pausing.

Can I pitch counselors for a second?  

Counselors are good for everyone. Everyone. People who are in tough spots and people who are in good spots. Everyone can improve. I’ve seen a variety of them and I’m seeing one now. 

Counselors have permission to say it like it is. No one else on this planet does. You think they do, but they don’t. Or the person you are talking to thinks they don’t. 

Counselors get paid to just listen to you and you don’t have to feel guilty for not “asking them how they are doing”… Right? Isn’t that fantastic? You can simply share your story, your views, and they just listen and talk, if you need them to. 

Counselors know what to say. When they do talk, they are able to get right to it because they don’t have to worry about permission and beating around the bush. You’re there to hear it and they get to just say it. And they’ve been trained in what to say. Bonus! 

I often wonder if we called counseling a different name, maybe it would blow up like hot yoga, CrossFit, and mindulfness. Maybe if we kept pitching it as something that keeps you evolving, instead of a mental prescription for a unhealthy mind and spirit, more people would be less afraid of it and likely to start it. 

Have you heard of Pausing?

It’s becoming very popular in LA and New York, and I think it’s really finding some traction. The tradition comes from the East, where it has been practiced for years. Pausing is about finding someone “who listens and talks softly” to encourage humans to stop and think about important things in life with someone of care. People all over are the world are starting to pause and claiming it’s working wonders. 

You should try it.

Some places even practice a form of it on Sunday mornings, I hear.

rob bell.

Speaking of jealousy... let’s call it the Rob Bell phenomenon. I use Rob because a) he’s been incredibly influential to me and b) he’s such a great illustration of how threatened we become with change. 

Some thoughts. 

1. Rob Bell is the single biggest influence of my faith. Poets, Prophets, and Preachers in 2009 changed my life. I had been a pastor for a year at that time and I came back from the event and realizing I had converted to something. I was suddenly overwhelmed at the beauty of trees, overwhelmed that there was good in this world and overwhelmed that my pessimism was fading and becoming replaced by something good and optimistic. The good news was actually getting good and Rob Bell was a conduit of that good news. 

2. People hate Rob Bell. Many use those exact words. People picket. Friends of mine jab at “Christian Celebrity”. Other friends constantly make remarks about where Rob is going or “nervousness”.  

3. C.S. Lewis wrote Hatred has its pleasures it is therefore often the compensation by which a jealous man reimburses himself for the miseries of fear.

People hate/dislike Rob Bell because they are jealous. And afraid. Afraid he might be more popular than them, afraid he might be right, afraid he might sway people away from their own belief which might mean that his belief is more appealing? I don’t know. When you hate, you fear. Whenever you hate or meet someone who hates, ask yourself - or him or her - what you are afraid of.

4. I’m not saying Rob Bell is Jesus. I am saying the way that people respond to him is exactly how people responded to Jesus. Jealousy over the crowds. Anger at the way he uses the scriptures. And fear how he blows up the religious system. Right. Those same Pharisees still hate people who blow up the system and yet, if the system doesn’t evolve, it dies. 

Ironic. The same system the Pharisees are trying to save will definitely die if they succeed in saving it. (Probably why Jesus was always trying to warn them.) 

5. Rob Bell steals from everyone. When you start reading the books that he reads, you realize he’s just stealing stuff from everyone else. Which is awesome. He’s not coming up with this stuff alone and you can steal from them too. And there’s something that has been moving in this faith for a long time… that’s always comforting. This faith has always had narrow roads of growth and life. 

6. Rob Bell is not my friend. I really wanted him to be and really tried to make him my friend. He’s not. That’s cool. I’m finally okay with it. My wife told him how much he has meant to us. I told him the same. That’s all that matters. 

7. Rob Bell just speaks my language. We all have a language we speak and I’m not saying Rob Bell speaks the best or correct language but he does he speak mine. If Rob Bell isn’t the person that speaks your language, please find people that do. 

At the end of the day this has nothing to do with Rob Bell. This has to do with people who best help you to see who you are and what you are capable of. 

Find him/her/them!

if you can't praise them, what are you?

Steph Curry tore up the NBA this season. A few nights after he set the record for 3 pointers and won the game on a ridiculous almost half-court shot. Average joes (not fans) were watching the replays on their iPhones and getting huge grins on their faces. 

In the middle of the Steph Curry show - which it was - there were quite a few ex-NBA players saying things like... 

Never seen anything like SCurry? Remind you of Chris Jackson /Mahamoud Abdul-Rauf, who had a short brilliant run in NBA? 

Phil Jackson said that. Phil Jackson who has coached more championship teams than any other coach. What? 

Oscar Robinson, an NBA legend, Charles Barkey and Walt Frazier all made comments that the game of basketball had changed and Curry, basically, isn’t as great as everyone thinks. 

Compare that to Lebron James who tweeted...

“Never before seen someone likehim in the history of ball!”

And Baron Davis, Rudy Gay, Dwayne Wade who all couldn’t stop gushing about his skills. 

(It's interesting that LeBron James went on to beat Curry in the finals.) 

This, of course, is not just a basketball thing. But it seems like there are two reactions to someone’s success: jealousy and/or negative reactions to the new operating system or simple enjoyment of the evolution of “the game” and the fact that someone is doing what they were made to do and you get to be there for it and learn from it. 

If I’m honest, sometimes it's hard not to be jealous. I spend all this time working on my craft, trying to get better, and here they come...

They’re so luckly.
They aren’t even that good.
It must be easy for them.
If they had to play the way I had to play. 

Just the ego responding to fear. 

So, I ask myself some questions...

If I can’t look at another artists’ work and say it is good, what kind of an artist am I? 
If I can’t read another author and say that is amazing, what kind of an author am I? 
If I can’t listen to another speaker and say wow, what kind of speaker am I?
If I can’t listen to another musician and be overwhelmed, what kind of musician am I? 
If I can’t see another person dance and cheer for them, what kind of dancer am I? 

If I can’t appreciate the people who are honing their craft with more skill and talent than I am, if I can’t be inspired by them, well… critics are everywhere. And they are terrified of their own standings. 

Critics are never the actual artists, authors, speakers, musicians, and dancers because they are too busy taking down the people that are, while believing they could do it better than all of them. Or, at the least, making excuses for their success compared their own. 

If I can’t appreciate a different religion or faith perspective...

she.

These words need to be repeated more often than they are. 

God is as much woman as God is man. 

The feminine is as powerful as the male.

The feminine is as strong as the male. 

The feminine is as full of wisdom as the male. 

The feminine is as capable as the male. 

The feminine is as deserving as the male. 

The feminine is as important as the male in the life of the male and the female. 

The feminine voice needs to be louder, only because it’s still making up for lost time and lost resources.

this really needs to be done by now.

Women can do anything men can do. (I know, I know, we are biologically different. Stop with the excuses.) 

They can preach, teach, lead, elder, deacon, whatever other “leadership” or “power” or “control” label you want to put on the task. They are leaders. They deserve power and control no matter what men think. 

In fact, they can do many of those things better than men. 

In fact, they should also be paid and treated the same as men who do the same job. 

In fact, we are missing out on huge swaths of wisdom and inspiration because we don’t push them to the front as often. 

In fact, God has feminine qualities. The Bible speaks of them all the time including in the very beginning when humans (that’s man and woman) were created in God’s image. The two form God’s image. 

In fact, when we ignore those qualities, it’s easy to focus on intellectual and institutional functions and aspects of the church and ignore the more mystical. 

In fact, still not knowing what to do with women, may be hurting the church more than anything else.

church and community. thoughts.

The church and community are two words that often feel like they are in a bad marriage. They are stuck together and don’t really like each other. I mean they had a good run but things just aren’t really working anymore. 

And it’s not for a lack of trying. There are small groups, community groups, luncheons, breakfasts, retreats, classes, service opportunities, studies, clubs, and functions all throughout the week. There are dedicated “meet someone new times” there are greeters and ushers and all kinds of other people who are supposed to make this community thing happen. 

Of course, because the marriage is supposed to be great, churches will usually act like it is. Everyone here is best friends. We eat together, pray together, walk the neighborhood together, and, sometimes, even sleep together. We do life together. Want to join into our amazing circle of friends? 

If your church is not filled with vibrant community, pastors should lead better, read more books, go to more community conferences, or really challenge the community to start acting more like a community. 

I used to take a lot of the community or lack of community personally as though I had to do more. 

I don’t know anymore. 

Here’s what I’ve learned. 

1. Some people do want community and they can’t get it. These people break my heart. They break it because I want to give them a friend but I can’t. Friends take time and they take two parties. One person wanting a friend can not simply be given a friend. They have to find someone who wants to be a friend.

I equate community to coral. Coral will grow just about anywhere except in empty flowing ocean water. However, put an old ship in the water and, over time, it will start to grow. 

Every church has at least a piece of wire in the ocean. Coral will eventually attach. But there is absolutely nothing the church can do to force coral to attach. Some will build really big shipwrecks, and pump all kinds of nutrients that help coral, but in the end, it still has to grow on its own. 

2. Some people don’t think they want community.

Many people are simply afraid. To make friends you have to vulnerable and risk. Some people don’t want to be vulnerable and/or risk and often for very good reasons. The church’s job is to encourage vulnerability and risk and to be there when it hurts. 

And then let coral grow.  

3. Some people have community and are doing it outside the church. 

Churches love to label everything with their brand. It’s our small group, our Sunday morning, our Bible study. The thing is that many people have all kinds of community in all kinds of places that are not labeled City Church A. We should encourage that and let it be. 

4. Some people need to not talk to a person. 

There are many people who shouldn’t talk to one person on a Sunday morning. They are exhausted. They are tired. They need to rest and breathe and relax and remember they are enough and worthy and loved and life still exists and beats all around them. 

There are many people like this and they are often berated at churches for not building community. Churches need to be berated for putting more burdens on them than they already carry. 

Someone once called our church, church for adults. If you want something you have to go get it. I found this to be an incredible compliment for all the reasons listed above. 

I don’t know where everyone is at on every given Sunday. 

I do know that many people who complain that they can’t find community at a church will never find a church that gives them community. They’ll go on lots of first dates - because first dates always seem hopeful - but they won’t find a lasting relationship with a church until they stop complaining about life not being what they want and start trying to be a different person. 

I do know that some people who don’t need another friend, need to be a friend to someone who does. This is hard and this is sacrifice and it costs. This is not for everyone but it is for some people. They have to figure out if that’s them. 

I do know relationships (and coral) take time. You can’t leave a church of 10 years and say you haven’t found friends like you had at your old church after being at the new church for 6 months. 

I do know people who come into a community with the ability to be slightly vulnerable and to take some risks, embed into that community much faster than people who wait for someone to approach them and offer them a friend. 

I do know that many people who complain that they’ve never been invited to ______’s house, have never invited ______ to their house. 

I do know that life is complicated and busy and full and that whenever I take a moment to connect in a meaningful way to another human being, I’m living more than I was with whatever complicated, busy and full thing I was doing previously. 

fire and gasoline.

If you ever watch a fighter jet take off, you’ll notice a tremendous amount of fire coming out the rear of the airplane. If you think about fire, you’ll remember that fire and gasoline, when combined in the wrong ways, will kill you and everyone close to the combination. 

And yet, when you see this jet, with a huge flame sticking out its back, being fueled by gasoline, we remember, fire and gasoline if separated enough, fuel one of the most powerful hair-raising sights on the planet. 

Church and money.  Wow, I tremble just typing the two words together. 

We have to figure out how to keep the fire away from the gasoline in order that the gasoline can fuel the fire that makes the jet fly. 

Churches are still trying to figure that out. 

Some things our own church has tried to do to keep them separate that sometimes work and sometimes don’t. 

We don’t pass plates. We never have. It’s amazing how many pastors and “church leaders” have told me that we need to pass plates because we “would make more money” and because “it puts pressure on people”. 

We have emptied our bank account three consecutive years and given it away.
We don’t keep a savings account. 
We give money to whomever asks with a need. If we have it, we give it. Period. 

Money is awesome when we use it to fuel the forward movement. We will continue to try and figure out how to do it. 

And if you have ideas as to how, please, please, please speak loudly! 

church is friends.

I’m not in this to fight for anyone’s business like a fast food restaurant, an airline, or a cell phone provider. I’m in this to free and inspire people and to point toward something refreshing for the exhausting game of life we’re all playing. If the language and culture we speak and work in, helps to do that, great. If not, well, I understand. 

That said, I get sad when people leave. Not because it’s somehow a bad reflection of our church or how we do things, but, quite simply, because I won’t see them anymore. And that stinks. As much as we hate to admit it, I stay connected with a large amount of people through church. And when they leave, I will miss them. So will others. 

So don’t mistake the sadness for business. We miss people. We miss relationships. And, again, that’s why we say, if we do run into you in the store, please don’t ignore me and act embarrassed. 

We’re still humans, right?

more church and dating.

When I had my first daughter I was petrified. I was scared of the horrible guys that would come and try to date her and want one thing from her and how bad it would be to have to fend them off with shotguns. 

I shared this at a church in my first year of pastoring. 

A lady came up to me after the sermon and said, Ryan, you’re all wrong. Why are you dreading your daughters dating so much? We have three daughters and the men they have brought into our family have been the best thing to ever happen to us. Why don’t you start thinking of it that way? 

I never forgot her words. (I later told her that they changed my life.)

In fact, I took them further. Why was it that I told my daughters that men were pigs and wanted nothing from them but to get down their pants? Wouldn’t that mean if my daughters started dating a guy who was a pig wanting nothing but to get down her pants that she would think… well that’s what dad always told me guys were? 

So, I started talking differently to my daughters(s) and changing my head in the process. I can’t wait for my daughters to start dating. Guys are amazing. Guys are awesome. I can’t wait to see who they fall head over heels for. I can’t wait to see the amazing human being that they bring home. 

And all of this is like church. 

Have you noticed all that articles, blog posts, and comments about how bad the church is lately? When people go to a church and it sucks, doesn’t everyone think, well… I guess this is what everyone said. Churches suck. If I want to go to any church, it’s going to suck so I might as well not go to any or go to one that sucks. 

Self-fulfilling prophecy, I believe, it’s called. 

What about if we started talking about how awesome church is? How fulfilling. How well it spends it’s money. How relevant and inspiring and graceful and loving it is? 

the church is beautiful

I understand very well that the church has absolutely destroyed some people out there. (Well people acting in the name of “the church” but let’s not get hung up on details...) 

I get it. I’m floored by some of the stories of people who still go to church after what the church has done to them. I tell them frequently: I can’t believe you’re here. I honestly can’t. 

But here’s the thing. Many of us have also been absolutely destroyed by a boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, wife, husband, boss, co-worker, stranger, cashier, friend... you get the idea. By a human being. 

And we still believe there are some good humans and we seek them. (If we’re in a good place, we still believe the person that hurt us is a good person and there are reasons they hurt us that we hope we can better understand, they can better understand, and we can all heal.) 

I encourage you to keep looking. There are some beautiful, astounding, majestic, generous, inspiring, creative, thoughtful, human beings who make the churches they attend much the same. 

church and dating

I planted a church. The first Sunday was very similar to a first date. I had high hopes and expectations and so did the other people but none of us knew if it would work. It was a little awkward but also exciting. 

As the years went by, we started to realize we liked each other and things got comfortable and beautiful. And the relationship is working. 

About 9 months ago, we had our 5 year anniversary party that was a lot like a wedding reception with dancing, drinking, music and toasts. I think we’re all married now. 

This has all made me think of all the other commonalities between churches and dating, some of which might help you in either… or both. 

There are good churches and good people and sometimes the two aren’t a good fit. It doesn’t mean anything bad about them, or you. 

There are bad churches. Really bad ones. Abusive churches. Friends don’t let friends date them or stay committed to them. 

There are churches that really sell you on the first date and go all out. Then they end up not really caring too much after you have committed. 

Breaking up is hard. Even if the relationship was bad. You still carry some grief. If it was good, you carry even more. Acknowledge it when and if you move on. 

Relationships take time to build. You can’t replicate in 3 weeks what took 3 years to build, unless it’s magic. (But don't always expect magic.)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Don’t knock a church because her hair is too long or she wears too much make up. Someone might love her. Don’t love a church because she’s the cheerleader and everyone at school says she’s the hottest one of the bunch. 

Love a church because she’s beautiful. To you.

maslow.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory of psychology written in 1943, which focuses on the stages of growth in humans. 

The stages go something like this: 

physiological: air and water
safety: personal security, health and well-being
love/belonging: friendship, intimacy, and family
esteem: a sense of contribution or value
self-actualization: the realization of potential. 

They are great. Stealing from the great Joseph Campbell I learned something though. And gave it my own interpretation. 

Pursuing those things is not where life is found. Campbell talks about myths and the value of myths. Myths bring awe and wonder back into the world and provide a bigger and more mysterious story to live into. That is their power. 

Toward the end of his life Maslow even added another level: self-transcendence. “The self only finds it actualization in giving itself to some higher goal outside oneself, in altruism or spirituality.” 

And someone who is not living into myth, well, they are not living life to the fullest. 

We all know that someone who must walk for 8 hours a day for basic water is surviving but not living. 

The same could be said for someone who must work 8 hours a day to realize their own potential. They are surviving but not living. 

That is why the myth, if you want to call it that, that a divine power that contains and is expanding the universe to ever greater and brighter and more beautiful arenas, and that lives within me and you and is pulling me somewhere I can not imagine, if I just let go of all the pursuits and realize I’m enough in this moment, right now, is where life actually might start to begin.

If we go one step further, every good myth contains some main parts - the hero’s journey as Campbell called it. 

The Summons, the Wilderness, the Gift, and the Return. 

So, this divine power containing and expanding and letting us know we are enough and bringing us to better life is not all magic fairies. 

It’s bravery to go new places with our thoughts, it’s the courage to be in the places of pain and suffering that brings us, it’s the gift of realizing we’re okay, even there, and it’s returning with something majestic and motivating for those who are still where we once were. 

I agree with Campbell - we need better myths and better explanation of the myths of the Bible and those we are living. 

our brains, and the bible, don't work like that.

Study of the human brain is one of the most amazing, frustrating, enchanting, and fear-inducing topics ever. 

But it’s downright enlightening when it comes to religion and the Holy Books. 

Let’s start here: 

We are figuring out all kinds of things about the brain including memory. Autobiographical episodic memory is one of the ways we store information and autobiographical episodic memory is pieced together from experiential moments that we retrieve. Those moments are affected by our knowledge, our mood, the social context, our physical perspective, and even language. So we encode these memories based on all of those things and retrieve them based on those things. 

Thus, every time we retrieve a memory, psychologists say it’s contaminated, and, of course, affected by the list above. 

So when we say we remember something. Yes, we do. But probably not what actually happened. 

Then throw in all of these ingredients: 

Confirmation bias. We all do it. We get a belief, lock it in place and then screen everything through that belief. We hear and see in a biased way in order to confirm the thing we already believe.  In other words, two people could read the same article and come away with the idea that the article is proving their own belief. 

This happens in many experiments. The same article will make one person feel more correct in their assumption of global warming being false and another person will feel more correct in their assumption that it is true. 

The same words, perceived differently. 

Optimism bias: This is another thing we all have, sometimes called better-than-average effect. This is the way we look at ourselves as better than everyone else. Or in a more positive light. 

This also works when we are talking about our own risks. We think very differently about the risk of someone walking “downtown at night” than we do about ourselves walking “downtown at night”. The risk is usually lower for ourselves than for the general population. 

Hindsight bias: We always make the past appear better than it was. In large part, because we now know, looking back, that all those fears we had about the past, didn’t pan out. So, looking back, it feels safer, less frightening and overall better than the time we are in... where we don’t know how those fears are going to pan out. 

A great example from the book The Science of Fear (which everyone should read) was an article by Thomas Friedman in 2003 about how great 1985 was. 

However, in 1985 the Cold War was raging, AIDS was ready to be an epidemic and there were a whole host of other fears... that all turned out alright. So we go back and remember 1985 as being much better than it was. 

One more: Whenever our brains move a “mystical” experience from the part of our brain that stores “experiences that we can’t put into words” into the section of our head that is language and words… we, of course, alter the actual experience. In fact, those two section of the brain don’t really work together. 

So when we try to explain the sunset, just by trying to explain it, we alter it in our own brain, before saying a word. 

Now if you stir all of that into a bowl, what do you end up? 

A group of people having mystical experiences and then trying to confirm their bias about being chosen by God in a certain context, knowledge, perspective and culture and then writing stories about those experiences while trying to retrieve those memories and looking back thinking things were much better than they actually were and thinking they were better than most people around them as well. 

People collect these stories, letters, and ideas and then read them with their own bias, perspective, mystical experiences, etc… 

And then have the audacity to say that they are infallible, inherent, and other fancy words that ignore just about everything about humanity, brains, and how we experience life. 

The Rabbis said there were 77 interpretations to every passage of Scripture and only 1 right interpretation that no one but God knows. 

Thank God for the Rabbis.

culture and science help us read the bible.

Talk about a line that will scare the soul out of some people. 

We’re all trying to figure this stuff out. We all always have been. 

And the Bible is a story of people trying to do that. And so is science. And so is culture. 

And so, as science discovers that the Earth is 13.8 billion years old, that evolution is a thing, that quantum mechanics is real, that dark matter and dark energy are also real, we get to discover new ways to read this book about humans trying to figure out how to discover God. In all of those things. 

And so, as society discovers that women are actually just as valuable as men, that human beings should never own other human beings, that the Earth is valuable, that there is room for all of us, we discover new ways to read this book about humans trying to figure out how to discover God. In all of those things. 

There’s no need to continue this fight with culture and science. Instead lets embrace it, learn from it, and be a part of its expansion.

my movie idea.

Imagine Red Dawn. Or any other action/war movie that you’ve seen.

The premise is that China has set-up military bases on U.S. soil and started to come down on religious rules and laws. You know the kind of stuff that really gets people in this country riled up. They have called us barbaric and ridiculed our faith and banned our guns. 

The entire movie is this group of rogue soldiers who are camping out in the mountains and fighting the Chinese, standing up for American freedom, and kicking some butt. 

The whole time they are also planning out something - something big. Something that will put the Chinese on their heels. We get tidbits of it but never what it is until the last scene. 

Downtown Beijing. 
Early morning. 
Skyscrapers everywhere. 
Two planes fly into them.

Roll credits. 

Good guys and bad guys gets real confusing, depending on perspective.

good villains bad heroes

The Bible is filled with apparent heroes. Heroes of the faith. I use the word very loosely, because, the more I’ve spent looking and hearing about these people, I’m not sure any of them measure up to Batman.  

We did a series on 1 Samuel and one of my big take-aways was this: Samuel was a jerk. He put Saul in one of the worst positions possible. He put an inordinate amount of pressure on Saul to be this amazing king and then threw him under the bus whenever he could. 

This guy was not a hero and we named the book after him? 

Then comes David. Oh great King David. If you play out his little war deception and murdering of villages so his deception wouldn’t get out to other countries... if you translate that story in modern times with US military and ISIS as the characters, well, we would hate David. He’s a selfish traitor. That’s before he kills a guy under his control so he can take his wife. 

Solomon was called out by God for doing the same thing that Egypt had done. Building a military superpower on the backs of slave labor and trusting in chariots. He was the wise King?

And even Joseph. The great Joseph - one of the greatest stories in all the Bible. Pretty amazing to think that the reason that Jews were enslaved in Israel was because of Joseph. 

He stocked up a bunch of Pharaoh’s crops during a famine and then charged the Israelites (his own people) for seven consecutive years, eventually demanding their enslavement as payment. 

And we could go on and on but what’s the point? 

There are no good guys and bad guys. Pharisees wanted to put labels on good guys and bad guys. They loved pointing out the bad guys thinking they were the good guys. 

Unfortunately, they ended up killing the good guy and becoming the bad guys themselves. 

We spend a lot of time calling out bad guys. Maybe the good guys recognize that the bad guys are just like them and maybe the bad guys still think there are good guys and bad guys.

if the bible is...

There are times when the Bible has not been awesome to me. At all. 

When the Bible is God’s authoritative word, or without error, or the handbook to life, or a science book, or anything else along those lines, I find it to be a terrible book. When people use it that way, I find myself really trying hard to be quiet. 

However. 

If the Bible is a book written by humans in a cultural context of language, understanding, and perspective… 

If the Bible is more like a menu… 

If the Bible is the world’s great myth...

If the Bible is a compost pile... providing material for new...

If the Bible is story, because story is what still speaks to us after thousands of years whether it actually occurred or not… 

If the Bible is supposed to inspire us to live our own stories of God and not to just memorize other peoples’ stories… 

Then I find it to be a rather inspiring, creative, eye-opening record of the evolution of humanity, of God, of myself, and of the world…

people love to be beat.

Yeah, that sounds really bad but I heard it from a retired Nazarene pastor who, obviously meant it figuratively, and I, very sadly,  agree with him. 

He said, “People like being beat and they don’t know what to do when they aren’t.”

It’s really hard for people to be told they don’t have to bring anything to the altar to offer to their god. 

How else are we supposed to know where we stand? 

Humans are much better off in a church/job/relationship/God that doesn’t beat them. People don’t need to feel terrible about themselves, to wallow in misery, in order to feel good about themselves. And yet, I’m always surprised with how many people still live in that place. 

It speaks volumes of what religion has done to the divine human spirit. It’s tragic on universal proportions. 

I’ve got to feel worse... to feel better. That is the lie that must die. 

Today.

independence.

Jesus should feel like the cage being blown to pieces. 

Jesus frees us from purity codes, from ritual, from religion, from doctrine, from theories, from head-games, from guilt, from blindness, to help us see a beautiful, inspiring, bold, revolutionary, optimistic, abundant, generous new world. 

To see love. 

Pharisees still hate Jesus. They prefer captivity and fear and control and power.
As long as they are on top.

Get free.

freedom can bring fear.

I watched a video of some lab monkeys being freed. They had been stuck in cages for years, experimented on by people in white coats. 

They were living an absolutely terrible life. 

They released the monkeys. They opened up the cages and allowed them to feel sunlight, to run into trees, to race across a field of grass. 

Some of them bolted. They were so pumped and stoked that they could hardly believe it. They were laughing in the top branches of the nearby trees. 

Others sat in the sun like we sit in the sun in March after not seeing it for 3 months. You just can’t believe something that fills up so much of our space, that costs nothing, feels that good. These monkeys were in heaven. 

But some… well they just sat by the door. What is this? Sunlight? Grass? Trees? I think I prefer the beautiful four white walls and the man who gives me my food every day and pokes me with needles. 

I assume you see where this is going but in case you don’t. 

Religion has been an experiment on a lot of people. It has poked and prodded and kept people very very under control in a nice tight box. People grew to love that box. And when someone comes along and starts talking about life, and God and love, well some people literally start crying while sitting in that sunlight. They can’t believe it. 

But others, say no thank you and head back to the cage. Maybe it’s too much space. Too many things could go wrong. Too many risks. Too many what if’s. The cage hurts but at least it’s safe. 

God led people out of the cages of slavery and production in Egypt and the first thing they wanted to do was go back. God always leads people out of cages and will perform plagues just to prove how serious God is about getting out of cages. 

Safety, unfortunately, often wins. There is a fear in freedom and love and not being forced to make bricks for a Pharaoh that beats you up. 

The problem is that God is not safe. Life is not safe. Love is not safe. Love demands freedom. It struggles to be noticed in that cage. 

I used to get really angry at people who go back in the cage but I have learned that God is in the cage too. God is in there, trying with everything God can do, to lead people out into the field, or wilderness, or life beyond where they can be big and God can be big while still finding room for both of them to breathe. 

At least, I hope, because I’m sure I still have cages and blind spots I don’t quite see and I trust there is more freedom. 

I just keep trying to point out there... to move out there... toward the sunlight where love embraces all and there is not the fear we think there is.