Well... San Francisco, it's been fun, motivating and challenging. We hope to be back soon and permanently. Now back to LA to finish finding the rest of the support team the Lord has prepared for us.
Today our team got to explore and get to know the city together, and I mean the whole city! Here Josh, Kyle and Matt enjoy a well deserved ice cream at the second best ice cream shop in the city, Bi- rite.
There are about 900,000 people living in San Francisco, a 7x7 mile area.
39% of those people were born outside the US. It really is a city with no cultural majority.
It has the second highest homeless population in the US.
1 in 5 males over the age of15 are gay.
20% of the city's population cycles out every year.
SF state mirrors the city's dynamics and less than 2% of the students there are Christian.
We are in San Francisco now! We met are team last night and they are amazing! Thanks for you're prayers. Today we will begin some work and planning. Here is a pic from my morning walk.
Well we are going to San Francisco but no there are no flowers in our hair. We will be up there for 5 days to meet the rest of our ministry team for the first time and to do some pre- school year prep. Please pray over our time there: That the members of our team will get some good time to connect and bond before the school year. That the Lord would guide our meetings and that we would be hearing from Him and His will for the school year. And that the Lord would refresh us and send us back to LA ready to finish up or support. You guys are great! Stay tuned for updates during the week!
Have you ever met anyone who doesn’t think Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials are awesome? You know the one: a bearded Hemmingway-esque man in a suit, sitting at a table in some exotic locale surrounded by beautiful local women. The narrator tells of his character as grainy 8mm video of him cliff diving and bull fighting play in the background, “The police often question him just because they find him interesting”, “He's a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter, so don't get any ideas".
The commercials tap into a sense of adventure and story most of us don’t experience in our own lives. We may have memories and moments of adventure but not a lifetimes worth. I’m reading a book about story right now and one of the author’s main points is that many of us don’t live a very good story. We can live a comfortable story without a lot of conflict and pretty one dimensional characters and wonder why life is so boring. I think I mostly agree with his sentiments.
But this idea of living a good story got me thinking of where Jesus fits into the picture. He is after all, the main character of the “greatest story ever told” and the center of our lives as believers. In fact one of the crazy things as Christians is that we get to enter into this ever expanding and seemingly never ending story of God as characters, each with a unique part to play…at least that’s what is supposed to happen.
I was reflecting this morning on how ‘boring’ a life with Jesus can seem and how this perception permeates both the Church and society in the West. Let’s be honest; for many people being a Christian means believing in the atonement, being as good as possible with the assurance of heaven in the end. To those on the outside looking in, being a Christian seems to be more closely intertwined with having a couple very strong political views and not getting drunk than it does with being a character in the story of Jesus. It is no wonder then, when people are not interested in talking or even thinking about Jesus. Why should they want Jesus if the story we as Christians are often telling is boring?
Think of Jesus in the Gospels, was he boring? Sure maybe in 21st century America the general consensus is Jesus was a some holier than thou dude who spoke in parables and platitudes about morality and some other stuff and definitely sounds mind numbingly dull but the Jesus of the Gospels isn’t anything like that! Do you think the disciples would have left everything so they could sit around listening to some soft-spoken guy telling them to “love the little children” while the big eyed Precious Moments cretins smiled angelically up at him? No way! Jesus was unexpected, he was exciting, he was healing people and casting out demons and arguing with the Pharisees and all the while he was claiming to be the climax of the generations long story of
And yet today the very mention of the name Jesus makes people zone out. It can make me zone out. There are weeks when I don’t understand or fully grasp the story I am in, when I forget I am actually in the story of Jesus, that I have an important part to play in the community and relationships around me. Usually those weeks are full of selfish pursuits trying to fill a sense of adventure and purpose I mistakenly think Jesus cannot fill. But then some weeks, some mornings like today I remember just how crazy it is to be a follower of Jesus. To believe that God entered into the world in human form in order to defeat death and evil once and for all, that he suffered and died, that he was fully human and fully God, that he rose from the dead, that one day he is going to return to Earth to fully rid the world of evil and heal all of Creation!? Even if you don’t believe it you have to admit it’s a pretty compelling story. And that’s just the story of Jesus; the rest of the story of God, humanity and the world offered in the Bible is just as compelling, just as mind blowing...but we often forget this…we often think of Jesus as a morality to obey, not an adventure to embark on. What’s a better story, a relationship or a set of rules?
Part of me wonders if the reason the Left Behind/Rapture theology is so popular in Western Christianity is because it offers a compelling narrative. We are going to be snatched up into heaven and then all hell is going to break lose on earth? That’s some pretty intense adventurous stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I think its all nonsense and a total misreading of Scripture but it sure is a good story. And maybe it’s because of this many people are so passionate about it. I wonder how many people think of the story of their daily lives walking as a follower of Jesus in today’s world in the same passionate way. I wonder how often I do. My guess is if I grasped the enormity of the story I was a part of, following Jesus would be infinitely more compelling and adventurous and wonderful and more alive.
“What if a person isn’t supposed to be alone, isn’t supposed to have glory on his own, but rather get glory from the God who loves him? What if, in the same way the sun feeds plants, God’s glory gives us life? What if our value exists because God takes pleasure in us?” ~ Donald Miller
If I am honest with myself, if we are all honest with ourselves, on any given day at any given moment, I operate as if I have glory on my own. What I mean is at some point during the day, and usually at multiple points, I have an interaction with another person in the world around me and my words or deeds are founded in my belief that I am more important, smarter or better than the other person in some way. I’ll give you an example: I struggle with anger when I drive. If someone is going to slow I get frustrated and move in close to try and get them to speed up. If someone cuts me off, I’ll swear (either out loud or in my head) at them and shake my head. But why? What gets me so angry? On the surface I would probably say, “Well, they just shouldn’t have done that” or “it was dangerous”, but the truth goes deeper. The truth is when I get angry on the road it is usually because I feel disrespected, like the offending party doesn’t give a crap about my existence, is barely aware of it or worse, is totally aware of it and yet values their own over mine.
I think this dynamic, this feeling of self-worth and self-righteousness is our misplaced need for the love of God playing itself out in our lives. Instead of seeking God and finding our worth in the fact He loves us, we constantly seek the approval and justification of our existence from other people. And when someone doesn’t approve, or doesn’t notice our worth we get very angry. I know this is true of me anyways.
In San Francisco, many people when asked if all humans have equal worth would say yes. Which I suppose is good, we do and it’s nice they think that. The problem is, for many, this is just lip service. They may say it and even think they believe it and yet live their lives as if they don’t believe it. For some, all humans have equal worth as long as their opinions line up with a certain political party or religious ideal. For others, all humans have equal rights until those equal rights infringe on their own private lives. And I bet if your follow up question was, “Well, why do they all have equal worth” you probably would get a pretty rambling answer.
But I think Donald Miller is onto something here. I think what gives people equal worth is the fact that God loves each one of us, not how much money we make, or how much we are adored by those around us, or how talented we are. I happen to believe this and I also happen to forget this on an hourly basis. My belief that God’s glory and love alone is what gives all humans worth is swell and dandy until someone drifts into my driving lane while yammering away on their cell phone at which point my red-faced cursing would seem to suggest, actually Josh, you really believe you are more valuable than that person. This is all very true and very convicting. I often am no better than Clamence in Camus’ The Fall when he says, “I could live happily only on condition that all individuals on earth…were turned toward me, eternally in suspense, devoid of independent life….doomed in short to sterility until the day I should deign to favor them,”.
And yet Jesus has changed all of this. Jesus’ very presence on earth, his life, his death and his resurrection were all confirmation, proof if you will, of just how valuable we are to God. Not because we have any inherent worth or value in ourselves, but because a perfect God loves us perfectly which makes us infinitely more valuable than if our worth was determined by ourselves. Imagine how radically changed your own life would be if you constantly lived your life through this reality. Imagine how changed your relationships would be, how changed your family would be, how changed your community would be, how changed your city or town would be, on and on until finally you come to how changed this whole world would be if the love of God for each person regardless of race, gender, age, or any other subdivision was known to everyone. If we all grasped how valuable we are and more importantly how valuable everyone else is in the eyes of God and how much He loves us and how it is this love that gives us value in the first place. My guess is this world would be a drastically transformed place. My guess is my own life would be a radically transformed one…and that is what I’m praying for, for this reality to really change not just my perspective but my heart. I’ll let you know how it goes.
