There are powerful forces in our culture that impact and shape who we think we are. The Christian answer that I was given as a young person is that we are all sinners. Certainly that is true. I know that I am flawed and fail regularly to live up to the best ideals of humanity, or even my own best ideals. All of us are a mass of contradictions. But is that the first and foremost thing about us?

This is not what compassionate parents teach their children. Not at first. We tell them how special they are, how much they are loved and cared for, and what possibilities they have.

I find it interesting in Paul’s letter to the Romans that before Paul expounds on the human problem, he identifies his readers as those who are loved by God, who belong to Jesus Christ, and who are, by divine call, saints (1:6–7). Most of us tend to think that a saint is someone particularly holy, set apart from the rest of us, someone who has achieved something very special. But in Paul’s view, we are all saints.
One important aspect to faith includes saying “yes” to our sainthood. Faith is our acceptance of God’s unconditional acceptance. We are first the daughters and sons of God before we are sinners. Toxic religion turns that around. Unhealthy religion teaches that we are first unworthy, under God’s wrath, and must be saved from our sin. Healthy religion says that we are first secure in God’s love, that we are saints already, called to live as God’s beloved children daily.

Once we accept that we are accepted and experience being loved by the One who sustains all existence, we then find the sacred space and inner courage to face the tensions and contradictions that our sin creates. When we know we are loved by the Divine Lover, we find the confidence and inner strength to confront our false self (our little ego-driven self with its propensity to grasp, grab, and cling to that which we think will bring ego satisfaction). Knowing that we are valued and have worth for simply being alive, we no longer feel the need to deny or repress our dark side. Our freedom to name our demons is the first step in overcoming them.

In the movie, “The Stand” (a classic tale of the conflict between good and evil based on Stephen King’s book), an African-American woman known as Mother Abigail functions as the Christ figure. One of her disciples is a deaf mute. He is a man of great compassion and integrity, but he doesn’t believe in God.

In one scene, Mother Abigail is talking about the role that this young man will play in accomplishing God’s will. His friend speaks up, “But he doesn’t believe in God.” Not the least bit surprised or shaken, Mother Abigail turns gently and communicates directly to the young deaf man, “That’s okay child, because God believes in you.”
It’s true. In spite of all our mishaps and foibles, all the ways we become entrapped and addicted that diminish our lives and relationships, God still believes in us. If enough of us really believed that, not only could we ourselves experience significant conversion, we could change our world. We are first and foremost saints, before we are sinners.
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Chuck Queen is a pastor and the author of “A Faith Worth Living: The Dynamics of an Inclusive Gospel.” He blogs at afreshperspective-chuck.blogspot.com.

December 7, 1941, The day Pearl Harbor was attacked;
November 22, 1963. The day President Kennedy was assassinated;
January 28, 1986. The day the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.

These were each very public (or corporate) tragedies that imprinted on the minds and hearts of an entire nation, if not an entire generation of people.

There are other tragedies that are more personal in nature—things that have a much smaller area of consequence but still profoundly impact and define those involved. For me, an example would be the birth of my girls and loss of my daughter Hope [May 2-4, 2008] that I have discussed at length in the past. I will never forget those days as long as I live. Time heals wounds but the memories of those three days will always remain.

I notice a common thread running through all these public tragedies and also through many of our personal ones: They weren’t supposed to happen. That is to say, we didn’t expect them when we woke up that morning; they caught us completely by surprise. While I don’t believe God brings tragedy upon us, I do think God can use them to get our attention.

In the midst of every tragedy there are windows of opportunity that open. These are chances to learn the lessons that our pain and suffering is trying to teach and to draw closer to God during these difficult times.

There is a certain spiritual openness that tends to come in the aftermath of public tragedies like 9/11. How many of us uttered the words, “Oh my God!”, when we saw the towers fall either live or on video?

It matters not what religion we profess or even if we profess none, when we witness a tragedy of that magnitude, the human heart naturally cries out for justice and we reflexively call out for God.

In these moments of tragedy, at least for an instant, God can shake us out of our self-addiction and refocus us on our common humanity. We realize that when one of us hurts, we all hurt. All of us groaned in agony at what we witnessed on 9/11. We wept for all the victims and were inspired by the brave men and women willing to lay down their lives to try and save others. We felt proud to be Americans that day; we sang God Bless America with great fervor. For a brief moment in time a nation came together behind a common threat; we seemed unified as never before. There was a window of opportunity that opened for us to work together, but we failed to sustain it. All too soon life got back to “normal”, and when it did we quickly resumed “politics as usual”. Now it seems we are more deeply divided than ever.

But in those first few months after the attacks, our “normal” world was turned upside down and there seemed to be genuine openness to different possibilities. Many of us found ourselves vulnerable and humbled by circumstances we didn’t understand and couldn’t control. How could someone do this to us?! Like the dazed people fleeing the rubble of the doomed towers, we struggled mightily to find our bearings in life. We wanted to make sense of the strange new world we woke up to on September 12, 2001.

We searched for an “anchor” in uncertain times; we looked for meaning, and sometimes as we stumbled in the darkness, we reached out and were surprised to find a “hand” reaching back—God was with us through it all!

There was a surge in church attendance after 9/11. Unfortunately, local churches by and large were not prepared to take advantage of the window of opportunity that opened after this tragedy and the uptick in church attendance quickly faded as life returned to “normal”. In short, our churches did not succeed in “hooking” those who came through our doors in the weeks following 9/11. Soon enough, people drifted away and returned to “business as usual” on Sunday morning—which meant they didn’t go to church.

On a more personal level, losing a child and struggling with questions that have no good answer—Why?—opened an unexpected window of opportunity for me. The experience has made me think more deeply and critically about my life and my faith than I might otherwise have done. In the ensuing days, months—even right up to the present—I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching. I hear the Jedi master Yoda’s wisdom whisper to me: “You must unlearn what you have learned.” I pride myself on my knowledge about God and the Bible, and knowledge is not a bad thing, but I find that it can sometimes get in the way of experiencing the “real God”.

Without even realizing it, I think I had confined God to a “box” of my own making and then expected God to stay neatly within that “box”. Experiencing the loss of my daughter burst my little “box” wide open, and showed me that the “real God” was a whole lot bigger than the “God of Alan’s box”.

So, I feel like lately I’ve been letting God out of the “box”. It is a humbling process to let go of “God on my terms” and the illusion of having a God I can “control” to embrace all the uncertainty and ambiguity that comes with experiencing the real, raw, untamed, and uncensored God—or at least a more complete concept of God than the one I had previously. At times I feel quite unfocused and vulnerable, but I also feel somehow liberated from a conception of God that was too limiting to “fit” the life I am now living. I am reminded of Paul’s words: “When I was a child I reasoned like a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things.” That process is not easy, it can sometimes be painful, but it is necessary and it is good.

I am convinced that God uses all things to help us become the people God needs us to be but perhaps no time is more pregnant with possibility than the aftermath of tragedies.

To seize upon that possibility, however, we must be willing to seek out the wisdom God would teach us from tragedy—and that’s not usually a quest that any of us willingly choose. Often it is more accurate to say that it “chooses” us. An event happens in our lives and we find ourselves “in the middle of it” and must choose how we will respond.

Sometimes the search is quite painful as the tragedy exposes core wounds that run deep, but we must push through the pain if we would discover God’s purpose. That kind of discovery doesn’t usually happen overnight; it takes a commitment to stick with God for the long-haul even when God seems far removed from our present circumstances. At first we may not see any windows of opportunity in the midst of the rubble of our lives, but if we concentrate and don’t give up too soon, they will begin to come into focus. We will find help, healing, and most of all hope in the midst of our pain and suffering. We will see that God truly can bring something good and beautiful out of our tragedy.
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God, none of us wants to see or experience public or personal tragedies, but we know they are a part of life. When tragedy does come into our lives, help us to continue to walk with You through the “storm”. Make us aware of the windows of opportunity that open during these difficult days so we can learn the lessons that only the searing pain and anguished tears of tragedy can teach. AMEN
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Alan Ward loves to write stories. As a science writer for NASA, he’s paid to tell the story of NASA Earth Science, but he is most passionate about telling God’s story and finding his place in that Story. He seeks to illuminate the “threads of divine glory” that run through our common, everyday stories. Part of his calling is to be a husband to Laurie (a United Methodist pastor) and father to Brady and Becca. He blogs occasionally at: Alan’s Corner, and also is on Facebook.

“Everyone else may starve to death, but I won’t. God has promised me that I will never go without,” he trumpeted. Astonishment flashed across my face like racing neon lights. I didn’t even try to mask it. In fact, I took a small step backwards and waited for the fire to fall.

But this strutting preacher quickly defended his statement by quoting Psalm 37:25 – “I have never seen the godly abandoned or their children begging for bread.” See, this fine man considered himself godly. Righteous. Virtuous. Favored by God. Thus, no harm would ever befall him or his family. They lived the divinely-charmed life with no worries about the future for God had written him a blank check. “I’ve got God’s promise,” he kept saying.

The spiritual mathematics of this kind of self-confidence looks like this: “I am godly = I will always have what I need and never go without.” For him the corollary is also true: “You are not very godly = You will not always have what you need, and you may go without.”

To hear him tell it, those who please God always land on top of the heap. Their cupboards are always full, their gas tanks never empty, their table always running over, and their checks never bounce. The reward for righteous living is a full belly.

But what about the godly Christians of yesteryear who did literally starve to death? Women like missionary Lottie Moon who gave her food away to the Chinese she served, only to die of malnutrition herself?  St. Lucian of Rome, and countless others like him, who was starved to death in a prison cell because he would not renounce Christ? Or the 2.5 million souls facing starvation in Sudan, now as you read these words, many of whom are Christians? And going without bread is not the only disaster to fall upon the faithful. Christians in China suffer daily under the ruthlessness of that regime. Believers living in radicalized Islamic countries are persecuted at all levels of society. Faithful followers of Christ, even here in the West, daily bear the economic and social consequences of living out their faith.

Is there something wrong with the faith of these people who meet trouble? Has suffering come upon them because they are unrighteous? Are they bad Christians? Is this the explanation for their misery? See, I don’t think this little mantra will hold up for long; this idea that righteous living always leads to the good life. Countless numbers of good and godly people have suffered, have gone without, have been tortured, have been chained in prison, and have died by stoning, firing squad, holocaust, and worse.

Why? Because they possessed an inferior faith, a faith not big or strong enough to get them out of trouble? No. They suffered because of their good and great faith, not an absence of it. The writer of the book of Hebrews concludes that those who suffer this way are “too good for this world…and earn a good reputation because of their faith.”

Their stomachs didn’t growl because their faith was defective. On the contrary, they suffered because of their virtue. They met painful ends, not because God was against them, but because God was for them. These heroes of faith weren’t standing behind a pulpit, in the midst of chaotic times, bragging about how the last bread truck in town was going to make a special delivery to their home, sent there by God himself. No, they led a life of faith, a life lived in scorn of the consequences, taking virtue as reward enough.

After leaving the man who had called dibs on the last loaf of Wonder Bread in town, I was left to wonder myself. “What happens to this kind of faith when the promised bread truck doesn’t arrive; when the pantry is found to be empty; when the last check bounces?”

I imagine a chink in this armor of belief makes for one hell of a crisis of faith. And it should. Faith that leads to arrogance isn’t faith at all.

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Ronnie McBrayer is a nationally syndicated faith columnist, speaker, and the author of multiple books including “Leaving Religion, Following Jesus” and “The Jesus Tribe.” Visit his website at www.ronniemcbrayer.net.

From the Greek word selig (which means blessed) comes the English word silly. I like to think that there is something sacred about the ability to be silly – to play – to laugh and be child-like.

Many faith traditions – Christian and Hasidic storytellers, Zen masters, Taoist sages – encourage us not to take ourselves too seriously. These prophets have an important role in the spiritual life because they espouse the spiritual practice of play and as Ralph Waldo Emerson (quoted in Joy by Beverly Elaine Eanes) wrote “It is a happy talent to know how to play.” When Hindus speak of the creation of the universe, they don’t call it the work of God. They call it the play of God.

Playing is as sacred as music and silence and solemnity. In “Toward Holy Ground,” Margaret Guenther wrote “When we play, we also celebrate holy uselessness. Like the calf frolicking in the meadow, we need no pretense or excuses. Work is productive; play, in its disinterestedness and self-forgetting, can be fruitful.”

When we play – when we enjoy the fullness of life with its curiosities, frivolities and insensibilities – when we don’t take ourselves too seriously, some would say that we are praying. Like prayer, laughter and play can be healing to the body, mind and soul. Laughter and play are holy things. When we play, we leave behind the daily stressors and allow our spirit to breathe and re-create.

Literature, the Arts and holidays remind us of the importance of playing – of giving ourselves permission to be silly and foolish … artists from Russia in the 15th century often featured the yurodiva, a kind of “holy fool”, in their paintings. April Fool’s Day is a day for laughing, for playing kind and gentle jokes, and for trying to trick friends. On the last day of the nature festival “The Huli” in India, people have fun by sending friends on impossible errands, such as finding a stick with only one end. In Native American Traditions, Coyote is the Trickster.

In the Aztec tradition, Coyote is called “God’s dog.” In Hollywood, Wile E. Coyote always played tricks on the Roadrunner and they always backfired.

A spirituality of play helps us live with mystery, paradox and absurdity of life! So few people grasp that concept, sadly. It’s in the spirituality of play that helps us come to know ourselves, as Teillard de Chardin wrote – not as human beings having a spiritual experience but as “spiritual beings having a human experience.

Might now be the time to open / re-open the doors of flexibility, intuition, vulnerability, child-like innocence, and spontaneity? If the Creator created anteaters, duck-billed platypuses, giraffes, clownfish, pink flamingos and us (!), surely the Holy One has a great sense of humor and invites us to nurture a spirituality of play.

May you make time to play, laugh, and “be” in all of its wonder, simplicity, learning and joy each day of each week. And through that play, may others come to recognize that they are human be-ings, not human do-ings and that when they create, they are expressing their be-ingness, their spirituality.
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Dr. June (Mack) Maffin was raised in Montreal and presently lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Check out her recent book “Soulistry-Artistry of the Soul: Creative Ways to Nurture your Spirituality” or follow her at www.soulistry.com.

As you near the latter part of a hundred mile ride, your mind is on much more physical matters. Do I have enough water to make the next refill station? Does my body need fuel? My hamstring feels like it’s on the verge of a cramp – as does my upper quad. How much longer can my body hold out? I hope there aren’t any more significant climbs.

After recently finishing my second “century ride” (cycling lingo for a 100-mile ride) I told a friend, “I’ve never felt so connected to my body as I do on a long ride.” I’ve been told that pregnant women feel something similar – a hyper-awareness of one’s body, of one’s limitations and possibles, of every muscle, every bit of strength, every feeling of weakness. And through the increased consciousness comes a wonder echoing the Psalmist’s ecstatic outburst, “behold, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

And yet, in the western church we have a tenuous relationship with our bodies. Too often we’ve seen our bodies only as tools of sin, as a vehicle for hedonism. In our American context, the Puritans laid the groundwork for our discomfort with the body. They believed that the body was weak and that Satan used the body to attack the soul. Therefore, one must be wary of the body and it’s desires.

However, if we consider the creation narrative, it’s only after God gives us bodies that he declares us – male and female – to be created in his own image and pronounces the creation as “good.” And while we recognize the susceptibility of our bodies to sin, in traditional understandings of the seven deadly sins the truly heinous sins are ones of the mind – pride, envy, and lust, not the sins of the body. However if one listens to the American pulpit one often hears that the mind can be redeemed – that we think and believe differently – while little is said about what redemption means to our bodies.

But a spirituality divorced from the body – a spirituality only of the mind – isn’t a true spirituality at all. The New Testament consistently points us to a spirituality that links the body and soul, beliefs and actions. In just one example, Paul declares that although we may “fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,” and don’t love, we are only a “clanging cymbal” and actually “gain nothing.” And what is love, if not expressed in actions performed by the body?

And so maybe, straining at the pedals 80-some miles into my ride, consumed with thoughts of cramps, hydration and a cool shower, something deeply spiritual is happening as I become increasingly aware of my body. I’m becoming aware that I’m not just a jumble of thoughts and emotions, but a jumble of thoughts and emotions wrapped in skin, a whole being, just as God created me to be, and then pronounced it “good.”
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Charles Dean is the lead pastor of Imago Dei Church in Peoria, IL. He writes about all his interests – reading, gardening, food, faith, cycling & culture on his blog, The Renaissance Christian.

“Are some sins worse or better than others?”

Most of the responses leaned toward “yes,” but that wasn’t the interesting part. When it came down to it, we had a really hard time defining what was sin and what wasn’t.

Gary Peluso-Verdend suggested in his response that the degree of severity of a sin is tied to the degree of brokenness or harm it causes. On the surface this makes perfect sense, but what about in the case of accidents? If I step on someone’s tow without meaning to, is that a sin? What if I’m hunting and accidentally shoot someone? Does it matter at all if the act is intentional, or does it just have to do with the harm caused?

This also raises another point about good that comes out of selfish acts. Say a big box store exploits workers, giving them less than a living wage in hostile work surroundings to make clothes. Then our church buys those clothes and gives them to the poor. Have we sinned? Does the big box store get partial credit for helping the homeless? After all, we were able to clothe more people with the money we had because they kept prices low.

Someone then wondered if sinning was basically the same as making a mistake. Some translate the Greek word for sin as “falling short.” But if I make a mistake on a spelling test, or fall short on a job, even if I try my best, is that a sin? What if I don’t try my hardest? Is it a sin now?

Then we got to Jesus so-called Greatest Commandment. The rule upon which all other rules hang, according to him. The two-part rule for a righteous life is to love God with every part of your being, and to love your neighbor (not just your next door neighbor, but everyone else) like you love yourself.

What if I don’t love myself? Does that mean I have permission to treat others as badly as I treat myself? Can I lower the bar on self-care on purpose so I have greater latitude in how I love others?

Finally, we came together on the idea that what Jesus was getting at was that you would know in your heart what is right and what is wrong. If you follow that inner voice – that moral compass, so to speak – you’ll always point in the right direction.

Makes sense. But then even that started to get shaky. What if you’re a sociopath and honestly don’t know the difference between right and wrong? Are you then incapable of sin? The Bible talks about the “age of accountability” when children become aware of their own sense of morality, but what if that never kicks in? What if I have a developmental disorder that keeps me from understanding the separation between myself and others? Am I then given free rein since I don’t know any better?

And how about learned, or environmental, sociopathic behavior? Think of the mob, which develops their own twisted honor code, yet seems to have no misgivings about murders, extortions and such that are permissible within that code. So when is a sociopath a sociopath? Do they get a free pass if it’s developmental, but not if it’s socially derived?

We looked back at the Ten Commandments for guidance, but even with those apparently clear-cut rules, we had problems. Does it say, “you shall not kill” or “you shall not commit murder?” There are both in the Bible. Lots of them. And does this only apply to humans or does it include animals? What about plants?

“You shall not commit adultery,” seems straightforward until we realize what they meant back then by ‘adultery’ is different than today. Many men had multiple wives, and in fact, you were expected to marry your brother’s wife and make babies with her if he died. Now it would be, well, kinda gross.

I left that night more bewildered about the nature of sin than when we started, and keep in mind that I created the book! Nice job, doofus. But one thing did keep echoing in my head. It was the statement by Jesus about not concerning ourselves with the splinter in someone else’s eye while we have a log in our own. Weird image, Jesus, but I think I get it.

I suppose the point is that I don’t have to figure it out, except for myself. And believe me, that leaves me with plenty of work to do without adding anything else to the to-do list.

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Christian Piatt is an author, editor, speaker, musician and spoken word artist. He co-founded Milagro Christian Church in Pueblo, Colorado with his wife, Rev. Amy Piatt, in 2004. Christian is the creator and editor of the Banned Questions book series, which include Banned Questions About the Bible and Banned Questions About Jesus. He co-created and co-edits the “WTF: Where’s the Faith?” young adult series with Chalice Press, and he has a memoir on faith, family and parenting being published in early 2012 called Pregmancy: A Dad, a Little Dude and a Due Date. For more information about Christian, visit www.christianpiatt.com, or find him on Twitter or Facebook.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Like the good sheep they are, the righteous honestly admit they never saw Jesus in any of these dire circumstances.

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Then Jesus lowers the boom and commands the cursed to depart from him.

The goats on the left are sincerely baffled and balk at their sentence. 44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

The fact that they call Jesus “Lord” implies they know him or, at least, think they do. Some of the goats may be church-goers who teach Sunday school and sing in the choir. They may be prominent “Christians” who are asked to pray at luncheons and sought after by community leaders.

Jesus repeats his message, this time in the negative. 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

This parable doesn’t seem to be a head-scratcher, although it is a little unusual. Unlike most parables, Jesus interjects himself directly into the story. And rather than an allegory with a hidden meaning, this one sounds a lot like an actual future event coupled with a strong, specific warning.

Since I don’t spend as much time as I should with the groups Jesus identifies as important to him, I admit that Matthew 25 is a little disconcerting to me. At the same time, I don’t think Jesus wants us to systematically go down a checklist of hospitals and prisons to visit in an effort to secure eternal salvation. Jesus is conveying a frame of mind and a condition of the heart that his true followers will have by nature of their state of grace.

Having a heart for “the least of these” can be manifested in different ways. It might be sharing the scriptures with someone who is spiritually starving or introducing a thirsty soul to Christ. It may be simply taking the time to reach out to society’s outcast or working to free the person who is imprisoned by his own vices and addictions.

Of course, caring for “least of these” has to be taken literally too. This would involve physically meeting people where they are – on the streets, in the homeless shelters, hospitals, and prisons. Several years ago, I participated in a prison ministry and I’ve never encountered a group of men in more desperate need of the forgiveness and hope found in the Word of God.

Finally, we can also participate in helping the “least of these” on a societal level. Having a heart for “the least of these” will include how we choose to allocate our resources as a country. I want a strong, efficient government, but I also want one that is caring and compassionate. After all, how a nation treats its most vulnerable members is a measure of its true greatness.

Can we visit family member in the hospital and not care if another sick person can even afford to see a doctor? Can we give a homeless person a dollar and not support public assistance to keep a shelter open? Can we preach to prisoners and not support programs that keep young, impoverished men off the streets and out of trouble? These are just a sampling of the difficult challenges we face as a community. Personally, I don’t want to vote like a goat.

Jesus will gather the nations before him, but he will judge each of us individually on how we treated Him and his brothers and sisters. Likewise, each person must interpret this parable for themselves and decide how they should act on it. There are many different possible ways to respond but, as Christians, it’s a question we all need to answer – because there will be a test at the end.
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Jeff Fulmer is the author of the book, “Hometown Prophet.”

In my nine or ten visits to Kenya, I’ve rarely seen the average Kenyan run for recreation or health reasons. By contrast, many Americans run because we feel guilty about last night’s dessert or double-bacon cheeseburger. I’ve seen Kenyans run because they are VERY late for work, VERY late for school, or are playing soccer.

Even the ones who look least athletic have the same gate as the few I have seen who are obviously VERY good at it. The latter run like gazelles, hovering over the ground. But both run like boys and girls who learned to run without shoes.1 Meaning, they aren’t cloggers. They don’t bow their heads beaten and low, slam their heels into the ground, jar their knees sideways with impact, and then wonder why their knees stab with pain and lower back hurts. They all run on the front or mid-foot, kicking up their heels behind their rear, head tall in the sky. I’ve never seen a Kenyan with more pride or better posture than when they run. I’ve seen the same posture in a Kenyan child running alongside me giggling “How are you?” as they run past me in their flip-flop sandals, or a 30 something day laborer trotting in his work shoes.

How is it that a people with little or no footwear technology run so elegantly? To run fast, don’t you need the right equipment, orthotics, and wraps? Or do our Western ideas of what it takes to run actually slow us down, or push us into injury? I’ve been running minimalist for over a year and have no nagging aches caused by injury. Two years ago I started my recovery from a stress fracture in my tibia while wearing cushioned motion control $120 shoes. While rehabbing, I was set free by my minimalist shoe evangelist Physical Therapist, then went sans cushion while revamping my form and have now run a LTB marathon and 10K.

Watching and appreciating a group of Kenyan men run by me while I waited for some friends, I wondered, “How much has my faith been cushioned with Western ideas of what spirituality or what life with God should look or feel like?” I don’t mean Jesus or Christianity need to get thrown out. After all, Jesus was a Jewish man from the Middle East – hardly an Anglo Western European. Who made who Western? Instead, I wondered “How have others taken the purity of the Scriptures and what it is to follow Jesus, and told me its all about an easier more comfortable life. How have I bought into thinking faith and even following God’s plan for me is about me and less about – obey me, love me, follow me, bear fruit, pray. (John 15)?”

As I’ve tried to answer these questions, I’ve come across these answers and further questions. First, I’ve needed to discern what is being produced, sung, and written for my consumption and cushion. Christianity has an industry that is funded by our desire for an easy me-Centered Christian life, and they’ve got lots of people buying. I’ve got good, really good friends in these fields, and I work for a company with a publishing arm. (I’m on thin ice here.) That’s just to say that I bought my new, and beautiful Merrell Trail Glove minimalist shoes at the same store that sells 1-1/2-inch platform cloggers that cushion the impact of inappropriate form. My neighborhood sporting goods store makes money selling what is popular, not necessarily what is good for my feet, not sure why we would think Christian retailers are different.

Secondly, I’ve seen how and when I say “No” to God because what he is calling me to seems to hard or is moving me towards greater the sacrifice of cushion and comfort. Most of us would want to think we don’t say “no” to God. However, I know my propensity to give to the poor and the work of the Gospel only AFTER I’ve bought what I want. My tendency to give from my left-overs at minimum indicates a lack of obedience to the most basic of Christian duties – generosity.

Remember, it’s not about buying or finding the right shoes that give us correct form and speed or endurance. It’s about you being the right form. Following Jesus, the original minimalist sandal-wearing runner, the one who came to show us how to do it and to make it possible.

** If you ever make your way to Kenya, Native American Reservations, or anywhere where people who have been beaten down live, you’ll be shocked to see the numbers of kids barefoot, particularly in rural areas leaving them in danger of disease and infection.
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Casey Beckley has been a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for the past 12 years.  He can’t believe people give him money to be with college students, learning from their perspective on the world, and having their passion for worship and Scripture rub off on him. Find him on Facebook.

Goulash is supposed to be an Eastern European stew of sorts. For my Aunt Betty I think it is more a way of cleaning out the refrigerator. She puts meat in it; noodles, tomatoes, paprika, onions, coffee grounds, peanut butter, grass clippings from the last time Uncle Joe emptied the bagger on the lawn mower. Everything. It consists of all these strange, typically unrelated ingredients. But my Aunt Betty is a good cook. Her dish tastes pretty darn good in the end. In the hands of a lesser cook, however, I’m sure goulash would be a culinary disaster.

This is my chosen metaphor to explain God’s “control” over the world. God takes all the ingredients of life as they jumble together in the pot: Heartaches, triumphs, failures, and accomplishments; bad decisions, injustices, and hope; our creativity and our stupidity – all these things. We can’t imagine how any of this fits together. How can this be worth anything? Yet, God is able to make something wonderful out of it. He masterfully brews this magnificent gumbo we call life, and it will taste pretty darn good in the end. But don’t dip in your spoon and taste it too early. It’s not done yet. It still has a ways to go. God is still bringing it all to a boil, waiting for a few essential ingredients to be added to the mix before it’s put on the table.

This then, is the Christian hope: God is redeeming the world through his Son, Jesus the Christ. We believe God is putting his creation to rights and will accomplish this purpose no matter how gloomy life sometimes appears. So, does God control this world? Sure he does, just not in the mechanical, unconscious way we may have always imagined. I don’t think he is pulling levers and punching buttons dictating the minutia of life. He seems to have left a great deal of autonomy for us his creations.

See, in the greatest act of grace short of the cross itself, God has given us a role to play in the redemption of creation. His good pleasure is, amazingly, to do his will and work through us.

That God is all-powerful over his world, masterfully cooking in his kitchen, does not diminish, negate, or marginalize our role and responsibility in the least. God will do what God will do. You and I must do the same. Now, if I was God, and you should thank God I’m not, I would have never entrusted my good creation to beings so irresponsible, so short-sighted, so corrupt and depraved. Yet, this is exactly what God has done. We haven’t earned this glorious responsibility. We don’t deserve it, but it is ours. What will we do with it?

Frodo, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic “Lord of the Rings” series is that little hobbit on whom the One Ring falls. He and only he must bear this terrible possession to the fires of Mount Doom to save Middle Earth. He protests his assignment, having not asked for this awful burden that has fallen into his hands. He says to his mentor and guide, Gandalf, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” And how we wish our world was different, just like young Frodo. But Gandalf wisely responds, “So do all who see such times. But that is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that we are given.”

If given an audience with God we might be so bold as to ask him, “Why don’t you do something about starving children, genocide, the violation of the innocent, and unending war? Why don’t you intervene in your world?” Such queries are dangerous. Not because God can’t handle it; he certainly can. But he just might ask us the same questions.
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Ronnie McBrayer is a nationally syndicated faith columnist, speaker, and the author of multiple books including “Leaving Religion, Following Jesus” and “The Jesus Tribe.” Visit his website atwww.ronniemcbrayer.net.

When Jesus walks on the water it is the purity in Peter’s heart that gets him out of the boat and into the stormy seas, without thinking, rationalizing, or questioning, he walks into the waves on faith. In doubt we can fall, like Peter did in his eventual fear; in faith we can stay afloat, stay buoyant on God’s belief in us and our belief in God. And even when we have disbelief and lose sight of him, God still pick us up out of the waves and bring us back to the boat and back to hope.

This has been one of those week’s where buoyancy has been hard to come by. Clients in crisis and suicidal, people losing jobs all around me, loved ones in medical emergencies, and fiscal disasters–local and national. When we lose sight of God we can fall. Regardless of what we do his hand is always willing to reach down and pull us out of the waves and back into the boat.

The boat is hope, his hand is salvation, our buoyancy (even if momentary and fluttering) is our faith. The sea and the storms, the waves that pull us under, that is life and life’s struggles.

I love this story of Jesus and Peter because it illuminates the struggles we all have every day, every week, every moment of our lives. I work in a field where I am meant to be the “answer-giver”, I have roles in my life as a teacher, speaker, and guide that mean I should “know” all the time. I am here to say that we never know all the time–no matter what our roles are or whether we are teachers to others. I am privileged to be given the chance, as therapist, as teacher, as leader, to help guide others mind, body, and spirit. But I never want to give the impression that I don’t struggle in the waves. We all do. My stumbling is my own reminder of humility. Faith is my own buoyancy, and sometimes I let go of God’s gaze, feel fear, and dip under the frothy waves. ?

The beauty of God is that even when I sink, his hand waits to catch me. He knows I will fall, it is the human in me, and he does not hold it against me. He always reaches out and gives me another chance to try again, be better, do better, and try harder. If we can be in any way like Peter, just take the leap of faith every once in a while, we will find buoyancy on the water.

In the world right now there are many waves in the ocean and many are reaching up for a breath of air and a hand to carry them back to the boat of hope. The beautiful gift we are given is the tireless grasp of a God who will always be there to pull us from the waves and into the boat. And some days, if we are buoyant enough, there are days we can lift ourselves up out of the water just enough to help someone else through the seas and back to the boat.

Sometimes I think God blesses me as much with the moments of slipping into the sea as with those of rising to the top of the ocean’s surface. Every time I fall, in some way, I learn more about myself and the grace of my humanity.

This week, in a time where I felt a bit low in my own stormy sea, I asked God, “What is the meaning of all this?” He asked me to wait and see, urging that in the waiting I would see what it all meant.

I was given the blessing to be there for two people in my life in the last few days–one familiar and one a stranger–who were falling beneath the waves. In helping them we rose together, higher and stronger.

These persons knowing that even when they could not carry themselves I could help them float; I learned that the key to our own buoyancy can often come in helping someone else who is drowning.

Life is full of these metaphors, these personal “life parables” that God sends us, just when we need it. Our lives on earth are woven together in a delicate pattern and God is constantly giving us a chance to be part of the connected symmetry of all of us. He gives us the option of becoming more buoyant in our own faith, and deal with the many tests of reality as they come. I thank God because without the humanity of the falling I would not continue to be reminded how important it is to rise and in doing so carry others to the surface with me.

I thank you God for the ocean and the storms, the waves crashing down, the boat as a bastion of safety, and your arms lifting me up–constantly teaching me how to lift others up in the waves. I thank you God for the lesson of Peter and the metaphor of faith and buoyancy.
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TB Pasquale is a writer, psychotherapist,and a practitioner/educator on the contemplative dimension of faith. She blogs over at www.crookedmystic.com about her own crooked path in Christian tradition and spirituality. She is in the process of finishing a memoir of her journey through trauma and into renewed faith titled “Tales of a Crooked Mystic: A Journey of Spiritual Confusion, Evolution, and a Search for God in the World.”