Birth Defects and the "Image of God"

Thought I'd share a little theological musing with you this morning.

In a clergy group I belong to, a member asked; "God creates us and we are made in the image of God, what are some good responses to someone who questions this because they were born with severe handicaps/illness, etc.?"

Here's the reply I offered.

To me, being created in the "image of God" means that humans have, in the essence of what they are, a similarity to God in the essence of what God is. I understand the essence of God as being "persons-in-relationship" (with all the good Trinitarian stuff that evokes), and so I see the essence of being human is in our design to also be persons-in-relationship. From that perspective, the condition of one's physical body isn't that much related to how one bears the image of God.

As regards congenital handicaps etc., I see that as simply an aspect of the brokenness of creation which leads to some of us being born with bodies that are far from what God intended in the original design for humans. In my own case for example, I was born with propensities that have shown up over the years as both depression and diabetes. That's a reflection of the uniqueness of my personal brokenness.

Interview with the Blogger

My friend Ry Edwards just posted an interview he did with me! It's 20 minutes and touches on why I believe in God, my favorite metaphor for understanding what it means to be human, and a Developers Conference I'm presenting at coming up in August. I've written about The Pipe metaphor on this blog before but I think this video gives a better introduction. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Interview on Facebook.

Here are some links you may want to check out as well:

Gofundme page for my conference expenses: www.gofundme.com/resource-developers-conference

The website for 3dm: 3dmovements.com

My blog of occasional posts over the last 10+ years: http://feralpastor.blogspot.com/

A Little Bit of Kingdom Come

People sometimes think that God *causes* bad things to happen in order to bring other good things out of it. Most of us, I think, have a problem with that as an "ends justify the means" kind of thing. But among Christians I think it gets currency from various directions.

• Some people read Romans 8:28 in that way, as if it said "we know that God is the cause of everything and no matter how awful it seems it's actually good because of the good that comes out of it."
• Our tendency to recite the Lord's Prayer as "Thy will be done, (hard stop) on Earth as it is in heaven" as opposed to "Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven" plays into a kind of resignation in the face of tragedy rather than an appeal for God's *good* will to actually be realized on Earth.
• Plus, there's that sense that if God is "omnipotent" then it would seem that everything that does happen is ultimately because God wants it that way.
• The kicker is the story in John 9 where most translations literally say God caused a man to be born blind in order to heal him later. (I think Eugene Peterson gets it right in his The Message version.)

I don't buy any of that stuff, but it's out there and feeds into the notion that God works evil to obtain good and we just have to deal with it.

At any rate, what I do believe is that in every situation - regardless of how it came about - God is present and is an active force to bring good forward.

And here is a very beautiful and touching example of what that can look like.

The Burnt Over District - video reflection

This is a seasonal reflection I created on video a couple years ago. The music is "The Burnt Over District" by Hem. I I slowed it down somewhat for time and effect.

Resonating with Brokenness?

I pursue a practice of daily devotions (note: pursuing is not the same as achieving) and when my devos are suitable for public view I often post them on my Feral Pastor Facebook page.  A recent post there that touched on the experience of brokenness, and how "cheering people up" is often not the best approach, seemed to get more attention that most.  Maybe that's just because simply naming the reality of brokenness has a powerful resonance with a lot of people.  Whatever the reason, I thought I'd also post that reflection here in case it was a blessing to others.

Faith in Community

I've heard it said that one of the beauties of community is that in the  times when it's hard for us to believe, others can "believe for us."  Here's a little reflection on on that.

"Shameless" Sermon Series, Part Four: "unComfortably Numb"

In the fourth and final message in my Shameless series, we look at the ripple effects of a disconnected life and the ways we try to numb the pain, which leads to more pain, which leads to more numbing.  We revisit the central message of the series, which is how God goes past the symptoms on the outside and deals with the VSD at the center of our hearts.  From there, the series winds up with a call to share what we have found with others as "Ambassadors for Christ."  All this, and Heinz 57 steak sauce as well!

 
Sermon from June 30th, 2013 from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

Anne Lamott Nails It for the Shame Series

This Facebook post from Anne Lamott is so perfect for the whole series I've been doing on shame and the struggle to achieve our own good-enoughness. Anne Lamott.... broken AND beautiful, just like all the rest of us!

Last week, when I was having the experience that almost every writer longs for, I got as mental and confused and low self-esteem as I've been in a while. And everyone I was with was extremely sweet, smart and affirming. It was the damn system that failed, the system I was raised believing in, that I can achieve and impress and people-please SO successfully, that I will finally get the seal of approval sufficient to fill the Swiss cheesey holes in my soul. I will have arrived, finally. Yay

During this pretty high-falutin' experience under the bright lights, w/ kind smart people and FABULOUS make-up, I felt like I'd 9 cups of coffee, two bags of candy corn, a box of chocolate truffles-- Heaven, right? I love being out of my body, tripping on my own fabulousness, mood-altered to within an inch of my life. And then guess what happened? You're going to hate this

It ended. Yes! My turn was over. All the smart kind people--and even my make-up person--TRAITOR!--went on to the next person. 

And then there was just me, even more needy, worried, and self-doubting than usual--had I talked too much? Too fast? I had meant to sound like a cross between Gloria Steinem and Ram Dass--but had just sounded like a very caffeinated ME. Regular old human me, beautiful, slightly nuts, flawed. Trying to tell my truth about God and being human, in my own voice.

Sigh. Then I flew home, to my dogs, my life, my writing, church, etc, and I drank a lot of water, and my friends loved me out of ALL sense of proportion, and I got to do the sacraments that save me--plop and putter. Reading to my grandson. Radical self-care--lots of rest, Wimbledon, salads, rubbing lotion into my fabulous jiggly thighs. Eating delicious low-sugar life-giving foods, with perhaps an excess of cherries and peaches. Okay, and plums. And that one night w/some See's. Getting a little writing done EVERY day, by pre-arrangement with myself, as a debt of honor. Teaching my Sunday school kids, that they are loved and chosen, safe beyond all understanding, and that to be alive in a miracle. 

Home! In my funny gorgeous dumb puttery life! Sweeping the kitchen, singing along with the Beatles. Hallelujah, and wow, and thank you thank you thank you.

"Shameless" Sermon Series, Part Three: "Brene, to the Therapist!"

Here's the third in my four-week series on shame.  I share a lot about my own interior life this week to show the multiple ways I see the Lord at work to heal and bless me, and to help destigmatize the very valuable things God provides through counseling and medication!

To watch the clip of Brene I refer to, go to bit.ly/browntedtalks and watch the segment from 10:50 to 14:40.

Also, if you want to see the Powerpoint slides directly, as they are hard to see on the video, you can find them here. 

These sermons are being done at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Maplewood, MN.  It concludes on Sunday, June 30th, 2013.



Sermon from June 23rd, 2013 from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

"Shameless" Sermon Series, Part Two: "The Shame Game"

Here's the second of my four week series on shame.  We get a look at the core of Brene's insights on shame, and then I make the connection to faith.  In a nutshell, I modify her wise words:

"Let yourself be seen, and believe that you are enough."

to link them to the spiritual reality of the loving God in this way:

"Let yourself be seen by God,  and believe your Father when He tells you that you are enough."

To watch the clip of Brene I refer to, go to bit.ly/browntedtalks and watch the segment from 6:06 to 11:20.

Also, if you want to see the Powerpoint slides directly, as they are hard to see on the video, you can find them here. 

This series is being done at Gethsemane Church in Maplewood, Minnesota.



Sermon from June 16th, 2013 from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

"Shameless" Sermon Series, Part One: "Brene to the Rescue!"

Here's the first in my Shameless sermon series.  (Every time I write "shameless sermon series" I feel like I'm apologizing for something.)  ;)

In this first sermon, entitled Brené to the Rescue!, researcher/storyteller Brené Brown sets out to solve the mystery of human connection and comes face-to-face with the great connection killer: Shame.  As a part of the sermon, the congregation undertakes an activity to challenge the shame of struggling with shame, seeing visually that this is a very common challenge among us.

(Early in the sermon we watched a 6 minute segment of Brené's TED Talk.  To respect the copyright on that talk, it is not included in the video below.  So I suggest you pause at that point and watch the first 6 minutes here.)

Sermon from June 9th, 2013 from Gethsemane on Vimeo.

"Shameless" Sermon Series and TED Talks

I'm gearing up for a series of sermons of freedom from shame.  The spark for this series was a hugely popular TED Talk by Brene Brown (see below), and I wanted to lift that up for people regardless of their interest in my own series.  It's good stuff.  I'm curious, also, just to know who may have already seen her talk, and if others have used it in worship or for teaching.

Here's the official article on my series.  It will be recorded and the videos will be posted here each week, typically by Sunday afternoon.

I am very excited to tell you about the sermon series I will be doing in June! It's entitled Shameless and will explore how the love of God frees us from feelings of shame and inadequacy. 

This series was inspired by a "TED Talk" video I saw online not long ago. TED Talks are short presentations by creative thinkers on a huge range of topics - everything from physics to fishing! The one that really grabbed me was by a woman named Brene Brown. In her presentation, she talked about the deep human experiences of connection and shame, love and vulnerability, sharing both her research and her personal journey towards whole-heartedness. This talk has been viewed over 9 million times! Brene has touched a lot of hearts with her insights and her personal courage to be open. Her core message is "Let yourselves be seen, and believe that you are enough."  

 

This is a true, profound and life-changing word of grace. And yet it leaves one essential thing unsaid: who is it that sees you, who says you are enough? The Shameless sermon series will seek to fulfill the promise of her talk by answering that question, inviting everyone to let themselves be seen by God and to believe their loving Father when he tells them they are enough.

Wrestling with shame has been a challenge for me personally over the years, and I'm so eager to share with others the grace I've found for dealing with that in Jesus. If you or someone you know ever struggles with feeling "unworthy" please be sure they get the word about this series! And by all means,encourage people to view Brene's talk online first. If they like what they find there, tell them the news gets even better when the love of God get into the mix!  

The series will go something like this...
Sunday June 9..............Brené to the Rescue!
Sunday June 16............The Shame Game
Sunday June 23............Brené, to the Therapist!
Sunday June 30............unComfortably Numb 

Now, is plugging my own sermon series a shameless thing to do?  Maybe so.  I guess I can live with that.  ;)

Theological Reflection part 3 - The Artist in Residence

(For part 2 go here.)

And what of James Holmes, the shooter?  Together with us, he is a member of the shattered creation and the broken human community.  Was his part of the sphere even more utterly shattered somehow from his birth… broken genes bearing sharper edges we now can see?  Were there things that happened to him in his life growing up or in recent months that shattered him as never before?  He had a mother and a father.  Was he a beautiful sphere on whom they gazed with delight before this day?  There was beauty in him: colors of the first creation.  A merit scholarship out of high school, honors on graduating from college.  I see the hues of a capable, creative mind.  Even in its shattered fragments, capable of careful planning for his attack and booby-trapping his apartment. 

Can anything good or beautiful ever be built out of the fragments of his life?  Perhaps.  John Newton shattered a host of lives working in the slave trade, yet even so, God managed to build out of this man the author of the hymn Amazing Grace.  Is this also possible for Holmes?  I confess, I believe it is possible, and I confess, I don’t believe it will happen.  Perhaps that’s part of my brokenness.  But I do believe that his jail cell is another place where God is present, bleeding, weeping, and now at work picking up the pieces.  I’m sad for both of them.  I think they will be there for a long, long time to come.

Theological Reflection part 2 - The Artist in Residence

(For part 1, go here.)

He knelt down
among the fragments to search out every shard
collecting them so carefully, yet even so
his hands were wounded further by the work.

And even more as he began to set them alongside each other,
creating again,
building beauty of the sorrow:
a lamp.

To stay involved in this broken creation and the lives of his human children comes with a cost for God.  Whatever suffering and pain he encountered in the “shattering” event, he adds to it in the course of keeping his hands on us and involved in our lives and our sharp-edged brokenness.  No clearer illustration of this is there than the wounds Jesus received in the course of his work to pick up, handle, and refashion the slicing, piercing shards of humanity he encountered in his life.  But the artist God is at work, not to put it all back together the way it was – that can never happen – but to build something new from the pieces.  The lamp image here is specific for me and calls to mind the Tiffany lamps, made with bits of colored glass, and although I didn’t make that explicit in the poem I hope the image does come through.  The phrase set them alongside each other is intended to nudge the reader’s mental imagery in that direction.

That phrase also has resonance for me in the details of the shooting event.  I heard stories of one person in the theatre, who had been wounded, throwing his body over a friend who had also been shot, into order to protect him.  I saw pictures of people holding and comforting others, with blood on one or both of them.  These are shattered fragments, set alongside each other.  This is beauty being created: the beauty of compassion, the beauty of self-sacrifice for the sake of others.

Through which a light would shine

revealing still the colors of the first creation
and the blood stains,
some dried and left in place
some washed away by tears.

I think of the town of Aurora as being like the gazing sphere.  It had a beauty and no doubt a sense of peace and security that was shattered in this event.  In its initial beauty I know that there were people of love and compassion and courage there.  These are the colors of their “first creation.”  In the shattering, some of those colors are actually now more prominent and easier to see – they have been put on display for the world to see as a light shines through them.  I’m thinking here of citizens and first responders who threw themselves into the situation, with all its horror and danger, to try and help.  I’m thinking of the bomb squad people, working still even as I write, the courage and skill that was in them yesterday now on bright display today.  Yet the same light that reveals the beauty of their character also shows us the blood of the victims.  The artist God, I think, intentionally leaves some of that blood dried and left in place to honor sacrifice and suffering by preserving them in memory.  Even the resurrected Jesus, remember, still had his scars.  But much of it is also washed away by the tears of the creator raining down from above as he goes about the work of building something new, something beautiful again.

Shattered goodness can be fashioned again into beauty.  I believe this is always what God is up to and the answer to the question “Where is God in my/our suffering?”  He is now most clearly, and most hidden, walking and kneeling among the people of Aurora, bleeding and weeping as he picks up the people and the pieces, already setting them alongside each other to make something beautiful in time.

Part 3.

Theological Reflection part 1 - The Artist in Residence

I hope that the poem can stand on its own, but for those who want to read it here is my own reflection on it in three parts.  The text of the poem is in bold italics.

The Artist in Residence: Aurora, Colorado, 2012

I’d heard the phrase “artist in residence” before and it felt important to lead with that.  To me it conveys that God is not one who comes and goes but who stays in the community, especially in the midst of hardship and tragedy when our pain makes God seem absent.  The overall witness of the Old Testament is of a God who stubbornly refuses to turn his back on his people and just walk away, no matter how they treat him.  One of the most beautiful metaphors in the New Testament, somewhat hidden in the English translations but clear in the Greek, is in John 1:14 where it says the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us.  That “dwelt among us” phrase comes with the image of “pitched his tent.”  Remember that while for us, pitching a tent is a very temporary stop, in ancient days and among semi-nomadic people, it’s an image of permanently joining the family/community. 

The Artist worked in glass, and blew a glorious gazing sphere.

Luminescent, layered, rainbow swirls of every color.  The object of delight reflected his face, his eyes, his smile.

He held it close.  It sang to him.

Creation was good, beautiful, a “reflection” of the goodness and beauty of the Creator, yet apparently quite fragile.  The object of delight was not just a “thing” but in relationship with the Creator: it sings to him.

It shattered
in his hands.

This is the core.  Creation is broken, humans are broken.  Not just flawed or “imperfect,” not just cracked or in need of some glue or a band-aid, but in a real sense shattered beyond repair.  Those who have thought deeply about the human condition, or looked deeply into their own hearts, I believe, recognize this truth. 

Why did it shatter?  Did it “leap” from God’s hands?  Did God hold the fragile sphere too tightly or drop it?  Did someone else play a role, or was there a flaw in the design?  These questions are not addressed, but the fact that the questions exist is acknowledged in the poem: it shattered in his hands.

Shards of glass
flying
falling
cut deeply in his flesh.  He bled, he wept.

The depth of God’s love for and delight in creation is matched by the depth of his pain and suffering over it’s brokenness, and matched by the depth of his commitment to caring for and redeeming it.  Any insight you gain into the depth of God in one of those areas illumines for you the depths of the other two.

Part 2.

The Artist In Residence: Aurora, Colorado, 2012

The Artist worked in glass, and blew a glorious gazing sphere.

Luminescent, layered, rainbow swirls of every color.  The object of delight reflected his face, his eyes, his smile.

He held it close.  It sang to him.

It shattered
in his hands.

Shards of glass
flying
falling
cut deeply in his flesh.  He bled, he wept.

He knelt down
among the fragments to search out every shard
collecting them so carefully, yet even so
his hands were wounded further by the work.


And even more as he began to set them alongside each other, 
creating again, 
building beauty of the sorrow: 
a lamp.


Through which a light would shine
revealing still the colors of the first creation
and the blood stains,
some dried and left in place
some washed away by tears.