Until The Daylight Comes
By Jane Tawel
September 27, 2018
Until the Daylight comes,
I lie broken
Sleepless
Afraid.
Until the Daylight comes,
I lie
Breaking
Truth-less
Afraid.
And until the Morning Star breaks the dark
And breaks the dark in me
I fight the demons of the night
Real and unreal
Forgetting that Hope
Comes with the Light.
But Ah, My Soul Awake!
Hope Comes Renewed
with the Rising of the Morning Star.
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: God Ain’t Your Sugar Daddy
by Jane Tawel
September 16, 2018
Søren Kierkegaard in his aptly titled book, Provocations writes provocatively:
To love God is the only happy love, but on the other hand it is also something terrible. Face to face with God we are without standards and without comparisons; we cannot compare ourselves with God, for here we become nothing, and directly before God, in the presence of God, we dare not compare ourselves with others. Therefore in every person there is a prudent fear of having anything to do with God, because by becoming involved with God we become nothing.
Yes. This. This is where we have gone so very, very wrong as a species. This is how as beings we have lost sight of that which can only call itself, “I Am”. This is how we can pray to a God – to The God!—for minutiae, for self, for games, and for stuff, and for feelings – pray not about God’s Kingdom but our own.
I write this as my daughter is one of the millions who has survived and dodged death in the region of Hurricane Florence. We are thankful that she had enough money to escape, a friend to escape with, and that the storm lessened dramatically from what was predicted. And yes, we prayed. But I pray every single day for two things: 1. Keep my kids and Raoul and me safe. 2. Help my kids and Raoul and me come closer to knowledge and love of You, God.
But those two prayers are contradictory, because truly seeking knowledge and love of God is not a safe quest. And so we live prudently and keep God not only faceless but nameless. I have found this is what we do with people and why should we not do it with God. If I don’t know the name of the grocery store bagger, then I can talk on my cell phone while she, an automaton, bags my food. If I don’t know the name of the person calling me to sell me something, I can hang up on them. And so it has become with our generic god – we think we honor Him as the only god by capitalizing his name, but we are really just trying to capitalize on our assumed relationship to Him. We give His son an equally odd distinction of powerlessness, combining His title, “The Christ” as a sort of last name, like “Smith” to his first name, Jesus. In this way we cut the power out from under Him. And we don’t need to be truly connected with nameless gods or humans and we can mask our fear as power or business or need or greed.
We have become so afraid of having anything to do with God because He may require something different of us, require something we don’t like; require us to give up something. We give god an innocuous name so that our relationship to Her remains neutral, neutered and nihilistic – all the while using Her as a male-daddy figure who loves us more than our brother, Cain. We refuse to be creatures to a Creator, lest She require us to dance with abandon amongst those who are homeless until a new earth is created by us as it was meant to be cared for in the first place – by us. We pretend that it is all in God’s hands and that He will give us the “desires of our hearts”, forgetting that we are to live as nothing but the desires of God’s heart in the world.
We keep the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob safely in the back pages of an historical book, trotted out to prove that we are safe and secure because somehow we “believe” He exists. We forget demons are real and they believe too, but they don’t fear God, they don’t serve God, they don’t give up everything to follow God. We downplay the prophets and elevate the personal letters. We leave Jesus hanging on the cross taking care of the covenant so we can play golf and let the current kingdom make the rules. We prefer a tin-god we can watch on television until we change the world’s channel to the next session of whatever pharaoh trumps today; preferring idols and golden towers to the God whom no man has seen and lived.
We have stopped being involved with Jehovah, preferring a more casual, politically correct, impersonal name – just “god”. Imagine if instead of “Mom” my children called me “person”? Imagine if instead of Mrs. Tawel, my students called me “Teacher”? Imagine my husband’s response if I stopped calling him by any of the special names I have for him – Boo-boo; honey; Dr. T; Ropey; Mr. Moto; Raoul, etc. – and any time I wanted something or wanted to tell him how much I love him, I simply addressed him by saying, “Dear Male, the only male in my world, please let me win this game and please, Male, help me mop the kitchen floor.” This. is. Who. we. Have. Made. Yahweh. Dear Male God whom I claim, like my husband, to have the most intimate relationship with because that is what it says in a book I get if I believe in some obscure, out there being who loves me so much just because I love me so much… can you please do this for me because I am Jane Karen Cook Tawel – and you know my name, right?”
We threaten God that where “two or three are gathered together in His name”, which we don’t use, that He has to give us what we want even if our shoes are still on and our cell phones merely muted. And we call our selves by His name without any irony, “little Christs” we name ourselves, assuming that we will never be held accountable for our side of the covenant.
Imagine if when our kids called home, they purposely only called when they knew we were out and they could just leave a message – knowing we couldn’t give them advice in person, or speak our minds, or talk back – we would just be there to listen to a message and then send money or whatever. Of course sometimes, since their parents are flawed human beings, adult kids should do this but that doesn’t mean when they do so, that it changes the relationship. Our children are meant to be independent but as they become less dependent, the relationship is less close, right? This is exactly what we who claim to be “His children” keep doing throughout our history since Eden with our Father God. We call God up as a friend and ask for something while we go about our day as if He is just the person on the other end of an answering machine. God forbid! That God should actually pick up the phone and talk back!
As written down by the scribes of God’s interactions with people, right after God gives His newly chosen people the rules that will help them form a community that withstands time, other powers, and the selfishness inherent in each of them, the book of Exodus has the Hebrews deciding they would rather leave the God-relationship to the professionals – or at least to someone else.
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. (Exodus 20: 18 -21)
And so it goes, century after recorded century, we mask our fear with blaming or taming God. We seem as Kierkegaard so vehemently points out to have completely tamed what that other great provocateur tried to warn us is “not a tame Lion”. And Jehovah always allows us our freedom – to either fear Him so much we want nothing to do with Him or to not fear Him at all so we can have nothing to do with Him.
Today, Jesus is our pal, not our King and God is our genie in a bottle not our Creator. People have given God lots of names, but God gave Himself some names and then, when we rejected The Father, He sent His Son to speak out and live out those names. In Exodus 15, God has a little “Let’s Get Re-acquainted Party” with His created humans whom He has called out from the nations into community with Him.
In Exodus 15: 26, God is directly quoted as speaking to people – not just taking their messages: “If you diligently heed the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
And yet even when The God comes as the human Jesus who speaks directly to people, He fails – because we fail. Again. And again. When Jesus healed the worst physical infirmities of all, people thanked Him and then walked away having gotten what they wanted out of God. But Jesus and His Father have always wanted to heal more than our sniffles. We want the Trinity to be our handi-wipe, our Kleenex, our heavenly botox for our outer selves and not a raging fire for our soul’s viruses. I think Christ when speaking to those who had just witnessed His powerful relationship with Yahweh, said with some amount of disbelief: “For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”
And so today, we are quite happy – relieved even –to leave Christ on the Cross where He, like Moses, spoke with God. We enjoy the myth that evidently Jesus “paid it all” on Calvary so I can live without following Him or His Father. And so we rack up treasures on earth and thank a nameless God for them; and we worry about if our daughter is going to win the game and we ask God for a favor; and we sweat in the night about the lump we find and we beg God for healing; and we live as if Jesus died but didn’t rise and as if God is tame, and not fearsome. And somehow we think we will go to God’s Heaven anyway because of – what? Because we call Him “Sugar Daddy” and know He owns the whole train — the whole kit and caboodle? We bought a ticket but don’t want to take the journey. And why would we want to live somewhere not here under our control any way with a bland God who lives only to please us?
We have made God the fairy dust of our desires and so to dust we will return because that is where we are most comfortable.
There are many instructions about fearing the Lord God Jehovah. Psalm 25:12: Who is the man who fears the LORD? He will instruct him in the way he should choose. Proverbs 15:16: Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and turmoil with it.
Deuteronomy 6:24: So the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God for our good always and for our survival, as it is today.
And so forth and so on. But right in the very beginning, right after Yahweh introduces Himself as God- Creator, He introduces another name to call Him by and this is what the chosen people of God (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah etc.) called Him: El-Shaddai (God Almighty). El-Shaddai – God of The Mountains. Jesus later says, “If you have faith, you can move This Mountain” and his hearers would be aware that Christ meant you can move God with your faith. But faith isn’t fairy dust, faith is following the covenant – the agreement with Jehovah and this is what the real name of the real god means: “Jehovah – The God of The Covenant Between Us and Them”.
We love to quote Jesus’ use of the term, “Daddy” or “Abba” when He speaks to The Father, but Jesus most often uses other names for Jehovah when He speaks to other human beings. He calls The God, “Theos” or “One and Only god”; Kyrios or “ Our god of The Covenant with Those Who call Him and Only Him ‘Lord’”. When Jesus begins the discourse that will lead to the prayer in which He address Kyrios as his own personal dad; Jesus tells the people that all the universe belongs to Megas Basileus or The Great King, as compared to other kings. In The Christ’s condemnation of our treatment of The Lord God, He tells us that Jehovah is “Kyrios Ouranos Ge” –The Ruler, Lord, Overseer of all the heavens and all of the Earth. And on and on we could go – and yet, those names scare us, as they should. We prefer to focus on remaining children who see God as someone too scary to be talked with directly. We prefer to lisp in our little voices, “Pweeze, daddy gimmee, gimme, gimmee – at least that which I can not get for myself through power, science, technology, coercion, greed or busyness.” By the time we are thirty, or forty, or sixty years old our baby prayers should just sound pathetic.
We have turned god into our Sugar Daddy. We have kept Him safely dead on a cross still paying for our sins, while we have no more desire to be resurrected than we have of seeing Him resurrected among us. We have made the Holy Spirit, the fun- praising Party Guy; and we pray for more dust to add to our already large dust piles. All we like sheep have remained foolish and all we like dust- bunnies have remained useless. We were created in the image of a God and we have decided that the image in the mirror is a safer bet.
Oh, if only we could long to become nothing in the presence of Jehovah Holy, Holy, Holy. Isaiah cried: “Woe to me!” “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” It is recorded that:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. (Isaiah 6)
If even angels hide their eyes in the presence of God, how can mere mortals long to be in His presence without fear?
This next bit will scare me to write but…..There have been a few times recently, when I have been lying all alone, worried and small in my bed at night, praying the prayers of the small and worried, when suddenly a True and Terrifying Presence has come near. To use a very flawed simile the feeling I experienced in that moment, reminds me of the time I decided to be very, very brave and try barefoot water skiing. I could only stay on my feet for about 30 seconds. That is how those late night times of a real sense of Jehovah were – I honestly could only stand to remain in my mind, heart and soul for about 30 seconds with what I knew to be “The Real Jehovah” – the One to Fear; the One in whose presence I am nothing, and yet…. Even in that fearsome moment….
I also recognized in Him, He Who is my daddy; He who came to live among humans; He who cares for me more than any earthly parent ever did, ever could.
After our Fall and our decision of trying to make the world into our own ideas of good and evil; of making ourselves God-wannabe’s, or “adults”; the Parents had to change the terms of our agreement, for the sake of their children –ourselves, the planet, and other beings both human and non-human. Jehovah’s love was never offered as license to be healed only physically, to go my own way not Yahweh’s Way, to let Christ die for me without my dying for Him, or to not be very, very fearful of A God Who Cannot be Contained in One Name. Because like any Good, Good Mother, Jehovah knows that once a relationship grows up that real love requires both people not just to say but to do; not just to take but to give; not just to ask but to receive; not just to follow but to lead; and not just to plant but to nurture. With Jehovah, relationship means not just to believe, but to worship. Just like the day I married Raoul, didn’t mean we would stay in close, living relationship forever but did mean I was covenanting with my husband to love each other in spirit, truth, deed, and body, heart, mind and soul. This is why The Christ compares us to The Bride — it is a marriage contract not a warranty we buy to protect our purchase of God-life.
When we lost our awe of The One God with Many Names, we lost what is defined as, “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder”. When we carelessly set down our reverential fear and wonder of Jehovah-Creator, we lost our love for Him and what we call love is a sad reflection of what we were created to enjoy with Him and which Jesus The Christ did enjoy with Him while among us. Jesus invites us to have that same fearful love of El Shaddai today which is paradoxically a relationship with the intimacy of marriage. We are offered the same relationship that Jesus had with Jehovah, and to understand that even though Christ was the only begotten Son, He still feared His Lord. We are called to fear and love as well, and to follow that covenantal relationship that The Christ now has for eternity with The Father, but we have to want to get to know The God I Am, and be known by Him – not just keep leaving messages to a generic-named god. And that should be terrifying. And yet, strangely freeing.
The prophet Amos (3:8) cautions us to live in fear of the Lion of Judah-God: “The Lion has roared, who will not fear Him”; but that Lion was also the lamb and when He came to live among His sheep, as The Christ, He showed us the nature of Jehovah and also our awed but trusting responsive nature to Him who is our Shepherd. Only then can we too serve as lions feeding Yahweh’s sheep.
If we lose ourselves to our own nothingness into the awe of He Who Is– then through Faith, Hope and Love, we will be all that we were created to be and reborn into that which can remain; and by losing the love of ourselves, we gain what is Love Eternal. In this way, by dying to self, we ironically, gain our truest selves. To love God is indeed, something terrible, something out of my control, something fearful, but in Yahweh’s created worlds, all beings which love Him with fear will be with Him forever in His Peacefulness Without End Kingdom — where the Lion and the Lamb snuggle together where there is finally nothing to fear– not even looking on the face of a Holy God. A Worshipful Holy Terror of Jehovah is the only thing that will ever bring me true and eternal joy. And so as our Messiah taught us, we pray: “Our Father, Who Art ‘I Am’, Sacred Be Thy Name”.
A Psalm of Frightened Joyful Love to an Awesome God:
Psalm 100
Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Stay Anonymous
By Jane Tawel
September 11, 2018
I’m Nobody
Who Are You?
Are You Nobody too?
Then there’s a pair of us – Don’t tell
They’ll banish you know.
How dreary to be Somebody
How public, like a frog
To Tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog.
**Written in 1891 by Emily Dickinson
I have recently observed people in power from my outsider’s view as a Dickinson -ian “Nobody”. I have of course, worked for people in power. Many of the people I have worked for or with are professing Christians, and many of them have achieved a power that has sadly become so masked by “feel good” philosophically excused uses of power that they have no remaining understanding of the dangers of human or national power. There have in my experience, been several of these powerful leaders who adhere to a particularly odd rule that they will not even read anonymous notes addressed to them, let alone take them seriously unless the anonymous person “reveals” herself or himself. They claim that there is something subversive, something unethical, about not being willing to put your name on a message. These powerful men, (and they are most often men but not exclusively so), can take that line in the sand stand because they have enough power in their particular sphere of influence to say and do what they want to and let the chips fall where they may –because of course they assume that like always the chips will never fall –because they have power. And so it goes round and round. But frankly from the peanut stands here, the anonymous collective opinion is that the very notes leaders should be reading are the anonymous ones. The notes we should be reading as Americans today are the anonymous ones – not just the current famous one, but all the anonymous “notes” of anonymous people without power trying to speak truth to power throughout our long and checkered history.
It is true that one reason people speak anonymously is because they are afraid; but they also speak anonymously because what they have to say is so true that it should brook no argument and yet, because we have gotten to a point in our history as humans where we seem unable to even admit we are wrong or mistaken, or uninformed, let alone, that we are sinful or evil; people will not admit they are ever wrong and will even argue outrageous lies and not be held accountable. If we cannot accept we are wrong then we definitely can not change course and stop being wrong. And because of this widespread disease of self-justification and self-righteousness and just plain pig-headedness –anonymous speakers know that the argument for and revelation of Truth will be used by the people in power to silence or muddy the truth. These necessary truths can include correctable truths like pointing out that what a leader said showed prejudicial views and should be corrected to revealing larger and larger truths like money is being spent in wrong ways by our leaders or our leaders are using their power to abuse children. If I received an anonymous note, would I be obsessed by wanting to know who it is from – yes, that is natural –but would I discount that there may be some truth in the message that I need to listen to – I pray not. I pray I would want to know the truth if it is meant to change something, to better something, to create something good, and not a truth meant just to punish or shame. I hope I want to learn and grow from truth, no matter how much it might hurt me.
Especially anyone who wants to claim a Judeo-Christian worldview should take these unsigned notes coming anonymously as spiritually serious. You see, if there is fear created in people who work for or with us, then that is quite plainly not “of God” as much of Holy Scripture advises us. (2 Timothy 1:7; Matthew 10:26-28; etc.). The second reason is that if someone writes to me anonymously then I must understand that my natural inclination is to protect self-interest, to defend myself, to not admit wrong or sin, so that I am actually, by the very anonymity of the writer, being lovingly – yes – lovingly! – honored by this person writing without name to me because they care enough – yes care! – about my changing for the better for my own soul’s sake. Do I put the anonymous writer on too high a pedestal? I hope so because of course the writer is in this situation, the “least of these” that the Bible tells me I will need to treat justly lest I be judged lacking someday by the God-man Messiah who came to be the least of these among us. Jesus didn’t even write to us anonymously – He didn’t write to us at all. He was so certain of His mission and His understanding of God’s True truth, as revealed in The Hebrew Scriptures and as revealed in His close relationship with His Father, that He didn’t write to us at all. He didn’t need to because it was already written in God’s Word, in God’s World, and in God’s Nature. Jesus simply lived powerlessly amongst us and because of His radical choice, He now lives in absolute power at the right hand of God –because of that choice of laying down all the power in the world to the glory of God and the salvation of His people. My dying to my own sense of power is the only way to ever live eternally in the power of the resurrection. I can’t be made whole, new, perfect, if I am clinging to the imperfect powers of self and of this place and time in which I temporarily live.
The reason people write anonymous notes is because they don’t have power and think that speaking their truth to a person in power is critical and important enough that they must do so . They of course also may not want to risk losing their jobs. They may not have a golden parachute or a non-disclosure clause or a helpfully rich relative. There are times of course when people must risk their jobs to do and say the right truth. There are times people risk not just their livelihoods, but even their lives to speak truth to Power. But as a little person who has many times felt compelled to speak truth and who has also supported anonymous note writers in their choice of anonymity, I will tell you that I think the real subversive actions are from those people who have power and will not use that power to look within themselves and figure out why someone is so afraid or so sure –that they must remain anonymous. The times I have felt compelled to speak truth to power, whether boss, relative or sojourner in Christ, still in remembrance, hurt my heart. The times however, that I did not listen to True Truth spoken to me, hurt my soul and that is more painful and harder to course correct by far.
Especially people who claim to follow Jesus as The Christ, should be humble enough to understand how their own power has perhaps blinded them to truth or to the different needs and inferior power structures of “The Other – the Biblical “lesser than’s”. Anonymity reveals needs just as much as signing one’s name to needs, and what anyone with the power to address someone else’s needs should do with that power is to follow Biblical injunctions to “die to self” and give to the least of these. We modern day Pharisees and Sadducees are the truly blind guides, the truly subversive abusers of the Good News, the truly unethical, and when we judge the anonymous writer we are leaving the planks in our eyes and judging the speck in theirs.
Jesus often told those He healed to stay anonymous and allow Him to remain anonymous from the powers of Rome and the powers of Religion – at least a little longer so that He might heal more, bring Good News to more of those with ears to hear and eyes to see. Several of the writers of the remembered actions and stories about The Christ were anonymous amalgamations of people who chose a name to put on the Gospel. – decades after The Christ died and rose again. These Gospel writers weren’t of course anonymous during all the years when the Gospel was orally spoken throughout the world, and so the religious and national powers of the time could kill them for speaking non-anonymously. Paul, who probably often wishes today from His heavenly view, that he had written his letters anonymously so people couldn’t abuse now what he said then, often used his eloquent words to speak to the idea of power. But those aren’t the popular bits that Christians in power today are fond of. We are too contently busy protecting our power and not busy enough taking a knee.
I started to write in my first paragraph that I have never wanted to be one of the powerful ones, but that would be a lie. As a parent, I can cringingly, with deep remorse, remember abuses of my power over my children. As a woman, I can remember abuses of my power. As a wife. As a teacher. As a friend. As a white person. As an American. As a brother or sister in Christ. Because you see, we are all sinners and all choose, sometimes daily, to eat from the apple of power to use good and evil for gain.
As a parent, it took me forever to realize that parents have necessary power for so long over our children that we have a hard time seeing when we are abusing it or when we are wrong. And we can see this played out on our national scene and in our churches today – this inability to give up one’s power and admit that you – or the horse you backed – or your pastor, pope, priest, or president is wrong; and then to realize that even powerful people should be informed, chastised, held accountable, and helped to do something differently than he / she has been. Frankly, sometimes for our good and their own eternal good, these people need to be removed from that position of power before the consequences multiply – for all involved souls, large and small. You see, we are all sinners, all wrong, all mistaken, and all eventually powerless and no matter our name, we end the game the same. Hence, we are in this together. We must all recognize that our nature is to abuse our power, no matter how rich, how poor, how weaponized or nuclearized; how democratic or “Christian” we are – Nations included; churches included; businesses included – I included.
Our human nature is to desire power in one realm or another and that is a gift, as long as that power recognizes first, that it can never remain if it keeps trying to usurp God’s inherent power and that secondly, it can never ultimately succeed if it keeps trying to usurp another human being’s inherent and spiritually equal power. We are created to use our personal or national or religious powers for Good. But of course the mythological telling of The Fall of Human kind is based on the True Truth that all human beings, men and women alike, long for the power that belongs to God and long for the power that belongs to some one next to them, and long to use that power for the knowing use of good AND evil. And in this we sin daily by abusing our natural powers to become un-natural, ie what we were not created to be. We also have tragically misused this power given to us as humans in our sins against the power of nature; this power that was given to us in order to serve the needs of our planet as overseers. We have destroyed not just other humans but the natural goodness of the earth. And we become more and more powerless in that realm because power abused is always power unloosed. Here in lies one revelation of the Christian worldview that “we fight not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers”.
It has been good for my soul to become a little gray -haired nobody. What has been hard for my ego and sometimes hurtful for my pocketbook has been glorious for helping me to walk “further in and further up” as C.S. Lewis might say. Walking in the shoes of people who experience prejudice their whole lives, not just when they are old women has brought me closer to the Messiah who turned our idea of power right side up from the upside down view we prefer as power-hungry sinners. Observing the hypocrisy rampant today has forced me to make different choices myself and to strive harder to act out, not just preach out Good News. I am reading Holy Words and those who illuminate True Truth, whether they write for Christianity Today, The Los Angeles Times, or WordPress with new intent on how to live rightly and fervor in how to look inwardly and outwardly at myself and others with those things that remain: faith, hope and the greatest of all, Love.
I am more cognizant and accepting of the reality, that the days of my life in which I have been the most of a “nobody” have been not only the best days of all, but also the days most like what we are told we will live in a new Heaven and new Earth. Being a nobody is truly the path to freedom, joy, and Jehovah’s Kingdom, where my name doesn’t matter; only the Way, Truth and Light matter – only He matters.
I am reminded of the verse I chose to be a life verse, (while the Angels watched and howled with laughter at the ironic Bible verse choice of this power-hungry but pathetically weak human). I chose this verse oh -so -naively when I was a high schooler and full of pride, ego, self-righteousness, and misguided power. It is from a letter signed by Saul, who changed his name in order to give up His power and lay down his life as His Savior did to the least of these. For Paul he gave up his power to serve not only those in his camp, the Jews, but also the Gentiles who desired to be part of God’s people, Jesus’ Jews. My verse, Galatians 2:20 reminds me that “I am crucified with Christ, yet nevertheless, I live. Yet not, I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith, of the Son of God –Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
See, one of the things about being dead -dead is that you eventually, no matter who you were – President, Pharaoh or Pope – become unknown, anonymous, a nobody, dust. But we who believe in the Hebrew God of Revealed Power, and The Holy Scriptures that reveal True Truth, believe there is a way out of eternal death and into eternal life; a way out of the anonymity of human beings who are from dust and to dust will return; a way into being known forever with a new name that will be our identity known forever, seen forever, living in the light of truth forever in Yahweh. But unless I become that which is dead to self before I physically die, then no matter how big the lights of my name today, no matter how much power I yield, I am a nobody. The Way of The People who want to claim to be little Christs is only walked by dying to being a somebody in the service of King Jesus, who became a nobody to live with us –yesterday, today, and forever. We become a part of the Some-Body of Christ only by becoming a Nobody to ourselves. It is through giving up the power of our own flesh and desires to honor and serve in the life of faith in the Lord the giver of Life, Jehovah God.
Sometimes dying to self for the greater good, means leaving a job that is sucking the soul out of you. Sometimes it means going to a third-world country to bring some good news; and sometimes it means letting a third-world country experience living freely in the good news of your own country. Sometimes it means speaking out for black men in America by taking a knee with them. Sometimes it means giving a twenty to a homeless person and foregoing the McDonald’s drive through. Sometimes it means protesting our current Babylon / America’s injustices, one border atrocity at a time. Sometimes it means losing your job or getting suspended because you walk out against gun violence. Sometimes it means speaking truth to people in power, standing shoulder to shoulder with others or all alone, with your own name proclaimed loudly enough that you might even get killed.
But every once in awhile, dying to self, means that you remain anonymous because you know deep inside, that you don’t matter at all and that ultimately, True Truth has a way of fighting its own battles. And that Truth will set you free.
And for some of us in power dying to self means not discarding but in fact, reading the anonymous note written to and perhaps even about us, and then humbly, contritely, giving up the ultimate power of being right and joining the eternal cast of nobodies.
We may choose to be like the multitude of somebodies that this world assures us we all can be. We may choose to use our gifts not for making the world a better place but for making us more powerful, for getting us ever more stuff than we need. We may walk in that wide way of the world and think we are somehow being unique and special. Aren’t we encouraged that we can all be Greatness and Power just by our own desire to “Just Do It”, right?
But some of us in order that someday “we will be like Him”, may choose to be nobodies. Because He became a Nobody. We may choose to walk humbly before God, no matter our title or resources, and to give unto others as we would desire to have given unto us. We may choose to believe that it is true Truth that some day we will only have left what we gave to the least of these and that all our skills and talents and powers will be dross and dust. We may choose to believe that only our Love will remain. We may choose to lay down our lives as if we were nobody just like a Nobody from Nazareth did for us. And only with that choice, which might include choosing to be changed by and live by the words not just of famous but also of anonymous writers, are we assured that one day, we will be Somebody worth being. We will in fact be with Somebody, worth being.
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (As recorded as the words of the Nobody from Nazareth in the Book of Matthew)
If You Were Still Alive, What Would You Do for Free?
By Jane Tawel
September 4, 2018
Laborious Thoughts on Labor a Day after “Labor Day”
It’s trendy to think through those imaginary conundrum questions. “Would you kill a thousand people for a million dollars”? “If you could steal money without being caught would you? These constructs are intended to reveal something about our ethics. Most of us get to play around with the idea of what we would do for money without consequences, because it will never be an actual real -life choice for us (unless of course you are currently an American Congressman).
The other imaginary conundrum that strikes me as an odd way of thinking – and stay with me here — is when people say, “My grandma would have been 104 today if she had lived.” And I of course, as the overthinker that I am, immediately note (hopefully not out loud) — But…. She…. Didn’t… Live ….. Right? I mean, if Ghandi had lived he would be 149 years old this year.
Yowza! – If Methuselah were still alive he would be like 3069 years old today, right? But if he were still alive and what he would be doing today IF, doesn’t really get me very far, does it? And what someone dead would do if they were alive is just like the question, “What would I do for a million dollars?“
Would you kill one person for a million dollars, isn’t really a fair ethical conundrum because unless you are a hit man, you don’t get paid for killing someone; You hopefully, get caught and get life. And then you get sort of the reverse of the question, “If my grandma were alive, today”; you get the question, “IF I didn’t get life in prison for killing someone for a million dollars what would I be doing today”?
But all of this leads me to an actual ethical, moral, world view question we seem to have stopped asking ourselves long ago. This is the question, “What would I do if I didn’t get paid for it?” And this I believe, if you read the Hebrew Bible, is at the root of the Judeo-Christian worldview. It is how we were created and always intended to live. It is how Jesus radically lived as a human. And it is a conundrum question that we need to, I believe, very quickly start asking ourselves no matter what our belief community. There is a “it’s going to be too late” quality to our lack of desire to ask ourselves this question. This question seems to me to be desperately needed as a searing light, or an emergency surgery for people claiming any sort of relationship with God. If we do not start looking at the Biblical paradox of leaning into a God who supplies all the world’s needs and who requires us to give up all of our wants for the desires of His heart, we will not be known by the Messiah who lived this radical “It’s all free” life while among us. We will not be ready for heaven unless we are living on earth as it will be in heaven.
So I ask myself a lot of questions about this and my questions now are quite unformed and my vision of what I am trying to see very distant, unattainable and hazy. Because of course I am, like everyone, cursed – for now, until my own resurrection and a new heaven and new earth. Genesis 3:17 has God bluntly describing what our future careers will feel like: “cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life”.
Here is the crux of what I am struggling with. We who claim the name of Christ as Messiah, and we who would claim to be the people of the one true God Jehovah have given ourselves over to the false idols of manna and self-accomplishments. And this is no where more evident than in the current day constructs of capitalistic, self-serving, personality worshiping, American churches.
I am reading some paradigm changing books by a man named Garry Wills. In two different books of his, he has opened my mind to reflect on the lives of both Jesus and Paul in radical, belief shifting ways. In regards to this topic though of work, money, Judeo-Christian belief, evangelism, freedom, service etc. Wills has given me pause. First, Garry Wills opened my eyes to the idea that some theologians and scholars believe that Jesus’ did not work as a carpenter for Joseph. They posit that Jesus’ “hidden years” before his three year public ministry to the Israelites, were spent with John the Baptist and other disciples, living hand to mouth in the mountains and living a life of “evangelism” in places far from Jerusalem. This means Jesus worked for food and trusted God, as He says to The Twelve, “for I have food you know nothing about.” Then we get to Paul who people always claim worked as a tent maker but Wills points out that Pricilla and Aquinas who were Saul’s mentors in the faith, were tent makers, and that it is more likely, Paul worked whatever hard grueling task was available in the communities he served with in his travels. Paul even claims to be a slave and to do slaves’ work, and Wills writes that this is because Paul actually fed himself by working along side the slaves so that he could witness to them of The Messiah, Jesus.
So the following mash-up is where I am going to go off-road and hope that this garbled mess of questions and ponderings will perhaps be a small pebble dropped in the pond of some one else’s desire who like I, longs to “know God with all my heart, soul, mind and Facebook postings.”
Question A: What would you do for money?
Answer: That is your job, your toil. That is what you must do to supply what you need to live – until you either die eternally or live in Christ eternally.
Question B: What would you continue to do even if you didn’t get any money or perhaps even accolades for doing it?
Answer: That is your ministry. That is your freedom in God. That is what you do for God and others and therefore, you cannot do that thing for any personal gain.
And unlike the questions raised about killing people or dead people still alive, these are questions we should be answering, because our answers, whether we know it or not, have effected the entire world.
What we of course need to look at is not what Grandma would be doing if she were still alive, but what did she do with her time while she was alive? What did Grandma do with that Time? What am I doing with the resources, talents, money, abilities, and time that I have WHILE I’m alive? What did Grandma do with them? Or Gandhi? Or Methuselah?
And of course, this is what we do look at with people we love or people who become famous, like Gandhi, for doing certain things with their lives. But we don’t like so much asking ourselves those questions while we are living, because we might have to make some changes, take some risks, give up our ideas of how things should be, and treat others differently. We would definitely be forced to see God and Jesus differently. We like to create a giant chasm between the conditions of living now and the conditions of living “in heaven someday”. Hence the idea of living on earth as it is in Heaven is scary and more than that, irritating.
Let’s face it, once we are dead, well, we are all sort of hoping that the construct changes, right? Once I claim a certain religious set of precepts, then I am supposed to anticipate getting something – eternal life, blessings, the love of God, salvation for no work on my part, etc. I get something – eternal salvation – for nothing, no work. But is there any indication in the Bible or in reality that that could possibly be true? Here’s a little ditty I wrote:
Thinkin’ about our life on earth;
Comparin’ to future rebirth.
No more sorrow?
No more pain?
No more money?
No more gain?
And no more Time—
Eternity?
So what does that mean NOW for me?
The conceptual construct we should be thinking about is a bit unsettling for most of us who might desire to claim to live by a Christian worldview without counting the cost – the cost that The Christ warns us about. You see the Biblical way is not one of pay for me but cost for me – cost of money, cost of talents, cost of my life. The real question must therefore be: What would I do for no money? In other words, ask yourself this — what would you do even if you did not get paid for it? Jesus goes further and asks his disciples, “Will you follow me, giving up everything even a place to sleep, even the praise of others?” This is why the story of Mary and Martha hits home.
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10: 38 – 42)
I last wrote about my struggles in thinking on what it would mean for those who claim a community in Christ to be free in my essay entitled, “Tear Down Those Prison Walls”. In it I quoted Meister Eckhart who wrote, As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. My rock and hard place is that I have loved growing up in churches but what I sense today is that we as Christians in an uber-capitalistic, uber-individualistic/humanistic nation have erroneously and grievously confused jobs with ministry. We have made Christ’s corporal body of individuals into a self-serving, self-satisfied corporate-structured business. We treat the pastors differently than the janitors. We need money to keep our programs going. We sit with people who think like us and look like us. We pay salaries commensurate with the CEO’s of other American businesses. We go there and leave there and live no differently with other humans on Monday than we did on Saturday night. And most telling, we do not go to hear God but to hear a paid motivational speaker give a good lecture – a little motivational talk, some prayers that make us feel good and safe, and some paid performers who make us smile and cry and feel something much like the movie we watched on television did last night. And none of this has anything to do with a desire or need to worship and sacrifice to a Holy Un-safe God.
It is obvious that we confuse the role of representative with that of paid ruler, and I believe this is true not only in the halls of our nation’s governments but most tragically true in our churches and Christian institutions as well. It is the Aaron / the golden calf problem. We want to be God’s people but like the Israelites did, we find Moses’ truth telling and stuttered mumbling inconvenient. Moses’ God makes us extremely uncomfortable – better to put a bit of distance between us and let the professionals take over while we worship American Idols. We’ll meet you after Sunday Service pep talks and feel-good pats on the back, for some Golden Arches Cattle Happy Meals. God will be safely kept stored at the alter til next week. No need to look on Him or let Him look inside us. Just give Aaron our gold and keep surfing toward that promised Promised land which we much prefer to be waiting ahead for us, not worked for now in this wilderness.
I have loved going to church my whole life, hearing sermons, hearing choirs and praise groups, hearing prayers; I still love to, frankly. But I believe that just as God had to smite the person who felt the Ark of the Covenant needed his protection and just as The Christ had to whip through the courts of the Temple; it is time for the American church to realize, God does not need our protection and we have become the money changers at the doors of God’s temple, the Body of Christ, His People. What we have created as opposed to what God intended needs to get a major Reset. I know there are people saying this smarter than I and people doing this braver than I. But I think one place for most of us to start is by first really looking outside at Jesus and the apostles who followed Him and be honest about what they say and what they did and how they lived. Perhaps this is the time to ask that other question, “If Paul were still alive he would be 2000 years old; what would he write in his letters to our churches?” And of course we should ask daily, “If Jesus were still alive,….. oh, wait a minute….. Oh…..
After looking outside we should then move to searching inside and my suggestion would be to fling the idol of making money to the curb and ask yourself, “What would I do for free?”
So what follows is a little personal journaling and this where my off-roading hits the stratosphere of unmooring thinking.
Now here are the other considerations I’m mulling over.
There is of course nothing wrong or sinful with using one’s skills to feed oneself. In fact, there is something wrong or sadly unable, in some way with people who do not or can not use their skills in order to eat and shelter and buy clothes. And you are lucky if you get to use the skills you enjoy and even love using in order to feed yourself and perhaps a spouse or kids or pet. Working is what we must do – now – since The Fall, since sin and living by the toil of our hands came into being. And the Bible is clear we are to be known as God’s people by our being good workmen, not ashamed of our use of our skills. The thing is, they are not a part of our eternal being. Work as we know it, will be changed just as our bodies will be changed when we are resurrected into That Life.
Will we use our skills in “Heaven”. Yes. But will we need to use our skills to eat? No. And that will make all the difference in the world. In that day and place, we will be resurrected to what we were always meant to be as humans; beings who work with no pain, only joy. People who work and create completely in harmony with each other, and to glorify The Creator of All. Only then, when we are restored to right relationship with God and in eternal service to Christ the King in a new heaven and a new earth, will our work no longer be for money or personal gain, but will in fact be the ministry to God and each other that we in our inner most parts, long for.
And this paradigm shift in living, is what should be making all the difference for those of us still “in the world but not OF the world”. Just as we look at young children, and think, “ah to be young again and not have to work”; so we should look at those who claim to be reborn into life in Christ. Paul, the worker bee and missionary wrote to his brothers and sisters in the community at Galatia, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery”. We are to be slaves, to Christ alone and when we take up that great eternal work, we will understand what Jesus meant when He said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28 -30)
Maybe the only thing I personally do daily without getting any pay or any praise in return, is study God’s Word and God’s World; and maybe lie awake at night feeling God’s presence and trying to listen to Him (in between the times I beg Him for stuff, of course). Both of these things that I think I do for free are pretty frightening and make me feel not accomplished but weak. These uses of my time and resources, seem to strip something from me before possibly adding something to me. I’m trying to do more things for free, especially now that I have been “let go” from a Christian job that I wasn’t a “good fit for” – hahahaha. Who would guess that?
It’s been a searing way for me to understand our confusion and mistaken theological worldview between “Christian” jobs (in quotes) and “Christian” people (in quotes) and Christ – not in quotes. And since my adult children don’t need me any more, so I have lots of free time to do free stuff. I’m refusing to write about the things I am trying to do as a freedom evangelist, since that would mean I might get something for it, like praise. See, being with out work that I loved – motherhood, teaching – gives me a whole new perspective on the world as created in our image versus the world as God desires it in His Son’s image.
Figuring out the difference in my life between doing something for self and doing something for God and others is super, super-duper, almost impossibly difficult. But in the final analysis, the question of why and for Whom I am working is the same as the question: “If my grandma were alive, she’d be 104 years old and I wonder what she would be doing? So I guess it all boils down to, “If I were really alive in Christ, what would I be doing for free?”
Our lives are meant to be lived in the paradox, the tension of when we are most slavish, we are most free; when we are most weak, He is most strong; when we are dead to self; we are alive in Christ; and when we are most poor in things of this world, we are most rich in things of real eternal value. And if we trust in the provision of He who is Eternal, He will make us worker bees whose nets are cast and overflowing in a sea of human beings; gaining those treasures that will never rust, never rot, and will because they are worked out in slavish Love, remain forever and ever. Amen.
So here is the Question of the Hour: “If you were still alive, what would you do with your time today? If you were living in eternity today, what would you do for free? What would you really keep doing as a servant of God if you didn’t make a dime from it?
The following are Biblical Meditations on God’s view of Work, Service, and How We Should Live. According to Jesus:
.
Jesus, our Brother and King reminds us to keep our hands to His work and to serve as He serves, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night.” (Luke 12:37-38)
The Christ’s Words as found in the Book of Matthew, on how the God of His People the Hebrews and the Creator of the Universe, expects us to work and live:
“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This, then, is how you should pray:
“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Jane Tawel 