Some thoughts on integrity

I recently saw an informal “religion” survey, one asking questions about one’s religion and associated history and practices. As a research tool, the survey was worthless, for a variety of reasons, but nevertheless, it was interesting.

Respondents were mostly from the US and Europe, with a smattering from other areas. The interesting part was a large number of respondents identifying themselves as Christians and an equally large number claiming atheism or agnosticism.

This got me thinking. What’s this atheism and agnosticism stuff all about? What kinds of people are atheists and agnostics?

The very concept of a “formal” atheism is a recent one. Until the last 300 or so years, it was assumed that there was a God or gods. Only a fool believed otherwise. Nothing else accounted for what we saw in the world around us.

Then came the Enlightenment and with it the first philosophical, formal atheism. And it was only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that there was even a concept, much less the practice, of an officially secular or atheistic country, such as we find in France and the former USSR.

There are some major repercussions from this. First, there is no case of a nation over time successfully living out atheism. A good example is the USSR. They couldn’t do it, and became a government by thugs, overseeing a nation of cheaters and manipulators. Russia today is a moral disaster area. This is because any group derives its view of life and its moral code from the dominant religion of the members of the group.

We can see this easily. For example, countries with a Muslim heritage invariably share certain characteristics. And those with a Roman Catholic heritage have different characteristics, while Protestant Christian countries are still different in their nature. There are fascinating things associated with this, but that’s for another time.

So there are problems for a godless society, but there are also problems for a godless person. This includes overt atheists and agnostics, and the great many professing Christians who are de facto atheists.

As I have spoken with a variety of these folks, one thing has struck me: As a group, they seem satisfied that they have answers to life’s questions, and are not much concerned with the “God question.”

However, another thing I have noticed is that few can present a rational explanation for their belief. They very often raise objections to some assumption about the biblical God and say they could never follow such a God. And from there, they decide that God doesn’t exist, because that’s a more comfortable position to hold. But their opinion, of course, has no bearing on whether God exists.

I have also noticed that their opinion is generally not open for examination. It’s sort of like the old cartoon character Yosemite Sam, who said, “There ain’t no reason for it. It’s just our policy.”

So I have concluded that, while there may be sincere folks among this crowd, the greater number are simply intellectually lazy. They have found a place that serves their own desires and stopped looking. They’re comfortable and unchallenged and like it what way. I point out, again, that I am including many professing Christians, who live their lives as if God did not exist.

It seems to me the most important choices one can make in life concern God. After all, if there is any truth to the biblical teaching about God, only a fool would knowingly ignore it. The consequences are too great. What we believe about God will shape our entire life, for better or for worse. And to simply ignore the question or to claim a convenient “answer” to the question without even considering the evidence is the height of foolishness.

But for many of us it’s not a problem. We just ignore it and live according to our whims and wishes. How can we do that, with strong evidence pointing to the folly of such a practice? Denial. We do it by simply denying to ourselves that there’s anything wrong. We live with blinders on.

Some would argue that we all live in a state of denial, refusing to acknowledge some aspect of our world. It’s only a matter of how great the issue is: Some deny small things, others big stuff. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Sounds plausible, and whether it’s universal or not, it’s certainly widespread.

One agnostic told me, in response to a statement I made about standing before God, that he doesn’t believe in God, so the question is meaningless.

But is our belief in something relevant to its reality? This is clearly nonsense.
Things objectively exist, and it makes little difference whether I believe in them or not. The difference it makes is in my decisions, not the reality of other things. If I refuse to believe something that is actually true, I live a life divorced from reality. Not good. So whether I believe God exists means little in the big picture. It makes a difference only to me and perhaps those I influence, but God either is or is not, regardless of my arrogant – and small – opinion.

I wonder if God finds it humorous when men and women take it upon themselves to decide he doesn’t exist. It would truly be funny, if it didn’t have such tragic implications.

I will, however, applaud these folks – atheists and agnostics – for one reason. They have a quality that many professing Christians do not: honesty about their lack of concern. They don’t care about God, they don’t mind saying so, and they live their lives accordingly. Many Christians don’t care much more, but carry on a façade that is utterly reprehensible. In that respect, I have to ask who has the most integrity.

Been busy?

What have you done lately?

No, I’m not talking about getting the latest technotoy or buying a new car. Nothing like that.

What have you done lately that matters? What have you done that changes the world, helps others, and lives on after you?

Anything?

One of the saddest things I ever read was from the Greek philosopher Aristotle: “The masses choose the lives of grazing animals.” Utter insignificance. Profoundly depressing, and the most depressing part: “Choose.” People choose insignificance.

So what have you done lately? What have you done that isn’t centered on yourself, that makes a positive difference in another life, that makes the world better?

Anything significant?

What have you done that isn’t the choice of a grazing animal, a sheep?

What are you doing with your life? Are you pleased with the legacy you will leave? Are you happy with what someone will write about you after you are gone? “He had fun” isn’t so great, you know.

Does the thought of standing to give an account before God scare you?

God has called us to himself, to be his, to represent him in the world. It’s an honor high beyond our imagining. He has called us — his own — to be an essential part of redeeming the world that is his and was stolen away.

But we’d rather play games. Little kids’ games. And we pretend they’re real life.
We live in a little, fake, cartoony world, a world of our own devising. And we try to convince ourselves that, man, this is really living! We’ve got a good thing going!

But it isn’t. And we don’t. And deep inside, we know it. Deep inside, we know that there has to be more. Our pain and our tears have to mean something.
We want to be more than sheep. It just can’t be we live, we die, and nobody cares.

So what are you doing that matters?

Thousands of children die of starvation every day. Every day. While the western world becomes a place of obese, self-indulgent brats. What are you doing about it?

Millions of people live on the edge of disaster, one failed harvest away from starvation. Millions more have no clean water to drink. How would you do, drinking water from polluted rivers, lakes and ponds? They don’t do well, either. They get sick. They die young.

What are you doing about it?

If you were born anywhere on earth as a “person of color,” your chance for quality education and a quality life are far less. No fault of your own. Only because of where you were born. Or the color of your skin. You could look forward to bad schools if you had schools at all, and a bigger chance of dying young than going to college. This is simply wrong, and our hearts should break from it.

What are you doing about it?

These are huge problems of injustice. But many of them are solvable. And if they are solvable, we have a moral responsibility before God to do something about them. But we can’t do it living selfish lives.

So what are you going to do? Nothing?

One day, we will all stand before God. “Give an account.” For some of us, that will be a very bad day.

According to the Bible, we were created to do good works. Works God planned for us in advance.

What are you going to do about it?

*****

Tutor school children • volunteer in a literacy program • volunteer at a hospital • volunteer at a nursing home • volunteer to work with AIDS patients • repair houses for those who are unable • deliver meals to elderly shut-ins • adopt orphans via Compassion International and similar organizations • volunteer at a school as a teacher’s assistant • mentor a child • give money to organizations that are making a difference in solving social problems • volunteer at a homeless shelter • join an organization assisting refugees • help buy medical supplies for disadvantaged people

• stop living as if the world revolved around you and your whims

• invest your life in something bigger than you

God has chosen us to represent him, to act like him, speak like him, learn to think like him, and be like him. We are called to be good, to reflect the character of our Jesus. As we do that in gratitude for his grace to us, we demonstrate his love through our lives, and we pass his gracious forgiveness—grace we experienced first—on to others who need to experience it next. The goodness that is in us—the character of Jesus—is practical, influencing our every decision through the day. God’s goodness in us reaches out and touches everyone around us.

I was reading recently in my Spanish Bible, in Colossians, and encountered the phrase, “abundando en acciones de gracias,” or in the English NIV, “overflowing with thankfulness.” It occurred to me that overflowing with thankfulness—gratitude—is both a part of goodness and a result of goodness. And the Spanish is especially interesting, when we consider that gracias means both “thanks” and “graces.” So we might say that we are to be “abounding in graces.” Literally translated, the Spanish phrase means “abounding in actions of graces.”

Gratitude and goodness are manifested as we abound in the graces of God, showering them on everyone we touch. As we tell people thanks—gracias—we can think of ourselves as telling them, “Graces to you.” And we can do much worse than that.

The passage in Exodus 3 and 4, a conversation between Moses and God, is fascinating. There is enough here to write several books, and indeed, many have been written. As I read this portion, at least three things jump out at me.

We all know the scene, where God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, telling him that He has heard the cries of the Israelites, and that He is going to rescue them. And he tells Moses: 3:10 "Therefore, come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt."

But Moses responds with a question: 11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?"

Good question: Who am I? I’m a nobody, and how is it that I am supposed to go out and tell people that I am here to save them, because God has spoken to me? Who am I, after all?

And God responded by not telling him who he was: 12 And He said, "Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain."

Notice two things: First, who Moses was didn’t matter, because God would be with him, and that’s the deciding factor, no matter who Moses is. Or who we are. Second, the “sign” God gives is only going to happen after the fact. Moses has to step out in obedience first, and then God will show that he was in fact acting on God’s instruction.

Then, Moses asks another perfectly logical question: “Who are you?” 13 Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?"

And God’s response, again, is very important—then and now: 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"

Now this is one that generates reams of writing and discussion. But here’s a good way we might understand it. The ancient world was not interested in gods as some abstract theological concept. They would have thought modern theologians, by and large, were crazy. A god—or God—was of value only as he acted in the lives of the people, protecting them, providing for them, meeting the needs of their daily lives. And he did this as an outworking of who he was: his character, personality, and power.

So we might understand this statement by God, instead of “I am who I am,” rather “As who I am, I will be present for you in your circumstances, as who I am.” A little awkward to get hold of, but probably closer to how Moses understood it. And it’s equally important to us. Our God is not some abstract, distant theological concept.

4:10 Then Moses said to the LORD, "Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." 11 The LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12 "Now then go, and I, even I, will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say."

So then Moses raises another important issue: I am not equipped. I don’t have the talent, gifts, intelligence, charisma, or whatever else, to go out in your name. Sound familiar? And God responded, “Who made your mouth?” If God made us, certainly he can work thorough us as we act in obedience to him.

These three questions are ones that we ask over and over when God wants us to step out and do things in his name. God wasn’t impressed by Moses’ objections, and He isn’t any more impressed by ours.

“I have noticed,” said my friend, “that no matter what we have done through life, whether praiseworthy or despicable, in the end we all finish the same: standing naked before God.”

My friend, a young woman, was talking about her job and what she had learned from it. She works with the elderly, people nearing the end of their lives. Many are near death. They come from varying backgrounds, bringing with them a myriad of past life choices and experiences. She often sits late into the night with them, keeping them company, helping fend off their terrible aloneness. This results in some deeply moving conversations, as these old people tell her of their lives, their disappointments and their deepest fears. One man, who had been a Nazi soldier in Hitler’s Germany, wept and cried out in German for forgiveness for things he had done a half-century earlier. He was consumed with guilt for his actions, and terrified of facing God.

There is profound wisdom in her observation, and too few of us see it while there is time to do something about it. Whether we have run major organizations and made millions, or have lived in the streets with nothing to our name, in the end it is true: We stand naked before God.

The old German man is a tragic case, living a life of 80 or more years, and having nothing to show at the end of it but fear and regret. But he is certainly not unique, or even unusual. His past is perhaps more egregiously evil, but many other people, more “respectable” than an old Nazi, are no more prepared for death than he was. Or for life, since the preparations are the same.

The comments we hear at the death of some young person, someone whom we consider to have died prematurely, are telling. “What a tragedy,” we say. “She was so young,” we say. And that’s understandable, certainly, but it shows that we aren’t seeing life as it really is. It is not the length of life that is important, but the depth. It is how that life is lived. A life that ends after 15 years is jarring, certainly, but it is no tragedy if that life was lived serving God. And a life that ends after 80 or more years, while perhaps expected, is a great tragedy indeed, if it is lived in pursuit of one’s empty whims, with no regard for anything but “getting my own way.”

We don’t live lives of random events in isolation. We live in a story. It is important that we see and understand that. But it is not a story that is already written, printed, and unchangeable. It is not one in which we are merely reading someone else’s script. We are co-authors. We help write the action, and we help determine the ending.

In his book Wild at Heart, John Eldredge quotes Daniel Taylor:

Freedom is useless if we don’t exercise it…making choices…. We are free to change the stories by which we live. Because we are genuine characters, and not mere puppets, we can choose our defining stories. We are co-authors as well as characters. Few things are as encouraging as the realization that things can be different and that we have a role in making them so.

Much of what happened in the early chapters of our story was the result of choices made by others, things done to us and not by us. Too often, the results left us with damage and pain. And too often, we have added our own poor choices to theirs, and we look back at our lives and see little that brings satisfaction. That’s cause for profound sadness.

However, there are two facts that are overlooked as we consider an unsatisfying past and wonder what the future holds. First, God is in the business of redeeming broken lives, even when the breaking is self-inflicted. And second, God expects us to work in cooperation with him, making choices and exercising control over our lives, coming to live as sons and daughters of the True and Living God. He is not raising up servants or slaves, and certainly not perpetual children, but rather mature people who understand that God is calling us to be junior partners in the “family enterprise” of redeeming a lost creation. We need to grow, to cease being perennial babes, to cease being rebellious adolescents. We need to grow up, to understand the seriousness of what God is calling us to be and to do: He wants us to enter into an amazing love relationship with him, joining with him in the task of tearing down the strongholds of evil. In this alone is there a rich, ultimately satisfying life. In this alone is there no fear of what might lie at the end of our life.

Theologians and philosophers argue ad infinitum and ad nauseum about whether we have choice or not. But the truth is, the argument is not very interesting to most people, and it does not help us live successfully, day by day, in the presence of God. We know, in our inner being, that we are not puppets. From very early on we choose to obey or disobey our parents. And from not too long after that, we choose to obey or disobey God. We are not puppets, and our decisions make a difference.

We need to say it again: Our choices matter. Decisions we make today have implications for tomorrow and beyond. And the decisions we make will be influenced by the place we put our passions.

Therefore, it is crucially important that we place our passion and our hope in something founded in truth, and not in whatever seems at the moment to light our fire. And we all pretty much know that – at least intellectually – but we still make really dumb decisions, choosing things that are guaranteed to hurt us. It’s almost like we are programmed for self-destruction. Why do we do such things? A part of the answer is that we are products of our environment, shaped by our culture.

To grow up in modern America is to grow up wounded. Our society is so destructive to people and relationships that, with very few exceptions, we wind up hurt, scarred, and without a true concept of who we are. We are born innocent, trusting and exuberant about life. It doesn’t take long for us to be stripped of our innocence, made distrustful, and to become skeptical about life. And the outcome is that we often don’t have a very good picture of ourselves, and we don’t do well in relating to others. The bottom line problem in this mess is that in the end, we simply don’t know who we are or why we are here. And if we don’t know why we are here, we certainly have not understood what God is about, because the two are intimately connected.

And so, we become people who live lives that fall far short of the wonder and joy and richness intended for us by our Creator. The idea that God – the Creator and Sustainer of the universe – would choose us – you and me – as his own most precious possession, is mind-boggling. We can see it in writing, and we can give mental assent to the idea, but deep down, we don’t believe a word of it. We just can’t believe – in the deepest recesses of our heart – that God delights in “someone like me.”

How do we get out from under this load? How do we move into a place based in truth and reality, and not our warped perceptions, a place where we see ourselves as God sees us, and live as He would have us live? It is certain that God would not have us live in this manner, stumbling, bumbling, never really finding our purpose in life or in his plan. But how do we get out of the mess we are in?

Some years ago, a seminar group was told by the speaker that the two most commonly asked questions are “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” I watched the response of those in the audience, as I have watched people since, and I have concluded that he was right. And that conclusion has been the occasion of many hours of thought. Most people want to know – and they don’t know – who they really are and that their lives mean something. And sadly, some people spend years asking, and never approach a satisfying answer.

The reason we do the destructive things we do is very often simply because we don’t know who we are. And if we don’t know who we are, then neither do we know why we are. And so we have no good basis for our decisions.

I have noticed also that men, especially, take their identity – the who am I? – from what they do. In any social gathering, when men meet, The Question invariably pops up: “So, what do you do?” It could be restated, “So, who are you?” But that would be rude, so we talk about doing rather than being. Men define who they are by what they do, anyway. A man is a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or any one of innumerable other occupational activities, and that’s who he is. And it’s useful to talk about what we do, since that’s a large part of who we are, and it’s also a non-threatening way to build something of a relationship. However, there is a problem.

I recently met a man whom I had heard of, and for whom I had considerable respect. It was at a birthday party for a mutual friend, and as we sat eating hot dogs, he asked what I had been doing. I told him I was thinking about self-identity, and how we get it. He said, “That’s interesting. My wife and I were talking about the same thing, and I finally told her, ‘Okay, I give up. I’m a missionary doctor.’” I laughed and told him he had just illustrated my concern: Men take their identity from their actions.

Would he be less of who he is if he could no longer go on missionary trips? He might be disappointed, but he would not be a different person. And if he could no longer practice medicine, would he become someone else? Of course not. Who we are is not the same as what we do, and it is important to know and remember that.

The first task in this quest is to stop thinking in terms of doing, and begin thinking in terms of being. After all, the question is about who I am. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. We try, but the truth is that we don’t grow up learning how to know ourselves in any meaningful sense; we know more how to think about what we do. We are judged a success or failure by what we do.

So how do we derive our identity, if it’s not by what we do? This is a hard question. Clearly, what we do tells us something about ourselves, it is not truly definitive of who we are. But what is there to replace it? Everything we consider seems either unsatisfying or incomplete.
But there is an answer, and it’s so simple you won’t believe it.

We derive much of our sense of identity from those with whom we associate, our community. And somehow our identity is connected also to our relationship with God: We are who we are based on how we are related to him. But what does that mean? It’s pretty difficult to put down in concrete terms.

As I was thinking about this, I was sitting in a class, and the discussion was about knowing God. A student suggested that the process of knowing God was like a spiral with God at the center. And we enter on the journey of coming into the knowledge of God by traveling around and around, each revolution bringing us closer to God. Suddenly it hit me: We press toward God, seeking to know him and live in his presence. And the farther we travel into the spiral, and the closer we come to God, the less important the question of our identity becomes.

The fact – simple but profound – is that the closer we are to Him and the more our focus is on Him, the more irrelevant is the question of who we are. As I come into the presence of God, it simply does not matter who I am. What matters is who He is, and that He calls me and brings me to live before him. Nothing else.

And perhaps the best part is that God not only becomes the measure and the focus of a successful life, but as He does, all the mistakes, all the wasted opportunities, all that the locusts have eaten, are redeemed, and are brought into the service of the Kingdom. Hallelujah!

The past years have been a time of trauma and turbulence, and many have struggled with their relationship with God, and with their sense of personal security. Many of us had our bubble – one we didn’t even know we had – popped on September 11, 2001.

I recently heard a pastor talking about times like these – times of testing – saying that in these times we have to tighten our grip on God. And that’s well enough to say, but sometimes not so easy to do. How do we grab hold of God when we don’t think we have the strength to grab hold of anything?

This same pastor said the key is in two words: worship and word. No matter what is happening in our lives, the key to moving closer to the One who is our strength, the One who defines our identity, is worship and the word. He is right, but only two-thirds so. We need worship and the word, and we need community. We need each other to grow and bear fruit in God’s Kingdom.

As we spend time before the throne of God – with others of like faith – simply enjoying him and praising him, He becomes the focus of our lives. From a place near to Him, the world is far less confusing and threatening. Add to that spending time reading his Word, letting the Holy Spirit work his way in us as the Scriptures soak into our inner being, and we have a guaranteed recipe for safety, for security, and for knowing who we really are and why we are here.

It has been interesting and perversely amusing to watch the Washington press corps engage in their self-important tantrum over not being informed about Dick Cheney's hunting misadventure. One would think someone had compromised national secrets or something, and not had a hunting accident that was really no big deal, and certain not something of national importance. Perhaps the Veep did us a favor by giving the press a good opportunity to show us what they are really made of. If we didn't already know.

I read today a quote that I knew, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that says, “When Christ calls a man, He calls him to come and die.” I was struck as never before with that quote, and have been thinking about it all day. Two questions: Is it true? And if it is, what does it mean? What are the implications in my life?

I think it is true. I think Jesus’ teaching on losing one’s life for his sake and other teachings, in addition to the practices of the early church regarding valuing one’s life indicate that they understood things the same way as Bonhoeffer.

Then, I need to know what it means for me, as a practical matter in my life. Specifically, what does it mean to me in my longings, my desires, my “needs,” and my relationships. I struggle with not having anyone in my life with whom I am intimately close.

I am speaking first of emotional intimacy, but also of physical intimacy. And I long for someone who loves me and demonstrates it by her actions toward me. I don’t think I am abnormal in that regard, but that my desires are basic in most human beings.

The question that I cannot answer – yet – is whether “come and die” I no longer have a will of my own. Whether it means that my life becomes one of response to stimulus from God. Whether it means to write off or disregard ones own longings and desires. Are we to be like marionettes on a string, moving when the puppet master pulls the strings?

That seems very unhealthy to me. It seems that suppressing deep longings is the route to bigger problems. I find it very difficult to buy the idea that we somehow lose our personality and individuality by following Jesus.