I’ve been watching it reluctantly because war bothers me. You’re saying, “Right, Sarah, you’re a compassionate human being.” But I don’t mean it like that. I was blessed with an active imagination. It doesn’t need pictures to have some knowledge of exactly how awful war is. I’ve never seen Schindler’s List, nor Saving Private Ryan, or any of those Vietnam movies that are on a lot of people’s “must see” lists. As a kid, I read a lot of “saving the Jews from the Nazis” books, until I got to the point where they were just too much for me, and I’ve never felt the need to re-expose myself through the movies (I feel the same way about movies having to do with racial violence, by the way).

But this series is important to Dave. It moves him, deeply, and he has wanted to share it with me. He got the set for graduation, and we’ve been watching it.

Wow. It’s well done, and it’s disturbing. I won’t go into details here–I’m not sure I could. What’s notable are the scenes I find disturbing. The violence is hard to watch. Watching men watch their friends die is even harder. Watching the people who lived in these places have to make impossible choices and have their lives decimated over and over again is even harder.

But what hits me most is the craziness of it all. The Allied D-Day strategy? Basically, to get our men in faster than the Germans could kill them. And D-Day itself? I’m not sure how it worked. It had to have been God, because men, after having parachuted in, were literally wandering around the countryside because they lost their unit and their map (and sometimes their rifle), and couldn’t find anyone else. No one knew where the roads were or what the country looked like or how many German troops were actually there. And it just kind-of went on like that, through the other ops we’ve watched. In the one we watched last night, they parachuted in outside of a Belgian town where they expected to find German soldiers. Instead, they found happy Belgians who threw a parade so the soldiers couldn’t get through town. They were supposed to find some bridges. No one knew how to get there. The Belgians had to show them the way. And it went on like that.

In the end, I’m left wondering when it’s ok to exact that sort of price from other people. When is it worth asking (or demanding) that people donate their time, their energy, and possibly their sanity and their lives, for a country or a people? It seems such a huge price to pay–the confusion, the chaos, the violence, the pain. And yet, war seems to be a necessary evil in our world, because the “bad people” aren’t afraid to hurt the “good.” But the more I see, the higher the line is that bad people have to cross to make me think this is worth it.

This brings me to a question: Is war somehow inherently masculine? There’s something in Dave that is drawn to the idea of fighting for the good with his body as well as his soul. It seems easier for him to think that the dangers just sometimes have to be faced, somehow, and that that facing is better than the alternative. I don’t know if that’s the military training and his deep resonance with aspects of that sort of life vs. my total ignorance of it all, or if it’s because he’s a man. I’m not saying that he wouldn’t be scared to run through trenches with people shooting at him, but he seems to accept that necessity easier than I do and look at it with some…almost longing, but that’s not quite right.  Some desire to have the chance to fight against something that obviously wrong?

Insight, as always, is very welcome.

I don’t know if she should be in jail.  I don’t really have an opinion on that.  I hear the people who say that others who do what she did walk all the time, and that jails are too crowded, and that there are better consequences for violations like hers.  I also hear those who say that someone needs to be made an example of, that everyone who does what she did ought to be in jail.  I think they both have good arguments and I’m not sure there is a right answer.

What I am sure of is that she has walked a hard road recently.  First, the deterioration of her mental condition in jail.  People scoff, but that actually makes sense to me.  She doesn’t strike me as someone who has a lot of inner structure.  She’s had money and things and people and fame, and these things have held her up and told her who she is.  In jail, she was stripped of those things, and this was done in a public manner.  It doesn’t surprise me that she wasn’t holding up and that things were becoming serious.

Right or not, the LA County Sheriff (I believe) made the decision to let her go.  This wasn’t her choice.  It may have been something that, in her lostness, she asked for, but she had no say over whether she got it or not.  People say that it shows how spoiled she is, but I don’t see how that works.  Whining usually doesn’t move people to let you out of jail.  This decision wasn’t in her hands.

Then, she was hauled before a judge (she couldn’t come on her own–she was under house arrest!) by a sheriff who didn’t want to bring her (they initially refused under arguments about jurisdiction) and sent back to jail.  This was little more than a pissing match between the judge and the sheriff.  It had very little to do with Paris.  She was caught in the middle because she is high-profile, and they both wanted to make a statement.

So now she is back in jail.  I’m thankful, for her, that someone had the wherewithall to put her somewhere (a hospital) where she could get some help before they threw her back.  But I feel badly for her.  She got caught in the middle of something bigger than herself, and that thing was then made even bigger because it involved her.  She tried to do what was right–to go to jail and endure.   She tried to endure, and got all of this awful publicity in return.

I feel for her, but I don’t want to make her entirely into a victim.  Whether she knew she wasn’t supposed to drive or not (and I would actually say that she didn’t–she’s silly, but she doesn’t strike me as stupid…at least not stupid enough to drive where she knows she’s going to be photographed when doing that could have serious consequences), she did drink and drive initially.   What I see, though, is that she was willing to correct that mistake.  She was willing to spend the time in jail.  And it was hard for her.  So hard that people were concerned for her (and probably for their own reputations).  And then she got caught up in the whirlwind.

But I’ve had so many times over the last couple of years where God has specifically answered prayers in my life (my own prayers and those of others).  There have been a couple times where an ongoing problem or concern that I haven’t shared with people because I’m a fairly private person or because I’m not sure it’s appropriate has improved within a day or so of sharing and asking people to pray.  None of these things are the type where I can say, absolutely, that nothing would have happened without the prayer, but the lot of them together suggests that God really listens for us, and then listens to us.

It’s hard for me to believe that our actions influence Him.  In fact, it’s hard for me to see him feeling about us much at all.  Interacting with these incidences in prayer has shown me that I see God the Father as a grandfatherly figure who truly cares for his people, but prefers patting them on the head from his easy chair (or lecturing them from the same place) and then sending them on their way to do their thing to getting out of his chair, walking over to them, and helping them do their thing, either at their request or because it’s just so clear that they need it.  The God I’ve always known is truly loving, but distant.  He’s involved, but only when he wants to be, and then it’s usually about him and not about us.

Gaak!  What a wretched God-image!  And what an odd thing to come upon like this.

I’m afraid that’s as far as I’ve come processing it at this point.

Some excerpts:

“If people know that I’ve converted to Christianity, they might take the law into their own hands. If they are not broadminded, they might take a stone and throw it at me.”

Maria – not her real name – is a young Malaysian woman who has lived a secret and sometimes fearful life since she converted from Islam to Christianity.

“I feel that I am all alone in this struggle,” she says, “and I am frightened because I am alone against the odds.”

The article also talks about how she and her boyfriend want to get married, but can’t because they are not Muslims.  Her church has made her sign something saying that they did not cause her conversion (in case they are found out).  And she can’t get close to people because she can’t risk being found out as a Christian.  It’s been this way for 10 years.

For some reason, it’s easy for me to imagine her fear.  I’m sure I can’t capture all of it, but it’s easy for me to understand her.  It hurts me that I know people who would condemn her, who would say that, if she really trusted God, she would talk about her faith and not be afraid.  I don’t know if that’s right or not, but I could not condemn her.

I don’t know her life.  I don’t know what she faces and what she fears.  I don’t know what it’s like to look around and wonder what these people would do if they really knew me, and to know that that’s a serious threat and not a claim of the false self.

What I do know?  Is that I will pray for her, and for her friend Lina Joy.

What I am thinking a lot about his this–I am only human.  And God?  He knows, more so than I do myself, what that means about me.  He knows my limitations and my weaknesses, he knows what I’ll be able to do if I push myself and what I’ll never be able to do no matter how hard I try.

That used to frustrate me, but lately it’s been comforting.

He knows that I’ve been busy and stressed and growing a lot on the inside, and that that means I can’t connect as well with him and, sometimes, with other people.  And he covers for that.  In all of this, I’ve been able to be present as a spiritual director when I’ve depended on him.  I’ve been able to walk with Dave through the first months of our marriage and some pretty stressful things that have happened (and are still not settled).

I can’t help but wonder how the world would change if we only expected ourselves to be human.  I’m really talking to people like me now–those of us who push ourselves, who see what perfect could be and try to get as close to it as possible.  I think there’s an opposite way to be, and that has it’s own traps and sins, but I haven’t walked there and so I don’t want to speak for it right now.

If I only expected myself to be human, then I wouldn’t expect myself to be able to give to all the people I want to give to this week (it’s graduation time and many of my friends are walking and moving on).  If I only expected myself to be human, then I wouldn’t kick myself when I don’t make us dinner because I’m too tired again.  If I only expected myself to be human, I would not feel so much anxiety about my life, and could relax back into the hands of God knowing that he would cover what I cannot.

And what if we let the people around us be human, or even encouraged them to be so?

What if we could really let it go when they don’t do the dishes, or when they forget to meet us, or when they break something of ours by accident, because they are also only human?   What if we could give them the space they need without getting hurt and pulling away, even when we want more from them, when we know that they can’t give it?

I wonder if the world would be a better place, if we would all find it easier to find God, or if we would lose all sense of responsibility and find ourselves in chaos?  I think there’s room to give ourselves and each other space without degenerating, but it might be hard to find the balance.

thunk, thunk, thunk

It parallels nicely with another image of growth that I’ve come across.  It’s like we’re climbing from the bottom of a sphere to it’s center by spiraling upward along the outside wall until we hit a tunnel that goes to the middle.  As we climb, our path around the sphere gets longer and longer, and we mirror that by becoming bigger and bigger inside.  Even though the path changes, though, we cover the same ground again and again.  We walk past the same places, though we view them differently.  We find ourselves returning again and again to the same struggles, though at different levels and from different perspectives.  Eventually, we reach the goal, the tunnel that leads us to the center.

We don’t want life to be this way.  We want definitive answers.  We want to overcome problems and sins for good.  Instead, we return to them, again and again.  We struggle past them once only to struggle again later.  We wonder why we’re back here, in this dirty, dingy, disgusting place.

I don’t think we could be anywhere else and have any chance of finding God.  If we didn’t keep coming back to these things, we wouldn’t need him and, quite frankly, I don’t think we’d give him the time of day.  It’s so often in our returning, in the confusion that comes when we find ourselves acting out of old patterns, that makes us realize that we really are deluding ourselves when we think we can do this life on our own.

The New Testament records story after story of Jesus telling people to follow him.  He asks them to give up all sorts of things and take on all sorts of other things in that process.  In the discussion that sparked this series, the gentleman I was talking with used the phrase, “Follow me” to  argue for evangelism in lieu of formation.  His argument was that Jesus wanted people to come with him and do what he was doing, which was leading people to belief in him.  It was interesting, then, when one of my commentors (the same one who took the picture that’s now the header–thanks, Monica!) used that verse to argue for the opposite position.  So my question?  What did Jesus mean when he told people to follow him?

Overall, it seems like he wanted people to buy into who he said he was and what he said he was doing.  He wanted them to believe that he was the Son of God and to follow that up with their actions, to give things up for that belief.  Some were to give up their money, some family relationships that were distracting them.  He called Matthew away from his tax collecting and The Thunder Bros. away from fishing.

As I read through the passages where Jesus calls people to follow him (I looked them up at BibleGateway.com), it seems like the key thing he’s calling them to do is to turn aside from what they are focusing on and focus on him.  Instead of focusing on making money for themselves through whatever means they usually do, he calls them to walk with him.  Instead of focusing on the relationships that mean the most to them, he calls them to now be with him first.

The more I read, the more I become convinced that this phrase isn’t used to call them to anything more or less than a relational belief in who he really is.  They are to believe he is God’s Son, turn away from worldly loves, and be with him.  I’m not sure that this phrase stakes a claim for the primacy of either formation or evangelism.  If it does, though, it doesn’t seem to be for evangelism.

There seems to be a relationship inherent in “follow me,” because if these people follow him, they will get to know him better.  They will see what he does and how he walks through life.  They will experience him in all sorts of different moods and doing all sorts of different things.  This experience will be their formation.  Knowing Jesus will make them able, later, to do things like evangelism, and like helping others be formed in his image.  So while it is the leaving of formerly primary things that is highlighted when Jesus asks people to follow him, formation is also inherent in that.  As is living for Jesus later on, in things like evangelism.  But, at least here, the formation comes first.

I don’t, however, believe that everyone needs to do that.  This is a distinction of Dave’s and I’ve found it immensely useful.  There’s a difference between evangelism and witnessing.  Evangelism encompasses acts done with the specific intention of converting people (in this case, to Christianity).  Witnessing, on the other hand, is a lifestyle.  It is the living of a distinctly Christian life.  It is being genuine and authentic to one’s belief in Christ through his or her lifestyle, the choices they make, etc.  Hopefully, people will notice this.  Sometimes, they don’t.  I’m not sure I would, if I were not a Christian and my friends were, but I can be dense like that sometimes.  Living the life of a witness also means being willing to share about Christ when it is appropriate in the context of the rest of a daily life lived for him.

All Christians are called to be witnesses.  Evangelism is a specific task (for lack of a better word) that some witnessing Christians are called to live out on top of that.  Others have the specific tasks of pastoring, writing, speaking, keeping accounts, doing taxes, nursing, etc.

I know that this is, so far, text-light.  I’m not quoting a lot of scripture or anything else.  Most of that is because I don’t have these things memorized and I don’t have them readily available on the computer and in the location where I’m doing most of my writing.  So if there’s a specific point that you’d like to see where I’m coming from in the text, let me know and I’ll dig it up.