Killing My Inner Snob

My friend “Bill” (sorry that isn’t him in the picture) used to operate a commercial fishing boat.  He’s a robust man with a fat, glossy face who’s always wearing a crusty, unbuttoned, red flannel shirt.  For most of his life he spent six months at sea catching fish.  I’m not sure what he did the other six months but I have a hunch he drank until he couldn’t see straight.  Now he’s “in recovery.”  After his third marriage failed, something (life or God or common sense – Bill would say all three) knocked him on the head and woke him up.  He remarried his former ex-wife, reconnected with his tribe of children and grandchildren, committed his life to follow Jesus Christ, and started helping other men overcome their addictions.

He’s a nice guy but he’s not exactly part of my normal social circle.  I grew up in a doctor’s family in suburban Minneapolis, got my B.S in Business Management, worked in the corporate world for five years, before completing my Masters in Divinity so I could become a pastor and an author.  I read Polish poets, listen to cello solos, and avidly follow the world soccer scene.  I’ve spent most of my life hanging out with “smart people,” people who sip a Merlot or a Guinness while we discuss novels,  racial reconciliation, and the poetic structure of biblical laments.  Of course I like these people, but a few years ago I wouldn’t know what to say to a guy like Bill.  I wouldn’t despise him; I just wouldn’t talk to him and I certainly wouldn’t learn from him.

Honestly, I never would have admitted it, but I was a royal snob.  Of course that’s the deal with snobbery: we never admit it because we never see it in ourselves.  O, we can sure spot it in other people – those elitist, racist, self-righteous, stuck-up, judgmental jerks!  I’m convinced there’s a little demon of snobbery lurking in almost every human heart.  If you don’t think you have a problem with snobbery, you’re a damned liar.

For the past few months I’ve been hanging out with Bill and I truly enjoy his friendship.  He doesn’t read Polish poets or drink Merlot (he used to get drunk on cheap Scotch), but he sure knows how to treat his wife, stay sober, love his grandchildren, admit his powerlessness, make amends on a daily basis, live an honest life, and appreciate every minute that he’s still alive.  I want to sit at his feet and say, “Teach me, Master Bill, how to become really smart.”

I never realized how much snobbery reeks.  No wonder the Apostle Paul encouraged everyone in an early Christian community to “be willing to associate with people of lowly position; do not be conceited” (Romans 12:16).  A few centuries later the recovering snobaholic, St. Augustine, blasted some elitists who were whining about impure elements in the church: “How will you eliminate those who are not perfect (or who aren’t in your social class)?”  Augustine pointed out an important truth: the furnace of life will equally expose all of our “cracks.”  That’s for sure.  For all of our differences, Bill and I are just two cracked guys searching for wholeness.  And thanks to guys like Bill, God is finally making me really smart.

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Loving Redemption Stories – Parts 2 and 3

Redemption Stories – Part 2: A bad middle

I love redemption stories (see Part 1 in the previous blog) – and they are everywhere.  They start with a good beginning, but unfortunately life has a way of unraveling doesn’t it?   The plot suddenly swells with tension.  Stuff happens – bad stuff, evil stuff, mean stuff.  In The Lord of the Rings the ring of power starts to corrupt everyone who touches it.  In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy gets whacked on the head and then those creepy flying monkeys descend on Toto.  In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne, a mild mannered accountant, acts rashly and winds up serving two consecutive life terms.

At times the bad stuff is our fault.  We betray someone, or perhaps a bunch of people.  We allow sin to fester in our lives.  We thought it would be our private sin party, but it leaks out and hurts others.  We battle an addiction and lose.  We botch a business deal or a job or a relationship.  The victimized achieve freedom, grab power and then become the next wave of oppressors.

Sometimes the bad stuff just happens: cancer, pain, betrayal, injustice, shattered dreams, church splits.  It could be a quick turn of events or a slow and deadening despair, like weeds taking over a garden.

In the Book of Ruth, Elimilech’s daring plan to save his family and start a new life unravels.  He drops dead and then their two sons kick the bucket.  This isn’t just trouble; this is a tragedy, a devastation, a freaking train wreck – and the shards of twisted steel pierce Naomi’s chest.

Stuff happens.  Wow, does it ever!  Some people get hammered by life, but eventually everyone gets something.  Bob Dylan once sang, “We’ve got to get back to the garden,” but that’s the problem: we can’t; there’s two angels with flaming swords guarding the path.  .

We try to minimize and blunt the pain by mouthing stupid clichés like “It could be worse.”  Okay, maybe, but it still hurts.  That’s one reason why I love the Bible: it’s so refreshingly honest.  Someone betrays the psalmist and he asks God to smack the guy in the teeth.  Jesus comes to the grave of his friend – definitely a bad middle for Lazarus and his sisters – and he wails like a newborn baby.

But a redemption story doesn’t just give permission for brutal honesty; like a deep and strong river, it also sweeps us along toward a happy ending.

Redemption Stories – Part 3: A happy ending

Happy endings make redemption stories irresistible.  They take us on a journey, through danger and sadness, but they lead us back home or to a better home.  Dorothy clicks her heels and wakes up in Kansas again.  Homer boots out his wife’s suitors and reclaims her heart.  A beauty loves the beast, the spell breaks and the beast becomes a kind and humane prince.  Andy Dufresne comes fully alive and then outwits the evil warden, escaping through a sewer to freedom.  Bilbo Baggins encounters unwanted adventures and near death but he finally returns home.  Boaz redeems Ruth and Naomi and the story ends with a fat little grandson sitting on Naomi’s lap.

That’s why the Bible is the best, grandest and most daring redemption story anywhere.  From Genesis, to Isaiah and right through Jesus and Revelation, the Bible declares the most outlandish and outrageous promises of restoration.  In Christ painful relationships will heal.  Addictions will be overcome.  Brokenness – even in our bodies – will become whole.  Injustice, poverty and racism are all vanquished.  Emptiness leads to fullness.  God wipes every tear from our eye.  All things are restored.

It’s almost too good to be true … and it would be if we didn’t have a Storyteller-Redeemer who can actually make redemption happen.  One of the deepest biblical miracles is that the Triune God lived his own redemption story.  As the eternal Son of God, Jesus had the best beginning.  But then for us and our salvation he plunged into his own bad middle, identifying with and absorbing all of our bad middles.  God took our failures, our wounds, our betrayals, our injustices, our sins and our addictions; he left out nothing, he ignored nothing, he judged everything; but in Christ and through Christ and with Christ, God turned all of these dark moments into facets of the bright and happy ending.  Somehow God will knit these sharp and dangerous fragments into His cosmic redemption story.

I have a hunch that we love redemption stories because God loves them too.  And maybe God sprinkles enough redemption stories into every culture – through fairy tales and films and novels and sacred texts – so that we’ll hunger for and quest after the Jesus story, the truest, deepest, most beautiful redemption story of all.

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Why We Love Redemption Stories – Part 1

Flash Quiz: What do the following have in common – Lord of the Rings, Homer’s Odyssey, Shawshank Redemption, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast, the Exodus, Cinderella and Jesus?

Correct Answer: They’re all redemption stories.

Redemption stories are everywhere.  I could rattle off dozens of redemption stories – even if you had a gun to my head and made me hop on one foot … barefoot in a puddle of hot vegetable oil.  I think you get the point: I love them.  But I have a hunch that everyone loves redemption stories, which is why we (i.e. every culture, not just Americans) keep telling old ones and making up new ones.

Every redemption stories has three basic movements:

1. A good beginning
2. A bad middle
3. A hopeful ending.

For a good beginning, think of Dorothy in Kansas surrounded by loving relatives and her doggie Toto.  Or think of the first lines of The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell … it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”  Ah, yes, sweet comfort.  Home.

Of course the Bible opens with one wallop of a good beginning – Adam and Eve in paradise.  But the Bible also contains smaller good beginnings, like the Book of Ruth.  There’s a famine in the land, but Elimelech decides to move his family to Moab. It’s a daring, dangerous move, but he’s going to make life work.  So with his wife and his two sons he treks to Moab.

God knows that we need some good beginnings.  A child’s birth, a little girl dreaming, a college grad ready for his first real job, a wedding dance, a new house, a move, a church plant – we need to receive and celebrate good beginnings.  They’re just flat-out good stories and I’m convinced that God loves them too.  Of course the only problem is that they never last … which leads to part 2.

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