Give Me a King I Can Call “Daddy”

There are moments in the Christian life when you think the rest of the world has cottoned onto the fact that Jesus is the best news ever; those moments occur when you see or hear something that seemingly accords with this that you hold dear. Whenever it happens to me, I am caught unawares: ‘What?! Does that say what I think it does? Oh my. I mean, Amen! How great! They are praising God, just like me!’ Such a moment arose for me a while ago when I spied this poster:

That I was strolling through a shopping centre seemed momentarily irrelevant. That the poster hung in the window of a stationery store was fleetingly forgotten. That promotions for aftershave and shirts screamed from the stores around me was initially of no concern. I simply thought, ‘Yes, my Dad is King, my Father is the heavenly Father, Lord of the universe, King & Sovereign over… Oh wait, it’s about Father’s Day. Darn. I’ll take a photo then’.

You can’t resist dissecting an image like this. I mean, they simultaneously got it so wrong and so right.

So wrong, because in order to infuse such a day of remembrance (brought to you by Hallmark) with a new kind of meaning this year, the marketing geniuses of the stationery store were forced to elevate fathers to that highest place they/we don’t deserve: royalty. Buying a mug or diary emblazoned with this is designed as a kind of cheap way to cover up the father’s shortcomings (and that of you the customer) for the year past, by pretending he’s almost perfect and you the customer think so too. I’ve been a father for 2 ½ years (read: long enough), and I know I don’t deserve this accolade. That’s how, in this poster, they got it so wrong.
Yet they also got it so right. Humanity craves a father to trust, to find shelter in, to sink weary bodies into, to adore, to keep on a never-toppling pedestal. The advertising was effective precisely because people, wittingly or not, look to earthly fathers to protect, to provide, to be tender, to be tough, to teach, to approve, to be a king yes but not at the expense of being a Dad.

Unbeknownst to this store, they had put in neon lights the cry of every generation: GIVE ME A KING I CAN CALL ‘DADDY’! And Christmas is God’s answer to this cry.

When Jesus was born on earth, God was signalling his intent to make his home with people like us (that’s John 1:14, The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling/pitched his tent, among us). In other words, the all-powerful King of creation was willing to be the exact opposite of aloof: the King came down off his throne. As an equal? Not exactly. Sure, Jesus was fully man, but did he retain distinctness among men? Yes, for being sinless, for being sanctified, for being (ultimately) Saviour. This is how we can call our King ‘Daddy’: we put our trust in Jesus, by whose cross & resurrection we are called brothers and sisters of & in Christ, as we enter the God’s family.

And in doing so, we say we submit to our new King’s dominion; the great thing is this is liberty, not slavery, aimed at maximising our joy. Because our King’s also our Daddy, we are assured he’s going to provide, protect, teach; we are assured he will approve, be tender, be tough, be trustworthy; we are assured he’ll never fall from the pedestal we put him on because he can’t. Because he’s our King. Do you see they must go together?

So I sign off, happily to the manor born.

Merry Christmas.

“Carnage” and Christians

I recently watched the film “Carnage”.  It’s an apt title on two levels: it describes the film’s emotional tone, and it also satirises the incident on which the plot is based.  Basically, whilst playing in the park one day, one boy strikes another boy with a stick, causing a minor injury, which leads their parents to be thrown into the awkward aftermath.  The film opens with both sets of parents, who are used to comfortable and respectful and terribly middle-to-upper class manners, trying to sift through the next steps: are apologies necessary?, is reconciliation possible?, who should foot the medical bills?, what kind of child commits such a violent act?, did we unwittingly cause this? is this just one of those things or something more? etc etc.

As you could predict, things degenerate quickly, as the polite masks fall and acerbic accusations fly.  The scenes unfold, and the viewer is led to (at various points) laugh out loud, cringe in dismay, and smile wryly because of the transparent stereotypes.  The film closes with the adults (along with their marriages) torn apart by the vicious banter and public airing of dirty laundry.

The film is a bitingly sharp commentary on social mores, raising a very important question: How long can someone disguise their true self?

The film’s characters are drawn so accurately that in them we recognise our conditioning: all of us, by default, are trained in what things we are allowed to say, what things are considered unsayable, and how far to go in the upkeep of appearances.  Though it’s tempting to call the display of relational disharmony ugly and irredeemable, the film’s second half depicts the truth of how things really are, compared with the sanitised pleasantries of the first half.  And isn’t that better anyway?  Ugly truth rather than censored deceit?

What’s the Christian view?  Much that we would consider ‘social niceness’ owes, I think, more to a worldly avoidance of boat-rocking and less to a pursuit of Christlike character.  Take our family relationships as an example: the kind of dysfunction and unhealthy communication that can characterise some families is often either laughed off (“You can choose your friends…”) or written off (“There’s no point, I can’t change them…”), resulting in stalemate of begrudged politeness.  Our true selves can’t emerge under these conditions, but are left to simmer.  Christians are called to much more than this.

Jesus in fact had some harsh words for the deceitful.  Mark 7:20-23:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come —sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”

 

Did you see Jesus slotting “deceit” alongside “murder” there?  It’s an outrageous thing to say, unless of course he means disguising what we really are/think is a big deal, it’s disobedient in God’s sight and futile in the end, because it will come out.  Which is almost certainly what he means.

But in case you think this is our Lord licensing us for thinking and saying anything and everything that pops into our head with wild abandon, see again Jesus’ words.  He commands against “malice” and “lewdness” and “arrogance” too, and aren’t the very attitudes that could lead us to say harsh, regrettable things?  The kind of things that don’t take an account for our own sinfulness but instead judge the other?  The kind of things that threaten spiritual growth?

So if we Christians are not meant to disguise our true selves, nor let deceit simmer, nor let fly with any malicious/lewd/arrogant thought or opinion, then what are we called to?  It can be confusing.  If a Christian character appeared in the film “Carnage”, would they have just said what was on their minds straight away, or would they have been gracious and selfless and meek?  It can be confusing.

That’s why it’s worthwhile (nay, essential!) to read the letters to the early church, because in them we have a microcosm of human problems and God’s solutions.  Just think of it: a bunch of strangers thrown together who have nothing in common but Jesus.  “Carnage” would only cover Day 1.  How could they strive to be different?

Ephesians 4:16-17:

Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Truth and love.  Love and truth.  This is how Christians (individually and corporately) don’t end up in Carnage.

And I mean that sincerely.

[Photo credit: http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/carnage-movie-image-winslet-foster-reilly-waltz-01.jpg]

How the Japanese Tsunami Touched Me

Since about January this year, I have had this object sitting on my desk, in full daily view. In case you’re wondering, it’s an indicator stalk that slots into the steering wheel of a car. This wand helped me turn right, activate headlights, and annoy ongoing traffic with my high beams. That is, until it malfunctioned. So I needed a new one.

I figured this spare part would be easily sourced and fitted, but was proved quite wrong: my mechanic informed me there’d be a 10 week wait whilst it was shipped from a Subaru factory in Japan. “10 weeks?!”, I said, “Not exactly convenient, is it?” No, it wasn’t, really. For two months, the Imbergers plodded on with intermittent light function (and before you leap to conclusions, no we didn’t do much night-time driving in that period, lest some unfortunate incident arise, but chalk that up as another inconvenience). Eventually, after the predicted delay, said part was received, fitted, and the Imbergers, not without some sighs of relief, resumed normal headlight operation.

The thing is though, my new indicator stalk came with a story. Turns out the wait was so long because, surprise surprise, there’d been some upheaval amongst the factories in Japan after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. And my part happened to be sitting on one of those shelves in one of those buildings that had been affected by the earth’s tremors and ocean’s torrents. “Right”, I thought to myself, “well that delay makes sense now”.

But there was more than sense being made. For me, this whole event made me seriously stop and consider the way I was being touched by a tragic event far away. Like many, I saw images on the news, stories in the newspaper, a constant stream of online content, but did I feel touched? Had those tsunami waves ‘lapped at my feet’ in any real way? Not really. For sure, it was a lot to take in and you could become numb to the suffering but still, did this tragic event far away really change me? Not really. Until, that is, my indicator stalk stopped working. So I asked my mechanic to give me it.

Which he did, puzzled all the while, but it was important, it is important. God has blessed me with the luxuries of health, wealth, and family. God has blessed me with a safe home, a comfortable past, a tsunami-free present, and a foreseeably secure future. God has blessed me with the luxury of driving a car and the money to afford a spare part. I have earned none of this. All of that has to actually mean something when something like the Tohoku earthquake happens. If I truly believe all I have is a gift, my response must stretch beyond annoyed inconvenience when my comfort is threatened, especially when the cause of that inconvenience is someone else’s earth-shattering.

So I hold onto this defunct device to warn me of my Australian luxuriant arrogance: the tsunami killed tens of thousands, and me? I had to wait a couple of months for a car part. But boy am I glad I did, because otherwise I’d have no indicator stalk on my desk to remind me of Real Life.

What my wry neck taught me about John Owen

I had a wry neck recently.  Far from being humorous or making witty observations, it was a real pain.  Really.

Almost overnight, I was transformed from being a fully mobile athlete to a non-turning immobile lump.  The genesis of my condition lay somewhere in an over-enthusiastic upward grab, I can’t even remember onto what, and then this persistent pain appeared.  It was made more complicated by a flu jab I received a few days earlier which, in turn, gave me the flu: so for a good while there I didn’t know if I was an influenza patient with neck pain or a neck patient with the flu.  The distinction wasn’t overly important; I would’ve called it quits and given a medal to anyone who could relieve the discomfort.

My wry neck felt like a constant companion: everywhere I went he was there, I couldn’t ignore him, I couldn’t forget him.  Carried about, talked about, complained about (for over 2 weeks in the end): it was obvious to all and sundry that this was a struggle.  There was fundamentally something ‘wrong’ with me.  Seeking a solution seemed not only a smart thing to do but the only thing to do.  Avoiding a solution was tantamount to idiocy, or at the very least foolishness.  But the heat packs didn’t work, the light massages didn’t work, the hot showers didn’t work, looking wistfully but pointlessly for slight improvements didn’t work: I had exhausted myself.

So I did what anyone in their right mind would do: I sought treatment from a medical professional, in my case a physiotherapist.  And let me dispel the notion of the unfairly labelled ‘physioterrorist’ right now: Colin was a gentleman, (though admittedly not a gentle man), his advice was prudent, his work was solid, and eventually he got me moving normally again.  And anyone who’s had pain for longer than 24 hours knows what a relief that is.  The fact that you can tell a ‘before and after’ story, that joyous comparison, is the best part of pain relief.  It was just so clear that I’d had a problem and things just wouldn’t be right til it was fixed.

All of which reminded me of John Owen, strangely enough:

“Where sin, through the neglect of mortification, gets a considerable victory, it breaks the bones of the soul; and makes a man weak, sick, and ready to die, so that he cannot look up. And when poor creatures will take blow after blow, wound after wound, foil after foil, and never rouse up themselves to a vigorous opposition, can they expect anything but to be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin?” (taken from “The Mortification of Sin”, free online copy here)

And I wondered for a minute or two, Do I think of my sin like my wry neck?  Do I consider my impatience an obvious problem, my pride a sickness?  Maybe that’s the problem, I don’t, I tolerate the sins in my life because they don’t cripple me physically: I can’t see them like I could see my neck awry, I can’t feel them like I could feel my neck pain, but aren’t my sins just as real, just as sick?  That probably makes them harder to deal with.  I mean, with my physical injury, I could see the situation so clearly.  I had a problem, something was wrong with me, and it needed urgent righting, I couldn’t tolerate the problem any longer.  See?  Clear.  And if my greed was as visible as a broken leg, I’d get treatment for it, no question: it’d be silly not to.  But just because greed isn’t as tangible as broken limbs, surely I shouldn’t change the urgent treatment.

I think that’s what Jesus was getting at in his railing against sin in Mark 9:43-47.  It’s like he wishes people saw sin as clearly as I saw my wry neck: a wrong that urgently needs righting.  How differently would Christians live if they reacted as fast and impassionedly to their lust as they did to their gastro!  Maybe we need to feel afresh the weight of our problem so we can see the stupidity of refusing a solution.

Getting stood up, in Jesus’ name

Disclaimer: This article is not some kind of public catharsis.  I do describe things vividly, but that’s partly to make the point.  I have already worked through the issues I speak of and do not harbour any bitterness or resentment.  Honest. 

I was recently ‘stood up’ not once but three times; three people I’d made an appointments with failed to show.  And this wouldn’t have been so notable, but for the fact that all three no-shows fell within 15 hours of each other.  So there I was: a triple loner, with only one belated text message to give me consolation.

Just revisit the scene with me and get inside my head:

So I’m slightly early… well OK, I can’t expect them to be here early, just wait a few minutes, they’ll be here soon.  Now it’s time… come on, nobody’s on time these days, take it easy.  Now they’re 10 minutes late… hmmm I didn’t bring anything to do whilst waiting, so starting to feel unproductive.  Now 15 minutes have past: better send a searching-but-gentle text message, “I’m here at the café, hope everything’s ok”. But no response.  How much longer do I wait?  It’s starting to get a bit ridiculous, 20 minutes late: I gave up glancing to see who was coming through the door ages ago.  Now I’m starting to get frustrated: I’ve got better things to do, don’t they realise that?  Where’s the call from prison, ‘Sorry Rob I got locked up & used my one phone call to get onto you!’  That may be a bit far-fetched, but it better be a good excuse, I hope they haven’t simply forgotten, that would be offensive.  Check my mobile, no humiliated text received, no telephonic tail-between-the-legs.  Do I just leave?  Can you do that?  What if they thought we were meeting half an hour later than I thought?  You know what, that’s probably it – they got mixed up, (maybe I got mixed up), but the important thing is they’re on their way and all of this waiting won’t be in vain… However it’s now 35 minutes past our scheduled time, they’re over half an hour late, and still I haven’t heard a thing.  I’m about ready to call it quits I think, this is beyond a joke now… I’ll shoot off one last text, something that keeps the lines of communication open but that subtly references my annoyance, “Hi, I had to head off, let me know if you want to reschedule”.  And I walk away, a little more jaded with the world than I was 38 minutes ago.

Summation?  I reacted in each instance of being stood up with a (well-disguised) cocktail of disappointment, anger, two-facedness, and resentment.  You may think that’s a harsh self-assessment: it’s not, of course, if my emotions were proportionate to the inconvenience.  So did I think I was justified?  Were my feelings entirely reasonable, given the circumstances?  Is a follower of Jesus entitled to be bothered by this kind of situation (albeit repeated thrice)?

Hear me out: I’m all for the value of ‘good manners’ (that’s why I showed up in the first place!) and I believe God is honoured by respect and courtesy and politeness and all those other things my mother taught me.  And it’s not as if calling a spade a spade (or in this instance, calling rudeness rudeness) is inherently bad: surely Christians can do that and not sin, surely it’s normal to acknowledge three no-shows as poor form.  But here’s the thing: I’m already biased that way, you’re already biased that way, that’s our default position – to appeal to our rights – so that old chestnut won’t help me make sense of my reaction.

A question that really helped me sift through everything, for when I was upset and felt jaded, was: what am I defending?  (See Tim Keller’s superb sermon on Healing Anger).   The truth is, whenever we get angry we’re defending something/someone.  Something it’s a worthy something/someone (think anger at injustice or poverty or a family member being hurt).  Oftentimes it’s an unworthy something/someone (the pursuit of that parking space, injured pride, TV reception dropping out).

What was I defending?  If I’m honest, I was really defending the preciousness of my time.  I dearly valued convenience, so I hated inconvenience.  Didn’t they realise I was an important person who’d squeezed them in?  How annoying: you mean I’ve wasted time, they’ve wasted my time?  And so on and so on and so on, until… oh dear… I had stopped resembling a follower of Jesus who is entitled to no rights.  Isn’t that true though?  As a Christian, I can’t demand that people treat me well – remember, I follow Jesus, and in his footsteps I tread to where?  A cross, of all places, where he gave up all entitlements.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23 becomes my touchstone, God’s counter-attack to my convenience and my rights, my way of reaching out to people and being joyful amidst inconvenience, my ‘no matter what’ manifesto:

 ¹⁹ Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰ To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹ To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

So if you’re scheduled to meet me, you’ve got my permission to be late next time: I’ll probably need it.

Holidays (or, ‘The Unplugged Test’)

I will tomorrow begin to enjoy a week or so’s holidays with my wife and girls (otherwise known as Team Imberger).

This is all quite apt and fitting and other annoyingly-God-ordained-type adjectives, after recently writing my post about quitting Facebook.

The words “litmus test” come to mind. Sure, I’ve deleted Facebook, but will I simply transfer insecurity and neediness to my tweets and blog? It will need prayer. I will need prayer. And a good memory of what’s gone before.

And more scenes like this. Glorious.

5 Reasons Why I Quit Facebook

A necessary disclaimer: there are many personal pronouns embedded below, precisely because I quit Facebook.  That is, being on Facebook is for many folks something quite healthy and altogether manageable, with nary an insecurity in sight.  But it became clear I am not that someone.  Therefore, do read the reasons below less as ‘judgements’ and more as ‘Rob’s catalogue of cons over pros’.  If, though, they’re your cons too, I hope my words embolden you for a quit campaign of your own.

1. I wasted an inordinate amount of my time.

Numerous articles have been written recently about how social media use disturbs productivity (the myth of multitasking being just that), and much as I attempted to wax lyrical about ‘needing to be connected’ and ‘my community exists online’ and other such well-honed clichés, the truth was unmistakable: I chose every minute of Facebook time and I mostly chose badly.  I’m sad to say my family suffered from this distinct lack of self-discipline: this would be reason enough to quit, but there are more.

2. Being ‘liked’ by friends became as or more important than being liked by God.

I had become the very caricature of ‘insecure Christian basing their self-worth on Facebook stats instead of on Jesus’ that I so despised and preached against.  The hypocrisy was stifling.  If I wrote a witty/insightful/cute status and comments didn’t come flooding in, I wondered ‘Why?’  Scrap that: I wondered, ‘WHYYYYY?!?!’  I came to my senses, in part because of Mark Sayers and his seminal work “The Trouble with Paris”.  He says it far more intelligently (and with more references to French existentialist philosophy) than I do, but Sayers’ basic point is we’ve been sold a malicious lie: you are the sum of your online parts, and the image you project is worth the spiritually-deluded upkeep.

The alternative, as I have learnt apace, is syncing with God’s reality: who Jesus is and how I fit into His story defines me.  All this I knew already (come on, I’m a bible college grad! a pastor! a well-read urbane individual!), but I clearly didn’t know it.

3. I used Facebook as a relational shortcut.

Though I knew intrinsically that it was an incomplete, unreliable, and self-censored version of people’s lives, I got on Facebook looking to fill in gaps, confirm suspicions, and generally cut out The Middle Man (he’s known as Genuine Relationship).  It sounds pretty cold and calculated when put like that, but I sort of drifted into this pastoral laziness, rather than sought it actively.  Status updates tell you a little and a lot all at once. There is no more powerful delusion than this about Facebook, that it makes life easy.  Sure, if by ‘easy’ you mean ‘superficial’, ‘wrongheaded’, and ‘likely damaging’, and that was certainly the case when I assumed I knew how someone was going just by seeing something/s they’d posted on Facebook.  The funny thing is that my generation don’t self-censor much (a brief survey of the status updates of 19-29 year olds can testify), but it was absurd, not to mention unloving, for me to diagnose, pass judgement on, and problem-solve my friends outside the context of Genuine Relationship.

Which leads me to a related cause for concern: if I used Facebook as a relational shortcut, I also let it facilitate fraudulent relationships based on extremely little, let alone enough to qualify as ‘friendship’.  Everyone bemoans Friend Requests from strangers or almost-strangers, but this burden appears tolerable enough keep up the charade.  Some are brave enough to do a “friends cull”; at one stage, I even considered un-friending my Bendigo-based contacts in order to actually get to know them (O the thought!), but in the end I chose deletion over selection.  My hope is this will help restore meaning to the word ‘friend’. 

4. Uncrowded space virtually disappeared from my life.

I really mean ‘virtually’ as the adverb it is: by virtual/electronic/internet means, my silences disappeared.  With a smartphone in hand, I could combat every pause with any input.  And with 600+ Facebook friends, someone was bound to be up to something somewhere, even if I did check it 2 minutes ago.  I realised this was a problem when I was, without conscious choice, bringing my smartphone into the bathroom with me for company.  Now, I’m not much one for standing in a serene field pretending to be a tree with my eyes closed humming rather a lot, but even I can admit the worth of stopping.  Yes.  Just.  Stopping.

5. An addict can’t dabble.

No siree, a problem gambler can’t place just one bet, a workaholic can’t work just one hour, a porn addict can’t look up just one site: and a Facebook addict can’t do rations.  It took me a while to learn this; indeed, you can probably guess I tried to ‘put things place’ and ‘set boundaries’, and subsequently ‘failed miserably’.

It was this final reason that really convinced me, once and for all, to quit Facebook.  An addict needs to go cold turkey, which is the paltry (or poultry?) equivalent of Jesus saying “Pluck out your eye, cut off your hand, if it causes you to sin: it’s better than being thrown into hell fully-limbed” (see Matthew 5:29-30).

But Twitter’s ok, isn’t it? #wishfulthinking #askmeinsixmonths #postcomingsoon #howdidhashtagsbecomemainstream

Illustration credit: http://karlfrankjr.com/2011/07/29/permanently-delete-facebook-account/