Esther

One of the more curious things about the Bible is how often its characters undergo name changes. Abram becomes Abraham; Jacob becomes Israel; Saul becomes Paul. Naomi says, "Call me Mara." Even Daniel and his three friends are given Babylonian names when they come into the kingdom of exile and take their place among the wise men. 

Sometimes, we go along with these name changes. Once Abram becomes Abraham and Sarai becomes Sarah, they are forever Abraham and Sarah. Once Saul becomes Paul, he's Paul forever. Jacob only seems to be Israel when he's a father of a people, but when he's a son, he's still Jacob - as in "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Naomi is never once called Mara, not by anybody that we know of, anyway. And we maintain that Daniel is Daniel, but we call his three friends by their Babylonian names - Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego. 

And then, there's Esther. Her Jewish name is Hadassah, but we always call her Esther - her Persian name.

It's enough to make your head spin, isn't it? Why do we hold on to some names, but let go of others? Why do we embrace the change in one character's story, but not in another's? Why is it Esther, out of all of these, that has me thinking about such things? 

I don't know the answer to that last one, except to say that it just struck my heart and wouldn't let go. But as for the others, we can start thinking about these ideas in some critical ways and maybe start to see some patterns emerge. 

Naomi's the easy one. Her name didn't really changed. She tried to change her name based on her circumstances, but the truth is that you're not what happens to you in life; you are who God created you to be. Her circumstances may have made her bitter (Mara) for a season, but her soul was still Naomi and always will be.

Abraham and Paul are easy for the same reason. Their names really changed. God changed their names. God slightly modified the spelling of each of these men's names to reflect a change in their heart or mission. He did it to demonstrate who they are, who they are becoming, instead of holding them to who they had always been. And when God changes your name, your name changes. 

Jacob's a little trickier, but not by a lot. God changed his name, but only in relation to the story that he was creating, not to the story from which he had come. He was still Isaac's son and Abraham's grandson, which means there was a part of this man that was still fundamentally Jacob and always would be. At the same time, he was now the father of a holy people and a man who had wrestled with God, so there was a part of this man that was now fundamentally Israel and always would be. If you want to know whether you're talking about Jacob or Israel, you just have to know which part of his story you're drawing from so that you can pick the name that fits into it. 

Daniel was given a new Babylonian name, but he never gave up what was very Hebrew about him. Throughout his entire story, he's putting his foot down and declaring that he belongs to the Lord God of Israel first and foremost and for always, so the greatest thing about Daniel is always his deep faith. Rooted in the Hebrew story, we're not about to give up his Hebrew name, then. He maintains that living in Babylon doesn't change him, and indeed, it does not. 

What, then, about his three friends? They remained faithful even in the face of a fiery furnace, so shouldn't we hold onto their Jewish names, too? Maybe, but maybe not. The fiery furnace is a turning point for Nebuchadnezzar; it's a point in time where he realizes that the Hebrew God is an incredible, amazing, powerful and present God. When three men are thrown into the fire and four men are seen walking around, Nebuchadnezzar declares something about God that he couldn't have fathomed before. Now, if we have three Jewish men in the fire, we lose something of that. This could just be the Jewish God. But if we have three men so thoroughly known by their Babylonian names, three men in a countless people in the largest nation on the earth, then you pay a little more attention to the God that rescues them. Their Babylonian names make them anybodies, rather than merely Jews, and that helps to frame the story. 

Which brings us to Esther. Her Jewish name is Hadassah, but her story is thoroughly Esther. And I can't help but wonder if that has to do with the way her story of faith connects with the story of the world. 

Esther was a Jew, but she was also queen of the Persians. Most of the persons in Persia didn't really know she was a Jew, apparently; it came as news to the king when she stepped forward to defend her people. Her posture came from her faith, but her power came from her position. And when we're talking about her position, it was a thoroughly worldly position. She was known not as the Jewish Queen of Persia, but just as the Queen of Persia. It's this that gave her the opportunity to approach the king. It's this that gave her the chance to speak on behalf of her people. It's this that ended up turning the tide in the Jews' favor. And I think the reason that we call her Esther is because when the world talks about this story, they don't talk about the Jewish princess, but the Persian Queen. When the world is looking for a place to connect into this narrative, it's through Esther, not Hadassah. 

That doesn't mean Hadassah has nothing to offer. Not by a long shot. It's Hadassah's faith and connectedness in her own community and history that gives her the courage and the strength to move on her power and act on behalf of her people. It's more a question of...what kind of story are we telling here? For what audience? Who are we hoping to connect into it? It's one thing if a little Jewish girl steps up to speak for a people she loves dearly; it's another thing entirely if a powerful Persian Queen steps down to speak for a people she will not let go of. 

It's just something I'm thinking about. 

Dramatically Different Discipleship

Perhaps the greatest difference between true Christianity and modern churchianity is discipleship. 

During His ministry on earth, Jesus had a number of men and women who traveled with Him wherever He went, bearing witness to His words and His works and becoming the men and women who shared His story with the world. We are most familiar with the twelve, but there were many more than these, and in the early pages of Christianity, we see them doing exactly what Jesus has called them to do - tell His story. 

When Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch on the road after Jesus's ascension, the eunuch is reading from the text of Isaiah. Philip climbs up into the chariot and shows him how this text points to the living, breathing Christ. When Peter goes out to spread the Gospel among the region, he talks freely about all the works Jesus has done for the blind, the lame, the poor, the sick. The Gospel writers, when they write about Him, remember seemingly every little encounter He ever had with even the most outcast members of society. They don't clean Him up for anyone. They go right ahead and put the Samaritan woman in His story. They talk freely about the tax collectors. They spare no rebuke for the Pharisees, just as Jesus Himself does not. Even Paul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus, becomes a man who can speak about nothing but Christ and Him crucified. 

No matter where you turn in the pages of Gospel discipleship, you see men and women telling the story of Jesus, giving those who lived in a different time and place a real chance to meaningfully encounter Immanuel - God with us - in the very real flesh in which He lived. Through His words. Through His works. Through His own testimony. 

In contrast, we...just don't talk about Jesus that much. 

Ask us what it means to be a Christian, and we will talk about being a part of our church. We will talk about attending Sunday services and going on mission trips and serving in our communities and maybe even being a deacon over some kind of very specific ministry. Ask us about what being a Christian even means, and we will point you to a book. We will even give you a copy of the Bible, put it right in your hands. And we'll expect you to read it. But whatever follow-up questions we have will be about the text, not about the characters. Our Christian education centers around the literature, not the living God. 

Be a little more specific still and ask us about discipleship, and we will start naming for you the members of our accountability group or the mentors who have led us in the faith. A disciple is just a student, right? So we will tell you of the men and women of whom we have been students. That pastor we met in our church growing up who shaped the way that we approached the Scriptures, the first elder to ever take an interest in us, the old married couple who counseled us through a rocky patch and showed us how to be better followers of Christ.

Perhaps that's it. Perhaps that's where our greatest trouble lies. We have come to call ourselves followers of Christ, trying to live "good" and "decent" and "loving" lives the way that Jesus lived and letting our stories be defined by how well we pull that off. Letting our faith be told by how we live it, rather than by how He lived. 

The truth is that we're pathetic disciples, most of us. We just aren't talking about Jesus. We just aren't telling His story. We just aren't making sure that our world, who live in a different time and place, have a chance to have a meaningful encounter with the living God. Instead, we try to give them ourselves and our own example and show them that somehow, that's enough. That they, too, can be enough. Even when we profess with our lips that without Jesus, we're nothing. 

You would never have seen Peter brag about what an awesome experience it was to be a disciple and try to get the people to follow his road; he wanted them on Jesus's path. He wanted them to know who Jesus was. Whatever little bit he had to tell them about Peter to help them understand, he would, but he wasn't about to make himself the center of the Gospel he was proclaiming. The same is true with Paul. With John Mark. With Luke. With Matthew. With Philip. With Bartholomew. With Thomas. Every single one of these men pointed with a single mind toward Jesus. Ask them what it means to be a disciple, and they would tell you without hesitation who Jesus was. 

Ask us, and we'll tell you who we are. Ask us, and we'll tell you who our church is. Ask us, and we'll tell you who our pastor is. And spoiler alert: our pastor is not Jesus. 

We have to become disciples again, not simply followers of Christ. We have to become those who use our lives to point to His. We have to stop being about the literature and start being about the Living God. We have to stop being about our programs and start being about His presence. When we tell our stories, they ought to be His stories, of which we are blessed to be but a small part. 

If we want to get away from our modern churchianity, we have to untie our sandals and step back on the shores of Galilee and start from the place where it all begins, where God created the universe, set us in it, and came to walk alongside us, that we may know Him and not merely ourselves. 

Losing My Religion

One of the last stories to start to come out before our national dialogue turned from the global health pandemic to the ongoing injustice in some of our communities...was a story about a Christian musician who came out and said he no longer believes in God. The mainstream media even jumped on this story - "Man Who Built His Life Singing About God Doesn't Believe In Him Anymore" - and the culture rejoiced. The world raised him up as an example of what can happen when a man 'brainwashed' by the idea of God opens his eyes and 'finally' sees 'the truth.' 

It's the kind of story that you can't just trust the headlines to read. In fact, I would say this is true about every story - you have to dig deeper and get as close to the source of these things as you can. Any thing. Every thing. Because the media only tells you what fits the narrative they're selling, and even just looking at some of the articles written about this story, the musician's - Jon's - own words were quoted only in part, so that you just couldn't get a sense of what was really going on in his life or how he got to this place. 

Now, let's step back for a minute and be honest about something: doubt is real. It's absolutely real, and it's nothing to be ashamed of or afraid of. It hits all of us at one time or another; some of us, it plagues for a lifetime. Faith is a choice that we have to keep making based on the experiences, encounters, and opportunities that we have to connect with God and with His truth. We don't just decide once who we are and what we believe; we are constantly deciding again and again and again. As we should be. Those who never ask questions of God cannot possibly expect Him to answer. Those are just the facts. 

So the news that a Christian is starting to question...isn't actually news at all. All of us question at one point or another, and usually, at thousands of points over our lives. If you have a faith that hasn't questioned, then what you have isn't really faith; it's superstition. 

God is not disappointed in you when you have questions. In fact, He loves it. It means you're seeking, you're engaged, you're pursuing, you're wondering. It means you are wanting to encounter more of Him. It means you're wanting to go deeper. It means you're not satisfied with where you are or what you know; you want to grow. He will answer every one of your questions if you'll just ask Him, and He won't begrudge you for it. 

Back to our story at hand. As I dug into the headlines about Jon, I was taken to a copy of his own social media profile where, in his own words, he had made his own statement - in full. And what Jon recounts there is all-too-common in stories like these: his growing discomfort with "Christianity" was actually rooted in his growing discomfort with "religion." 

Jon recounted experiences he'd had throughout his life in the church, camps and rallies and functions he'd been to that "felt" weird to him, felt forced. Felt like they were being put on for show. He talked about the pressure he felt - maybe everyone felt - to stand up, to come forward, to make a commitment to Jesus on the last day of these kinds of retreats and rallies and how it all just felt so contrived. So fake. He goes on to talk about other experiences he's had in the church that made him feel the same way. And then, he says, he started reading the Bible and couldn't reconcile the God he found in some of those pages with what he'd always been told to believe. (We can imagine this must be the God of the Old Testament he's referring to. I can't think of a single Christian in the past 2000 years who hasn't had to wrestle with that.) 

The truth of Jon's story, then, is not that Jon 'no longer believes in God;' it's that there was so much religion in the way that Jon never got to know God in the first place, and Jon no longer believes in religion.

It's a story that's playing out every day all over Christianity, especially Western Christianity. Or maybe we should say Western Churchianity. Our faith has become so much about religion that it's losing its substance, and when we come to find out how hollow our programs are, we're not left with much. 

At rallies and camps and programs like Jon is referring to, the ones that feel weird and contrived, our youth are often introduced to emotionality. They are given an experience, and it feels like a mountaintop, but God's voice isn't there. They are introduced to having a response evoked in them, to being drawn toward a reaction, to being told that what they feel is God, but they aren't hearing Him. We put the Cross in front of them, and maybe an empty tomb, but not as often do we put Jesus there. We introduce our young believers (in age and in spirit) to all of the artifacts of the Christian faith without ever introducing them to the Lord Himself. And often, if you ask a believer, they can tell you more about the other characters in Jesus's story than they can about Christ Himself. 

They can tell you who Matthew was, who Peter and Andrew were, who James and John were. They remember Zacchaeus and blind Bartimaeus. They know the story of the woman in adultery and all the men who walked away. They can recall the woman at the well and the demonaic in the graveyard. And they can tell you all of these stories through the lenses of every character except Jesus. They simply cannot seem to remember the heart with which He ministered in these places. 

And then there comes a point when the stories about Jesus and the programs about faith just aren't enough. When church isn't satisfying to the soul any more. When we're hungry and thirsty for more, for something real. So we go looking for God, and when we find Him, we realize how hard it is to fit Him into the faith that we've built our lives on. He just doesn't belong in our churchianity. We cannot reconcile who He is with the emotionality and dogma of religion, and unfortunately, this makes the whole thing - God and religion - feel like a lie. When we come to realize that God is not who our religion has told us He is - and that often means discovering He is more complex and dynamic than our simplistic presentations and small theologies suggest - then we can no longer trust our religion or the God it never introduced us to. 

Then, we say things like we don't believe in God any more, but the truth is actually that we were never given the chance to believe in God at all. We were too busy being religioned to death, and what we've discovered is that we no longer believe in religion. 

Which is okay. Because from here, we can go off in search of God. 

And although the media tries to gloss over that, that's what Jon says he's doing, too. He's going into a season of searching, a season of questioning. He's turning his back on the church that never delivered what it promised to him, that never gave him what they claimed they were giving him, and he's embarking on a journey to see if he can find the God he thought he was falling in love with all along. And you know what? If he's earnest about it, then he will. God just loves being found. Hilariously, right next to us where He's been all along. 

The headlines want to mock us and say, see, it's all just a joke. Your faith is falling apart right before your very eyes and finally, finally, you're coming to realize what this 'world' has known all along - that your God is not real. But that's just not the case. Our religion is falling apart before our very eyes, and it should be. Because it's giving us the chance to discover the truth that our hearts have been drawn to from the very beginning - that our God is real. And He's exactly who He's always said He was.

My heart is with Jon as he journeys, and with all of us as we wander our own roads. May we throw off all that hinders us and press on in search of what our hearts just can't let go of - a God who is complex and dynamic and loving and good and powerful and present and real. 

The Sound of Silence

As we continue to look at how we, as persons of faith, should respond to the injustice and unrest we are seeing in our world, there is one more very important truth that we must understand. (There are many truths we must understand, but one of them is also that the more we talk, the more likely we are to put our foot in our mouth or to start twisting the narrative, neither of which is helpful. So I am planning on simply this one more important truth, and then shift gears.)

It's easy to look at issues that we don't quite understand, things that we haven't personally dealt with in our lives - or things that we're told we can't understand, that are so far outside what we could possibly experience that it's futile to even try - and to think that maybe the best thing we can do is nothing. The best thing we can say is nothing. After all, if we don't understand - if we can't understand - then what on earth makes us think that we should speak? 

I am not a racist. I could be. I have known in my life a handful of my relatives who grew up in a different time and place, with a different perspective of the world based on their own experience of it and the cultural realities of their time, and I've heard some things. I could have become someone who adopted those views, who spouted those same words. But I didn't. I don't. I never have. And to be honest with you, I don't really feel the need to spend my entire life trying to prove that I'm not a racist. I don't want to have to define myself by one very specific thing that I'm not. Because I am a lot of beautiful things, too, and it's easy for those to get lost if the only statement I want to make with my life is that I'm not a racist. 

So it's easy to want to disengage, to say that I have nothing to say. It's why so many of us so easily back out. We have, in many cases, wrestled free from our own demons on the issue - from our family histories and early exposures and in some cases, sheltered existences - and we don't have any desire to taunt those haunting memories; we are ready to leave them buried where they lie and try to just...move on. 

But then, there are these words:

How dare you quote my decrees and mouth my promises!

You hate discipline. 

You toss my words behind you. 

When you see a thief, you want to make friends with him.

You keep company with people who commit adultery. 

You let your mouth say anything evil.

Your tongue plans deceit. 

You sit and talk against your own brother.

You slander your own mother's son. 

When you did these things, I remained silent.

That made you think I was like you. - Psalm 50:16-21

You've probably heard it said that our silence is complicit. That is, by saying nothing at all, we are standing with injustice - not against it. Our refusal to speak is akin to our affirmation. It is a condoning of the actions of others, whether we mean it to or not. 

Look at what David says, or rather, what God has said to David. He's said, You're a sinner. You do all of this wicked stuff. You and I both know it. But because I didn't say anything about it, you thought I approved of it. You thought I was like you - for no other reason than that He never said He wasn't. 

And that means that when we speak, we don't just speak for our friends to hear us. We don't just speak for those who are speaking out and need us to join them. When we speak, we don't just speak for the marginalized.

We speak for the perpetrator. We speak for the instigator. We speak for the sinful man who has committed the wrong. Because when we don't speak, maybe he doesn't understand that what he's done is wrong. Maybe, because of our silence, he thinks that most of us are just like him. That given the same set of circumstances, we would do and think and believe the same things he does. When he does these things and we remain silent, he thinks we are just like him. 

Which means we have to speak. Not so that the world knows we are not like him, but so that he does. So that he sees that what he's done isn't the status quo. What he's doing isn't just the way things are. Thousands of persons just like him...are not just like him. Millions of persons who could easily be just like him...are not like him. He is a sinner; we are sinners, too. But we do not condone sin - ours or his. 

So as much as it seems foolish to us, as much as it seems unnecessary, as much as we don't want to tempt our troubles or dig up a past that we've done our best to bury, one of the best things we can say right now is: I'm not like you. I don't approve of what you've done. I don't agree with what you've done. I can't fathom a world in which I would ever do what you've done. I'm not like you. 

To say that, though, we have to speak. We have to take that chance to raise our voices even in an issue that maybe we don't understand, maybe we can't understand - maybe they're right. But we do know sin when we see it. We do know what wrong looks like. We may not understand everything, but we can understand this. 

For that reason alone, we cannot be silent. 

A Thin Line Between Love and Less

When we talk about how we're supposed to respond to injustice in the world, the question we have to keep coming back to (as it is in all things) is: what is love? 

What does love look like here? What is real, authentic, tangible love? To use an old phrase, what would Jesus do? 

The truth is that there are persons in our world who are afraid to live their lives. They are afraid to do things that most of us take for granted because these most basic things pose a risk for them in some places that most of us will never understand. Yes, this is true of persons of color, but not all persons of color. It's also true of persons of trauma, regardless of skin color - men and women who have grown up in an unstable world, always being told that who they are is not enough or that who they are is detestable or deficient in some way. Men and women who have been beaten just for existing, who have been raped because they are not valued. There are a lot of persons who are afraid to be alive in their world because at any moment, they know intimately that their world can turn on them for no reason at all except for who they are. 

On one hand, we have to acknowledge that. I have to acknowledge that. The fear is real. The threat is real in too many places. The anxiety, the trauma, the terror is all real, and it's a constant companion to these persons who can't get away from it. 

On the other hand, regardless of who you are or what your other experience has been in the world, you are safe with me, and I staunchly refuse to pretend otherwise. I know that you feel unsafe, but you are not unsafe with me. I know that you're constantly on guard against a world that can turn on a dime, but I'm not turning. And it's important to draw a line that recognizes both - that honors and addresses the fear, but that puts it in its proper place. 

So as safe persons, what do we do? As persons without hate in our hearts, how do we live as love? 

Some say that the way to do this is to stand with our brothers and sisters, to raise our voices on their behalf, to speak where they cannot speak. And in fact, that's why we see so many of our current social movements being led by "allies" - persons who don't live every day with the same experience as those they are fighting with and for, but who recognize that it is true for these others nonetheless. But I don't want to be an ally; I want to be a friend. 

And a friend is someone who doesn't do your shouting for you, but helps you to find your voice. When Moses was leading Israel in battle on the mountain, he climbed the mountain and raised his hands. When his arms grew weary, the two men next to him did not just stand there and raise their hands - they held up Moses's hands. They let him continue to lead. They made sure that when Israel looked up at the mountain, they saw Moses's hands raised toward heaven, even if that meant they had to stand there all day holding them up. 

That's what a friend does. What I don't want to see us do is hijack someone else's story just because we think we have a voice and they don't; love gives a voice to the other. Love enables them to speak out. Love lets them be what they need to be to work through the very real struggles of their own existence, whatever their experience. 

I'm reminded of what a friend once said to me, in telling me a story about love. In a dark moment in her life, there were plenty of friends who wrote or called or sent cards with lovely little sayings on them, but one friend - one true friend - showed up with ice cream and sat in the corner of the basement crying with her. That's the kind of friend we need to be, now and always. We need to be the kind of friends who show up with, not take over for. 

The difference is this: when we try to take over for someone, to give our voice to their story, we end up feeding the fires. All of a sudden, they're angry because we're angry. We give them space to mimic our voice, but it never quite gives them their voice, so there's no resolution, no satisfaction, no catharsis in that. We will all keep screaming forever because we're just egging each other on. 

But when we show up with someone, when we work to give them their voice, when we cry with them, shout with them, stomp our feet with them, something completely different happens. They get it out. They hear their experience in their own voice. They experience the release they're looking for. But then...then, they look next to them and see us, and the whole dynamic changes. The whole relationship changes. 

Have you ever had a friend so angry about something that the two of you just started punching pillows together? Or shouting curse words into the air at nothing in particular? You're mad. Yeah, you're mad. But at some point, your once-angry friend looks over at you, mid-punch, mid-syllable, and sees the real, vital, life-giving friendship that you're sharing in that moment...and just laughs. You both just bust up laughing together. All the energy, all the fire, all the vim has gone out because your friend has been heard - in his or her own voice - and turned and found a friend right there through it all. 

That's the moment we need to be going for. That's what needs to happen in our world right now. These persons who are angry, who are scared, who are weary - they need to turn their heads and find in us a friend who stands right by them while they work it out in their own voice and know that with us, they aren't unsafe. With us, they aren't unheard. With us, they are truly loved. So much so that we can stand and shout and cry and mourn with them without ever once hijacking their story, but also so much that when they turn, they feel that undeniably deep connection and authentic love that just...releases the tension so much that we can't help but laugh together. We can't help but love together. We can't help but move forward together. 

All the energy, all the fire, all the vim has gone out because we have given those among us a voice and they have turned and found love.