I Am Least Like Myself When I...

...am with my family.
Not really surprising, is it?  When I go home for the holidays and spend a couple of days with my family I act more like the child that I was and less like the man that I am.  And it doesn't help that I want my sister to like me and my parents to be proud of me.

But that is more than enough about me.  How do you finish that question? I am least like myself when I...

Most of us can think of people or situations that cause us to act like the most awkward versions of ourselves.  We feel insecure around them. Unsure of ourselves. Why?

Because we've got some measure of our worth wrapped up in their opinion of us or in how we perform in that situation.

When we rehearse the gospel to ourselves it brings us to the place where we find our worth in God's love for us.  And that frees us in a radical way to be who we truly are. Why? Because God loves us exactly for who we are.  He doesn't love us because of our religious observance or moral performance, but went to the cross for us in all our brokenness.

Who are you?

Most of us don't really know who we are. If you ask us, "who are you?" we respond with a list of our hobbies, our occupation, and our family roles.
"Well, I'm outdoorsy, I like to hike, I am an engineer, and a dad to three boys."

Since we don't really know who we are we, cobble together an identity for ourselves.  We construct it.
"I'm a mac guy.  I'm funny. I like pizza."

But, for people that live in traditional societies an identity is family based and inherited rather than constructed.  "I'm a part of this family or that clan."

So when Jesus approaches Nicodemus in John 3 and tells him that he must be born again, what he is saying is that in order to enter the Kingdom, Nicodemus must have a total shift in identity.  From family allegiance and racial superiority to an identity that is given by the Spirit.

For those of us who live in a nearly constant state of identity confusion, the great thing about being born again isn't that your identity changes (although it does), but that you finally have an identity that doesn't shift like desert sands.  The most important things you can say about who you are will be things that don't change.
"I'm forgiven. I'm God's child. I am accepted by God. I am made worthy by God."

Instead of building our identity on a career, romantic love, acceptance, power, or prestige, we are invited to build our identity around a person.  A person who always forgives and always fulfills.

One More Try

One of the purposes of a wife is to encourage you and lift you up.
And then, one of the purposes of a wife is to keep you humble.

The last post I wrote, which was about identity and being born again, came from an insight I had during one of my morning prayer times.  I have ideas that I want to write about every day, but this particular idea had me really excited.  So I shared the concept with my wife and what I had discovered while praying.  She seemed to really listen and connect with what I was saying.  This is important to note, because sometimes I get really excited about things that are, well, boring.  And after I told her all about it, I wrote the post. Then I asked her what she thought of the post.

She was merciful.

"Um, well I really liked what you said to me the other day... I'm just not sure you really translated that onto the page." Ouch. The worst part was, I knew she was right.  It had nothing to do with whether it was my best work or not (it wasn't) and everything to do with whether the piece transmitted the concept well to the reader (it didn't).  I know exactly what I did, too.  I tried to take a chapter's worth of material and condense it into a blog post.  This was a bad plan.

So I am going to write that piece again.  I hope you will indulge me.  And this time, I hope it makes sense.

What does it mean to be "born again"?

When you hear the words "born again," what comes to mind?

For evangelical Christians in the South, those words carry the connotation of conviction, commitment, and experiential religious praxis.

For many secular people those same words carry the connotation of over-zealous, intolerant, unbalanced, perhaps even dangerous.  If you will excuse the colloquialism, I think the general vibe secular people get is that people who claim the label "born again" have gone off the deep end and have over-done religious commitment.

But what does that phrase actually mean?

It comes from the Bible.  In a very famous passage from the Book of John in the third chapter.  Ever seen the signs that say "John 3:16?"  Well, the phrase "born again" comes from the neighboring verse John 3:3.  It reads:

 3Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."4Nicodemus said to him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?" 5Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. - (ESV)

When we read the words "born again" in that passage we tend to assign to them the meaning that we already understand them to have, but when John wrote those words I can assure you they hadn't inherited the layers of meaning from 20th Century evangelicalism yet.

The Jews lived in a traditional culture where your identity was assigned to you by your family lineage, your genealogy.  Your identity was a reflection of your family.  This is incredibly difficult for Modern and Post-Modern Westerners to understand.  We tend to have fractured identities that we create for ourselves largely by the consumer choices we make and the careers we choose.  You want proof?  Ask someone who they are.  They will usually respond with A) what they do for a living and B) and what they like to do (which reflects their consumer choices).

So when Jesus tells Nicodemus (the "him" in the text) that he must be born again, this time "of the Spirit." He is saying that he must re-orient his entire identity from familial lineage to the Spirit of God.  Or put it in more modern terms: Nicodemus as a "ruler of the Jews" is basing his self-image upon the purity of his racial lineage and is basing his standing with God upon the same thing. Jesus is calling him to a completely new basis for his identity.

Fast forward 2,000 years.

What is it that makes you, you?  Your job, the brands you buy, the person you love, or the person that loves you?  Is is your hobbies, your pride in the superiority of your race or particular tribe, or the things you own?  Jesus is saying that to "see the Kingdom of God" you must learn to forsake the created things you have gained your identity from and learn instead to gain your identity from the Creator himself. And this will definitely feel like death and birth.

To be "born again" is not to have one particular type of religious experience. It is to be the same person, only now with a radically different basis for your identity.  And while this passage doesn't explain it, the rest of the book of John goes on to claim that the only safe place to gain your identity and sense of self-worth is in the sacrificial love of the God who made you. God has proved your infinite worth to him by dying for your sins upon the cross.

I Yelled at A Lady Yesterday

Yesterday I went to the worst OfficeMax ever.  If you will excuse the provincial rant for the benefit of my Charlotte readers... it is the OfficeMax on 74 by Guitar Center, and I highly recommend that you never, ever go there.  It is the kind of place where you stand in a line of four people and no one is working any register, but they are standing around talking to each other. Yeah.

Yesterday I didn't need to buy anything from them, I needed to return something to them.  I knew this was going to be a major undertaking before I ever stepped in the door. I walked up to the Customer Service desk and waited. No one was there. I was worried that the rapture had happened. I looked over toward the regular registers and no one was working any of those either, but I figured I had a better chance of being noticed, so I went.  I waited in the ghost town for a while and eventually someone begrudgingly came. This person called for a manger who, it turns out, was the long lost descendant of Tomas de Torquemada, leader of the Spanish Inquisition.  Long story short, I returned my item.

The only problem was (besides everything) that I lost my temper with the lady behind the counter. Bad. I was embarrassed, everyone in the store was embarrassed, and the manager was reaffirmed in her assessment that her job sucks.  So I left.

Now the pre-planning of my day determined that right after this I was to spend time in prayer.  And as you might imagine, I could not pray. God has determined that if we can't love the people standing right next to us, there is no way we are going to be able to love him, who we cannot see. 

Outside of the gospel, I really don't owe this lady anything.  I don't even owe her courtesy. I will pay her courtesy as long as that gets me what I want, until it doesn't, and then I will switch tactics.  But if I am a sinner saved by grace, and she is made in the image of God, then I have a duty to her that goes far beyond courtesy. Because the truth is that while I cannot control the circumstances or the service in that Office Max, I can choose my response to them.

So I bought her a Starbucks card and I went back and apologized.  Not for my sake, because I can get over it and sleep at night.  Not for her sake because she will, too. But for the sake of the gospel. Because a God who has gone to such extravagant lengths for me, even when I am berating poor ladies in OfficeMax, asks me to love other people well.  And if I owe him everything, what is there that he cannot ask of me?

I went in and apologized.  I thought the lady was going to die from shock.