Home is where the heart is. Part 3: Putting up the walls

Now, like I said, I used to work pretty late into the night. I'd work until the sun went down, then I'd finish by the headlights of my car. My brother [the carpenter] would come over, and he'd check my work. One night, I had been in a hurry, but I'd finished this whole wall. Well, I was pretty proud of myself, until he stopped over to check my work. He took one look at it, and said, "You gotta tear that all apart and do it again."

It looks good, what's wrong with it?

So he says, "It's not square."

"Square" I asked Grandpa?

Yeah, square. See, all the corners have to be square... uhh, right angles. If they're not, then the whole thing can fall down. Carpenters have this tool, called a square, which they use to check everything. A square, it looks like a big metal "L" and you hold it up on all the angles, you can tell if they're the right angle, and if they're not, then when you put some weight onto the structure, it'll fall down. That wall I made, the studs weren't square with the top. It was only off by a little bit, but a roof weighs a lot, and if I didn't fix it, then the house would fall down before I got finished with it. So my brother explained all of that to me, and the next night, I took the whole wall apart and started doing it again, started doing it right this time.

Grandpa went over and patted the front wall of his house, "See, it hasn't fallen down yet, and it's been up more than 40 years."

In which I point out that God loves you

In my ongoing series regarding Christianity, I thought that it might be time to discuss sin. Yes, sin is real. Yes, there are activities which are sins, and there are activities which are not sins. Yes, this does mean that I am judging your behavior, and that you are free to judge mine. Sin has consequences. GK Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy that sin is the easiest part of Christianity to prove. We cannot prove the resurrection, though there is good reason to believe that it happened. We cannot prove that God made the world. Proving sin is easy, since it is manifestly true.

What is sin? Sin is anything we think, say, or do, which takes us further from relationship with God. Please note the word relationship. One of the ways in which Christianity differs from other religions is in being a relationship between a person and God. It's not one way, it's two way. I relate to God, God relates to me. You relate to God, God relates to you. Much like in any other relationship, we have the ability to make the relationship better, and we have the ability to make the relationship worse. I am married to a wonderful woman, whom I love deeply. If I say something insensitive, or I agree to do something then don't follow through, that creates an injury to the relationship. This injury must be dealt with, or it will fester. As such, I try to make a point of apologizing when I have wronged my beloved wife. Just as in my marriage (which God uses as a picture of what our relationship with Him should look like), there are consequences to my sin. When I hurt my wife, the apologize, she decides to forgive me. This does not ameliorate the fact that she has been hurt, and depending on the injury, may take a bit of time to heal. In our relationship with God, the consequences of sin are a bit higher.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Romans 6:23

The result of sin in our relationship with God is that we die. We earn death by sinning. Just like my wife's forgiveness helps our relationship to heal, God's forgiveness allows our relationship with Him to continue. However, there remains that pesky problem of death. See, someone has to die. The debt has to be paid. Which is why God sent Jesus. God wanted us to enjoy eternal life, and moreover, to have that eternal life with Him, but to do so, the debt we had racked up through sin had to be satisfied. Jesus paid that debt. With His life.

That's an incredibly high price. Honestly, that's much more than I would have been willing to pay, especially understanding that I continue to sin, I continue to be a jerk to God on an almost daily basis. Looking objectively at this for a moment, God got a rather bad deal. God doesn't look objectively at this. Instead, God decided that his love for me, and for you, was sufficient that he was willing to pay the highest imaginable price for us. God traded his perfect son's life, in order to save my wretched life. And moreover, He still thinks it was worth it. The book Jesus Freaks (and I'm quoting from memory, so this might be slightly off) contains the story of a Colonel in the Russian military during the cold war. This Colonel found himself in the room with a Christian one day. This christian shared the good news of Jesus with the Colonel, who decided to become a Christian himself. His prayer, as I recall, went something like this, "Dear God, Thank you for saving me. If I were you, and you were me, I never would have saved you, but you have saved me. You must be a very good fellow. Thank you."

God is indeed a very good fellow. God has paid an unimaginable price for you and me. The great news of it is this. God knew what he was getting. God knew that he was getting sinful people. God isn't surprised by the sin in your life. God has never said, "Fix what's wrong in your life, and come to me." Instead, God has said, and continues to say, "Come to me, and together we'll work on what's wrong."

I need to take a quick moment out for a vocabulary lesson before we continue.
Justice: Getting what you deserve. eg. You steal a car, you must return the car, make reparations, and spend some time in jail.
Mercy: Not getting what you deserve. eg. You steal a car, you must return the car, and you are then free and clear with no further repercussions.
Grace: Getting what you don't deserve. eg. You steal a car, you are then given a car dealership.

Justice for us would be the aforementioned death. God interacts with us using Grace. Note, you aren't expected to clean up your life, God doesn't require that you have everything right. Instead, God says:

"For by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

Broken down, here is the great part. God paid a great deal so that you don't have to suffer the consequences of sin. God did this because he wants to have a relationship with you. God did not do this so that when you decide that you want to know him, he can say, "Nope, you're not good enough." God knows you. God knows all your crap. God knows all my crap. Knowing that, He still loves us, and he still wants to have a relationship with us. Far from being a message of rejection, or that we're not good enough, the Good News of Jesus is that God doesn't care about how good we are, he WANTS us.

Home is where the heart is, Part 2:Putting in the foundation

Well, the first thing to building the house was putting in the foundation. My brother [redacted], the heavy equipment operator, borrowed a bulldozer from his boss for the weekend, and dug out the hold for me. Once that was done, all my brothers came over to put together the forms.

"Forms?" I ask.

Yeah, forms, see, you know when you pour concrete, that it's wet. It has to dry. It's the consistency of... pudding, with rocks in it. Anyway, you have to pour it into moulds, which are called forms. We built the forms out of plywood and 2x4's. At one point, I was up on the scaffolding, putting something together and [heavy equipment operator] says to me, "Can I borrow your hammer real quick?"

So, I said, "Where's your hammer? You had a hammer just a few minutes ago."

"I forgot it, it's down there." And he pointed into the hole.

"So go get it"

He says, "Keep your voice down, or [carpenter brother] will yell. He's always yelling at me, he says that I lose stuff."

"Well, you seem to have lost your hammer."

Now, by then, [carpenter] had noticed that we weren't working, and he comes over. He wants to know what the hold up is. So, I tell him [heavy equipment operator] left his hammer down in the hole, and he doesn't want to go get it, he wants to borrow mine. Boy, did he ever start yelling.

Those were the days you know, those were great days, all together, working. Those were good days.

Grandpa has a misty, far away look.

In which I explain

My post yesterday talked about the age of the term, "Christian" and how some have started to call themselves "Christ-Followers", finding that Christ-Follower has less baggage, and may be somewhat more descriptive. I want to clarify why I have decided to continue calling myself a Christian. As I noted, Christian is a very old term.

Dereck Webb sings in his song, "A King and a Kingdom,"
There are two great lies that I've heard:
"The day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die"
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him.


I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being a republican. I am however saying that Jesus was not interested in political power. I am saying that Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world. (John 18:36) I note that over the past thirty or so years, the American church has been co-opted by the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and a host of others. We have been convinced that our role as Christians is to vote a certain way, and that our faith demands that we follow a certain political outlook. This has led to the detriment of the church's reputation and effectiveness. This has also enabled the fracturing of American politics.

I am a Christian. Though I respect and honor those who, for perfectly logical reasons have chosen to find a new, less encumbered label for their faith, I will maintain that I am a Christian. I do so because I will not give up the word Christian to those who want to use God's Church for their own gain, rather than for God's glory. They are charlatans, and cannot have my good name.

In which I start to rant

I have been wrestling with an idea. This will be the first elucidation of this idea, in which I define what I mean when I say that I'm a Christian. In the interim, I've been doing a bit of reading. I've read Unchristian, and GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy, both of which I highly recommend. Unchristian makes an interesting point. The book was put together by the Barna Group, who do market research for christian organizations, allowing them to taylor their approach to the population they're reaching. I've read other things as well, and when I next make it tot he library, I will be picking up Jeff Sharlet's book on "The Family", a purportedly christian organization, which believes that the ultimate expression of God is political power, not Love.

I am not comfortable with much of what has been done by "christians" or in the name of Jesus, who is Christ. Many of my generation have chosen to manage this by calling themselves, "Christ-Followers". This is a perfectly understandable choice, but not one the one that I make. If you are a Christ-Follower, I wish you all the best. However, I will continue to call myself a Christian, hoping to redeem, through a life well lived, that very old title.

Christian, is a fairly old term. Not as old as Israelite, which dates to God renaming Jacob Israel. Christian dates to the early Christian church. Acts 11:26c "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." Christian has been around since the early church set up shop in the city of Antioch. That places Christian at 1900 (+/- 50) years old. This is a very old name, one that I'm rather proud of. However, Christian is also a name which has been used to justify terrible things. Christianity has been used as the justification for the crusades, for the inquisition, for the cleansing of Jews from Europe during the middle ages, and all manner of other injustices. Here in the United States, Christianity was the reason for forcing the Native Americans to convert, and from time to time, raising their children in a Christian atmosphere was the justification for stealing children from their parents. Today, Christianity is the justification for saying terrible things to homosexuals.

I do not see that these things are in line with scripture. I find nowhere in the New Testament in which God encourages his people to take up arms against another nation. In fact, Paul writes that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spirit. Jesus says to Pilot that his kingdom is not of this world. Throughout history, it seems that christianity has been co-opted by men intent not on things of the spirit, but on gains of the flesh. Men interested in increasing their own wealth, stature, or political power, have used the name of the church, the image of Jesus, and the word Christianity as a rallying cry, and a cover. I do not find this behavior to be in line with Jesus teachings. I do not find this to be in line with scripture.

There are two verses which I have found to be good guides to my walk with God, and I now share them with you.

From the Old Testament: Micah 6:8 "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

From the New Testament: James 1:22 "Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Now, I have no illusion that on any given day, I manage to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. I call days when I get one of those right, "good" and days when I get two right, "GREAT". I haven't yet managed to get all three right on the same day, so I will have to continue to rely on God's grace. In later posts, I'll go further into what it means to keep from being polluted by the world. As I look at the activities of the "christians" who seem to take up so much time on television, I keep going back to these two verses, asking, "In what way is this person interested in Justice, Mercy, Humility, and God?" or, "How is this person caring for the least and the downtrodden among us?" Though I don't get these things right on a regular basis, I am working to live them out, which is as much as I can do for the present time. I believe that this is the basis of being a Christian. This is what I want associated with the name Christian. That's what I'm working toward.

Home is where the heart is. Part 1.

Well, my time in the army ended, and I got shipped back home. I got to come home to your grandmother, and to good old [redacted]. After a few years at home, I decided that it was time for us to have a house. We had rented an apartment, but it was time for us to have a house of our own. So, I talked to my brothers. Now, my oldest brother was an electrician, and the next one down was a carpenter. My brother [redacted] was a heavy equipment operator. He used to be a real crackerjack with a crane. In fact, over the lunch breaks, he would take a split bucket, do you know what that is? A split bucket. It's this digging bucket you can put on the end of a crane. It has these jaws that scissor open, and you use it to dig. He used to put a coke bottle in the lot, and he could pick up that coke bottle with the split bucket, he'd pick it up without breaking the glass. In fact, he used to bet guys a dollar that they couldn't do the same. He made a lot of money that way, on his lunch hours.

Anyway, I talked to my brothers, and they said that they wouldn't build a house for me, but that they'd show me how to build it. So, I found a piece of land, and I took out a construction loan, and I started working. I'd work all day at [local chemical company], then I'd go to the house, and I'd work until it got dark. Once it got dark, I'd turn on my car's headlights, and finish up whatever I was doing. I'd work over the weekends, and I worked over my vacations, and after a while, I had the house all put up.