Cory Monteith and the Tragedy of Silence

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Image from www.imdb.com

adness washed over the entertainment world a few weeks ago when Cory Monteith was found dead in his Vancouver hotel room. Monteith was a beloved actor on the hit show Glee and had recently opened up in 2011 about his struggle with substance abuse. He had worked through some rehab programs and to onlookers it appeared as if he was getting his life back together. Unfortunately, the toxicology report produced after Monteith’s autopsy reveals a different man altogether.  The toxicity report produced by the British Columbia Coroner’s Office confirms that Monteith died from a “mixed drug toxicity that involved heroin, primarily, and also alcohol.” Sadly, this report suggests that something sinister was actually still at play within Monteith’s own heart – perhaps he wasn’t quite the happily recovered person he presented to the public.

I in no way want to tarnish Monteith’s reputation and I definitely don’t think he deserves harsh critique for the actions leading to his death. If anything, I think his family deserves compassion and comfort for a life lost too soon.

That being said, I can’t help but reflect on how Monteith’s tragic death gives us a window into the universal inclinations of human souls. Even the day of Monteith’s death, friends reported him as being in high spirits and appearing as if everything was going fine. However, lurking beneath the happy-go-lucky exterior was a life-sapping addiction. He had tried to rid himself of it, but it was still there.

I wonder how many of us can relate to this same picture of “human-ness.” Maybe it’s not a drug addiction, but how many of us have an intuitive awareness that something within us is out of whack? It could be an obsession with pleasure (i.e. sex, pornography, etc.), it could be a preoccupation with recognition (i.e. pride, position in the workforce, being “noticed”, etc.) or any host of other things. If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably been told that all of those things need to be “set aside” or “put-off.” But, no matter how hard you try, you find that those particular issues keep coming back into your life and negatively impacting yourself, your family, or your friends.

Well, let me suggest to you that these battles aren’t won through internal resistance. It seems like Monteith started the growth process well by including other people, but somewhere along the way stopped being honest with those same people. Maybe you’ve started the growth process well too, but gave up after you saw the addiction persisting. Maybe you’ve relinquished the loving, encouraging environment of others for a dogged, internal battle against that frustrating flaw.

NEWSFLASH: You truly can’t muscle your way out of the wily jaws of addiction by yourself. In fact, you were never supposed to.

Believe it or not, human beings were really created for relationships. Missing this reality is the great tragedy of silence.

Humans have this natural tendency to hide away. We’d rather keep our “issues” hidden beneath layers of happy faces and fake smiles. We fear judgment and condemnation so we hide and cover. The very thing we need most to change (i.e. community), we innately resist. Well, let me tell you. This approach never accomplishes anything positive and always ends tragically. It may not end in your physical death, but it most certainly will end with discouragement and frustration in your spiritual life.

You need compassionate attention. You need strong arms to hold you. You need gentle hands to comfort you. You need a discerning mind to correct you. You need a careful tongue to remind you of grace and truth.

You need people.

Is Christianity Hipster?

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hat do you get when you mix a knit beanie, ankle-rolled jeans, a pair of well-worn Toms, a V neck t-shirt, some tasteful tattoos, a bible, and coffee? The infamous, slightly androgynous, totally relevant, and absolutely perfect: hipster Christian. You can catch this exotic biped lingering around local music dives drinking in the melodies of popular (but not too popular) indie bands or taste-testing the newest concoction at their local micro-brewery (Yay for quad’s and porters, right?).  Additionally, they might surface in groups at nearby coffee shops gathered around Tim Keller’s newest book talking about God, life, and poverty in third-world countries. If you see them here, I wouldn’t disturb them. It’s probably best to just take pictures from a good distance. Their diet of soy and legumes makes them slightly unpredictable at times.

*Image from thepubscout.com

Well, obviously this is a bit of a caricature, but I think it’s instructive as far as it goes. A lot of twenty-somethings are asking the question: can Christianity truly be relevant to contemporary culture? If so, what might that look like? Does a charitable accommodation of Christianity merely consist of adopting cultural trends and “baptizing” them with the presence of Christian traditions (i.e. Scripture, prayer, concern for the poor, etc.)? This is certainly a confusing question and a lot of times it seems like we just mash disparate parts of our life together and hope for the best. We take our love for coffee and mix that with a little bit of bible-study and (ta-da!) you get a “relevant, Christian” product. Unfortunately, this approach seems somewhat flat. It doesn’t seem to account for the true richness that we know the Christian worldview possesses.

So, what is a better way of navigating this question?

To begin, I think it’s helpful to remember that the evolving face of cultural trends always masks their impetus. Their true nature is an expression of a genuinely human desire: the desire for a place. We all want a place. We all want to fit somewhere. We all want to belong. Latching on to hipster trends (or even “hipster-ism” itself) seems to satisfy this human need and we just eat it up. Somehow it makes us feel like we’re not so alone. It feels defined and definition provides comfort.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not down on interesting and exciting new cultural developments. In fact, I think iPhones are great, the 4,531 newly discovered ways to make coffee is pretty phenomenal, and I never knew until now that Ray Ban’s were actually the apex of ocular engineering. I’m not saying we boycott these trends. What I’m encouraging is a that we honestly assess the reason behind the trends to see how Christianity can properly engage them.

The reality is, a new iPhone will never give you a lasting meaning or purpose. That new coffee shop that “everybody goes to” will eventually close down.  Given the inevitable expansion of your plaid-encased mid-section, your skinny jeans (Lord bless ‘em) will probably stop fitting in about 5-7 years.  Trends change. Cultural taste is about as capricious as a 5^th grade love interest and if you find your “belonging” in these realities, then you’re bound to wear yourself out running around to “empty cisterns”(Jeremiah 2:13).

Now, this desire for “belonging” is not (in itself) a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a beautiful reminder of the human condition. Human beings were actually created to have a place. Fortunately, that place consists of more than just a pair of skinny jeans and an asymmetrical haircut. We were created to abide in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship with God the Creator.

In Matthew 11:28 Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.” Essentially, he calls to us saying, “Stop your useless attempts to find meaning in other things. Stop carrying the burden of endless cultural demands. I am here. With me you have an enduring place; one that doesn’t change every other week. Only I can provide the peace you really need and the place you crave.”

*Image from wallpaperfast.com

Jesus also says in John 4:10, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” In the context here, Jesus is talking with a woman who was fumbling through life, trying to find purpose and security through cultural customs. Jesus recognized this and said to her, “You don’t have to keep doing this. Look to me. I have the water that your soul is longing for. I can fill you forever. I can satisfy that bottomless pit that your soul has.”

This is why I think Christianity is actually MORE hipster than anything currently on the table. Why? Because Christianity focuses its attention directly on the latent desire existing behind cultural trends. It speaks to the most relevant and essential deficiency you and I have: the need for a place to belong.  

So, go out and enjoy culture. Enjoy the fruits of human creativity and ingenuity. But don’t forget that truly relevant, “hipster” Christianity doesn’t best accommodate itself to cultural trends by just mixing them with Christian traditions. Instead, Christianity most affectively confronts culture with the poignant message of the gospel as it answers the fundamental desires of all human hearts and offers anyone an enduring place in the Kingdom of God.

Dallas Willard on Life in Jesus

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ere are some wonderful thoughts from an equally wonderful man, Dallas Willard (1935-2013). This excerpt comes from his book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. I hope you are blessed/challenged by his words.

"Jesus offers himself as God’s doorway into the life that is truly life. Confidence in him leads us today, as in other times, to become his apprentices in eternal living. “Those who come through me will be safe,” he said. “They will go in and out and find all they need. I have come into their world that they may have life, and life to the limit.”

I think we finally have to say that Jesus’ enduring relevance is based on his historically proven ability to speak to, to heal and empower the individual human condition. He matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weakness he gives us strength and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.

He comes where we are, and he brings us the life we hunger for. An early report reads, “Life was in him, life that made sense of human existence” (John 1:4). To be the light of life, and to deliver God’s life to women and men where they are and as they are, is the secret of the enduring relevance of Jesus." (The Divine Conspiracy, 12-13)

DOMA and Zimmerman: Thinking about Thinking

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e live in a culture of issue-based insanity. It takes about 3.1 seconds for the American populace to bounce from emotional outrage over denying same-sex couples certain rights to racist accusations in a murder trial. Who knows? Maybe next week will be a movement to liberate the Panda bears from their subjugation to sugar cane.

Don’t believe me? Just look back over your Facebook news feed for the past 2-3 weeks.  

Why do Americans prefer to ride frantic, emotional waves of “liberation”, rather than stand on the rock of careful thought? Why do we do this? Are our own lives really that boring that we’re compelled to obsess over other people’s issues?

I’m reminded of 1 Thessalonians 4:11 where believers are instructed to “make it [our] ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to [our] own business and work with [our] hands.”  This text seems to suggest that a faithful, simple life trumps the emotionally up-and-down life offered to us by American culture.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Christians cloister themselves away from things going on in the world, but I am saying that we need to guard from being swept up into the emotional commotion of current events.

How does this actually play out?

1)      Take 2-3 days to think about what you want to say regarding a current topic before you shot-gun spray it over the internet. This might mean you have less to say, but it should ensure that you’ll have something meaningful to add to the conversation.

2)      Consider the other side. Often times our impulsive responses are against a straw-man representation of the other idea. Make sure you know what the other side is actually trying to say before you open your mouth or set your fingers to the keyboard.

3)      Pray! Please don’t forget this part. Whatever words you say or type should be edifying and constructive. Ask Jesus to confirm whether or not your input would actually be helpful in thinking through the issue at hand. Ask him to show you how to say it. If he wants you to speak, he’ll give you an audience.

The reality is that we can be a lot less reactionary and defensive if we devote more of our time to building a rigorous understanding of the world. We can interact more perceptively and carefully if we have a thoughtful structure about the world in place. If we can, I advocate that we put our efforts into this project and not into the capricious meanderings of American society. 

C.S. Lewis on Faith

An excerpt on Faith from C.S. Lewis’ essay Religion: Reality or Substitute. Enjoy!

When we exhort people to Faith as a virtue, to the settled intention of continuing to believe certain things, we are not exhorting them to fight against reason. The intention of continuing to believe is required because, though Reason is divine, human reasoners are not…The sort of arguments against Christianity which our reason can be persuaded to accept at the moment of yielding to temptation are often preposterous. Reason may win truths; without Faith she will retain them just so long as Satan pleases. There is nothing we cannot be made to believe or disbelieve. If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the gift of Faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth.

Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and “Place-ism”

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hen I have time in the mornings, I like to catch a couple minutes of the news before bustling off to work. I am especially pleased when I get to watch the scheduled special feature at 7:45am. During this segment they usually interview some local public figure about current hot topics.

This morning they interviewed one of my favorite guys: Art Gray.  From my first exposure to him, I found Dr. Art Gray to be a complex, intriguing individual. A quote from his webpage confirms my suspicion:

•  "Dr. Art has worked as an economist, an attorney, a pastor of two churches, an executive or a religious non-profit and as an overseer of up to 150 local churches...he has a bachelors degree in Economics from Loyola Marymount University, a Juris Doctors degree from, Southwestern University School of Law and a Doctor of Ministry in Transformational Leadership of the Global City from Bakke Graduate University. He is also a certified Life Coach from Leader Breakthru Coaching."[1]

Clearly, he has had a variety of life-experiences that make him, at minimum, quite an interesting guy to talk to. While I find some of his religious conclusions difficult to concur with, I do think he has helpful distinctions to make especially in the area of racial reconciliation.

All that being said, today the news team was talking with Dr. Gray about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial.  Now well over a year past the fateful February night, the courts are working to determine the actual events that occurred and whether or not it is appropriate to convict Zimmerman. This process has given rise to many related conversations about neighborhood watch groups, gun control, racial profiling, and Zimmerman’s 110lb weigh gain over the course of the trial (ok, maybe the last one was just news on TMZ).

So, racism was the topic of choice on the morning news and the anchor asked Dr. Gray if he thought Zimmerman was racist.[2]  Dr. Gray responded that he didn’t think Zimmerman was racist, but ‘place-ist’.  This means that Martin seemed (to Zimmerman) to be in the wrong place – he didn’t “fit” where he was. Subsequently, Zimmerman’s awareness was heightened and he pursued Martin to determine why he was where he was.

So, I’ll be honest.  I have no idea what was going through Zimmerman’s head. I don’t even know if Dr. Gray’s assessment satisfactorily adjudicates the racist issue (would a young white kid have conjured up the same place-ist awareness in Zimmerman?).  However, I was struck by how true the idea of place-ism seems to be.

Stop for a minute and think about it.

Doesn’t it seem like American culture pushes people into social ghettos? Maybe it’s not just American culture, maybe it’s something about human nature, but it seems like we all have a place – socially, geographically, etc. We live in that place, know that place, treasure that place and anytime someone who isn’t a normal part of that place enters it we are immediately aware. Remember back to those socially awkward middle-school days, right? Well, I’m not convinced that those middle-school days are completely over. Honestly, my exposure to the ‘grown-up-world’ tells me that it’s not.

While having a place is not necessarily a bad thing, it can (and often does) give opportunity for great amounts of discrimination and animosity. The people of this ‘place’ can’t possibly interact with people of that ‘place’ because they don’t dress the right way or drive the right car or eat the right food. Social ghettos immediately suspect that alternative social ghettos are somehow less valuable or even not valuable.

What is most disappointing is when this attitude of ‘place-ism’ finds its way into the church. This denomination can’t fellowship with that denomination because they believe in speaking in tongues. This pastor can’t dialogue with that pastor because he doesn’t preach the ‘right way’. This Christian can’t sit next to that Christian because “they’ve never tithed one penny the whole time we’ve seen them coming to this church.”

I think we’re missing it here. This has never been the way of the gospel.

The gospel unites (Galatians 3:28); ‘place-ism’ divides.  The gospel has an eschatological vision of people from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Revelation 7:9) together in God’s Kingdom; ‘place-ism’ has a vision of us-four-and-no-more.  The gospel sees difference and celebrates (1 Corinthians 12); ‘place-ism’ sees differences and separates.

As followers of Christ, we are called to be more than ‘place-ists’. We are to be an open people that willingly incorporate others into our lives and give them….a place.

So, today, let’s be Kingdom people; not ‘place-ism’ people.

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[1] For more on Art Gray see: http://www.arthurjgray.com/index.html.

On Human Beings and Dirt

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uring my college years, I became fascinated by the history of Western thought. I know it may be super nerdy, but I am captivated by tracing ideas from their genesis in history to their termination in the modern world. It’s kind of like playing a gigantic game of telephone!

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching theological anthropology (i.e. what theology has to say about human beings) through the centuries and I have come across some really challenging and intriguing ideas; one of which I would like to share with you.

For the longest time, theologians have squabbled about what it means to be human – that elusive imago Dei, right? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Well, somewhere along the way, it seems that many of these bright and best theologians lost sight of a pretty self-evident feature of being human: embodiment. Thankfully, this idea of human physicality has resurfaced in the history of thought. Now, while I’ll leave most of these ideas about embodiment to my friend Collin to hash out (here: kaleidobible.blogspot.com), I do think there is something extremely important about physicality that we would do well to remember.

Think back to the creation account of Genesis. The narrative of Genesis 2:7 reminds us that human beings were formed from the ‘dust’ of the ground. To put it bluntly, we were fashioned from ‘lumps of dirt.’ What does this mean? Well, it means that you and I – as human beings – have a particularly intimate association with the physical world. We are made from it.

Now you might ask, so what? To which I would respond, when was the last time you thought about your relation and responsibility to the physical world? What might it look like to care for that from which you were made? I’m not talking about some whacked-out, tree-hugging fanaticism here. Rather, I’m asking what a careful honest assessment of your responsibility to the physical world might look like given the fact that you are so related to it.

Furthermore, how might you worship God with your physicality? Given that He has created us from dust, how might we use our dust to glorify him? Do you think caring for the body that you have might be considered worship? Does it seem strange to think that interacting with ‘other dust’ by rock-climbing or going on a walk or swimming might actually be worship?

I wonder if you might join me in discovering how to enjoy and use our embodiment to augment the Kingdom of God as we continue to discover what it means to be human.