Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet, “People have, with the help of so many conventions, resolved everything the easy way, on the easiest side of easy. But it is clear that we must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance. We can be sure of very little, but the need to court struggle is a surety that will not leave us…The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it.”¹

Embrace the struggle.

Herein lies the wrestling of my heart and mind. I want easy answers – “the easiest side of easy” – answers. I want everything and everyone to tie it up in a pretty bow with all the sunshine and rainbows one could offer. And yet, struggle is more like a muddy, mosh pit. Where we come out dirty, bruised and exhausted.

I have been moshing these last few weeks. I have been asking the questions that challenge me and yet, find few who are willing to engage in an honest, calm and kind discussion. It seems we are far more adept at mud throwing and body slamming than we are to actually seek a path between two realities. What I am realizing is that truth is often woven deeper than we will find in simply talking and yet is often the place we have to begin.

Words, though powerful, have little power to truly change anyone. Change happens in the heart. When truth lands in the deep places it is far more likely to be lived in an outward expression. In his Sermon on the Mount discourse Christ said, “What you say flows from what is in your heart.” Much of what I have borne witness to these last few weeks has been more like a sewage dump than anything that resembles truth or love. And while truth and love seem to be what we are seeking, we are lost in our own nuanced definitions of what both are.

Could it be that truth and love are tightly bound together? Rilke in his letter went on to say, “To love is also good, for love is difficult. For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the epitome, the ultimate test. It is that striving for which all other striving is merely preparation.”² A difficult task – the ultimate test – is to not only speak truth in love but to also demonstrate it in actual acts of affection and care. Truth and love cannot be separated.

Love requires effort and yet, it seems we are a lazy people and choose to live in our assumptions and suppositions of others. Truths spoken from here are half-truths at best severed from love because love recognizes it is not enough to live in our own conclusions. Love welcomes the invitation to be uncomfortable, to be challenged and to walk away at times bruised from it.

Love is sacrificial and at times painful. Often, love costs us something if not everything. Agape love is the fullest expression of love Jesus says we are to have for one another and especially for our enemies. Agape love is demonstrative always showing itself by what it does.  It is God’s love for us made manifest in our ability to love unconditionally another. Our expression of love should call one another higher, deeper, wider and longer into the love of God. Sometimes this will be painful, shaking and unsettling but true when it is offered as a plumb line – a vertical guide from God through us to another.

What I have been witness to lately, is far more self-expressions of love – demeaning, demanding and degrading –toward another and most virulent toward a perceived enemy. Words have flailed from lips and keyboards offering nothing but condescension and shame falsely wrapped in a bow of “christian-ese.” Fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – are not found here. What is spoken is done in angry passion – rightly initiated but wrongly expressed. Consider these words from Galatians 6:1: “Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself.” I have seen many become a version of the very thing they fight against.

If what fuels our impetus to speak is driven by our need to point out the errors and sin in another we must be very careful on how it is expressed. Matthew Henry expounds on this verse in Galatians:  “The manner wherein this is to be done: With the spirit of meekness; not in wrath and passion, as those who triumph in a brother’s falls, but with meekness, as those who rather mourn for them. Many needful reproofs lose their efficacy by being given in wrath; but when they are managed with calmness and tenderness, and appear to proceed from sincere affection and concern for the welfare of those to whom they are given, they are likely to make a due impression.”³  

If our message of truth and love is to be a worthy one bearing the banner of Christ, it must be spoken and demonstrated with great care. It must bear none of us and all of Christ. It should be given in a spirit of conviction not condemnation with the full intent to draw one back to the heart of God. Conviction brings clarity, is loving and offers hope. Condemnation brings shame, is hateful and offers no hope. We are a people who are not to remain silent in the midst of sin but rather, we are to speak up for truth and love and speak with the same.

For as much as we want to be warriors for truth and love we must at the same time remain vessels of truth and love.

Four years ago, I was deeply distressed by the vitriol and venom on social media. Not from the “talking heads” I followed and did not know in real life but rather, it was those I had a personal relationship with left me with great sadness and confusion. Many were people of “faith” with whom I had worshiped with at one point or another in my life and yet, the tone and conviction of their posts made me question if I ever really knew them and if our “relationship” was ever true. I found myself quieting many of them on my timeline but the damage had already been done and I have spent the better part of the last four years walking through forgiveness and healing.

The greater truth is we all need a forgiveness and healing. We all need a Savior. It is a plain and simple fact – a presidential candidate will never be it. When Christ followers get caught up in the election cycles and the candidates, I wonder who holds the heart more. Especially when a candidate is set up to be the “deliverer” from all the evils of this world or at least what we deem most pressing. No person who walks the earth can deliver us from even one.

Indulge me here … in Matthew 22 the Pharisees were trying to entrap Jesus and questioned him about paying taxes to the emperor or not. Jesus knew the malice in their heart and asked for a coin. This coin had the head of Caesar on it. He then asked, “who is this” and they replied, “Caesar.” To which he replied, “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.” This speaks to me greatly. A ballot to be cast in November does not belong to God’s Kingdom. It is our proverbial coin of Caesar’s. Therefore, do your due diligence and vote but do not let it impede your witness as a Christ follower.

If our intensity for a candidate far outweighs our love for the one who will vote differently. Be careful.

I recently saw a post that questioned the veracity of another’s relationship with God based upon their political stance (which was oppositional to the writer) and it saddened me. A differing vote does not make an adversary in God’s Kingdom as much as it does in man’s world. However, if an adversarial stance impedes your ability to love another, something is wrong. Very wrong. Love requires many things such as grace, mercy, kindness, goodness, honesty and the willingness to believe the good of another just to name a few. When we lose the ability to exhibit this we have lost the ability to love. When we have lost the ability to love whose kingdom are we serving?

Four years ago, I had to quiet many on my timeline. Today that is no longer necessary. Four years of walking through forgiveness and healing have brought me to a place where instead of “silencing” the posts of political sarcasm and criticism to protect my own heart – I pray for the heart of one who posted.

I’d rather bring them to Jesus than forfeit them to Caesar.

I was listening to a podcast when I heard a statement that has stuck with me ever since. It was simply “a victim can never be a victor.”

This world would have us believe we are a victim of something. Just watch the news for five minutes and you will hear all the ways you have been affronted. Turn on any radio station, pick up most any book that speaks to current events and you will find your victimhood. The enemy of our souls would have us believe we are a victim of a million different offenses, and he longs for us to claim them all but if we believe only one, he will claim success. Christian after Christian has fallen for his ruse and believed his lies, but it should not be so because a victor cannot be a victim.

If we have been saved by Christ, our victory came through him. It has already been won. It has already become our inheritance. However, when we allow ourselves to be a victim to whatever the enemy, the culture and this world tells us must be so, we become fixated on what has been done or what we think has been done to us. It then becomes what we see – in everything. It becomes what we think – in all things. It becomes our truth and therefore taints every thought, word and action. Yet, our truth will never be THE TRUTH. Our fixation – our victimhood – keeps our focus everywhere except on the One who has won our victory.

Paul told the Corinthians, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1Corinthians 15:50) When we are caught in a victim mentality, we are stuck in our flesh and are mired in the world. We are unable to walk in our inheritance. Jesus told us that in this world we will have trouble and persecution but in him we will have peace. (John 16:33) If we are more focused on the persecution – real or perceived – peace will remain elusive. Living as a victim means we do not believe in the sovereignty of God and cannot trust him with the circumstances. However, we are reminded in the Word to run the race set before us looking to Jesus to perfect our faith. We are to consider his example of endurance and not grow weary or lose heart. We are to endure trials for the sake of discipline full of faith in our victory in Christ. (Hebrews 12:1-7)

Believing and speaking our victimhood denies our own weakness (we all fall short) and seeks to blame another. It is a mentality that begs for healing …

“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.” (Hebrews 12:12-13)

A victim mentality is our lameness. Our circumstances may be difficult and uncomfortable but we are not a victim of it. We must never allow ourselves to be incapacitated because of it. A thorn in the flesh – a messenger of Satan – was given to Paul to torment him.  He prayed three times for his thorn to be removed. And, when it wasn’t Paul didn’t call himself a victim of it. What would it be if we actually did the same? Might we too hear the words, “my grace is sufficient and power is made perfect in weakness.” Like Paul we then might be able with full sincerity say that we are “content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10)

Oh, that we would stop coddling our victimhood. Stop singing our victim song. Stop wearing our offense as a badge of our persecution. May we let go of what our flesh demands and what the world dictates and have faith in the sovereign hand of God standing firm in the victory already won for us. May the victory cry rise from the deepest places within us as we continue to trust him to perfect us in the midst of whatever is happening. This world and all its affronts and offenses are temporary.  It will all perish. The Kingdom of God of eternal – it was, it is and it will forever be – victor and victory! In Christ, this is our inheritance.

Live the VICTORY and not the victimhood.

280 days ago I put pen to paper and wrote Day 1 on the top of my journal. It wasn’t the first page in the notebook but it was the first page of counting. Counting the days that gathered us in and closed us off. 280 days of counting and I am still not done. Yet, this is something I will walk away from this time, we have both – always both – here on this dirty ground. We have the good and the bad. We have heaven and hell. We have them both – because here we can live them both. Our humanity is born from the breath of God and breathed into the dirt of this ground. It holds us here in both kingdoms and here we must learn to love one more than the other.

Perfection will never happen but surrender always will. We choose to whom we surrender.

2020 has been a year of fear – fear of a virus, fear of scarcity, fear of others, fear of police, and fear of politicians. Fear causes us to capitulate or it becomes the root of resistance. Fear induces us to relinquish or it provokes us to seize hold.  Surrender will only come when fear is confronted – not the person, the place or the thing – but the fear we hold within us.