Guest Posts
Why I Have Begun to Subscribe to the Reformed God
My friend, and fellow seminarian at Biblical, Mike Landsman, responds to my post “Why I Haven’t (Yet) Subscribed to the Reformed God”.
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I am probably not the right person to write about Reformed theology because technically I’m not Reformed. I never grew up Reformed and never heard of Reformed theology until about two years ago.
I thought I was a deep thinking Christian because I didn’t hold much of the Charismatic doctrine I was raised in and because I read Phillip Yancey books.
Then one day I stumbled ass-backwards into material by John Piper, Tim Keller, and R.C. Sproul. It felt like I was picked up and thrown into the deep end of the pool. I certainly don’t know everything there is to know about it, but I have been increasingly turning to it for comfort and for a foundation on which to build.
On the surface Reformed theology can sometimes appear to be concerned with doctrinal minutiae at the expense of everything else. I believe this is unwarranted. Luther, Calvin, and other leaders would send people out to plant churches all over Europe, often in places of intense persecution.
Also it must be understood that historically the Roman Church’s magisterium had a thousand years to add unbiblical practice on top of unbiblical practice. Reformed theology is so detailed because it had to be.
Reformed theology is detailed not because no one had anything better to do then navel gaze and think about aspects of God’s sovereignty instead of helping poor people. They had to study, pray, teach, and catechize. They searched the Scriptures and went back to the church fathers and had to formulate doctrines, such as God’s sovereignty, in order to counter the theology of Rome.
Reformed theology makes us, or should make us, uncomfortable. It makes us keenly aware of our spiritual state outside of the atoning work of Jesus on the cross. We are all sinners, all deserving of death, and the only thing that differentiates us from others is Jesus.
That drives us, or should drive us, to share the gospel and to talk about the love and grace of God. Anyone who sits back in comfort feeling like they know they are part of the chosen is probably not regenerate in the first place since pride is a work of the flesh.
I think the big issue here is a misunderstanding of the love of God.
We have this pop-culturally shaped understanding of a God who is love, who excuses all sin, and lets all bad behavior or sin go because of grace. Our understanding of God’s love has to start from Scripture not from how we think God’s love can or should operate.
If you want to see God’s love look to the cross.
If you want to see God’s wrath look to the cross.
If you want to see God’s endgame for all things look to the cross and the resurrection.
The God who holds all things, rules all things, and has a purpose in all things is infinitely preferable to a god who responds capriciously, or a god who acts in the way we think is fair.
We like to throw around the idea that God causes all things to work towards good but we always stop short of reading the rest of the verse that explains that all things are promised to work for the good only of those he has called.
The reason why I love the Reformed ideal of God is because I believe the Reformed ideal of God is the God of the Bible. The god I was taught to believe in was a god who was subject to the whims of man and who waited for man to make decisions before reacting to man’s choices.
Like Caleb mentioned in an earlier blogpost, God is wild and untamed, but good. And only in Reformed theology do we see a picture of an untamable sovereign God who is good and who does good even in the face of the most dire of circumstances.
Praise his name he gave us the Scriptures so we can see his character for what it truly is and base our knowledge of him on his self-revelation and not on personal experiences or philosophically based explanations of his character.
One Year with Suicide
Leanne Penny’s journey has taken some heartbreaking turns. Including her sister’s car-train accident, losing her father to heart disease and her mother to suicide. Through all this pain she has chosen to persevere. God has led her to share her story of hurting, healing and choosing joy as a writer and blogger at leannepenny.com. You can also follow her on twitter.
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In Michigan the leaves are changing bold and beautiful hues and falling to the ground. Fall has always been my favorite season, but this particular fall day lacks beauty for me. You see, today marks the one year anniversary of my Mom’s death. One year ago today she took her life.
Last year on October 13th I was just getting into bed after staying up too late when I heard my cell phone ring. It was my brother, and after a glance at the clock I realized that time in Michigan was midnight thirty. My heart sank and I braced myself for a blow, because calls after midnight rarely bring good news. My husband took the call and after he hung up the phone he gently filled me in. Earlier that evening my mother had taken her life on the same train tracks that my sister had her accident years before. I didn’t burst into hysterics or tears, instead I sunk into shock. I couldn’t believe that all the hope I had been grasping so desperately had shattered on the tile floor of our bathroom. There was no coming back from her depression. It had finally defeated her spirit. She had been so mentally and emotionally unavailable for years, and now she had faded out of my life completely.
I wanted to write about what it feels like to spend one year processing and grieving suicide. I know a lot of people tell me that they can’t imagine what it would be like to have your mother take her life. Well I think that if I could sum it all up into one word it would be this: confusing. After 365 days of living with suicide I am still confused. I know that the body, mind and soul of a person are unbreakably connected. When the mind is very sick it has the power to take down the other two. When the body is sick it can take down mind and soul down as well. However, I have seen enough optimistic cancer patients to lead me to believe that the worst place to get seriously sick, is in the mind.
My mother struggled with depression for about 30 years, and it eventually took her life. Some days I view her death as a struggle with terminal depression, a disease of the mind. Other days I wonder what was inevitable because of her diagnosis and what she could have fought through. But every day I wonder who my Mom really was underneath that thick gray crust of pain and sadness. Toward the end of her life she was usually a warm body and a blank stare, existing in a world I couldn’t seem to reach. I listen to stories and glean pieces of the person God made her to be, she was bright and fun loving, a warm hearted and servant minded person. She felt other people’s pain like it was her own and she was the star of the school play. I miss her even though I hardly knew her at all. Mostly I am frustrated that I missed out on her. That my life was spent watching her blow away like dandelion fluff, piece by piece drifting somewhere unknown.
I can honestly say I was angry at her, for all her failures as my Mom, and for being locked behind a wall I couldn’t penetrate no matter what I did. I kept reaching for her just like my own baby son reaches up for my face. As much as you hate to admit it, You always need you mom, and she couldn’t be mine anymore, even though she was sitting right across from me. I won’t ever fully understand that, it’s utterly terrible grieving someone who is still alive.
I don’t know why some people die of physical illness, some people die of mental illness and some people die in sudden tragic accidents. I do know that one out of every one person on the earth will die and that even though my moments on earth seem endless, they are anything but.
I try to remember the good memories of my Mom, but most of them happened years ago. When she was alive, the idea of being like her terrified me, so I rejected everything in hopes of avoiding her fate. Well now I am confident that I can avoid her fate while at the same time being her daughter. I am now brave enough to talk about some parts of her that I carry on in this life.
1) When Noelle was born she came to visit and kissed her right on the lips. I thought that was weird, but now I smooch those little lips whenever I want to, because I am mom, and I can.
2) She always left her coffee cup in the bathroom because she finished her last mug while she was doing her makeup. I do that too.
3) My mom’s favorite season was fall, mine is too. She would drive us around town just to find beautiful trees to fuss over, as a kid I didn’t get it, but I have every intention of subjecting my kids to that as well.
4) She wore the diamonds my dad gave her when he proposed, I am now brave enough to wear them too. They are a symbol of all the beautiful intentions they had when they started our family, and that’s a part of all of this that I want to carry into the future.
Suicide is messy and inexplicable selfish, I doubt she had too much control over it, as far gone as she was. It is a terribly confusing thing and difficult legacy to leave your children. All that being said, I am my Mother’s daughter and I have every intention to fight like hell against metal illness. I will love autumn with reckless abandon. And every morning I will leave a mostly empty coffee cup on my bathroom counter before I get out there and live life to the very fullest with every intention to leave an amazing legacy in my wake.
The Eulogy I Gave For My Dad: A Guest Post
Tor Constantino is an ex-journalist, current public relations professional who has worked for CBS Radio and ABC, CBS television stations. He contributes to RELEVANT magazine, http://ChristianPost.com, SCL and his blog, http://www.torconbooks.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.
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Tor Constantino
It feels surreal and unnatural to lose both parents within such a brief span of time – little more than two years.
I went to church and sat next to my father this past Sunday and did not expect a phone call the next day saying he was gone.
I did not expect that my parents would not live to see any of their 12 grandchildren get married. I did not expect that they would not live to see their great-grand babies. And I certainly did not expect that they would not live to see the age of 65.
Up until this past Monday when he passed, I did not expect anything less than another 15 or 25 good years to share with him.
But the thing I expected least of all was the deep peace of mind and spirit that I have knowing that he’s reunited with my mother.
Ever since she passed away in 2004, he had not been happy. My sisters, brother and I tried to spend a lot more time with him. Our respective families took him out to meals, coffees, worked around his house, took him on walks and drives around the lake to improve his spirits – to little avail.
At one point, I was so frustrated with his listlessness that I selfishly and angrily confronted him to “snap out of it” and get on with his life. Questioning him whether or not his surviving family members and extended family were enough?
He quietly replied that he deeply loved each and every one of us. But he shared that all the extra attention and effort we applied to him, was bitter sweet because Gwen (my mother) wasn’t there to share it with him.
He quietly shared further that no matter how much we loved on him and spent time with him – each of us ultimately had to leave him to return to our own families and homes each day. It seems that our daily departures from him unintentionally sharpened the painful void of my mother’s memory.
That was an unexpected insight into grief for me. Without minimizing it, such a loss is somewhat akin to a painter losing their sight; a musician losing their hearing or a chef their sense of taste. Everything they love to do and experience in life is affected and changed, because their point of contact that helped define each moment was no longer there. My mother was that point of contact for my father.
My dad loved us five kids and deeply loved his grandkids – but I now know that he was sad that he could no longer share those moments with my mom.
Trust me as I tell you, I miss them both – but as I said, I did not expect the peace I now have in their absence knowing they’re together.
Some kids get from their dads a love for baseball and can quote player statistics all day long. Some develop a love for hunting and fishing that lasts a lifetime. Still others develop a passion for cars and working along side their father restoring a classic engine.
While my dad never had a passion for baseball, hunting or cars – there is a passion that he had that transferred to me and that was a passion for the word of God and an eternal faith in Christ.
Everyday I’m grateful for that gift of faith my father imparted to me, especially on a day like today.
Earlier this week, my wife came across an email from a woman who attends our church and at the end of the email there was a quote that I’d like to share, it reads:
“The true measure of a man’s wealth is what he has invested in eternity.”
That quote has lingered with me, because it was a standard that my dad could measure up to. Anybody who truly knew my dad would agree that by that eternal standard – he was one of the wealthiest men they knew, and that’s evidenced by the overwhelming number of us here today to honor his memory.
My dad was always ready to listen, pray and offer words of wisdom through the scriptures to anyone who sought him out.
During calling hours last evening, I can’t tell you how many people – some were family friends, others were complete strangers – who came through the receiving line telling me, that my dad was a “father-figure” to them when they did not have one; or the incredible role and impact that he had on their lives; or how his faith and family had been an inspiration to them.
“The true measure of a man’s wealth is what he has invested in eternity.”
Having said all that – after losing both parents so close together with decades of life still ahead of them both – it’s easy to point an accusing finger to heaven and claim that such a loss is unfair and is a cruel cosmic joke.
The knee jerk reaction is to demand an answer from God to the question – Why????
Why are they both gone?
Why should I go on without them?
Why did this loving couple of such demonstrated faith have to die so young?
Why our parents?
All of those “why” questions and many others came flooding into my mind when I heard that my dad died – because I loved him as much as I loved my mother.
Interestingly, those questions about “why” it happened, reminded me of a passage I read in a book titled A Grief Observed.
After my mom passed, I shared the book with my dad. It’s written by C.S. Lewis – an avowed atheist who became one of the greatest Christian writers and theologians of the 20th Century.
Lewis wrote the book shortly after the death of his wife, Joy Davidson, to cancer. To be honest, I don’t know if my dad ever read the book I gave him – but I’d like to read a bit of it to you about the “why” questions we all experience when we lose a loved one:
When I lay these [why] questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of ‘No answer.’ It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He (God) shook His head – not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, ‘Peace, child; you don’t understand.’
Can a mortal ask questions which Gods finds unanswerable? Yes, because all nonsense questions are unanswerable. Questions such as, ‘Is yellow square or round? Or ‘How many hours are in a mile?’ – have no answers. Probably half the questions we ask – half of our great theological and metaphysical problems – are nonsensical questions.
What that passage suggests is that all of our “why” questions about tragedy are the wrong types of questions to ask.
After last night’s calling hours – considering the hundreds, possibly thousands of lives my parents positively touched – I was thinking about what are the correct or right-type of questions I should ask. Questions that are not nonsensical to God and that He wants to answer for me regarding the death of my parents.
After the long line of people from last night’s calling hours who shared story-after-story about my dad’s positive impact on their lives – there was one question that came to my heart,
“HOW can I be more like my father?”
And the answer from God came to my heart as quick as the question,
“The true measure of a person’s wealth is what they invest in eternity.”
Despite the pain, the loss, the grief – I had an answer from heaven that brought me true inner peace. I had an answer and direction, that I’m to continue in this life and my faith until I’ve reached its end and finished well – just as my father did.
I will continue to pursue the true eternal inheritance of dad and seek to have a positive impact on those lives I happen to touch – just as my father did and continues to, even in his death.
Having answered the question of “why” and why there’s a better question to ask when faced with tragedy, I ask if you’re rich in the truth, wealthy in faith and fully invested in eternity? On the other side of death’s veil, will you know that you finished well?
Allowing your life to become the answers to those questions, is worthy of life and ensures a life of worth.
Mourning and Social Media
Today’s guest post comes from Leigh Kramer, who is a certified thanatologist and former hospice worker, which easily makes her a candidate for a “Top 10 Coolest People in the World” award.
In May 2010, Leigh intentionally uprooted her life in the Chicago suburbs by moving to Nashville in an effort to live more dependently on God. She writes about life in the South, what God has been teaching her, and her ongoing quest for the perfect fried pickle. A former medical social worker, she is currently writing her first novel. You can follow her adventures on Twitter and her blog HopefulLeigh.
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We know that grief is a stranger to no one. At any time, we could lose a person that is a part of our lives. Now in the age of social media, we’re facing loss on a virtual level.
Since blog friends can be real friends, what do we do when a blog/Twitter friend dies?
I stumbled unto Gitzen Girl‘s blog a couple of years ago, amazed by her joyful spirit in spite of her circumstances: a painful chronic illness. I’ve read her blog sporadically the past several months, but was always glad when she’d pop up at (in)courage.
Last summer, she vulnerably explored her grief after the sudden death of her father. Grief is messy. There are no pat answers when your world is ripped apart. Until you’ve experienced the pain of losing a loved one, it’s impossible to know what the bereaved experience.
Sara lifted the veil for those who haven’t walked that road and provided community to those who’ve mourned. In some ways, she prepared us for what we now face.
On Wednesday, news spread through the blogosphere that Sara’s body was shutting down. She started hospice and her loved ones began the process of saying goodbye.
But what about the rest of us? Those of us who had felt encouraged and comforted by her writing but knew Sara by her words alone. We’ve felt the impending loss all the same.
When you don’t have that face-to-face connection, how do you mourn? The intersection of grief and social media adds a new dimension to bereavement. Loss is loss, no matter what.
We simply have to be more creative when it comes to mourning those in our social media circle.
The Twitter hashtag #ChooseJoy sprang up Wednesday as the news spread, a place for everyone to reflect on Sara’s impact on our lives. Sara’s words made real, a testimony to who she is and how we’ll remember her.
Wednesday night we learned that Sara’s family would have a candlelight vigil at 7:45 CST. And so all around the country, people lit candles and said prayers.
People have been writing beautiful posts about what Sara has meant to them. Her dear friend Jessica began a link-up for all the posts. It is amazing- and at times overwhelming- to see how one person affected so many people, many of whom never met her in real life.
There’s talk of Choose Joy jewelry being created. And then there’s this other way to commemorate Gitz’s life: a Choose Joy tattoo in her own handwriting. Tam‘s already taken the plunge and many more, myself included, will follow suit.
Jessica’s husband Matthew reflected on social media’s impact on Sara. Because of her illness, Sara’s been limited to her condo for a couple of years now. She Skyped, she blogged, she Tweeted. Along the way, her life expanded beyond the walls of her condo.
She brought us into her world and we brought her in to ours. This is why so many face the task of mourning someone they’ve never met.
It may be tempting to ignore our sadness, to say we don’t have the right to mourn Sara since we didn’t know her personally. However, we’ll only be doing ourselves a disservice.
No matter the connection, we must give ourselves permission to mourn.
Be sad. Cry. Reflect on what Sara meant to you. Pray. Decide how her legacy will impact your life.
Above all else, choose joy.
How do you choose joy?
Fear does not fill Heaven, Love does
After 36 hours of no electricity from hurricane Irene, we’ve just been restored to full functionality but not without some property damage (pictures tomorrow).
Today, I’m privileged to host Deb Hill, who blogs at Muse and the Queen Honey Bee.
The post that I wrote on “Why 99% of Pastors Agree with Rob Bell … at Funerals” has sparked a lot of good conversation. In all, it’s totaled over 10,000 hits and continues to attract new readers to my blog every day despite being published some five months ago.
And out of those 10,000 hits only THREE people have shared with me their experience of hearing a pastor preach the deceased to hell (which speaks to the goodness and wisdom of the mass majority of pastors). Deb’s story was perhaps the most emotive, and redemptive, so I asked her to share it with us. The only thing better than her talent for story telling, is the story itself. Enjoy.
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I have vivid memories of my friend:
My very first; he’s standing on a table at Kindergarten, stamping his feet and swearing at the top of his lungs. I was, at one and the same time, appalled and admiring of this audacious display!
It’s the summer before grade one, he and I are climbing on the roof of his parent’s garage, after expressly being forbidden to do so, and experiencing the thrill of ‘getting away’ with it.
We are re-connecting in a combined Jr. High after nine years apart because we were educated in different systems. (He was Roman Catholic- Seperate School, I, Protestant/Lutheran-Public School). After having ‘failed’ twice he was two years behind me and quite fed-up with formal education!
The thing was, my friend had been born with water on the brain. The Drs. had succesfully inserted a shunt to drain the excess fluid, but he was, shall we say, different.
It was the 70’s and the education system was woefully inadequate to deal with a child born with hydrocephalus who had pronounced learning disabilities and behaviorial issues. (He was often a Royal Pain!)
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But my friend was more than his condition….
He was incredibly quick-witted, mischievous, kind and loyal.
We were teenagers in the 80’s in Small-Town, Canada. Nowhere to go, nothing to do except ‘ Sex, Drugs and Rock-and-Roll’. (And far too much under-age drinking).
But there was more to us than that…
There were afternoons at the lake, swimming and boating and water-skiing. There were picnics on the off-beaten trails and canoe trips and mid-afternoon coffee breaks at my work to cheer up the day and there was laughter. Lots and lots of laughter. Most important, there was a deep and abiding Friendship!
I eventually left to the Big City, off to University. My friend, stayed home…
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One afternoon, I got the dreaded Phone Call…
It was May 10th. Mother’s Day. Sunday.
We were 19.
My Mom called to let me know that my friend had been tragically killed in a single vehicle roll-over in the early hours of the morning.
The driver survived.
Drugs and alcohol were a factor.
My friend’s Mother had the unimaginable task of having to identify the remains of her youngest child, her baby. They wouldn’t let her lift the sheet. She identified him by his crooked baby finger on his left hand.
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At the Funeral the Priest preached for half an hour on how my friend:
(a son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, a baptized child of God)
was burning in Hell because of his lifestyle choices,
and the rest of us (his friends) better shape up and start living right or we would come to the same fate.
Really?!
You see, the Priest’s message of God’s wrath and condemnation had not been my experience:
The night before the funeral I had the most vivid ‘dream’ of God the Father holding me all night in my grief and despair. I was not living a ‘Christian’ lifestyle anymore than my friend had been, yet God showed up, without me even asking. He held and comforted me. He sustained me with His presence. He held the grief, that threatened to consume me, at bay. This ‘holding’ went to my deepest core, to my inmost self. It lasted all night.
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I was no more worthy than my dead friend to receive the Mercy of God.
For two decades I carried the weight of the Priest’s funeral sermon with me. Questions roiled and churned, but remained unanswered:
Why my friend and not me?
My friend and I knew the same Gospel, the same Jesus.
My friend was no more wicked than I.
My lifestyle choices had been the same as his.
Would/could God really send my friend to Hell but show me such tender gentleness and compassion?
Had God brought this young man into the world, created him with handicaps that made his life difficult, to say the least, just so He could violently wrench his life away and then throw him into eternal damnation?
Really?!
My heart ached for his Mother.
My friend died on her birthday, on Mother’s Day.
She was grieving, bereft, and all she had been offered was the hopelessness of Hell.
She shared at the funeral reception with us, his closest friends, how as he was leaving to go out the night he died, she had had a premonition and an overwhelming urge to run after him and beg him to stay home. She felt he was going to die. She had stopped herself because she didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends. She told herself she was being melodramatic, silly. But when, by early Sunday afternoon he still wasn’t home, she KNEW! Now she carried cavernous guilt for not having listened to/acted upon that Inner Voice. If only she had tried…if only…
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Almost twenty years later, as I sat at my kitchen table sharing this whole experience with my own Mom, pouring out all the unresolved grief and turmoil, the Holy Spirit was able to bring me closure and peace:
God spoke to my heart, dropped His peace into my soul.
My friend’s Mother (and myself) needed the healing Mystery of God’s Love, not the wounding Fear of God’s Wrath.
God let me know that just as I had not been forsaken or left orphaned, neither had my friend.
In his time of greatest need, during the accident and the trauma of dying, God the Father was there holding him, comforting him, and extending him Mercy.
I know that I will see my friend again, and that Priest was wrong…
Fear does not fill Heaven, Love does.
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Have you received, experienced the Mystery of God’s Love that seemingly defies the conventional teachings of the Church? Are you, like myself, afraid to trust that these experiences are truly from God? Is it easier to believe in a God who widely condemns and narrowly extends mercy? Why?
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After subscribing to her blog, you can follow Deb on Twitter.
