Shaped, Imago Dei

(pre-publication excerpt from Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians)

 

“God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.”

– Genesis 1:27

Michelangelo left an unfinished sculpture of the disciple Matthew, the former tax collector (a Jewish traitor to the Romans).  He became a Jesus-follower.  The statue shows him looking up toward heaven; his body hasn’t fully emerged from the stone.  You can see the ragged places where the sculptor is still chiseling away, still revealing the man from his native rock.  You can see the longing in the man’s eyes, seeking his creator, while being revealed by his creator, reveled in by his creator.

The sculpture is shaped like a man, like the sculptor himself.  He has expression, personality, and depth.  He’s wearing clothes.  He’s pretty husky; he looks quite the athlete.  He’s carrying a tablet in his left arm.  And he’s made from rock – the earth.  Like Adam, whose very name means “earth.”

We’re made in his image, but we’re unfinished.  We’re longing; we’re seeking.  We’re being revealed by our Sculptor.  We’re being reveled in by One who said, “Let us make man in our image.”  And the kickin’ thing is, unlike Michelangelo and the stone guy, he’s alive and still sculpting us in real time, all the time.

Early Christians who spoke Latin referred to “Imago Dei,” the image of God.  Our ways are like his, distorted but recognizable.  Emerging.  Like the saying about kids who resemble their parents, “That apple didn’t fall very far from the tree.”  Different, still-forming, yet the same in recognizable ways.

Bagel shops, God-kisses, and Zephaniah

Talk about a between-the-lines day...

Three days ago I had a bagel with my friend Mike.  I asked if he knew of any people who were doing reputable between-the-lines ministry in our area that I should interview for this blog.  (Between-the-lines:  Christian, maybe just Christian-ish but passionately doing God’s stuff, and not affiliated directly with a particular church group.)  He said, “Sure, what are you doing on Friday night?”  (Knowing the plan already was to go worship in Dunedin with visiting musician Dennis Jernigan.)  Seems his friend Jeff was going to be there, and he was involved in something along those lines.

“Oh, and there’s this guy, Sol Pitchon, you ought to track down sometime; he’s very involved in a number of unwed-pregnancy ministries in the area.”

I jotted down the name, then lost the note.  Found Sol on internet, put him on my go-do list.  That was Tuesday.

Last night we had a long conversation, supper and prayer time with the near neighbors, something God dropped in our laps in September.  We meet with them once a week, about – they can’t make it to conventional Sunday church services due to some really serious health issues.  So we have church on our own schedule.  Good times.

Anyway, that left me getting to the DJ event quite late, which was ok.  My main focus was to meet Mike and his friend, although worship time with DJ is a wonderful thing.  A secondary desire was to thank Dennis for thousands of hours of musical companionship, and no I’m not making that up.  (I sing when I walk...and I’ve walked an hour a day since 1998.  Do the math.)  Of course, the DJ handshake might not happen; this guy is world-famous in the Christian music community, and he’s in gigantic churches all the time.  Odds were, big crowd, maybe-handshake, conversation unlikely.

I walk in, and there are about 45 people in the room.  I count.  Wow.  Intimate.  And just in time for a favorite, “This is My Destiny,” which is an anthem of all the good things God calls you, and calls you into.

After, Mike and I talk in back.  Jeff comes up; turns out he’s the guy who made the phone calls to DJ in the first place.  Jeff has quite the story, and I hope to share some of that here in the next week or so.

A guy walks up and greets Mike by name, who replies, “I know your face...”

“I’m Sol Pitchon.”

Mike had no idea he was going to be there, in fact, Sol almost wasn’t there, because he’d forgotten and then oops-remembered.  Turns out Sol and I have a few things in common: his daughter lives in Huntsville, where we lived until this year.  He knows the pastor at our former church up there, Murray Wilton.  And he is very much a between-the-lines guy here in the Bay area.  We’ll have a go at meeting after the 1^st of the year.  Stay tuned.

And I got to shake DJ’s hand and thank him for being my walking companion with the Lord for so many years.  His transparency about his journey from wounding and sin into God’s grace and ministry is quite the picture, as is his independent (not big Nashville, LA or NY labels) music. For those who think he's just another guy pushing an agenda through your computer/TV screen so you can analyze it at arm's length...I wish you could have had the 5 minutes of face-time with him that I had.  His authenticity, compassion and acceptance are impossible to push away.

At the end of the worship time, DJ said, “The question people ask me the most is, did God deliver you all at once, or was it more of a process.”  (Long pause and a slow smile.)  “I tell them, yes!”

One of DJ's life-changing verses, and one of my themes, is Zephaniah 3:17:  "The LORD, your God, is in the midst of you, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with joy. He will calm you in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing."  (WEB translation)

Exactly; "yes."  Miracles and process.  Mike befriended me, a new guy in town, just 7 months ago.  I don’t even remember who introduced us.  Probably Dave.  Biweekly bagels led to another kiss from God for me last night with four men who are walking the unmarked paths God takes them on.  It’s nice to see some others out there.  Here’s hoping you see some of your own path, and your own kiss from God, today.  Listen, and maybe you can even hear him singing...

God is in ______

There’s a popular saying among Christians that “God is in control.”  If “God is in control,” then why do you and I still sin?  Why do we see so many Christians in conflict with each other?

Because we still have free will and he’s chosen not to be in that kind of control.  He’s in the kind of “control” where He can and does routinely involve himself with us, just like other people do:  conversation, persuasion, confrontation, intervention, giving life, ending life, comfort, and so forth.  No one would say that the guy ballroom dancing was “controlling” his partner. Leading, yes.  Partner following (we hope!), yes.  It’s a relationship, not a control/submit struggle.

Please notice that nothing I just said denies his power, authority, sovereignty, justice, holiness, miracles, other activity in this present day, or any of those other things Christians talk about.  Can he unilaterally cause events without any human participation as such?  Sure.  Does he?  Sure.  Sometimes he “sets up kings and deposes them.”  Not always.  People do quite a bit of that themselves, frequently badly.

Can I recognize the line between God’s active interventions and man’s?  Heck no, and I doubt anyone else can either.  (But I see a lot of people out there who think they can.)

“Power” and “control” aren’t the same thing at all.  Control is the use of power to achieve some end.  To “have” the power to do anything, anywhere, anytime is not the same as to apply that power unilaterally.

God is in power.  Thank God we’re not.  And thank God we’re not in control, either.

Wrong turns, new scenery, and ruined for this world

It isn't that I enjoy making the wrong turns in a web search.  It's that I often find stuff by accident, and discover enjoyment in a new place.

My latest wrong turn took me to Wrecked for the Ordinary, an online magazine about (and by) people who won't settle for comfortable pop Christianity, but instead embrace radical, passionate personal choices to change their worlds for the better.  Nice to see someone with a vision similar to my own.

It isn't that this guy Joseph in the Bible enjoyed being sold as a slave by his own brothers.  By any measure, his life was wrecked.  But God showed him a new life in his exile, and used the whole sorry affair to save a family of hundreds, the first Israelis, from starvation.

It isn't that I enjoy waking up, wide awake, at 3AM.  It isn't that I enjoyed a couple of major heart interventions over the last 13 years.  Or lots of other bad stuff, caused variously by choices of my own, others, God, and that Bad Guy.  It's just that God almost always meets me in my unintended destinations, and that makes them pretty good destinations to "accidentally" arrive at.  Wasn't my plan, maybe.  But He sure has a way of showing me good new scenery.   

Sometimes the scenery (like this one in the graffiti room at Passion 2006) makes me realize I’m ruined for the old world I knew so well, and sometimes in a moment, my whole world changes.  That moment really was a realization point and turning point in my life. I'd seen a new country, and I was completely ruined for the old one.  Never been back.  Old country's gone.

Maybe you've noticed that pattern in your own life?  Here's hoping your next "wrong" turn turns out to be a great one.

Coming soon - interview with a Between-the-Lines guy

Monday I get to interview Dale Hendry, who with his wife Vicki runs the local Center of Hope.  Center of Hope is a smaller-scale version of the Los Angeles Dream Center (which is an awesome story all its own; look it up).  This place takes folks who are homeless or just out of prison, who have drug/alcohol addictions, and walks them through a road to healing and restored life in Jesus.  Stay tuned!

How you're like a diamond

(pre-publication excerpt from Between the Lines:  Christianity for Misfit Christians)

 “children of God...seen as lights in the world, holding up the word of life.”

– Philippians 2:15b-16a

What does a human made in the image of God, the imago dei, look like?  Well, for starters, since Jesus says he’s light, perhaps we look like light as well.  Or maybe, a diamond.

Shine a light  into a diamond.  (Red is fine, but green is eye-popping.)  Then, we’re surrounded by brilliant points of light, like stars in red or green.  The pattern changes constantly, with every tiny change in the angles between the laser and the diamond.

The light shines on the diamond, and is reflected from the facets at different angles.  But the light also shines in to the diamond, and is refracted (bent) into many new directions inside the diamond.  Each new ray of light reflects internally and eventually emerges from one facet or another to add another point of light to the ceiling, like another star in a constellation. 

If there were such a thing as a white-light laser, those refracted rays of light would produce stars in all the colors of the rainbow.  All around, all colors, all glorious.

The diamond has no light of its own, at least at first.  But as its owner shines his light onto and into it, it produces a constellation of lights, unique to that diamond, and changing as the diamond moves and lives. Maybe that’s kind of like what the scripture means that says we will shine like stars or lights in the world.  We shine with no light except that which comes from God, but we can reflect and refract that light in a thousand different directions and colors.

Scripture paints a picture of a God who places every star in the sky, and knows each by name.  Such a God shines his light on and through us; he designed and named all of our ways just as he named each star.  Like stars in the night, we were made to be beautiful, and wonderful.  He intended the constellation of his people to be as awe-inspiring as the night sky over Sinai, crowded to unrecognizability with lights.

We are made of mere carbon, the stuff of pencils and coal mines and diamonds.  The difference between us and a lump of coal is the shaping hand of a Creator, a good God, who ordained beauty in all things at the Creation, who said it was all good.