to sweep through the Middle East. God bless the sowing and reaping of this holy field.

The Temple and the Palace

I saw a man
Living in a palace
of gold
and ripe fruit
and all the finery of earthly things
Surrounded by attendants
and concubines
and jestsers



I saw a crowd
With not a single face
Everywhere a sea of masks
and enamored robes


and gloves and gold and jewels





I heard a song
a cacophonous noise
Birthed by a never-ending festival
of dim lights
and hapless games
and riddles without answers
and the monotonous drone of mirthless laughs

It is a sad, annoying little noise






I saw the man
at the center of it all
Weighed down by crowns and masks deceptions of all sorts

Sitting on a daimond throne






I held a paper sword
with writings absurd and wise
It cut down the guests
the party-goers
the attendants
the despairing celebrants
It cut away the drapes and gold
It chopped to bits the masks

The diamond throne shattered with fright






The whole damned palace came tumbling down
But how could such a thing stand anyway?
built as it was around the temple of the living God
And how could I stand to not cut it down?
when I saw that under the masks and robes
I had ordered its construction

Thank God for Sorrow

Praise God for failure
Glory to Him for disappointment and fear
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
And wade through the swamp of hidden sins
And Wander the tangled wilderness of addictions
And all this time
Between the sobs and stumbles
I lift my arms
shouting hallelujah



Hosanna
Honor and glory to the God of Israel
Who keeps me from the wasteland of despair
Who will one day lift me out of these misseries
Hosanna



Praise Him
Seek Him
Bow in reverence for Him
Then stand with the honor of one made in His image



The deeper the darkness
The greater the coming glory



The more He reveals our sinfulness
The more He will soon reveal His grace



The more gutteral our wailings
The more beautiful will be the songs of our deliverance



So pray for deliverance
And give thanks while His answer is yet unseen
And then give thanks
For the curse from which you shall be rescued



For you have been made blind
And soaked in leprosy
And made to beg for your bread
Precisley so that He may heal you

Scripture on the Mirror

A flash of insight
A moment of understanding
A glimpse of my inadequacies

In this moment I see
"a zoo of lusts
a bedlem of ambitions
a nursery of fears
a harem of fondled hatreds"
My name is Legion

For an instant
Righteousness appears to me
and all that I should be
and all that I am
And I understand
that I must sanctify this temple

There is something to be done
"No more nor less nor other than done"
There is a brick to be laid down
An anchor to be dropped
A battle to charge into
A victory to be siezed
Because my King has ordered it
And He has not afforded me the luxury of defeat

So I scribble on the mirror
and bless this place of cleansing and relief
I build up in my mind
A defense against all unholiness
And with clumsy steps in the deep, deep dark
I proceed cheerfully
To the city on the hill

A View on the Way to the CRC Bus Stop

Two rows of trees
lined up perfectly
Suggest pillars of an imaginary hall
Down the concrete path
a set of stairs leads down to the flood level
Further on
and on either side
There are more trees
some stripped bare of foliage
some green all year
and some blossoming
All surrounded by concrete
and well-watered and well-mowed grass

Out past the entrance
and the road
There is a field
with green grass
and some flowers
here and there
Only a few buildings can be seen
in that direction

Of course
on the left
There is the valley's make-believe metropolis
and on the the right
There's the cramped town called
Elk Grove

But nonetheless
out there in the distance
in that place that was so unimaginably far away
before the train and the automobile
Where the sky touches the earth
There are the mountains
topped with that mysterious white dust
And filled up with that ancient holiness

Just like the plains
The old grasslands
that are almost a desert sometimes
and are still there
and always will be
Even if they are hidden
by the cities and roads and farms and sprinklers

But they are no holier
than the thousands that have built
this artificial landscape
It is really a miracle to pass so many in any given day
and a tragedy that we think nothing of it
They are just as mismatched as the fields and pavement
People of all races and creeds from every corner of the globe
all caught up in this weird, chaotic game called civilization
It is a blessing that my classmate wears a turban
because if he were too like me on the outised
how could I grasp just how strange and alien he really is?
It is a blessing to have a Muslim for a classmate
because if I never came so close to him
how could I understand how similar we are?

crap
The bus is already here

Frustrations of an Unpublished Writer

I'm eager
impatient even
I want to get out there
I want to get out of here

It's cramped in this room
with papers scattered across the floor
piled up in mountainous heaps
with the course of my pacings
worn deep into the floor
This is the landscape of my imaginings and reasoning
and frustrations
and late-at-night procrastination

A dozen projects wait patiently
for my wandering attention
They plead silently for theirs lives
awaiting my decision
or confirmed forgetfulness
They wait to be completed
or to be edited with second and third and fourth thoughts
their paragraphs shifted and cut up and stretched in every conceivable way
their theses reconsidered and reconstructed
They fear to be hopelessly flawed
to be the products of misinformation or a passing fancy
or a bloated ego trying to impress or shock anyone who takes the time to read him
which is hopefully no one

Outlines are stacked over at the corner of the desk
one for each mess of letters cluttered around the room
and then some
This one has seen a thousand revisions
each informed by a new discovery or epiphany or scholar
yet only two chapters are actually written
This other one has been turned over and studied and delighted each day in my mind
but not so much as a sentence of it has actually been written
This one is almost complete
the whole thing's been written out
but it needs to be rewritten at least once more
and it is perhaps too grand
It's broad and complex and that's why I was able to fnish it
and that's also why it can't be the first one published
This one was an afterthought
but it might not be so bad
I was planning on essays
treatises and the like
I wanted to write theology
and delve openly and thoroughly
into the deepest questions of eternity
and humanity
and morality
Then I was hit over the head
with an unwritten novel
and then struck again for good measure
So I started to write a story
and made plans
So He struck against my skull once more
with a few poets this time
and wrecked my plans once more

I want to get out there
I want to break out of this room
this cramped little space
with it's paper mountains
and well-worn valleys
But not yet
No matter how eager I am
It's just not time yet
So I'll wait
And when He says it's time
I'll look up and see
that the walls fell over

Do You Believe

Do you believe
in your heart of hearts
In a God that loves infinitely
and knows you by name
and crafted all the world
and has a path prepared for you
and died on the Cross for a world that hated Him?

When you can testify
but there doesn't seem to be a single shadow
where hostility isn't lurking
Do you believe that you are on the side
of the One who was and is and is to come?

When everything is fan-frickin-tastic
and there's no end to your angry mumbles
Do you believe that you have been baptised
in the blood of Love Himself?

Do you believe
in the midst of soul-numbing luxury
in the midst of groans and rolling eyes
when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed
in your heart of hearts
In the great I AM
with as much conviction and ease
as you believe in the sky and the earth
and every jumble of atoms in between?

Do you believe that
if He really wanted it
that mountain jump into the Pacific?

I don't

My heart of hearts is a jumble
of nonsense and truth
and that infernal unreason doesn't budge easily

But I want to believe
I want the faith that can move mountains
and turn the world upside down

It takes a risk
it takes a step out of the "normal" life
It takes a jump into the insecure

You have to be ready
to look like an idiot
to stand out in the rain
lost and without so much as a dime
to let go of everything and everyone
to feel let down

That's what it takes
to trust
to pray
to believe
And if you don't spend a night
in cold, humiliating insecurity
Either that night is on its way
or your not doing it right

Here's the cliff
Are you ready to jump?

Out Into the Nothing

I indulge once more
I give into the old craving
into the habit
the addiction

I reach up again
and grab another fruit
I pick another and another
I tear at them
gnaw and rip and gulp

Soon I'm only taking a bite each
I toss the rest to the ground
Then I don't take even one bite
Absentmindedly, I pick them and drop them

I gossip on
not caring in the least about the subject
My eyes peruse the women in the streets
flitting from one to another with each passing second
I mentally label my little corner of the world
without even any serious vanity
I curse and blaspheme constantly
but show no hint of amusement at those taken aback

The party is done with
now I'm just sprawled out on the couch
A slow death creeping through me

Passionate evil subsides
Convention takes over
A neat, black tie makes it hard to breathe
A suit limits my movements

I march and march and march
Under the trees I used to take so gleefully from
my hands rise and absently swat at those worthless treasures
Through the forest where I danced in pagan revelries
the wildest of shrines no longer interest me
Into the grave
where I feel neither relief nor fear nor pain

The dirt floor gives way
I tumble down, down, down
out of all light
away from all that is whole
I tumble into the farthest reaches of oblivion
out into the Nothing

In the end
I did neither what I ought
nor what I liked

Decency

Decency

What a kind word
What a civilized word
What a shallow word

It is a word worth all the gold in the world
but not a single tear
It is worth years of teachings and work
and everything required to be a proper, normal person
but it is not worth one second of courage
It is the lifeblood of empires
and it is the poison of souls

It is comfortable
It is polite
It is accepted
and it is nothing like righteousness

It was decent men that burned babies for Moloch
It was decent people that owned slaves
It was decent people that fueled Hitler's empire
It was decent people that nailed Messiah to the Cross

We're all living in a glass city
We've all got fire and water
an inferno and a flood
just barely held back
And decency is what holds it all back

There's a wild storm out there
a whole world of hot and cold
But decency keeps the room comfortable
it keeps us lukewarm

At least the overwhelming darkness is honest
At least the cacophonous noise doesn't pretend to be soothing
But that shadow is a liar
That murmured confusion is a scam
The masquerade is more sinister than the orgy

Fire the gun
break the ceasefire
Swing the hammer
shatter the glass
Preach the doctrine
in both word and action
That is more righteous
more radical
more powerful
than any other

Let's see this city of hypocrites
this kingdom of snobbery and fashion
this fortress of gossip and vanity and self-satisfaction
fall to pieces

Slice
Burn
Tear your way through
that paper world
and underneath
you'll find righteousness
and holiness
and heavenly glory
but most importantly
You'll find Him

Revelations

  The Revelation of the Self

I think therefore I am
I am
I am
I am what?

I am a bundle of thoughts
that's stupid
emotions then
that's also stupid

I don't know what I am
I'm not like anything else
I'm not like a rock
and if I'm like a rock I'm not like a computer either
that's just a really complicated rock
I'm not part of nature

I'm not a number either
or a logical law
or a principle
or a thought or feeling
or a fact about something that happened or is happening
Those are all supernatural
But none of them are me

I see all these other things like me
They're called Selves
people
I don't know what we are
But I know we're important
more important than a rock at least


     The Revelation of Moral Law

I am important
It is wrong to hurt me
or something like me

What is Wrong?
What is this other thing?
It is like Wrong
like Wrong just as I am not like a rock
But it is very different from wrong
like a rock is different from a tree
What is right?
What is good?

It is a principle
It's like numbers
or logical laws
Right is like how an idea follows a premise
And Wrong is like how another idea doesn't

I can't get away from Right and Wrong

I say Right and Wrong are not important
And the very use of the word "important" validates them
Without them nothing is important
Without them there is no such word as important


     The Revelation of Beauty

I am starting to like Right
I think it is... something
It has some quality

Right has something that I like
Something that I like more than pleasure
Right is Beautiful


     The Revelation of Meaning

Somehow it's not enough
No, that's not it

Somehow it is enough
but I can't understand why
I have this picture of it all
and something is missing from it
Without it the painting is not important

It is called Meaning
It is eternal
It is beautiful
It is intended
It is what makes everything important

I can see it now
It's a plan
But I don't know it


     The Revelation of Good

Right is something else that I like
something besides Beauty
Even Beauty is something else that I like
Meaning comes from and is something else that I like

They all have that quality
And that quality
that thing that Meaning comes from
is not itself without them all

I think I know it now
They are Good


     The Revelation of God

I can hear the echoes
I can see it all coming together
I can't see how it could come together without this
without Him

I can't find anything in nature that is important
not like how I'm important
Down here all of Good is about me
and those like me
Down here Good is all about the Self
But there's something more
There's something up there that we are all about

There's another Self
He made me
He made me important
He made me Good


     The Revelation of the Fall

But I am not Good
not anymore
I am not Beautiful
I have been cut out of Meaning

I am Wrong
I do Wrong
But I am still important
I can't stop being important
And the more important I am
The worse all this Wrongness is

I am very bad
I am full of shame
go away


     The Revelation of Love

I LOVE YOU

It comes again and again
the echo of His voice
It keeps me out of the Nothing
just barely

I LOVE YOU

It is getting stronger each time
I have to cover my ears
They hurt from His voice

I LOVE YOU

It gets louder still
I'm angry
I hate Him for making me
I hate Him for making everything
I hate Him for not leaving
I hate Him for caring

I LOVE YOU

He's here now
I have to hide
I have to find a darker place
I have to stop caring
I could stop it if He would
maybe if I hated Him a bit more

I LOVE YOU

SHUT UP!!!

Here's the rock that was never important
and the wood
and the steel
You never made them matter
Why do I have to matter?
Why do I have to be important?

Do you care about them too?
Is that why you never gave them this curse?
Get out of that body!
Stop laughing at me
with that mouth you made me
Stop crying for me
with those tears you crafted

That body was made for something important
but not important enough
It wasn't made for something as important as you
something that couldn't leave the light
So get out of this filth and dark

I LOVE YOU

If you won't leave I'll force you
I wasn't joking
I'll use this rock and wood and steel
that were never important enough to be bad

See how your blood flows
just like mine
Go away already
We leave when our blood flows this much
when our bodies hurt and break that much
They lose their little shadow of Meaning

I LOVE YOU
I LOVE YOU
I LOVE YOU

SHUT UP ALREADY!!!

...

That thing isn't important anymore
Hide it
in case He tries to come back

...

I LOVE YOU
NOW DRINK MY BLOOD
AND EAT MY FLESH
AND TELL EVERYONE ELSE
HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM

I love you too...

I always loved you
I was always so scared

I've been so alone
and so cold...

I love you

I've been looking for you
and hiding from you

I LOVE YOU!!!!



These are the Revelations
of Wisdom
of the Story of Humanity
of God

Against each Revelation
all human wealth
and might
and cleverness
are irrelevant

So we bury them in nonsense
and routine
and ignorance

But when they stir in us
All the power of the world cannot seal them away
No mountain is high enough that they cannot reach it
No valley is low enough to escape their notice
Because they are revealed by the One
that they are all about

They will topple nations
turn heroes into cowards
and cowards into heroes
and crooks into saints
They wise rejoice in them
and the dealers in earthly wisdom despair in them

When they breach the surface
and puncture that scab of confusion and business
the world is renewed
And its prince howls
in fury and agony and fear

Are you afraid?
The person that you are will not survive
The self that you are will be rid of him for good
And you will be made new

A Christian in College

I'm wandering through the halls of academia
I'm navigating my way through the strait and narrow maze

The scripture is sound
but my heart is offbeat
The verses are sensible
but the world is all noise

The path is straight and narrow
but everything around it
from the sky to the seas to each tiny little pebble
to time, space, and gravity
is one giant mess

I hear Uncle Screwtape
he's whispering confusion
he's showing me darkness
he's pointing out into nothing

He's got these books that are so full of wisdom
but there's just so many lies
so much nonsense
I can't tell truth from fiction
These books have hidden treasures
but everything else in them is pointing everywhich way
and no way at all

I run to the Church
and he calls out the hounds
hypocrisy
pride
faction
decency

I flip through the Word
but so much is foreign to me
There's so much that I think I understand
and I'll think it over for an hour
but I'm still unchanged

I get a surge of piety
I pray each day
I read and discern
But at the end of the month
He's back once more
He's got some new trick
and I don't even try to resist

He left me alone at my peak
But now I'm back down in the gutter
back down in the normal
the ninety percent of my life
And to tell you the truth
he really doesn't need that new trick

I know it's a battle
but I can't read my orders
I know I've got the truth
but I can't remember where I left it

It's all up to God
It's all about faith
It's all about the Power
and Love
and Majesty
that made me and remakes me

It's all up to Him
Because I'm in a paper boat
in a paper ocean
And the only way I'm surviving this mess
is with a miracle

Riding the Bus

 Waiting at the bus stop

I might be alone
or there might be someone else sitting on this bench
I get up and pace
back and forth and back and forth...
It might be right on time
but I don't know what right on time is
maybe it's ten minutes after or maybe fifteen or maybe five

It pulls up
I say hello
I take my seat

I've got my ipod on
it's blasting some song
but I want to read or pray or something
I turn it off

But I leave the earbuds in

There's people everywhere
I see some every time I ride
I see them again and again
But I'll never know their names
Some are only in town today
I'll never see them again
for as long as I live

I overhear a conversation
I might be interested
or annoyed
They're talking about their lives
or maybe the news
or maybe some big idea
maybe a really big idea
I might be interested
but probably not

A minute has passed
In that minute I've passed at least two dozen buildings
I have no idea how many people
maybe more than a hundred
So many lives that I just flash by
So many lives condensed into so many minutes of travelling
So many lives condensed into so many blocks and miles of city

So many birthdays
inrpirations
triumphs and defeats
So much pain and pleasure
agony and joy
So much of everything that matters

Wars are fought over this
revolutions
constitutions
charities
research
adventures
quests

Novels are written about this
bestsellers even
poems
plays
holy texts

God made the universe
for this grand drama of little moments
God died in this war of laughs and tears
He rose again to fight
in the battlefield of awkwardness and stiffness and hilarity
of bickering over dinner tables
and cheerful walks
and lonely rides in buses full of people

How can something so impossibly big
be so very small?

I get on and say hello to the driver
I get off and say thank you
And in between all these people
all these souls
skim the surface of my life

When will I understand my part?
When will I grasp the immensity
or the glory
or the tragedy
or the beauty
of this war of little things
that plays out every day
when I go to school?

I want to be Weak

 I want to be weak

My footfalls are too loud
like boulders pounding against the earth
I open my mouth and a new wind pours out into the sky
each word is a captivating song
I close my eyes and the world vanishes

I am far too strong

My dreams are sacred beyond all earthly treasures
My passions are as grand as those of any ancient hero
My every movement resounds like thunder

I am far too strong

But no matter how clever I am
the Enemy is smarter
No matter how fast I am
his angels are faster
No matter how strong I am
His kingdom is stronger

I want to be weak

I will die without weakness

I must be weak enough to hear an infant's murmur
Weak enough to surrender all I treasure
Weak enough to bow to a beggar
Weak enough to grovel and beg
Weak enough to weep

If I am as weak as this
Then I shall never see defeat

If I should prevail against the world
It is not because I am strong or the world is weak
It is because the world is too strong
and it has tried to fight a contest of strength
But I have a King
against whom all weapons are like dust
and all cleverness is foolishness
and all that can die might as well have already withered
and all that can be shaken might as well already be in shambles
and all the treasures of the world are like so much garbage
There is more hope in challenging the ocean to a duel
Than there is in raising a mighty fist against my King

So if the world despairs of all victory against me
It is because the world is too strong
And I am weak

What was the Resurrection?

It was the day the world was born again. Or maybe it was the first day of Creation or the day before Creation. Perhaps it wasn't the day that the world was reborn but rather the day that time caught up with its true beginning. For God made humanity not so that we could love Him but so that He could love us. And what greater love is there than that? Can it possibly be imagined that the Crucifixion was an afterthought? That it was just a way to fix the Fall? Could the Resurrection possibly have been Messiah climbing out of the grave saying "I'm glad that's over with." I submit that this was the true spiritual "big bang", regardless of when the material world emerged. I hold that this was the brilliant flash of light into a lightless world which illuminates all of history and nature and poetry.

It was like an atomic explosion, though that is a puny little thing by comparison, in which the first wave of heat and light and the wave of fleeing godlessness (which is to say, nothingness) can be seen striking the pagan myths with all their dying gods and the poets with their tragedies and romances and sacrifices and the philosophers with their renunciations of the world and the common celebrants with their love of the world. Then there was the second wave that lit up a bush in the deserts of Northern Africa and thrust Jonah into the belly of a whale and then out again and cast the Israelites into exile and then pulled them back to their one true home. Everywhere we look we can find the scattered debris. And then there was the fire, the awful, wonderful, ravenous, gentle fire. It came, I believe to every man and woman that ever lived. It came, and still comes, to those without knowledge who were yet confronted by their forgotten Prince begging in the streets. It came to the singers and writers and philosophers who forgot themselves and their worldly pride in the pursuit of that light that is behind and inside and illuminating the veil of Creation. It came upon people whose nations were still only barely feeling the first wave, people who had no idea of its name, but the fire also came to those who knew precisely what it was called. Its newness came even to those who thought it old and outworn, something to soon be forgotten. It came to those who thought they could bind it up in laws and traditions and lord it over others, and many of these hid their faces in terror and shielded themselves with ignorance. It engulfed those bored of the normality of ceremony and they smiled at the subtleties and laughed delightedly at the symbols. It sought out the wild savages through trained missionaries and included them in a philosophical heritage. It surrounded academic snobs through simple servants and taught them to feast and to fast. It pursued a boy named Clive Staples Lewis with a merciful relentlessness until he bacame a man who went to bed at night listening for the approach of "Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet" and then until his terror and resentment gave way to love.

This day was sunlight upon a leaf. The whole world was infected with the shadows and the hollowness and before that day to touch that which was most heavily infected was to fall further into depravity. But what this Man touched became clean; He reached out into our emptiness and where our hands would have whithered His poured out health and fullness. This same Man passed out of the world through the threshold of death which is available at every point and so at every point was His life-giving touch. We could not concieve of the terror of our depravity so He mourned on our behalf until the weight of our sins bore Him down into the absolute Nothingness... and then He left them there. The One in whose image we had been made and Whom all of us lived as imitations of did what we all must do and what He could not do from His celestial throne, and so we learned how to die. We were incomplete and He poured into us all abundant life. Then He gave us the knowledge and power and hearts to see the crooked things and work to make them straight.

This was a cosmic call to arms. There is a cycle by which sin begets sin which plays out in a thousand different ways in every aspect of life, a rusted chain that is invincible to all inside it. This chain dug into our bodies and built up habits and instinctive depravities. This chain laid the foundation for empires and cities wherein the merchants and bureaucrats and skeptics sat in comfort and safety. This chain delivered a dull and lukewarm world into the diseased hands of the very first to fall. On this day, that chain was broken. It was cut and shattered and pulled apart in a million ways at a billion moments and with it all the palaces of the world were overturned and all the powers of the flesh were undone and those ancient sinners of the first and final war were made to flee from farmers and peasants. The world had been one giant swamp and at the sound of this shofar the mountains rose up to touch the clouds and the waters sank deep enough that whales could swim. Fights and fueds have been born out of simple selfishness but men and women of war have fed upon thicker bread. The wrath and hope and fear and zeal of wars that decimate nations and rouse the muses have been fueled by the power of the Messiah's return. If there had been no Messiah, abolitionism would not have been peopled with his imitators nor would the twentieth century have felt the terror of his German and Russian impostors.

And the truly glorious thing about it all is that it is not just an event or a force that has done all this. It is a person. It is a man who lit up the darkness and breathed life into dullness and set up a place for every kind of person and appointed a time for every natural passion and laid the foundations for the cosmic army called "The Church." And He is doing it still. It is not simply radiance which goes ahead of and behind that day; it is Him. It is He who calls me by name.

Converted Pagans

I find it odd that secularists can so easily ignore the weight of Christianity's theological heritage. In my reading of church history, it seems that nearly all of Christianity's most noted theologicians started out their intellectual careers in cults, the swampland of agnosticism, the cold dark of atheism, or the lukewarm waters of moderated religion. From the Apostle Paul to Augustine to Batolome de las Casas to John Newton to William Wilberforce to Dwight L. Moody to G.K. Chesterton to C.S. Lewis to Philip Yancey* to Francis Collins, the most esteemed ranks of the faiths defenders has been populated by old enemies. How is it then that when history tells us of a miracle and both insanity and natural causes can be dismissed, the critics conclude that it is a lie? How can it be that the Gospels, which are literally thousands of times more reliable than any other ancient texts, are the subjects of greater and more paranoid skepticism than any other ancient texts? How is it that the firmness of Christians in their doctrine is looked upon with suspicion when those same Christians were once Pagans who lost their grip (often very reluctantly) on their anti-Christian doctrines?



* I realize that Philip Yancey was never a secularist or pagan of any kind but he did grow up in a Southern, fundamentalist church that led him to a skepticism of Christianity and the Church and put him on the verge of apostacy.