A Change of Heart

As we all look forward to the new year, resolutions are forefront on many of our minds. What do we want to do, where do we want to go, what changes do we want to make in the new year? As I said yesterday, the best resolutions are resolutions for the heart.

But that doesn't mean they have to be touchy-feely or obscurely deep; resolutions for the heart can be practical and simple and still be invaluably meaningful.

For example, a few months ago, I made a decision about television. Well, several decisions. First, I determined to turn off anything that had uncouth language. Now, I'm not one of those Christians who tends to worry too much about language, but most of these television shows that curse gratuitously also use a lot of innuendo. And the problem with innuendo is that it teaches us to listen in an impure way - we hear the unsaid filth, rather than taking others at their word. We listen beyond conversation, and not in a good way. So I turned it off. And you know what? My heart is learning to hear again. 

How is this a resolution for the heart? It has restored me to relationship. It has changed the way that I interact with others. It has allowed me to come purely into communion. This is the first step to loving each other.

I also decided that I was not going to watch gratuitous violence or get drawn into crime shows. There are a couple of standards that are on my favorites list for character development, and I continue to watch new episodes of them, but no longer the reruns. Why? The headlines are right - they desensitize us. And the headlines are wrong - they overly sensitize us. When your neighbor tells you of real tragedy, you cannot be trying to figure out how your favorite set of television characters would handle it. When you hear of heartache, you cannot live in a world that expects it to be solved in under 60 minutes. And at the same time, when you have to stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere or have a repairman over to your house, you can't be thinking, "This is how it starts." This kind of constant immersion in human depravity taints our relationship with both real humans and real depravity. We've lost it all. So I turned it off. And you know what? My heart is learning to be broken again.

Further, I decided that I would not longer do marathons of shows, which was particularly to pass the time. Since I don't have a streaming service, this amounted to whatever marathons the networks were showing at any given time. But immersing ourselves in television in these ways, for long periods of time, further removes us from the community of real people around us. So I turned them off. And you know what? My heart is rediscovering my real community.

It's gotten to the point where I don't even catch much news any more, and I used to be a news junkie. There are a lot of problems with the news these days. For example, most of the local news consists of crime stories that only really affect a handful of people in a community of hundreds of thousands, and yet, we're convinced that they have something to do with us. They are an expose of people's lives who we will never know, tragedies we will never be caught up in. They take us away from the people that we do know and the very real stories we're written into. On the national level or on the grander scale, the news is pretty good at getting us to have a mind for things around the world that we can never do anything about, either. And this, too, pulls us away from our very real stories in our very real communities. So I turned them off. And you know what? It's amazing.

All of this is very practical. It's nothing superhuman. It's nothing touchy-feely. It's nothing obscurely deep. It doesn't dwell in some deep wound that I haven't been able to heal (although I have plenty of those). But it's just this small thing, this small set of decisions about something so mundane as television. And it has revolutionized my heart.

My heart beats with the pulse of my own community again. I hear the people who are talking with me, and I'm able to talk with them. My heart breaks for human depravity, rather than just accepting or even expecting it. My life is invested in the actual people in my actual community in my actual story. And in turn, several other things about me are changing, things that I could have resolved just to change, but with much less success because they would not have been a change of the heart. 

The heart of the resolution is not to get yourself to...; it is to give yourself to.... It is to figure out how to reconnect with the life that God has given you, to live it wholly and fully in good grace and generosity, in real community with those around you. We are all written onto the pages of each other's stories, and it's no scripted procedural. 

It's this amazing, enrapturing, beautiful narrative that we're all living together by the very hand of God. This new year, give yourself back to your story, to your community, to your God. 

This is real resolution. 

Resolutions

It is around this time of the year that we start turning to hopes for the new year, trying to figure out who we want to be, what we want to do, where we want to go, and what changes we have to make in our lives to get there (or perhaps, the answers to these questions are the changes we are making in our lives). 

The average January 1 membership of any gym or fitness facility will confirm that most of our resolutions are fitness-based. But the average February 1 membership of any gym or fitness facility confirms that our best fitness-based resolutions tend not to last. This is true also for weight-loss groups, diet systems, and smoking-cessation programs. It is not because these things are hard that we are so quick to give up; it is because the pay-out is so low and the maintenance so high - they require a constant fighting against ourselves, and we were not made for war. These are resolutions that we must labor to sustain, with so little in return, and so, we give up.

Many others make resolutions centered on relationships - healing broken relationships, getting out of bad ones, starting new ones, finding "the" one. These, too, are no good, precisely because they do not depend solely on us. Healing broken relationships takes all parties, and we cannot resolve for the other that they will seek the same healing. Getting out of bad relationships requires another to let us go, and there's no guarantee that they will. Starting new relationships means finding others who are also seeking new relationships, and they simply may not be. Finding "the" one requires that you are also "the" one being sought, and maybe he/she resolved this new year to faithfully enjoy his/her singleness. Resolutions in relationships sound great on paper, but they don't depend on us; they depend on much more. They can therefore be frustrating, and often ultimately go unfulfilled.

Still many others make administrative resolutions, or those that are discipline-based - balancing checkbooks, getting out of debt, living within their means, reading the Bible, going to church, transitioning to a new job, buying a new car, etc. These are also great goals, but not really resolutions - they don't solve anything. They don't change anything. They are, essentially, to-do lists for the new year, and they hang heavy over our heads. Does that mean I am actively discouraging people from resolving to read their Bibles? Yes. If your resolution is to read your Bible just because you probably ought to read it, please don't. You will one day look at that book and say you read it, know nothing about it, and can't remember a darned thing. Not only that, but you will not be fundamentally changed just by reading it; you will only have a trophy for Christian participation, and barely that. Do not use your resolutions to make to-do lists. They are the illusion of accomplishment, and nothing more. (Now, some of these aforementioned resolutions can be done well, in the spirit of heart and not in the burden of to-do lists, in which case, go for it.)

And many more make resolutions to act differently in some fundamental way - to complain less, rejoice more, be more friendly, be more gracious, be more grateful, be more generous, whatever. These are perhaps the most troublesome resolutions of all, for they are the most prone to fail. Why? Because when we resolve simply to do different, we are constantly discouraged by the self that we see in the mirror. We are who we are, and without a fundamental shift in our orientation, whatever we manage to do toward these goals is difficult, contrived, and empty. It's fake. The world sees through our fakeness, and so do we, and it is not long before we feel like we've lost something of ourselves, which comes back to us seven-fold, just like demons to an empty house. 

Now that we've ruled out the big four, the question remains: if we want to get in on the resolution-making fun of the new year, what's left? What do we resolve for 2017?

Make resolutions for your heart. 

Resolve things that are going to shape you. Resolve things that are going to grow you. Resolve things that are going to penetrate deep to the very core of your being and make a real, lasting change in the way that you live and love in this world. 

Resolutions for the heart need not be sustained like body-centered goals; resolutions for the heart sustain us. Resolutions for the heart do not depend on others to be fulfilled; they fulfill us, and they draw others in. Resolutions for the heart do not rely on to-do lists, on boxes that can be checked; there is nothing to do, only to be. Resolutions for the heart are not some facade we build, not some contrived, empty existence; they run deep to a solid foundation of the very spirit of God within us. 

Wait, wait, wait - this sounds really hard and abstract. And, well, uh...touchy-feely or something. It doesn't have to be. Resolutions for the heart can be really practical, seemingly simple, even. They can look a lot like some of these other resolutions, or they can look entirely different. They can be the sorts of things that become easier with time (FYI - none of the above become easier with time; they all become more and more difficult. But resolutions for the heart become easier because they succeed at fundamentally changing you in ways that you desire). Tomorrow, I will give a few real examples of how this looks. For today, just let this set your wheels turning.

Stop asking what you want to do in the new year, where you want to go. Ask yourself, instead, how you want to grow, how you'd like to change, how you'd liked to be shaped. That will help you figure out what resolutions to make for your heart to help you do just that. 

In Swaddling Clothes

Here is the challenge for all of those who would call themselves faithful, even Christians today, who know how the story turns out: can we appreciate the unrest that comes after the silent night?

It's tempting, far too tempting (and so tempting that most of us cannot withstand the temptation), to let the manger fall in the shadow of the Cross, to look right past Christmas with confident assurance in Easter Sunday. But at that very moment when God came into the world in flesh, those who had waited with such expectant hope, those who had followed a star to the little town of Bethlehem, those who had heard the cries of a newborn babe, could never have imagined such a thing as Sunday morning.

They would have thought we were crazy.

But our modern theology refuses to wait. It cannot comprehend a Christmas story that does not carry at least the echoes of Easter. And this is a tragedy.

It is a tragedy because it reduces God to what He has done for us, not what He is. It is a tragedy because we live in this perpetual liturgical calendar that lives and dies on Golgotha, but never cries in Bethlehem. It is a tragedy because we focus so intently on the Savior that we miss entirely Immanuel.

God with us.

I have written before, many years ago, about the difference between the coming and the Cross, about the importance of this God who has decided to be with us, who has come in a form that we can recognize, who has condescended to live here among us. This is the miracle of Christmas, not that God has become such that we can put Him in our homes somehow or wear Him around our necks, but that God has become such that He can walk into our homes. We do not establish Him in our homes, as all of the pagans have always done; we welcome Him.

God with us.

When we are looking so much at the culmination of Jesus' life, we miss the true miracle of it, the miracle, yes, even of a babe who must grow before our very eyes. We are missing the angst, the troubled hope that must find a way to hold on as revelation develops into first a boy, then a man, and only finally a Savior. We are missing what it means that God dwells among us. And our theology has been reduced to, "Oh, Jesus? Yes, He died for me."

He died, yes, but He lived. Our modern theology argues that He lived in order to die, that His life was necessary only for His death, but we must not buy into such short-sighted theology. We must not accept such a self-centered faith. Yet, we have. We have accepted a faith that believes that Jesus' entire life can be summed up in the Cross and that that Cross was for our sake. Therefore, our Gospel is simply self-serving and nothing more.

But Jesus' entire life cannot be summed up in the Cross; it must be anticipated in the manger. It must be embraced in the stable. In swaddling clothes, this is the Son of God, who has so much in our day become the Christ that we have forgotten the Immanuel.

God with us.

So again, here is the challenge for all who would call themselves faithful, even Christians today: can we live in light of Christmas without rushing toward Easter? Can we love a little town in Bethlehem as much as the spectacle of the Cross? Can we appreciate the unrest that comes after the silent night?

Can we let our Christ be also our Immanuel?

God. with. us.

God With Us

The same nagging disappointment that struck turn-of-time Jerusalem is the one that still troubles us today - this Jesus is said to have come into the world, but, it seems, nothing has changed. 

People still hate each other. Things break. Contracts are broken, covenants torn. Weather still goes wild, flowers wilt, and no lion has ever lain down with a lamb (although there are some amazingly cute stories gone viral of unlikely animal friends). We look around our world and see the brokenness, the woundedness, the hurt, and we cannot help but wonder about the hope. Immanuel? 

Surely, God is not with us. 

Even for the Christian, this seems to be the ache. We pray, read the Bible, and go to church, but the God we serve has become little more than a star in the sky or a babe in a manger; He is of no practical good to us. We are either hoping that one day, we will be guided to the place where He dwells or that He will grow up in the developing revelation before our very eyes. Very few, if any, of us are willing to actually go to the manger and hold Him. Very few, if any, of us are willing to listen to His cry.

And cry, He does. This is, I think, what we so easily miss in all of this. We hear, ever so faintly, His persistent cry, and we think this must mean He is as helpless and hopeless as He was that Christmas morn. Our disappointment cannot be hidden. Here is this God who has supposedly come into the world, but nothing has changed except that He has added His cry to ours. 

This God of ours must be of no good at all. 

But it is because we can hear His cry that we know that He is here. It is the very paradox of our Lord. He is present among us not only as a God, but as a brother; not only as a Father, but as a friend. It is difficult for us to listen to the cry, particularly in a world where we are so convinced that any good and powerful God would act more like the Wizard of Oz than the Suffering Servant, pulling levers and using smoke and mirrors to at least create the effect on the world that He's promised. But we know this story. We know when this is true, it is not long before someone pulls back the curtain and reveals this false god for who he is not. 

Only in the Suffering Servant do we see who He truly is. Only in the manger do we come to know Him. Only in His cry do we hear His heart. And it is only because we hear this cry that we know that He truly is with us.

Were He not, the silence would be deafening.

A star in the sky, a babe in a manger - it's easy for us to sit back and ask, What's it all mean? It's easy for us to say that maybe it means nothing. But that is so much not the case. This means everything. It means that God is faithful. It means that God is true. It means that God delivers on His promises, keeps His covenant, and loves His creation. It means that God has done amazing things and continues to do them. It means that the revelation is developing before our very eyes. It means that the Word has truly become flesh. It means...that God is with us. 

Immanuel. 

Immanuel

The day after Christmas has got to be one of the most disappointing days in all of history. And I'm not talking about every December 26, but about that day more than two thousand years ago AFTER the day that Jesus was born. 

The Scriptures would have us believe that not many would have missed the miracle of the stable, as remote a location as that was. There is a reason that we are given both shepherds and wise men responding - these were the representations of the far extremes of society. Shepherds were often lowly, often disconnected from the doings of the rest of the world by nature of their profession. Yet, they knew. And wise men, well, they were always in the know, often in the highest places in all the world. So the fact that the lowliest and some of the highest were aware of the newborn babe is characteristic of the way that the Bible often indicates an entirety of something - everyone knew.

And, of course, the rumor mill was likely just as strong then as it has always been, so there were not many who knew the whispers of the pregnant "virgin" and would not have been watching her closely. The whispers, as they always had, would spread. Truly, the entire world would know.

According to God's desire, the young Mary and Joseph bestowed on their son the name, Immanuel - God with us. Not only did the world know His birth, they knew His name. They held their breath with expectation, and then...

Nothing happened.

Literally nothing.

An actual baby was born. An actual baby was swaddled in clothes. An actual baby cried, then nursed at His mother's breast. Absolutely nothing in all the world changed. This Immanuel? What. a. Disappointment. 

You would think that if God is going to come into the world, even if He chooses to come into this obscure place, even if He comes in this quiet way, that something is going to happen. Thirty-some years later when He dies, the earth quakes, the curtain is torn, the dead come out of the ground. But at His birth? Nothing. A star in the sky, a babe in a manger, and life as we know it goes on as it always has. 

All this waiting on God, all this longing for Him, and at the very moment when all that waiting was supposed to end, the whole world exhales, only to hold its breath again. 

But we should have known. We should have anticipated that God would not do things in the way that we expect, but in the way that He ordains. We should have understood that the developing revelation was now growing up before our very eyes. All that we had unto this point led us to a baby, which was God's plan all along, but in order to see the fullness of His plan, we had to watch that baby develop - the developing revelation led only to a revelation which was developing. 

Our God has always been the God of paradoxes. 

And so here we are, on this most disappointing of all days, when God has come into the world as know it but things are exactly as we have always known them. Or are they?

For the whisper has become a cry, the anticipation has become a hope, and the Word has become flesh. And before our very eyes, the revelation of God will develop, the Son of Man will become a Son of God. He will live, die, and live again, this Savior of the world, this babe. Immanuel, God with us.