I’m going to get in trouble for this one. I know it. And I’m OK with it. You don’t question someone like Francis Chan and not get some fallout from it.

Yesterday, I saw someone…everyone on facebook post a CNN article about Chan. In the article he explains why he quit his job as a seemingly “successful’ and famous pastor in California to move his family to Asia. This is not what I want to take issue with. But he made a statement in this article that bothered me as a pastor and as a believer.

Now, let me say that it is possible he was taken out of context. It was CNN, who is not known for being the height of integrity in reporting. But since there are a number of people who will be tweeting this quote and using it as their spiritual facebook status du jour, I think it is worth engaging.

The article says:

If we were to meet God in person, Chan said, “I think the first thing He would say is you don’t take me seriously. You have no idea how to fear me.”

Immediately, I recoiled when I heard this. And the more I’ve thought it over, the more wrong I think it is. In fact I would call it damaging.

Now, here is not what I am saying. I am not saying we should not be concerned about taking God seriously or that we should not fear God in a biblically appropriate way. What I am questioning is this – Do we really believe this is what he would and will first say to the redeemed? Will his first words be scolding ones?

Think about the implications of this. We, who have placed all our hope in the work of Jesus because we have not and indeed cannot fear God and take him as serious as we ought so that we will be loved by God, will not – according to Chan – hear words of loving acceptance but words detailing our faults in these areas. Our hope is not in Christ’s work on the cross but in our abilities to take him serious enough. And what is serious enough? Is perfection of seriousness what is desired so as to not hear these words.

The fact is we could substitute our lack of seriousness with any number of sins: lack of generosity, lack of chastity, lack of kindness, lack of love, lack of honesty, lack of parental love and care, etc. All of these are true of all of us everywhere. We could expect any of these evaluations because we are guilty of them all.

Now, I did start to think. And I thought, “Maybe we would not hear such condemning – though truthful – words when we enter heaven. But What about now? You know, now – while we are still dealing with sin and all the lack of seriousness with which we take God? Would God’s words for us be scolding words?

But then I thought some more. Does this mean that he stands over us scolding and condemning now? Would this mean we cannot with Paul tell other Christians, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”? Can we preach this to ourselves?

Can we be assured of his love at all times – even in the midst of our sins? Even in the midst of not taking him seriously? Even in the midst of not fearing him as we should? Even in the midst of all the sin that courses through us day after day? Or when we lay our head on our pillow at night is our only hope for this life and the next our ability to say, “I took God seriously today!”?

Or can we agree with Chan and say, “You are right. I have not taken God as serious as I ought. In fact, I am worse off than even I know. Thankfully, I cannot even see the depth of my sin. But also thankfully, I am not accepted by God based on my ability to be serious about him perfectly or at all. I accepted based on nothing I have done but by what God has done on my behalf. I am defined now by my trust in what Christ has done for me. Not by what I have or have not done.”

This is why it is called “good news.” And that is why the gospel is scandalous. The scandal is not that Christians don’t take God seriously. The scandal is that God loves us despite it, going so far as to die for those who do not take him seriously and loving them forevermore even though they still often show a lack of seriousness about him. That is the scandal.

Chan and I both have the same desire – that God be taken seriously. But I am convinced that the only way we take him seriously is by relentlessly laying before our people (and CNN reporters) the wonder of the cross and the grace we find there. For that is where we find our hope. Our hope is not in our seriousness or our fear of God. We will always fall short in that area. Actually, you know what the picture of seriousness is? It is childlike faith in the unthinkable gracious and merciful love of a Father who runs out to meet his child and showers him with acceptance. Not scolding but joyful, celebrating acceptance.

With all the new traffic I’m getting here, I thought it might be a good idea to post some thoughts on blogging so any new readers (we might have doubled to 10, hi mom!) will understand what is happening here.

1. I apologize to everyone who, when I found out they had a sinus infection, I wondered what they were whining about.

2. I miss iMonk.

3. Is it reasonable to be concerned that the evangelical “missional” movement is more about what we have done, are doing or wanting to do than about what God has done, is doing and will do?

4. There’s magic, magic I tell you, between the covers of a book by Annie Dillard.

5. What did I do when I was sick before I had a laptop?

6.  Festive celebrations with pork products.

7. Has anyone else noticed how football commentators now are always saying things like, “He’s not a spectacular player but…”? It’s like the trash-talking has spilled over into the booth.

8. Five more days of Christmas music.

9. I can’t believe I didn’t know the new Duffy album was out till I saw it in Wal-Mart.

10. I’m not sure any Christmas present could top all the kind emails, comments, notes, tweets and blog posts – literally hundreds from all over the globe – in response to this.

Enough time has passed for me to go ahead and admit to being an advisor to my parents as a young person. Looking back, it happened far more often than I care to remember. My parents in the their collective wisdom of 80 to 100 years would assert some proposition on appropriate behavior, fashion, music or morality. Inevitably, I would reply in a way exhibiting how ridiculous I thought such counsel was. I should have just said, “OK, well I trust you.” But I am not sure in all my years I did that. Ever. And now there hangs somewhere in my parent’s home a picture of me in parachute pants. And a matching shirt.

For the sake of transparency I am willing to also admit how often I find myself counseling God. You know, because I have these ideas about things…and o.k. it just sounds foolish typing it up. But we all do it. We think God is doing something ridiculous and then deign to give God advice on how he should have acted.

The familiarity of the Christmas story makes it impossible to see how ridiculous it is. And I am convinced that I would have counseled God to do things differently.

I would been more ambiguous about the virgin birth plan so there would be a loophole when people talked. And we know they talked. And I would not have wanted to be so cruel to such a virtuous woman. Having a been a youth minister, I know what kind of teenage girl should have been chosen.

I would have chosen a more affluent family…you know, to make the transition from celestial to terrestrial a little smoother.  I wouldn’t have wanted him to be acquainted with any unnecessary sorrows like cultural whiplash.

While I appreciate the Victorian drama of sending the mother away to have the baby, I am not sure I would have chosen to do it so late in the pregnancy with such risk to the health of the child.

Even if I went along with all of the above plans, the one I would have certainly thought ridiculous was the decision to have the King of Kings born in a manger. It sounds disgraceful. For what father would do such a thing? We chose to have our firstborn in a top notch hospital.

I would have first announced to someone besides the shepherds. Can you imagine a Kennedy having a child and then announcing it via the Birmingham News?

And one of the things I would call the most scandalous was giving a baby such pricey gifts. Obviously the “wise men” -so-called – are mired in a consumeristic and materialistic culture. Why not sell those gifts and give them to the poor? Why not build an inn for Jesus to be born in? Why not give it to Lottie Moon?

And on and on ad infinitum. I suppose we need to all reckon with the fact we would have at least looked at God sideways as this plan was unfolding. We sing about it now but we would have shaken our heads in complete disbelief at the time. And I know this because we do it now.

“What were You doing? I would have…”

My parents are great. The mercy they show me still after so many times of verbally putting a fist in their face…the grace they have bestowed on me in innumerable hugs, kisses and gifts after I refused to trust them is staggering. I thought they were foolish, old-fashioned and “not with it.” And I told them as much. But they knew this was coming (I have three older brothers). My guess is – and it has taken me being a parent to see this – that my parents loved showing me grace and mercy.

I’m convinced God did things the way he did to show us his gracious power to rescue was not in the created things but in the Creator.  But I’m also certain he did it knowing we would always be failures – failures at trusting in his raw power to rescue. And we would need the very grace he sent his Son to usher into history. So all of our would-be protestations about the way God did things stretching from manger to cross are the reason for both. And it is impossible to read this seemingly ridiculous Christmas story and not see how much he enjoys showering us with loving grace and mercy.

I’ve been reading through his books this year. Sanity is what I looked for and sanity is what I found. You can also read the 10 Lessons Learned From Eugene Peterson This Year about Pastoral Work.

1. You can study the Bible without really reading it.

2. It’s OK to not know all the answers.

3. The material world is a gift, not a problem.

4. The Church is not a business with a CEO and investors.

5. Stories are important.

6. Gimmickry kills spirituality.

7. The people Isaiah preached to did not have to go to a Bible dictionary to understand what he was saying.

8. Most people try to be more spiritual than a man who was known as a drunk, glutton and blasphemer. (Spirituality does not always look ‘spiritual.’)

9. Words matter.

10. The first words of man as recorded in Holy Writ are rendered in poetic form.

Update: My friend Collin Hansen – talented author & editor – posted this on The Gospel Coalition Blog.

(This is a slightly reworked version of “Christmas Is For Haters” from last year. )

We are now very accustomed to hearing about how Christmas is difficult for many people. The story of Scrooge and his – ehem – problems with this season is no longer anecdotal. It is now par for the course. Maybe it always has been. Maybe the joy of the season has always been a thorn in the side of those who can scarcely imagine joy.

Not too long ago, I heard from someone about how difficult Christmas would be because of some heartbreak in their family. There was utter hopelessness and devastation. Christmas would be impossible to enjoy because of the freshness of this pain. It’s been a story very hard to forget.

I get it. I mean, it makes sense on the level of Christmas being a time in which there is a lot of heavily concentrated family time. The holidays can be tense in even the best of circumstances. Maneuvering through the landmines of various personalities can be hard even if there is no cancer, divorce or empty seat at the table. What makes it the most wonderful time of the year is also what makes it the most brutal time of the year. My own family has not been immune to this phenomenon.

But allow me to push back against this idea a little. Gently. I think we have it all backwards. We have it sunk deep into our collective cultural consciousness that Christmas is for the happy people. You know, those with idyllic family situations enjoyed around stocking-strewn hearth dreams. Christmas is for healthy people who laugh easily and at all the right times, right? The successful and the beautiful, who live in suburban bliss, can easily enjoy the holidays. They have not gotten lost on the way because of the GPS they got last year. They are beaming after watching a Christmas classic curled up on the couch as a family in front of their ginormous flat-screen. We live and act as if this is who should be enjoying Christmas.

But this is so damnably backwards. Christmas – the great story of the incarnation of the Rescuer – is for everyone, especially those who need a rescue. Jesus was born as a baby to know the pain and sympathize with our weaknesses. Jesus was made to be like us so that in his resurrection we can be made like him; free from the fear of death and the pain of loss. Jesus’ first recorded worshippers were not of the beautiful class. They were poor, ugly shepherds; beat down by life and labor. They had been looked down on over many a nose.

Jesus came for those who look in the mirror and see ugliness. Jesus came for daughters whose fathers never told them they were beautiful. Christmas is for those who go to “wing night” alone. Christmas is for those whose lives have been wrecked by cancer and the thought of another Christmas seems like an impossible dream. Christmas is for those who would be nothing but lonely if not for social media. Christmas is for those whose marriages have careened against the retaining wall and are threatening to flip over the edge. Christmas is for the son, whose father keeps giving him hunting gear when the son wants art materials. Christmas is for smokers who cannot quit even in the face of a death sentence. Christmas is for whores, adulterers and porn stars who long for love in every wrong place. Christmas is for college students who are sitting in the midst of the family and already cannot wait to get out for another drink. Christmas is for those who traffic in failed dreams. Christmas is for those who have squandered the family name and fortune – they want ‘home’ but cannot imagine a gracious reception. Christmas is for parents watching their children’s marriage fall into disarray.

Christmas is really about the gospel of grace for sinners. Because of all that Christ has done on the cross, the manger becomes the most hopeful place in a Universe darkened with hopelessness. In the irony of all ironies, Christmas is for those who will find it the hardest to enjoy. It really is for those who hate it the most.

When I was at Covenant Seminary, everyone’s favorite professor was Jerram Barrs. His classes were always the furthest thing from boring and your head hurt from thinking by the time you left. The idea of having to sit through other thoughtful lectures after his was painful. I remember one class in particular – mainly because of one small discussion.

The context escapes me. But we were talking about ‘evil.’ He told us that most people could no longer recognize it any longer because we associate it with the extreme forms. He gave the example of Hannibal Lecter. He said that evil must now be so extreme for us to name it that we can no longer see it in ourselves or others.

He’s right, of course. It must now be murderous and bizarrely so. And adultery must now be coupled with something akin to insanity to be even considered cruel. Insanity. Maybe that;s the problem. We have now let the idea of evil drift into the realm of psychotherapists and now it is out of the arena of the pastors.

The Scriptures no longer give us the picture, instead it is drawn in hues of psychosis and abhorrent physical violence. If those two are absent, evil is not really identifiable any longer. Our problem is not that we call what is evil ‘good’. Our problem is that we call so few things ‘evil.’

It is really no kindness to ourselves or others. Though it does feel kind in some touchy-feely, super-spiritual, grace-misunderstanding way.

My wife and I like to watch Sherlock Holmes mysteries. One we watched last week involved a man who was blackmailing wealthy men and women with sins to hide. My first thought was to think it was not such a big deal to do such a thing. But Holmes thought it was detestable. And then it hit me. I was so conditioned to see the affair and the homosexuality as the height of evil that blackmail almost looked harmless when compared with it. But the blackmailer’s evil – though not as easy to see – was very horrific. He was using the sins of others as gain – preying off their fears and foibles. When justice was served in the end, it felt very satisfying from my couch even though I had not seen the extent of the evil in the beginning.

The problem with this ultimately is not just the blindness but the now almost imperceptible inability to now say, “This is evil.” If evil is only the extreme sins of our culture as defined by the cop and lawyer shows on network TV, then we will have a hard time convincing the good people of our culture of their need for Christ’s work. If the evil we must deal with is defined by what is on our list of wrongs, it will be hard for us to see our own need for Christ. I guess that is especially true if we wrote the list. If deception for the sake of pride is not ‘damnable’ in the eyes of our people, it will not seem to those having it, there is a need to rejoice that it is covered…or for others, that it needs to be covered.

1. Why do we pick the one time out of the whole year when people are shopping for others to harp on materialism?

2. When people turn out their Christmas lights and deflate the decorations before they leave their house, they might as well say, “Hey, no one is home…sooo, if you are a burglar we will not bother you if you are quick enough.”

3. I like Cracker Barrel’s coffee more than any coffee shop’s.

4. Dadgum, my wife can cook.

5. Our family is united in our affection on a few things: The Beatles, The Jesus Storybook Bible, our house and pizza.

6. This + this = awesome. Girly but awesome.

7.  Repentance, by definition, lays down defensive weapons and takes up humility.

8. Could it be that young evangelicals are moved by movements and trends more than God, himself?

9. I just realized I’ve always thought all the other innkeepers – you know, the ones with no rooms available – were mean people. But that isn’t is very fair to them.

10.  I vote for lights hung up all year long.

Part 1, “The Waiting”
Part 2, “The Impossible”

When I asked my wife to marry me, I did so at a park not far from where we live now. She had no idea it was coming…especially since the conversation started with how I was in financial straits because of a car wreck a few weeks earlier. She was understanding and understandably disappointed. She wanted me to ask her in that very place.

So, when I asked her to be my wife, she was so excited she shouted out across the water, “I just got engaged!” Another couple across the lake from us shouted back, “Congratulations!”

I’m about to tell you something very weird – I think about that couple all the time. Well, not every second. But fairly often. I never think about us telling our parents or anyone else. And really, we had to tell the story over and over and over.  But that unknown couple who has no significance outside of that memorable event, I think about their unlikely sharing of our joy a lot. They are part of it. They were the first to hear.

The Bible never tells us why the birth of Jesus was announced first to the shepherds. And I have no idea why God sent angels to to them and did so before anyone else. No one really knows. I hope you have always been skeptical when some pastor says, “God sent angels to the shepherds first because…” If the Bible does not tell us, we are only left to guess and wonder why such unlikely men were chosen.

It does fit a pattern though. Mary and Joseph were pretty unlikely because of where they from and the Mary being a virgin thing makes her pretty unlikely. There is a lot of this “unlikely” going on. David was the unlikely king, young and forgotten among warrior brothers. Moses growing up in Egyptian palaces only to virtually ransack them later. And of course there is Joseph, the braggart turned savior. Who would’ve thunk? This is pretty normal behavior for God.

What I do know is that when I think about that couple across the lake, I do not think about them so much as the event itself…the announcement. It was the announcement that made them memorable. My wife and I do not discuss their ‘congrats’ because they were so great but because the announcement was so great. They were the first to respond to the announcement and their unknown identities and shadowed shapes in the dark add to the significance of that night I cannot explain. Maybe they are part of the dark velvet on which the glow of a diamond ring shines.

Maybe the same is true of the shepherds – those unlikely first recipients of that good news. We miss something if we celebrate them. They were not told so that we would know that God loves the lowly. This is true, of course. But maybe he chose the lowly shepherds because he wanted the vent to shine brightly like a star in the night sky above the fields of flocks they tended. Maybe he chose the unlikely to show his glory clearly in a way that announcing to kings could never have done. The Shepherds don’t make the announcement of Jesus’ birth any more wondrous than it would have been otherwise but it does add to the drama…maybe it helps us see the glory better.

This should encourage all who want to be used for God’s glory but look in the mirror and say, “unlikely.” God trades in wares which are the opposite of likelihood. He does not only take circumstances and do the impossible but he also takes unlikely people such as shepherds and makes them part of events, cataclysmic occurrences and glory-filled announcements.

1. The only problem with putting up Xmas lights is the putting them up.

2. Dear Magic 96 FM, There are more Christmas songs not by Wham, Mariah Carey and Annie Lennox than are.

3. I may or may not have eaten a peanut butter, cheese and bacon sandwich this weekend.

4. Dear young pastors, Read Eugene Peterson’s books for pastors. (See comments for list.)

5. OK, I admit it – I was wrong to think Auburn was crazy to hire Chizik.

6. Auburn fan or not, the saddest part about Cam Newton’s father trying to sell Cam to the highest bidder is that he is a pastor.

7. Conviction over consensus.

8.  Tired of waiting for the new U2 album.

9. The problem with our comedian culture is now you can say anything and it’s alright as long as you are funny.

10. After a while we finally made fun of all the cheesy marketing of Christian virtues (God’s Gym, A Crumb and A Fish, etc.) of the 80’s and 90’s. Now how long will it take for us to do that with all the UFC allusions?