J.S. Park

Question: Does Everything Have To Glorify God? — A Mega-Post On When Idolatry Is Not Idolatry

Three anons (edited for length):

- My friends always say that everything we do should glorify the Lord. Because of that, we don’t go to the movies or read different books. If they see me watching Hunger Games or something, they tell me it’s all the Devil’s work. I feel ashamed because they say they are closer to God. What do I do? It’s hard to stay away from sin…

- Should all hobbies and interests SOLELY be for the Kingdom, or is it fine to sit down and write a horror story …? Even if you felt it was fun and maybe even cathartic to do so? I mean to say if we only wrote Theology 24/7/365/a lifetime, that Sherlock Holmes and Guy Montag might never have existed in our imaginations and that would be selling God-given gifts short. Is this right to think this?

- Hello! My mother tends to collect Asian statues from a junk store for me, my favorite things being Foo Dogs and the Mankei Nekos. However when some of the more strict Christians come to my apartment I can see them side-eyeing the animals and the smiling Budai as though they’re sources of evil. Is there any particular reason for this? My mother raised me to believe you can appreciate another culture’s lore and art without falling into the idolatry but the side-eye makes me a little nervous.

Well dang.  Please allow me the grace to write an open letter for the people who want to “glorify God” in dang near everything.

Dear serious brothers and sisters:

I know that some of you are very, very serious about your faith.  It kills you when an unbaptized heathen slips a bad word, you cringe at those “worldly” TV commercials, you scoff at pool halls and karaoke bars, and you think that old hymns and unleavened bread will save the American church. 

I understand.  You are sincere.  It’s great that you take this seriously — but if you’re squeezing undue pressure on rules about rules over other people’s external behavior, you will inadvertently turn a relationship with God into a moral-boundary-pushing competition.  This is just straight unhealthy.

You’ll forget the original reason why you had these rules, and perhaps ironically, your good intention of glorifying God will turn into idolizing these moral fences, and you’ll be so far removed from Jesus that you’ll make fundamentalists look like easygoing liberals.

I really do sympathize with all this: because maybe you had a friend who started off enjoying a slice of cheesecake after each meal and then he went up to black tar heroin.  You had another friend who listened to an Eminem album and now he’s racing cops and punching babies.  You knew a church that started singing contemporary praise and now they’re playing Highway To Hell on Sundays.

I’m poking a little fun, but I get it.  You’re afraid of the slippery slope into idolatry.  You’re worried for your children and your church and this world.  I bet that this is very real concern, and I do love you for that.

But can I just make a simple gracious suggestion? 

Please, please, please hear me in all humility on this, but maybe we could just relax about some stuff.  Perhaps many of these boundaries, which began with a noble heart, are actually causing some brothers and sisters to imprison themselves with a paranoia about being able to enjoy anything. This desperate race to “glorify God” can easily become a masochistic slavery that focuses on arbitrary self-imposed standards which do not bring us any closer to Jesus, but only breeds superiority or despair. 

This is simply legalism, and it kills us slowly.  The second you begin to idolize anti-idolatry, you enter into a very clenched, restrictive, airtight faith that sucks the life out of our joy. 

Certainly there are many things with which we should exercise discernment and caution — but shopping does not instantly mean materialism, and secular music doesn’t mean satan-worship, and enjoying the arts doesn’t mean we are witches and warlocks. 

I know this will make some of you cringe.  You are already yelling 1 John 4.  But can we balance this?  Apostle Paul writes to Timothy —

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons … They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

And also to to the church in Colossae —

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

According to Romans 14, if something causes you or someone else to stumble: then don’t do it.  It’s that simple.  But please don’t hold those secondary rules over other fellow Christians.  Some can handle certain things, some cannot, and while we must graciously rebuke one another when we have a blind spot, we cannot legislate someone’s behavior to claim someone is “not glorifying God.” 

So yes, you can enjoy the cheesecake.  You can buy the dress and the video game and the brand name jeans. Go write your fanfic and draw your anime.  You can cry when the fictional wizard kills the other fake wizard.  You can feel good when you get a ton of likes and reblogs.  You can enjoy Mumford & Sons, even when they sing the f-word.  These are not sins unless you force them into sins, which is still pretty tough to do.  I trust you will be reasonable about these things and you will not wave them like a banner.  I trust you will keep Jesus at the center.  God is not a cosmic parole officer, and He wants you to have fun too.

Let’s also please be considerate towards other cultures, upbringings, and backgrounds.  What you think is sin is actually a preference, and your traditions are not written in stone.  None of us have the power to turn our claims into “Thus saith the Lord,” unless he really did saith that, and even then, do not lord it over others.

We can only exemplify Christ and pray that others will be convicted by the Spirit.  We pursue Christ first in all these things, and he alone will change hearts and grow our faith and keep our eyes focused on the essentials.

Keep the main thing the main thing, and go have fun please. 

When I was growing up, I was not allowed to go to the local pool halls. As I look back, I’m sure my parents did not want me to come under the influence of the unsavory characters who frequented those halls. So they built a fence to keep that from happening: “Don’t go into those pool halls.” The problem was I didn’t understand why, so I grew up thinking it was a sin to play pool (don’t laugh, I really did). Imagine my consternation when I moved to a Christian conference center and saw a beautiful antique pool table in the recreation room and godly men playing pool.

That is the way a lot of manmade “dos and don’ts” originate. They begin as a sincere effort to deal with real sin issues. But very often we begin to focus on the fence we’ve built instead of the sin it was designed to guard against. We fight our battles in the wrong places; we deal with externals instead of the heart.

— Jerry Bridges

 

“You can always see who’s a legalist because he can’t laugh at himself. He’s the one going around saying, “That’s not funny.”

— Timothy Keller

- Here’s a sermon I gave recently about how to glorify God and what that actually means, preached at a wonderful lively church that knows how to have fun and get serious too.

— J.S.

The Non-Theology Theology: The Fear of Being Irrelevant When Bad Things Happen

When the world goes crazy and life gets upside-down, it’s really hip to say, “Just be there for someone” — and you’re called a jerk if you say anything else.

I understand this, because it’s certainly insensitive to preach cold abstract theology at hurting people.  Anyone who does this: we throw them under the Religious Nut Bus.  We use clever counter-cultural terms like “theological bullshit meter” as if we’re really self-aware and we’re not like those other Christians.

But really though: I wonder how much of this is just straight-up fear of backlash and mainstream opinion.  I wonder how much of our talk on “relational intimacy” is really just more b.s. to cover for our cowardice in offering a clear lucid theology on the pain of a broken world. 

Aren’t people just trying to be “relational” to appear relevant? 

Are we really so desperate to cater to the modern skeptic with a watered-down version of progressive pseudo-Christian humanism?

Are we really so afraid to share a robust, vibrant, encouraging, comforting theology on God during our struggles? 

Isn’t God really the only one who actually can do work on our heart in the heartache?

Of course there should be a mourning period.  Of course we shouldn’t go all Jerry Falwell and equate disasters with God’s wrath.  Of course we can’t immediately jump to the moral of the story.  And yes, much of what passes for sermons on suffering is really just trite, impractical, inconsiderate nonsense.

Yet at some point: there must be something offered more than our silent presence.  There must be a worldview that accommodates for atrocities and tragedies.  We must have a hope that is both displayed in actions and spoken with words.  Our comfort means nothing if it’s merely comfort for its own sake. 

Doesn’t the Christian faith offer the best thing possible then?  It offers both the pathos and the logos, both a presence and a reason.  How can we keep silent about this?

Even if my voice shakes and even if it sounds crazy out of my mouth and even if you reject me: the least I can do is tell you about the one who saved me and changed me and is with me through everything that has ever happened.

Christians believe this is all going somewhere.  We don’t always know why, we don’t always know what God is really doing, we don’t always find it easy to trust Him. 

But we do have a hope that this is not the end of the story.  We have a hope more stable than our circumstances.  We have a hope that God is here somehow, working all things for an eternal good, displaying his infinite love on a cross, compensating for all the pain in human history within the most horrific tragedy of all.  God understands us more profoundly than we could really know, and He is not far from our hurting hearts.

I know it’s not always the right time to bring that up.  I just think nothing else can bring more healing than He can, and we could probably talk about Him sooner than later.

I don’t want to be ashamed of my theology.

After all, my theology is alive, risen, and here.

— J.S.

Question: Struggling With Depression and Faith

Anonymous asked:

I’ve struggled with depression for a long time, but this year it got really bad—to the point that I went on medication and have been seeing a counselor for a couple of months. Those two things have been extremely helpful and I have been feeling a lot better. However, it’s been super hard to pick things back up with God. Do you have any advice? I’m trying not to overwhelm myself, but even just going to church has been hard. What are some things I can do that will help?

Hey my friend, depression has been a lifelong struggle for me and it’s absolutely awesome that you sought help for your issue.  Very few Christians are willing to do this because of the strange stigma of “Only God should heal you,” which as you know, is only said by people who don’t get it.

Please allow me the grace to first share a few posts with you:

- Getting Back The Fire For God

- Is Depression and Anxiety A Choice?

- Why Did God Make Emotions?

I know there are no magic words to make everything instantly better, but I’ll share a few things that have helped.  Please know I love you and God loves you and I’ll be praying.

- The Christian life is a journey, not a light-switch.  Please have grace for yourself on that.

- Do NOT pressure yourself into a rockstar faith by setting an impossible standard for yourself.  Jesus had some things to say about people who did this to others, and certainly we shouldn’t do it to ourselves.  Don’t rush it.

- I totally understand that going to worship service can be uncomfortable and sometimes even harmful to recovering people — but also remember there is so much more to church than Sundays, and that Sundays are really the fulcrum starting point for deeper fellowship.  Find a mentor, talk to your pastor, an older mature person, a group of friends, get involved in a team, and keep trying.  Persevere with them.  God tells us that one of the ways to overcome deep valleys of the soul is to rejoice with our fellow brothers and sisters.

- As simple as this sounds, simply get to know God.  Be encouraged by His heart for you. Sometimes the simple act of intimate time with God (for even a car ride or a few moments in the morning) totally recalibrates my orbit back into His mission, and I’m empowered to know that the God of the universe loves me and has my back all the way.

- I have a habit of defining myself by my struggle instead of defining myself as part of God’s story.  I’m not saying this is what you’re doing, but your struggle does have a direction and an end goal.  Many of us just forget.  There’s a time and place to rant, but also a time to regain perspective on what’s next.

- Go have fun.  Seriously.  When I get depressed, I don’t always need theology and discipleship and long lectures and inspirational speeches.  Those are nice, but usually I just want a good burger and ice cream and a walk on the beach and a Netflix marathon and loud laughter about dumb things and cooking a Pinterest recipe for the first time.  Don’t ever think this is shallow: this is life too.

- Find a need and serve the need.  You are specifically wired by God to do something awesome as His force for good in the universe.  You are created to speak something into the world that no one else can.  I don’t mean you do anything to earn God, but that God is excited to work through you and is already orchestrating His purposes in you.  I don’t mean that being “busy” is some cure for our condition, but that the victory over our struggles must also have a direction towards something better.  Find a need, serve the need.

— J.S.

Choices, Decisions, Passion, Life

I think sometimes we desperately want others to understand our life-decisions and we want to explain our side of the story and make sure others understand why we are set on these dreams: and we feel that even if they really believed in us, they are still looking down on us somehow and that maybe fate or God or the universe will catch up to our subpar choices and pay us back. 

I wish others could see we are conflicted, that certain decisions are not easy, that nothing is as ideal as we hope, that we don’t always know if this is right or wrong, that we often decide what we feel is best at the time and that we really are trying our hardest while trying to make everyone happy.  But there is no pleasing everyone, and probably not even fully ourselves, and some decisions are bound to make others angry.

We are bound to accrue enemies over a lifetime for the decisions we make — and we can’t control that.  We can only control how we respond. 

It does not help our case to be rude to our “enemies.”  But it also does not help to constantly apologize for our life-choices and act sorry about the path we chose when it’s already so hard to figure out our one life on this earth.

I’m trying to find the balance between recognizing the truth of others’ criticisms and the conviction of my own judgment.

I want to know that I’m not picking the opposite of something to prove to someone else that I’m doing the right thing.

I’m tired of anxiously twitching every time I invest my heart into something you don’t approve.

I know everyone else has a vision for my life, and if I’m making a mistake, maybe I want the chance to find out on my own.

I would hope you could cheer on my dream, no matter how silly it sounds or how you’ve made up your mind or how you think you’d do it differently.  You might despise writing or dancing or music or ministry or charity or the arts — but that could be resentment for something you didn’t even try to understand.

I want a fair chance to pursue my passions without extra discouragement and distraction and division: because you are making a hard thing even harder.

Maybe you can encourage my already difficult decision. 

Maybe you can extend a hand instead of shaking a fist. 

Maybe you could explain exactly why you think this is a bad idea, or tell me a better one.

Maybe you could ask me all the facts instead of presuming your version of the narrative of my life. 

Probably you’re just jealous or insecure or being petty or you have an agenda for holding me back.

Maybe you just don’t know how much I’ve really thought about this.  I have certainly thought about it more than you ever, ever, ever will.

Maybe you think my dream is stupid or wrong or misguided: but maybe I feel just as stupid, wrong, and misguided — and following dreams is always more complicated than our easy labels.

Probably you think you know what’s better for me, when even I don’t know what’s better for me, when I’m doing this because I believe God Himself has called me to it.

It’s okay if I fail.  I would rather fail at what I love than succeed at what I don’t

You can either be the voice that fuels my self-doubt and fear, and I’ll have to overcome you, or you can be the voice that grows a deeper thoughtfulness about my own direction and creates forward momentum, and I’ll thank you later. 

I need you to be life for me. 

It’s okay if you don’t agree.  It’s okay if you’re mad at me.  But time is short and there are a million voices pulling me every which way — so amidst the confusion: inspire me, challenge me, breathe in me.  Whatever I choose, please be life.

— J

That moment when you are in total awe of someone’s faith, and their faith somehow builds your own.

Blog Integrity: Forgetting To Practice What You Preach

I saw a quote written from a guy I know, and it was a great quote and he probably really meant it. 

I wanted to be gracious here, BUT — this thing he was telling everyone else to do is the very opposite of how he really is.  He knew the exact right words to phrase it, the keywords to tug the heartstrings, that slightly aggressive tone to preach to the choir, the vivid imagery and active verbs to pull it off. 

It felt so icky.  This was the paragon of a pot calling a kettle black.  It was black calling black black.

If he had said it any other way, with any kind of nuance or self-awareness or humility: it would’ve made sense.  He’s not a bad person or anything, and there is value in hearing from someone who is still overcoming their own issues.  But this wasn’t that kind of honesty.  It was all finger-pointing, just abrasive and hollow and laughable.  It’s the sort of thing that instantly makes you say, “Well-what-bout-chu?”

Come to think of it, I’ve probably done this many times.  I’ve preached what I haven’t been practicing.  I’ve told people to do what I wasn’t doing myself first.  I do think all of us can teach others without being perfect, but there’s a way to do that which can make us relatable or make us jerks.

Of course, we’re all in progress.  We have blind spots.  We will never arrive to perfection.  Yet I wished he had quoted someone else, or was less uppity, or maybe added, “And I’m working on it too.” 

I could only guess: he doesn’t know it’s his own problem.  He just knows it’s a problem in other people.  This is the part that makes me sick to my stomach with grief.  I don’t know how to approach someone like this because it’s too much work, too stressful, and not very worth it.  I just thank God that I have friends who are smarter than me and are not afraid to rebuke me in the face.

Maybe we could just write the stuff we really feel instead of preaching pretty ideals all the time.  It won’t kill you to be honest about your struggle.  We don’t need another soap-box; we need knee-deep stories of hope and heartache and grace.

We can admit: we’re all trying to get it right. 

We don’t need to talk from a pedestal.

God have mercy on our hypocrisy and grace for our every spoken word.

— J

Here is an exercise: Quote only those words that you are willing to do today. If we can’t act on what we quote, what is the actual value of it?

Expecting others to do it and not ourselves is just arrogance and self-centeredness. Find a struggle and persist in it. Then be willing to change. Wouldn’t you like these words to have meaning for generations after us? I would. So let’s not hollow them out with our laziness.

— Drew Tatusko

lovecourtney:

What other King leaves his throne?
What other King leaves his glory to die?

I don’t mean to sound blasphemous, but this could be in the Book of Psalms.  We can never go wrong with honesty.

brianli:

I’m going to presume that my lack of love for You recently has been due to my lack of knowledge about You.

If I really understood Your grace, this wouldn’t be an issue right now.

If I really understood even a fraction of Your mercy, I would be on all fours, unable to contain how much I don’t deserve the treatment that You give me.

But no, here I am on Tumblr in a state of self-pity because things have gone sour recently, and I have too much pride to admit that I can’t pull myself out of this one. My heart is void of any affection towards You and I know it’s because of my self-indulging nature. I lack both sides of the understanding that I should come to. I neglect the true nature of the depraved state I am in while also neglecting the true nature of the grace in which I am showering in as well.

Simply Lord, I am going through the motions. My guilt isn’t causing repentance, it’s causing apathy. My wounds aren’t closing, they’re being infected. My works are just that, works. My Bible reading is consistent but it transitions into nothing more than flipping loose leaf pages and building head knowledge. Lord, I feel empty, and it’s because I don’t know You.

Reveal to me Your character, Your love, Your mercy. Overwhelm me with it. The more I know about You, the more I will love You. The more I love you, the more I will want to get to know about You.

Question: Victory Over Binging

Anonymous asked:

Hey, thanks for that post about binge eating. I use food as a coping mechanism too, and I hate myself for it. Your victory gives me some hope though, so thank you. I did want to ask — are there other ways of coping that you developed instead of binge eating?

I’m definitely no expert on binging but I can share a few personal things that helped.  Please know that these are only suggestions.  Feel free to toss them or modify them as you see fit.  And don’t be afraid to seek counseling or medical treatment — there is zero shame for seeking help.

1) If I got an urge, I immediately confronted it.

This sounds obvious, but the second I was triggered to binge, I usually flew out the front door and took a walk.  Other times I got in the car to drive to the bookstore or Starbucks.  I’d call a friend to say hello or turn up the stereo full blast. 

These immediate actions interrupted my patterns and sobered me up.

You’d be surprised how quickly you can “break the spell” when you completely change your surroundings and introduce new stimuli.  It’s almost like you forgot why you even felt the urge at all.

2) I got really serious about exercise.

There’s always that buzzed feeling after a binge where you swirl down a hole of self-loathing.  I felt fat and disgusting.  I couldn’t stand to wear a T-shirt because of my stomach and I began wearing a huge jacket all the time (and I live in Florida).  Of course, feeling like crap about binging usually leads to more binging, and so the vicious cycle continues.

When I committed to exercising, that momentum really broke the guilt-spiral and incidentally encouraged me to eat better.  When I missed a work-out, I had to remember not to guilt-trip myself but make up for it. 

Eventually my old pants started fitting again.  I got back the old muscle definition.  That freedom felt too good to pass up, and binging became much less attractive.

3) I set an eating schedule.

This is obvious too, but it’s so much harder than it sounds.  I really don’t know anyone who keeps a strict eating schedule.  If you’re a spoiled American kid like me, then you eat whenever you dang well feel like it.

The thing about diets is that they’re really easy to do for the first few days.  It’s the same with faith, with exercise, with life.  But there is always a moment of temptation that cuts in where we decide to say, “Okay, just once.”  And then the just-once gets us on the wrong track again, because we tell ourselves, “Might as well forget the diet now.”

When your “just-once” moment comes, push through.  Do NOT compromise.  There is no magic trick here: you just have to be disciplined.  Throw away the snacks or run out the door or leave the potluck early or call a friend. 

4) I filled my mind with more important things.

After a while, I had to quit defining myself by my struggle.  I couldn’t keep thinking in terms of weight loss or calories consumed or snacks avoided.  No one can possibly sustain a life like that, or we’d be nervous wrecks completely idolizing the recovery.

I had to keep Christ first.  Every time I did things of eternal significance, my mind-space was filled with important matters and emptied of anything less.  My God-made purpose and Christ-anchored identity would then overwhelm my struggle.  Sure, there is a tension, and there are days when the struggle seems to be winning.  But this is human nature, and it’s why God has grace for us.  It’s grace that covers where we mess up and grace that empowers us forward to a life of freedom.

You are wired for something important, and God has given you talent and abilities and gifts to flex for His glory while you’re here on the earth.  If you pursue Him, you’ll actually end up forgetting your struggle more and more: because the glory of God will have taken up all your vision.  While many of us have a lifelong battle with certain issues, I also believe in a God who can have total victory over our old selves. 

I know this is probably lofty and abstract, but trust God that when you pursue Him, He will work in you.  Find who you are, NOT by what you’re not, but by who God says you are.

— J.S.