Menagerie of virtue
A torrid tale of snakes, elephants and whales. Because when you’re stuck, getting unstuck matters, and sometimes cleanliness and Godliness have nothing to do with one another.
I was stuck.
In every way I can think of.
It’s two years ago and how good everything was is not the point… I had lost the thread of what was God’s, what was mine, and what following God actually means.
He whispered something in my ear that I didn’t like, and, in the middle of all sorts of activity, I froze.
I got scared.
I got scared of what I had heard from God.
I got scared of what my convictions told me to do.
I got scared to ‘faith’ any further (it’s a verb!).
And… I stopped.
Because there was a question.
I wish I hadn’t heard the question but I did.
And, hearing, I listened.
And, listening, it needed answering.
The question, which was quite familiar, was, “…did God really say…?”
…yeah.
Eve, sister, I get you.
Genesis 3:1
The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say…”
It is a very compelling question.
One I didn’t know the answer to.
Go back two years before my stuckness… to 2020… and I think I can explain.
It starts with Ravi.
Ravi Zacharias was an influential pastor in evangelical America that had founded and led a large church that had celebrity, lots of campuses, and all the contemporary stuff that no one should care about but that everybody does.
He had it all, inclusive of a fall and a sex scandal.
The unfortunate reality of the American church paradigm.
The news about Ravi Zacharias comes out… and it changed my world. At least, it should have. It certainly changed my heart.
I was just too scared to change my life to suit.
To understand… you probably need to know that I don’t, and didn’t, care about the the man’s celebrity. I was not particularly surprised. I was not particularly disappointed.
It was… predictable.
It was the latest of a great, great, great many stories of a failure of the leadership of those who steward the Gospel to look anything like it.
It was, sadly, business as usual.
It wasn’t new.
But something struck me that day.
Something clear.
The thing that struck me was another question, and a simple one, “why?”
Why does it not work in this way?
This particular way?
Why exactly this?
Is it yet more snakes? A pile of them? Whispering in the ears of the innocent servants of the faith and pulling them astray?
Maybe.
I think we have to consider the question.
But, ‘the devil made me do it,’ is the weakest argument of the weakest minds and, bluntly, should not be an acceptable discussion point when considering the behaviour of those whose entire job… is to teach others how to engage the gospel of grace.
Something is broken.
The questions become what, and, still, why?
We need to consider that the very people we tend to blame are in fact victims too.
We should ask ourselves if these members are perhaps trapped inside of cultures of pressure that do not allow them to be what they preach — and — that a great lie, that they are or should be ‘great men,’ is preventing them from being good ones.
Something needs to change.
The question needs to be answered.
“Why?”
And so that’s when and where my heart changed.
This question.
“Why?”
My heart wanted to work, here, on this.
To figure out where the snakes are and how to help our friends carry their Christianity with less burden. To make a mess and see if there is anything I can do to be of value in this discussion.
To look an ask hard questions of our assumptions as to how models, power, systems, control, money, and influence all work in our body.
I just… wasn’t ready.
I even started a blog… to talk about exactly these issues… and then never spoke up.
Not. Even. Once.
For two years.
Sometimes slowly indeed.1
So I kept walking and both tried to honor the thought and I tried to avoid doing… this uncomfortable thing that it seemed like I needed to do.
To talk, plainly, about the elephant in the room. To stand outside the fence, and point at the issues.
I just couldn’t make myself do it.
All I ever wanted was to be inside that fence.
So I tried to sandwich this conviction — this calling — into roles within institutional church that it couldn’t work with. Never could have. I wanted my cake and to eat it too.
I was a child.
And so God, having given me this remarkable ‘“yes” to work on, started saying “no,” to a lot of other things.
Like you do with a child, when you need them to pay attention.
God relentlessly, generously, aggressively pruned the shape of my heart as it related to His Church and His purposes.
It was amazing.
It was painful.
It was incredibly inconvenient.
And so I made hard decision after hard decision and put down the childish things God had asked me to set aside… but I still didn’t pick up the one thing He had asked me to do.
I was tortured with a constant set of questions, “…did God really say?” and, “…but who am I?” and, “…what will the cost be?”
…and it left me with not much to do.
(Good parenting!)
Until today.
I didn’t mean to, but looking back, I pulled a Jonah.
Jonah 1:1–3
“The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai… but Jonah ran away from the Lord”2
Except Jonah did that because He wrestled with the injustice of God’s remarkable grace being given to a people such as he would find in Nineveh.
He found his whale on principle.
I was mostly just scared.
So… did God really say?
…
I don’t know.
(I’ve never known.)
In all the years of privilege in which men and women would ask me, “How do I tell what is ‘God’ vs what is ‘just me’ in my heart? How do I know?” …my answer was always the same3.
You don’t.
Not until you try.
It is in the heat of the willingness towards obedience that you — and I — will discover what was God, and what was not.
And that’s when there’s usually another question, “But what if I’m wrong? What of the cost?”
…my answer was always the same here as well.
No one ever regrets trusting God.
I have never heard someone say, “I shouldn’t have trusted God,” and, I don’t think that I ever will.
It is, on reflection, challenging to be the guy who says things like that.
Because those are good words.
My heart? My courage? Not so much.
It is, I think, reasonable, that God might look at such a one and blink a bit, waiting to see the willingness to ‘be’ what one has taught others to ‘do.’
That seems like good parenting to me.
So to, with time, the request that your child put their toys away.
Clean up their mess.
And become willing to engage the work of the day.
And that’s where we are.
That is the present moment. Frankly, it’s a relief and I am excited to dive in.
…I am here.
Send me.
All scripture referenced is NLT unless otherwise noted. I prefer NLT for postural discussion as it is both reasonably rigorous while retaining a conversational tone.
For study I strongly encourage the use of original language tools, multiple translations, and rigorous critical thought.
Please remember that when you read the Bible in English you are always reading someone else’s theological interpretation of the text.
1 This is actually a reference to the book, ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ from the ‘9th Step Promises’ — may you all be so blessed as to find them.
”If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”
2 Edited! the full text is, “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.” I thought it was fair.
3 Please add to the answer indicated that such a thing would never cross god’s character or contradict the gospel. never exercise into the science of defining god’s voice in your life the choice to act in a manner that contradicts the love, grace, and compassion of his character. …meaning don’t be crazy, please.
Or, if crazy is your eventual destination, maybe work up to it, one step at a time.
