All the Songs are Stuck in My Head

Due to a lot going on this weekend, I was not able to produce a typical post, but I thought I would share something I wrote a couple of years ago when I saw the 2012 Les Miserables musical in the theater. I watched the movie again last night for the first time so it seemed fitting enough. I'll try to be more consistent next week, but for tonight, I hope you enjoy this little break from tradition. 

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Since the title translates to “The Miserable Ones”, it is not a surprise that misery is present throughout the story. This particular film adaptation did, in my mind, a better job of displaying the ugly truth than other attempts I have seen. You start to feel compassion as a man laments that he was arrested for taking bread to feed a starving child.  You seethe at the injustice as a woman is turned out onto the streets because she left one man’s lust unsatisfied. I was disturbed and horrified at that particular scene when Fantine gives in and sells herself for the first time. The same feelings hit me when I saw the abuse suffered by an innocent child. And the feeling only continued throughout the film with the sights of poor people reaching for relief and getting none, a man’s foot stepping into a river of blood in the street, and a young boy lying in a row of corpses. It is almost impossible to look at these horrors and not wonder where God was.  That is really what I want to write about. If Hugo was a Christian trying to tell a tale with a present God, where is God in it?

A lot of “Christian” tales use Christianity or conversion as the final solution to fix whatever problems the characters have been having. In Les Mis, while Christianity is present from the beginning and offers some relief, it doesn’t solve the main problems. The mercy and kindness of the bishop inspire Valjean to change his life, but don’t erase the crimes he committed or the consequences for breaking parole. Likewise, Valjean shows mercy to Fantine which gives genuine hope and at least gets her out of prostitution, but too late to save her life, and too late to allow her to be with her child. Mercy is even shown to Javert, but he is too engrossed in justice to be able to accept it.

           

Another popular theme in Christian fiction is that the Christians are the ones who have the answers and can lead to solutions, but in reality, Christians fail just as often as non-believers and sometimes make things worse. In Le Mis, imperfection in Christians is not ignored and blatant hypocrisy is evident. Valjean is not fully redeemed even after committing his life to God and changing his whole identity to fit. Valjean’s fear shows that his Christianity does not perfect him, he still felt he had to hide and lie and run all his life. The more obvious example of imperfect Christianity is in Javert who truly believes he is following God, but has become so lost in the law, he can not acknowledge grace. Then there are the Thenardiers who, at one point, claim they took Cosette in because it was “no more than we Christians must do” which is so obviously ridiculous it requires no more comment.

                       

I have heard protests against the story from Christians as they claim it is too sad and want to look at happier things.  This is when I need to slow down because my instant reaction is to shout profanities of a frustrated nature at them. Focusing on joy is important, but so is recognizing and not being ignorant to the miserable things God allows. It is plaint that the film is not happy and it truly doesn’t have a “happy end”, in the traditional sense. The revolution has failed, Javert was so unfamiliar to mercy that he chose to kill himself rather than try to accept it for himself. Valjean is dead after running and being afraid his whole life. There are still dozens of innocent dead, and dozens more suffering oppression. I see why this doesn’t seem very uplifting and could turn off certain audience members. My argument though, is that the film does not contain a traditional happy ending, but it delivers THE happy ending.

Mercy from men was not the answer. Rising against oppression certainly didn’t solve things. Even the Christians were not perfect. Redemption, peace, and Joy were reached in the ultimate happy ending of being delivered from misery on earth and being untied with Christ in Heaven. When Valjean sings about “this wedding night” during his final scene, I believe that he is not just taking about the marriage of Cosette and Marius, but of himself as a bride of Christ’s church going to meet the bridegroom. Christian kindness can lesson pain, choosing to follow God results in better circumstances, but it can not perfect a person or their circumstances. God’s mercy redeems the soul and uniting with Him ends the misery for eternity.

It may seem jaded or cynical, but suffering no longer surprises me, in fact, I am sometimes catching myself wondering why there is not more of it, knowing the condition of the hearts of man. This doesn’t bother me though as much as you may think it should. I just know that suffering is not the end and I try to set my focus on the much larger portion of existence rather than this tiny one. Jesus said that there will be trouble. Some trouble is worse than other, some lasts longer, but it all seems the same when I consider what comes after this. The end of a war, justice, grace, healing, peace, and the end of all types of misery is the true “happy ending” of the story of all of the miserable ones.

A Daughter's Love

I’ve been taking my son on walks every morning this week and, while doing so, have been listening for God. I don’t have a particular topic for tonight, but I want to share what I’ve been primarily hearing on these walks. Last week, I talked about God’s love. Today, after much processing of what God has been showing me, I want to talk more about the nature of God’s love and where I need to apply it for myself and in my relationships. Our love is often attached to conditions, in order to love well, we need to stop loving like people and start loving like God. For me, that began with understanding the way God loves me.

My whole life, the enemy has always managed to get me in one area, and sometimes even managed to convince me that it would be a sin not to believe him. He told me that I’m not good enough, and, in a way, he’s right, which is why that particular lie was so hard to fight. I didn’t have an arsenal of defense because, really, I could never do anything to be good enough for anything or anyone. The part that he left out though, was a very vital game changer.

I’m nothing on my own. With God, I’m everything.

I wrote last week that God’s love is separate from our spiritual GPA, and that’s what I’m putting into practice. It’s important to remember that even before I became a Christian, I was loved by God, created by him for his purpose and for his delight. By being who I am I bring joy to God. I don’t need to be different from what I am and I don’t need to be perfect. I just need to be me and God delights in his creation. That’s what he’s been telling me this week and it’s what I’ve needed to learn how to believe my whole life. Me choosing God and choosing the way I live my life, brings me joy, makes my life better, but it doesn’t change how God feels about me. I have been told that I am a lot of terrible things and Satan used those to make me believe that the things I did or the way people perceived me removed my worth. When I’m worried about what anyone else says or the enemy is telling me what I should think, I need to have the strength to ask God his opinion. I will weigh myself by his standards which will always result in me being loved, and if I happen to be doing something wrong, he will tell me and I will correct it, but I never have to wonder what my worth is or if someone else’s opinion may be more correct than God’s.

Seeing myself through God’s eyes has been life-changing, Likewise, I have thinking about seeing other people through God’s eyes. They are always loved no matter what they are doing. They may need truth and they may need correction, but always with gentleness which will facilitate their humility and repentance. I am not more loved by God because of the choices I have made. I need to love just as I am loved, according to his standard. There are still people I need to forgive and relationships to mend, but it’s a process I have at least begun. It’s not easy to love perfectly, but we can do our best and we have a good teacher.

This unconditional love thing is also the model that God gives to us for marriage, parenting, friendship, and really every other possible relationship. He sets the standard for how we love others, we don't. We love our kids no matter what they do and we should always find a way to show that love even when we are frustrated or disappointed or are having to discipline. The way we treat our kids, our spouse, and everyone else should always convey love no matter what else is there as well. The difference when someone is close to us is that we have the ability to know how they would recognize that love best, even in the midst of negative emotions, and that ability becomes a responsibility to show love the best way possible.

The most complete way I have experience having to put my ability to love into practice is in my marriage. When I met my husband I was 16 and never had a real boyfriend before. I had some “relationships” in middle school, I had been on a couple of dates in the year prior, but the majority of my expectations came from TV and movies. Needless to say, my expectations were unreasonable. And worse, I didn’t know how to articulate what I wanted. I just wanted things to be what I wanted and I didn’t want to have to ask for them. So most of the time, they didn't happen, and it took a very long road before I learned how to talk about it. By that time (after over two years), I was ashamed that it had taken me so long. I felt silly and I also was convinced that my desires were petty or pointless. Granted, some of them were, but when he and I learned how to articulate our desires and expectations and learned how to speak each others’ languages, everything changed. But, my expectations never wavered. I still found myself wanting to feel a way I didn’t or be treated a way that simply wasn’t his way of showing love, while his methods of showing love the best he could never seemed good enough.

It wasn’t until I was married that I learned a new development was necessary. I wanted love that looked a certain way. I wasn’t focused on loving. Could I love my husband because of who he was and who God made him to be, or did I only love the times he made me feel how I wanted to feel? I was ashamed again to find my answer was leaning more towards the latter. God’s love has always been selfless. Marriage is meant to be an example of how God loves us. I was failing. We can do nothing for God and so our worth to him is inherent. His love is truly without condition. Mine wasn’t. Because I’m a human, it may never be, but I can look at my husband differently now than I did a couple of years ago.I had to learn to love him, not what he was interested in, not what I thought he would become, not what he did, but just him as the person God created and delights in. I can be happy or unhappy with him based on what he does, but my love for him needs to be unwavering, as God is, and not dependent on how I feel or even how well he loves me. 

Finally, and most importantly, God’s standards for love apply for our love for him. This is sometimes the easiest and sometimes the hardest for me to do. It’s probably pretty easy to guess when it changes. God is easy to love unconditionally when he gives us only good things and conveys love for us. It’s more of a challenge when we are seemingly given a snake when we asked for a fish. The ultimate question is, do I love God for what he does for me, or because of who he is? That's a hard one, and not yet one I can put a formula to. I guess it comes down to knowing God well, to listening for his voice, reading his word, knowing him for who he is. It's then plain that he is good and that makes him easy to trust and so easy to love. 

A Father's Love

Last week, I shared my antidote to fear which was “resting in the love of God”. I realized, soon after I posted, that God’s love is a complicated topic that is worth some exploration. I didn’t see how badly I needed to explore said topic until I realized I had some truly misguided thoughts on it. 

Like everyone who has gone through adolescence, I have struggled to stay consistent with my opinion of authority figures. College was certainly a crucial formation process as it was there that I learned how much structure meant to me. I could decide what I wanted to learn and how well I wanted to learn it. I could get a score and change my behavior to get a better one. Somehow in those formative years of my faith, I began to see God the same way. God makes the rules. You follow the rules, things go well. You can measure your progress by the fruit in your life, much like you can a GPA. The problem here is that, though the formula may work, it leaves out the personality of God who is more than just a professor with a pass/fail margin. I now have the problem of tending to measure my worth based on my spiritual GPA rather than on the blood of Christ. Coming from a world where love is dictated by performance, I sometimes forget that God’s love is constant, consistent, and unchanging, no matter what lessons or trials are happening at the moment. I had to dig deeper into the truths that I know about God’s love and see where I was not applying them to my relationship with him.

The thing is, God’s lessons come from love. But his love does not come from anything. His love simply is, just like God is. There is nothing, no GPA or spiritual discipline or evangelism track record that could make God love any person any more or any less. He simply loves and he loves fully, unconditionally, and personally.

I often remind myself that God cares more about my faith than my happiness. If he puts a bump in my road, I know it is to benefit me and that I will come out stronger in the end. I forget however, that God does still care about my happiness. If the storms come, and sometimes they come once after another without ever clearing up in between, he isn’t just sitting up somewhere far away waiting on my response, he is standing beside me, facing them with me, and wanting me to see that.

Jesus allowed Lazarus to die. He didn’t heal him while he was sick, he specifically waited until he was dead because there was a lesson in faith to be learned through that. He could have showed up, said “suck it up” to his weeping sisters and asked them why their faith was so small before bringing their brother out of his tomb. But instead, he took the time to weep WITH them. He wasn’t mourning for the guy he resurrected a little later, he was coming alongside the sisters who were hurting.

 I can tell myself a hundred times that God only allows pain because there is good to come of it, but he starts to seem so cold and distant when I forget that he cares what I’m going through. He wants me to share my burdens. He will even weep with me. He is patient with us while we learn.

It’s easy to see God as all wrath and authority, and I’ll admit, that comes easier to me and is honestly a more familiar kind of persona for me to believe in, but that is only part of what he does. God knows that because we are human and we do stupid things and we hurt ourselves and each other and there is a very powerful force telling us to do the wrong thing, we need a rulebook. He loved us enough to give us one rather than letting us fall on our faces alone, and he loves us enough to show us what happens when we mess up so we can do it right the next time. Just following the rules isn’t good enough if we fail to see the reason behind the rules and consequence. God wants us to see the Father kneeling down beside us, weeping with us, and wanting a real blunt and honest conversation, not just obedience and stoic resolve.

Like I said, those storms come and sometimes stay a very long time. They can be hard to see past, particularly because Satan would like us to always see the sky as a little cloudy rather than enjoying the bright sunlight, and he’s good at that. But God also prepares joy for us. He wants us to enjoy even the little bit of sunshine and see that it’s from him. If things really are so gray that even that isn’t visible, he’s sitting in the dark with us, waiting it out with us, and holding us when we cry.

I can’t say I always understand God, but I trust him. People ask far too often why a good god allows bad things. We ask “why me?” or “why this”. But the only answer is “why not?” I am not above correction. I am not big enough to see what God has in store. Job didn’t know during his suffering that God would restore him ten fold. Lazarus’ sisters didn’t know as they wept that, not only would their brother live, but they would have the honor of seeing first-hand Christ’s amazing power. Not to mention, it gave the rest of us reason to know Jesus is willing to stop and weep with us even when he’s teaching us. If I could see the whole world at once, I would probably understand better how all of the large-scale suffering in this broken little world could come together and make sense in the end. But I’m not that big. And how arrogant would it be for me to tell God, who is, that he’s doing it wrong or isn’t showing love the way he said he would. So, I stand by my statement that we can rest in the love of God. And I hope to be better at doing so with time.

I know Father's day is hard for some people. I hope anyone reading this who may be dreading tomorrow can look forward to a day spent in quality communion with the only perfect Dad. 

Bigger than the Boogie Man

I spent the vast majority of my childhood with crippling insomnia. My parents tried to send me to bed early, denying me naps during the day, playing whale sounds in my room, but nothing helped. I would lie awake at night and my mind would bounce from one topic to the next, turning in circles. I still have a hard time getting my mind to quiet down at night (particularly if I’m hungry) but when I was a kid, the problem was more than just turning my brain off, it was the thoughts that would come in the dark. It would only take a few minutes of restless wandering for my mind to conjure up some terrible image, scenario, or just a feeling, and I would be paralyzed with fear. I would stay under a thick layer of blankets even though I was sweating and felt like I was suffocating. My head would pound with blood in my ears and my eyes would dart around the room looking for whatever impending force would work its way in at any moment. I would try to distract myself, but eventually, my thoughts would circle back and I would be ensnared in terror once again. It wasn’t until I was nineteen and mostly over my issues with the dark when I recognized what I had experienced for so many years when I was little. I had a spiritual attack, and I was old enough and knew enough to recognize it for what it was. I hadn’t just been another kid afraid of monsters under the bed. I didn’t just have a “vivid imagination”. When I was told there was nothing to be afraid of, that wasn’t true. There was SOMETHING. I just didn’t HAVE to be afraid of it.

The last post was about Satan and the lies he tells us that he hopes will lead us to sin. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure the most common lies Satan tells us begins with “you should be afraid that…” Satan wants us to live in fear because it keeps us frozen. If he can’t have our souls because those have already been claimed, he can go after our lives, because the only way we can lessen his kingdom is with what we do on earth. Fear is what kept Jonah from going to Nineveh. It’s what made Peter deny Christ on the eve of his death. It’s what keeps Christians from proclaiming their faith openly. And it’s what keeps us from fully living the life God intends for us to have. I fully believe that when we struggle with sin it is because of a lie that we believe. At least for me, most of those lies start with a reason for fear. And I think it’s true for everyone that fear is what stops repentance and keeps us bound to our sin, no matter what lie it’s attached to. You may be afraid of how your Christian friends will respond. You’re afraid of failure. You’re afraid of the pain that comes with giving something up, even if that thing is hurting you.

The problem is that fear seems to make a lot of sense. In a world mostly influenced by an atheistic point of view, fear is logical, while faith is idiotic. We worry and get stressed out about everything. Some parents think that the more they worry about their kids, the more they are just expressing love. After I had learned enough about angels and demons to no longer be cripplingly terrified at night, I realized I had a terrible struggle with anxiety. But then, instead of trying to assure myself that there was nothing there to be afraid of, I began to try to justify by saying that what I feared was reasonable. The truth is though, no anxiety is reasonable. Fear is a natural, biological, God-designed response to things. But that’s all it is, a response. A momentary alert system to lead us to decide to fight or flee. It was never meant to last, never meant to control our actions, and never meant to become a glorified fixture of daily living.

Jesus did a lot of taking about fear. Specifically, not to. The first thing angels tend to say when they meet a human is to inform them not to be afraid. What I don’t think most Christians realize is that God COMMANDS us not to be afraid, the same way he commands us not to murder and to love one another. God’s commands are in place for our good, his good, or the good of other people. Therefore, fear is somehow damaging and needs to be exterminated, the same way we would exterminate termites that could slowly and silently devour and destroy. The biggest turning point for me in my fear was asking myself, “Would I rather follow the command of God almighty than face the consequences of ignoring him?”

The second biggest turning point was when I realized how to obtain the antidote to fear. Peace was a distant and longed-for dream, until I heard or read at some point the words “Peace is resting in the love of God”. I don’t remember where that sentence came from, but I find myself repeating it in my head every day. I know that nothing can separate us from God’s love. No matter what happens in our lives, we trust that God loves us, that nothing he allows for us is unknown or wrong. There is much we must struggle with, much that seems difficult or unfair, but nothing we have to fear if we know God, our loving and all-knowing father holds us and the universe we are in. God wants us to reach above our circumstances and find him. The command not to worry was never given a condition. And probably the hardest truth of all is that we don’t have to be doing well to see that God is good. We can trust him. We can rest knowing that even if our biggest fear happens to us, he will have a plan for it, and in time, all suffering will be obliterated. 

I tell myself these things when money seems to be a distant memory, when I look at my son sleeping in his crib and start to imagine a billion things that could happen to him. I say them when I’m in a car with my dad behind the wheel. Mostly, I say them when Satan is trying to tell me that whatever God wants for my life is too scary to pursue. I’m a long way away from being fear-free. But I also know what it is like to have peace, and that alone is still a miraculous gift. There are a lot of mistakes Christians tend to make because of fear. But there are also countless blessings that come when they choose to have faith instead. 

Dethroning the King of Lies

There has been and will probably always be a very popular discussion about God’s involvement in peoples’ lives. Even people who don’t necessarily believe in God as he is shown in the Bible tend to subscribe to the idea of some source of power or personal spiritual element that works in the lives of human beings. There are theories that God is in everything in creation. There are others that claim God created the world and then sat back to watch it rotate into destruction. There are people who say there is no god at all and everything came out of nothing. I have established who I believe God is, how much he knows me, and what I want his role to be in my life. That topic doesn’t interest me as much these days. The conversation that I believe has been sorely neglected is less popular, but I think, equally as important. If we don’t understand who Satan is and what role he has in our lives, whether we want him to have one or not, we really can’t fully understand God’s.

From my twenty-some years of experience as a sinner, I have concluded that absolutely every sin one can commit occurs when that sinner believes a lie. Murder, you have the right to take someone else’s life. Lust, your momentary pleasure is more important than the possible consequences. And my own discontent, my life should have been different than it is. In the Bible, Satan is not called the Murderer or the Hater or the Pervert, he’s called the Deceiver. And there is a very important message to Christians in that title.

The Bible says that to love is the greatest commandment because all other commandments are held in it. If you love God, you will do right by him. If you love people, you will do the right by them. No other Commands are really necessary if you know how to love well. My theory is that, likewise, lies encompass all other sins because you can’t sin unless you believe a lie or choose to ignore the truth.

Just as I know God to be an active and powerful force in my life and the world, I know Satan is as well. The scary thing is how easy that last bit is to forget. 

We are in a battle between our Flesh (Satan) and our Spirit (God). We are constantly being pulled towards our Flesh. It is where our nature directs us. Like a tide in the sea, if we do nothing, we will slowly drift in the wrong direction. We need to wage a war on our Flesh by equipping our Spirit even to stay where we are. It takes a lot more effort to actually move away from destruction. There are several strategies that can be used. Reading our Bibles, praying and meditating regularly, staying in fellowship with other Christians, admitting our failures and changing our actions, are some and are very important. But one thing that I have come to believe is absolutely critical, particularly with that one pesky area of temptation that Satan throws at us over and over again, is knowing how to recognize the lie behind that temptation, and knowing enough truth to be able to counter it. Jesus didn’t ignore the Devil when he was harassing him in the desert. Jesus came back with scripture and Satan shut the hell up (ha, see what I did there???).

Satan is the Deceiver. If we take away his power to deceive, we take away his power. If you think about sin the same way you think about a diet, avoiding temptation and exercising willpower alone are okay, but don’t fix the hunger or the desire. But if you are educated about what foods are both good for you and delicious and keep those handy to pull out at any time, you’re gonna be fitting into those new pants a whole lot sooner than your friends. We can’t escape our desires to sin, but we can equip ourselves with truth that can quench that temptation really quickly.

If you struggle with sexual sin, keep a note in your pocket that explains God’s intentions for sex and what happens to your spirit and your body if you go against that.

If your struggle is with fear, memorize all the Bible verses you can about God’s love and plan for you and pull them out of your mind as soon you find yourself getting panicky.

For me, I have to remind myself that God’s plan is perfect. Even if I don’t like the circumstances, he only can do good, no matter what it looks like. That way, when Satan tells me that things are screwed up and I need to pick a different path, I can have a ready response.

This is also important to remember when we look at the people swimming around in the lost world we live in without truth to guide them. It’s sad. It’s desperate. It’s hopeless without truth. Christians have the responsibility to know the truth and to speak truth lovingly to those who are lost or struggle, and that’s everyone.