Relationship That Leads to Life

Relationship That Leads to Life

Why God's law is good news.

From the August Issue of Christianity Today

Posted online on August 11, 2010

My husband and I are trying to get our kids to consistently do their chores. We've tried threats and rewards but worry that our extrinsic motivators are holding our kids back from learning to obey simply because it's the right thing to do. "Gee," we long to hear them say, "my folks love me and know what's best for me, so I better pick up that broom and chip in."

Our struggle with our kids got us thinking about God's struggle with us. Surely he wants us to do the right things for the right reasons. As his people, do we behave "Christianly" because of extrinsic or intrinsic factors? As his church, what are our ideas about moral development?

I once spoke at a family camp of believers and nonbelievers who had been meeting for years. One morning, a seminary graduate shared his story with the group. David had weathered a crisis of faith when his father—a sternly religious man and prominent church leader—had been exposed in chronic sexual sin. David said that healing had come slowly and that, looking back, he realized the Christianity of his upbringing had overemphasized "morality" in place of "relationship."

It sounded to me like David's dad might have benefited from a little more emphasis on morality. And I worried that David's take was not what the group needed to hear; two affairs had fractured their community in recent years. To me, it seemed they were suffering from too much relationship and too little morality.

I remember my reaction now with chagrin. I've since seen individuals and church communities with a robust focus on morality fall countless times. I get David's point: An emphasis on holy living without a genuine, life-changing relationship with a holy God can lead to rigid legalism on the one hand or secret sin on the other—and often it leads to both.

I also know Christians who emphasize relationship—and God's un-earnable, inexhaustible love—yet who have catastrophic moral falls. Such failings do not disqualify us for God's forgiveness, but they often have shattering consequences.

So what works? When it comes to shaping character and behavior, is it better to focus on God's law or his grace?

Psalm 119 is a love song to God's law, which seems odd. My friend Steve Bell says he never understood such passion for a moral code until he thought about children playing near the edge of a cliff. Without a fence, the children are always in danger, never able to relax. But if a barrier is installed, they can play freely and without fear. God's law is God's grace. It's a safety fence that brings incredible freedom.

Of course, it's only a matter of time until a kid starts to wonder what's on the other side of the fence. If she doesn't know or trust the fence builder, she might suspect that the barrier is holding her back from bigger fun. So she hops the fence, a lemming for false liberty. Humanity has an extensive track record on this front.

Fortunately, there's more to the story. God's law is not only a safety fence; it's also a mirror that shows us we can't live up to his standards without his help. Jesus comes not to abolish the law but to finally fulfill it. Yet many of us keep hopping the fence. Why? Partly because we still don't really know and trust the fence builder.

God doesn't expect morality in the absence of relationship. The first line of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20) is not, "You shall have no other gods before me," but, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." God defines the relationship first, then describes a life lived in its context.

Psychologists warn that extrinsic motivators for morality erode intrinsic ones. When our preachers thunder warnings about living right to avoid God's wrath or earn his favor, we run the risk of drowning out that still, small voice that beckons us to live out the holiness given us solely by our Father's grace.

Conversely, when the message is that our behavior doesn't matter, that God's grace is unmerited and therefore morality is not a major issue, we seem not to know our Father at all.

In the end, it isn't morality versus relationship. It's morality because of relationship. "Grow up," Jesus says in his most famous sermon. "You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you" (Matt. 5:48, The Message).

If we know our Father loves us, and we love him, we'll trust whatever he asks of us. We won't need the threats and rewards that can skew real faith toward pharisaism. We'll just pick up our brooms and chip in.

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The Risks God Takes

The Risks God Takes
Why a little church history is a necessary--and dangerous--thing

From the June issue of Christianity Today
Posted online on 06/17/10

My kids are growing up in North American evangelicalism, just like I did. My husband and I load up the family wagon every Sunday for primarily spiritual reasons, but as a byproduct, we are also marinating our offspring in a specific cultural broth. By the time they leave for college, they will have spent 18 years in a Reformational stew.

Church culture is the norm for our kids. They have no reason to believe that Christendom has ever been different, although they do recognize progress in that they can wear jeans on Sunday mornings.

One of the quirks of growing up in certain streams of evangelicalism is a lack of historical context. In my youth, a church father was a dad on the deacons' board. If we had to summarize Christianity's history, we would probably reference the apostle Paul, Billy Graham, and our congregation's building committee.

I would have remained ignorant if it weren't for books. G.K. Chesterton cajoled me to respect tradition as a way of "giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors." My ancestors, it turns out, are a lively bunch. I discovered them scattershot—Augustine's introspection, Eckhart's mysticism, Therese of Lisieux's humility, Benedict's organizational genius. I began to see church history as a trove of devotional information, a 2,000-year stream to be mined for the golden testimonies of saints who pursued God and recorded what happened.

Hungry for context, I delved deeper—and soon realized why we don't share much church history with our kids.

Yes, there are bright lights in the story. But there are also dark moments when the church and state joined hands to form one iron fist. Sacramentalism (the teaching that God's saving grace comes only through the sacraments) was often turned from a means of grace into a way to secure power (for only the church could perform the sacraments). To challenge official church doctrine meant consigning your soul to hell—and the church would likely help you get there quickly.

When Tertullian claimed that "the blood of the martyrs is seed of the church," he could not have dreamed how much blood would be spilled at the hands of other Christians. Like that of Jan Hus, a Bohemian preacher who argued that Scripture should be available to the masses and have the ultimate authority in doctrinal matters. Seeking church reform, he preached against corruption.

When Hus refused to recant his positions before the Council of Constance in 1415, he was condemned as a heretic, strangled, and burned. But a century later, his blood helped to seed the ideas of Martin Luther and Menno Simons. Out of the pain of their difficult labor, my own church tradition was born.

Then there's the case of Michael Sattler, a 16th-century Anabaptist who was pronounced an "arch-heretic," tortured, and executed for concluding that Scripture did not advocate infant baptism. A few days later, Sattler's wife was drowned for holding the same view.

How do we process these stories? I open my Bible, and I recognize my debt to those who fought for the accessibility and authority of Scripture. My church holds a baptismal service, and I think of those who were drowned for claiming the right to be baptized as adults.

I recognize, too, that without dissenting voices, there would have been no Reformation. This tempers my response to fellow Christians whom I believe are doctrinally unorthodox. I disagree with them as my conscience dictates, but I must also respect them as potential sparks in a reforming fire. As long as the church is made up of humans, it will need reform, and reform will require dissent from the status quo.

The story of Christianity ultimately leaves me shocked at the risks God takes with humans. Even the greatest lights in church history were dishearteningly imperfect. For all his heroism, Luther attacked the Jewish faith so polemically the Nazis later misappropriated his writings for their anti-Semitic cause. Reformer Ulrich Zwingli advocated justification by faith and concern for the poor, but he also endorsed the executions of two of his brightest disciples because they became Anabaptists. Simons was an inspired Anabaptist leader, but he overzealously excommunicated many who did not live up to his pious standards.

Yet God did great things through these flawed people, much as he did with Abraham, Isaac, Peter, and Paul. As long as there is a human element in his church, it will be prone to corruption. But as long as his Spirit moves, there will be reform and renewal.

When our kids are ready, we will give them context for their religious heritage. For now, they do not understand that the church they file into on Sunday mornings is a place as dangerous as it is holy. But if God is willing to keep taking a chance on it, so are we.

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Allow for Space in the Music

Allow for Space in the Music

Acknowledging the mystery of pain.

From the April issue from Christianity Today
Posted online 04/12/2010

Eighteen months ago, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and my father's rare neurological disease took a hairpin turn for the worse. Their busy lives dissolved into months of treatments, complications, and worst-case scenarios.

Caring for them has been my first real experience with prolonged suffering. I had no clue about the malaise that can spawn from the union of chronic pain and diminished hope. My parents have been heroic. But they have also groped for the meaning of their pain and its remedy, and have found neither.

Through it all I have tried to offer comfort, and I've watched others do the same. Sometimes our words have been balms. Sometimes they have been hand grenades.

I recently asked friends online what words and actions had been the least helpful in trying times, and I got a passionate and prolific response. I recognized many of the platitudes listed as things that had come out of my mouth.

Many responses fell into a category I call "Invalidation of the Present Pain." With a bombastic mix of well-meaning fervor and unconscious impatience, we attempt to rush our wounded friend to closure. Classics include "It will all work out in the end," "Time heals all wounds," and glib recitations of Romans 8:28.

Many of those responses are wonderfully true. But so is Jesus' observation that it's those who mourn who are comforted (Matt. 5:4). He knew better than anyone the Happy Ending that awaits us, yet he was deeply respectful of the pain of our present condition. John 11:35 tells us that when Jesus' friend died, he wept; the Greek word refers to a passionate outpouring of grief. So perhaps it is more Christlike to feel pain rather than to try to expedite it.

Other replies revealed what I call "Formula Thinking," an assumption that a uniform explanation can be applied to all suffering. We believe affliction is either discipline from God or an attack from Satan, and that the right degree of repentance—or faith—will turn things around.

The idea that God blesses the good and punishes the bad, and that circumstances line up accordingly, is antithetical to the stories of New Testament believers. (It was also the error of Job's well-meaning friends.) It provides the illusion that we can control outcomes. When people are in pain, we reflexively look for something to blame, so we can avoid that variable and keep out of harm's way. Tragically, our judgments are often salt in our friends' wounds.

Still other responses fell into what I call the "Forced Meaning" reactions. "God has a reason for everything," we claim, and then we try to ram horrible tragedies into redemptive molds—suggesting that cancer, rape, and earthquakes are wake-up calls, strange expressions of grace in God's epic story. But does the Haitian mother holding her child's mangled body really have a chance of finding comfort in this platitude? Is it true?

Scripture reveals a sovereign God actively working in human events, but it also speaks clearly of free will and its consequences. I cannot begin to fathom the tension between the two. But I do believe that most of our suffering is the result of brokenness, and that God is more interested in reconciling all things to himself than in blowing them apart. Yes, God brings good out of tragedy (it's one of his specialties), but that doesn't mean he necessarily engineered the horrors.

After the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami, theologian David Bentley Hart responded eloquently to the Forced Meaning bias, saying that Christians shouldn't "console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God's goodness in this world, or … assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred."

So what can we say in times of trouble? I asked my friends what responses had helped them the most, and their replies reminded me of a piece of advice attributed to Miles Davis: "Think of a note and don't play it." As a musician, I understand—allow for space in the music, don't always rush in, and listen. As a friend and a daughter, I'm starting to get it, too. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is think of a truth and embody it rather than say it. When we long to tell a hurting friend that she's not alone, we can simply sit with her as a tangible reminder that she isn't. When we want to reassure a struggling family that God cares for them, a well-timed casserole can demonstrate that very fact. Only when we acknowledge the present pain—and the mysteries that likely shroud its cause—do we earn the right to affirm God's goodness in the midst of it.

And only when we mourn—for ourselves, for each other, and for a world groaning for redemption—can we be comforted … and be a comfort.

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Strength in Meekness

Strength in Meekness
What to do with the anger that saps strength.
From the February issue of Christianity Today
Posted online 02/15/2010

(Note -- if you'd like to hear "Roll It", a song on my new cd inspired by the ideas in this column, go HERE)

My grandmother was great, but she had that special mother-in-law gift of raising my mother's blood pressure. A well-timed comment about cooking or child-rearing would leave my mom stammering and defensive.

As a teenager, I would walk by and whisper, "Water off a duck's back, Mom." She came to understand my code—Let it go; Nana doesn't mean anything by it, and we know you're a good wife and mother—and my whispers usually helped. But now I wish I had known to say, "Roll it onto God, Mom."

Psalm 37:5 tells us to "commit your way to the Lord." Translated, this verse says something like, "roll onto Jehovah thy way." At certain family dinners, that means passing the gravy and "rolling" the need to defend ourselves—as well as our more serious needs and concerns—onto God.

Jesus was quoting from Psalm 37 when he said the meek will inherit the earth, and it turns out that the whole psalm is a primer on meekness. I have always been a little over-meek (reticent, shy, too deferential). So when I read the Bible and find the meek congratulated, I'm delighted.

But there's a catch. It turns out that only two people in Scripture are described as "meek": Moses and Jesus. So meekness likely has little to do with timidity.

If meekness isn't weakness, what is it? The word has an association with domesticated animals, specifically beasts of burden. At first blush, this etymology doesn't thrill me; I don't particularly aspire to be ox-like. But when I think about it, an ox at the plow is not weak but extraordinarily strong. The key, though, is that his power is harnessed and directed. Perhaps meekness is strength that is submitted to an appropriate authority.

Shortly after I began writing this column, I found myself in rare conflict with a friend. At first I thought my anger was giving me strength, bolstering my courage so I could deal with the issues. But the anger soon betrayed me, sapping my energy and compromising my ability to act according to wisdom and divine direction. It's only as I have turned my hurt—and the overwhelming urge to prove that I'm right—over to God that I've begun to be able to respond (and sometimes resist responding) from a place of holy, rather than human, strength.

Psalm 37 is all about strength in meekness. It deals with trusting God to be God, and with not trying to do his job. The meek, for example, don't repay evil for evil; they rely on God for justice (vv. 1-3). Several verses mention that the meek don't fret. And the meek let God provide their hearts' desires rather than trying to manipulate people and circumstances to get what they want (v. 4).

How much energy do I expend trying to secure provisions, control outcomes, and manage people's perceptions of me? Psalm 37 tells us that the meek give that labor up. They trust God's claims that he will provide, protect, and defend, and in so doing free up resources for putting their hands to God's plow. It's a good plan.

But here's the thing: I would be fine with rolling my burdens onto God if I were guaranteed resolution. There's a joke that describes the effects of playing a country song backwards: Your spouse returns, your dog is resurrected, and your truck starts working again. I wish that surrender to God worked the same way.

But faith isn't like that. The biblical witness is that circumstances often get more challenging, not less, when one's way is committed to the Lord. So why roll it onto God if "it" (the need, circumstance, quarrelsome friend, or critical in-law) isn't necessarily going to get fixed?

There are stories about prisoners in Nazi camps who were made to move heavy boulders from one end of a field to the other, only to carry them back again. Many of the men were eventually driven mad, not by the backbreaking nature of the work, but by its futility.

It isn't the experience of being misunderstood (or suffering or poverty) itself that will undo us, but rather the sense that we are enduring hardship to no good end. That's why the apostle Paul emphasized that we do not labor in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). We discover there is no wasted effort or pain, because there is nothing that God cannot redeem.

I have a choice. I can wear myself out pushing the boulders of my life around my prison yard. Or I can be meek, and roll those burdens onto God. I'm not sure exactly what Jesus meant when he said the meek will "inherit the earth," but I've certainly discovered that this world is a better place when I roll it off my shoulders and into his hands.

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Our Divine Distortion

Our Divine Distortion

We can't see God clearly without Jesus. O come, Emmanuel.

From the December Issue of Christianity Today

posted online 12/18/2009

 

 

When I found a brand new lap-top for half price on eBay, I told my friend and musical colleague Spencer about my bargain of a find. He was worried: "Usually when something's too good to be true …"

"I know," I replied impatiently, "but the seller has a 100 percent approval rating."

"Be careful," warned Spencer.

"Of course," I assured him, annoyed. I wasn't born yesterday.

I sent the seller $1,300 and discovered in very short, sickening order that I had fallen prey to a classic scam. A fraudster had hacked someone's eBay identity in order to relieve easy marks like me of our money.

I felt an absolute fool—and didn't want to tell Spencer. The next time I saw his number on my caller ID, I didn't answer. I could just imagine his "I told you so."

Soon, I was avoiding Spencer completely. And I started to resent him. Why did he have to be so judgmental? Why couldn't he be on my side? Why was I ever friends with that jerk?

Eventually, we had to fly together to perform at a concert. "Whatever happened with that computer thing?" he asked an hour into the flight. Cornered, I finally confessed my foolishness, dreading the inevitable response. But as soon as I told Spencer about my mistake, a strange thing happened. The enemy I had turned him into evaporated. Spencer turned into Spencer again, my teasing but deeply empathetic buddy.

As embarrassed as I was by my eBay error, I felt even dumber about the way I had allowed my shame to distort my perception of a best friend. If my hand had not been forced, I would have remained estranged from him indefinitely.

I've always considered myself perceptive, but the longer I live, the more I discover my susceptibility to misinterpretation. This is true of the way I view my friends, truer of the way I see my enemies, and perhaps truest of the way I perceive God.

I was raised to understand that sin's gravest consequence is the way it forces God to perceive me: God is holy, I'm not, and there's no way he can even look at me until I have the covering of Christ's blood. In my teens, I clipped a poem out of a youth magazine in which the poet asks—and answers—a pressing question: "How can a righteous God look at me, a sinner, and see a precious child? Simple: The Son gets in his eyes."

But what about how I look at God? I've often been oblivious to one of the most insidious byproducts of the Fall: Sin affects my perception of God. Or, to turn a phrase from that poem, the sin gets in my eyes.

Before Adam and Eve had fallen for the first lie, they basked in God's company. But after a few bites of forbidden fruit, they no longer looked forward to seeing their Maker. When he came calling, they hid.

Had God changed? No. Adam and Eve's brokenness altered their perception of God, not his character. Ever since, we humans have been letting our shame poison our understanding of God. He becomes an ogre, or a bookkeeper, or maybe just a disinterested, detached monarch.

Many of us unconsciously relate to God our Father as a Godfather—there's a lot he can do for us when he likes us, but don't get on his bad side. So we avoid him. And the longer we refuse to take his calls, the worse the distortion becomes.

But here is some good news: Jesus is the antidote to our misperceptions. When we speak of the Incarnation, we acknowledge that Jesus is "God con carne"—God with meat on. Our questions about God's character—Is he really about mercy, justice, and a love that just won't quit?—are answered in the person of Jesus.

In one sense, Adam and Eve were right to fear facing God. The consequences of their choices were painful. But even God's seemingly harshest judgment—banishment from the Garden and the Tree of Life—was rooted in love. If the first humans had accessed eternal life in Eden, they would have remained in their brokenness forever. God chose another way—a death and resurrection way that would cost him much—because he was and is and always will be with us and for us.

Christmas clarifies this resoundingly. That's why every time the angels announced Christ's birth they said, "Do not be afraid." Yes, we should fear sin's consequences. But we need not fear the perfect love of a God willing to come and shiver in our skin to save us.

We do not have the power to change God's character. Our Father is our Father. Always has been, always will be. But we will never see him for who he really is until the Son gets in our eyes.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Come, Lord Jesus

Come, Lord Jesus 
Oh wait, He's already here.
From the October issue of Christianity Today 
posted online 10/12/2009 

I was a guest musician at a church in Winnipeg, engaged in the familiar liturgies of a pre-service prayer huddle. One person prayed for the congregation's safety in inclement weather, another for the technical aspects of the service, and a third kindly remembered my family back home.

When my turn came, I must have used a phrase like, "God, we invite you here among us." I clearly recall the minister's prayer, which followed mine: "We know we do not have to request your presence, because there is nowhere you are not. So we celebrate the fact you are already here with us now."

My head stayed bowed, but my face burned. This guy is correcting my theology with his prayer!

The service went as planned. But throughout the evening, I was mentally defending my choice of words. Of course I know God is everywhere—I've read Psalm 139! I was requesting an extra measure of his presence, an outpouring of his Spirit. Or, if you want to be more precise (and clearly you do), I was praying that God would help us to be open to him. Aren't we just arguing semantics?

I never articulated any of these thoughts to the minister. But the dialogue I've had with him in my head ever since has gradually refined my thinking—a case of iron sharpening particularly dull iron. I now believe that pastor's gentle correction was necessary.

If the psalmist is right—that there truly is nowhere we can go to flee God's presence—why do we act like his attendance is intermittent? And why do we assume it's dependent on us?

"Halfway through the retreat, God showed up," we say. As if he wasn't there before we were, drawing us to that time and place.

"Lord, we welcome you to come," we pray. As if he needs us to usher him into the world he created. As if we do not "live and move and have our being" in him alone (Acts 17:28).

In the Gospels, Jesus makes a simple proclamation with seismic implications: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near" (Matt. 4:17). For those of us who grew up in the hot, scary shadows of brimstone pulpits, the command to repent causes an involuntary shudder. But the Greek word is metanoeite,* which is more invitation than threat. It means "change your mind" or "reconsider."

Reconsider what? According to Jesus, everything you thought you knew about reality. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven is near.

Most of us think of heaven as somewhere out there, the place where God watches from a distance and we will one day join him. But for the biblical writers, heaven is close. In fact, the "first heavens" is a term used to describe the earth's atmosphere. So when Jesus describes the invisible (but very real) realm that God inhabits, he lets us know it's not only out there, but also as near as the atmosphere surrounding our bodies and the air we breathe.

That Winnipeg minister was calling me to repent—to reconsider what I thought I knew about reality and the way God pervades it. I don't have to invoke God's presence. I only have to attend to it.

This change of heart and mind alters the way I approach discipleship. I suspect I have sometimes unconsciously used spiritual disciplines as smoke signals to get God's attention. Now I am learning that they are simply ways of letting him capture mine.

A similar change has occurred in my orientation toward evangelism. I don't have to give a nonbeliever something I have that she doesn't. I need only invite her to open herself up to what God is already doing all around her.

The other day I was trying to describe this shift in my understanding to my friend Roy Salmond. He ran to pull out an article he'd read in Time magazine more than a decade ago. It's an eloquent piece called "The Game of Catch," by Roger Rosenblatt, about baseball, parenthood, and the wordless communication between a father and son tossing the ball around. While the article is in no way religious, one thought in particular has permanently changed Roy's view of life with God.

"They do not call it a game of throw," Roy quoted, grinning. "They call it catch."

Oddly enough, I understood exactly what he meant. Spiritually speaking, I've been preoccupied with throwing the ball; this turns out to be a case in which it would be better to receive than to give.

God is the initiator. We love because he first loved us. We're here because he thought of us and welcomed us into his world. Yes, he stands at the doors to our hearts and knocks, but we need only let him in. We don't have to summon him from another country or galaxy. The kingdom of God is already near.

Repent. It's time to play catch.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

* Thanks to the kind folks who pointed out that the correct tense of the Greek for repent there should have been "metanoeo".  I repent of getting my Greek grammar wrong!


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Matter Matters, August, 2009, CT

Matter Matters

Lessons learned between the couch and a 10k race.

In a department-store line, I watched an undergarment commercial on a screen above the cashier's desk. It featured women expressing dissatisfaction with their figures, while the camera zoomed in on their chests.

It seemed I was watching a series of dismemberments, as the infomercial's editors divorced body parts from their owners in order to direct attention to deficiencies in quality and trajectory. I was struck by how tragic it is that millions of humans—impossibly complex in neurological makeup, fantastically unique, and almost unbearably freighted with potential—walk around obsessed with perceived appendage inadequacies (or superiorities).

This is no news flash: We live in a body-obsessed culture. Materialism—the conviction that only matter can be proven to exist and that belief in transcendence is at best a fond hope, and at worst a dangerous delusion—is the spirit of our age. Ironically, it leaves us with no spirit at all, just our bodies and their appetites, unbridled and insatiable. No wonder we approach the fridge—and each other—with a predatory eye. We're just trying to survive.

I believe that the only cure is to embrace nonmaterial reality as an integral part of the universe and ourselves. The conviction that we cannot be reduced to bodies is foundational to my worldview. It has also enabled me to justify avoiding any sort of consistent physical exercise for much of my life.

My husband is a kinesthetic person; if he goes too long without activity he gets restless. I, on the other hand, can be perfectly and indefinitely happy with a book and a comfortable couch. Although I often have felt a vague sense of guilt (and, lately, gravity), I have found a way to spiritualize my inclinations. I focus on soul things (books, ideas, music, relationships), not body things (exercise, nutrition). It's always seemed to me that exercising for exercise's sake is like wasting your life constantly fine-tuning your car rather than driving it somewhere.

Then, this past year, my parents got sick. Seeing how stress on the body—both theirs and mine—affects the well-being of the soul, I began reconsidering my position on exercise.

So I promised my 11-year-old son that I would run a race with him, and I downloaded a "Learn to Run a 10k in 13 Weeks" training guide. And I started to run.

Actually, run is a strong word. I began to shuffle forward in a continuous motion. But this was no small thing. I started rising an hour earlier than normal to jog before the kids got up for school. My friends said, "Who are you, and what have you done with Carolyn?"

I've been shocked by how spiritual an activity exercise has turned out to be. When I am running I am uniquely awake and open; it's not uncommon for me to wind up crying, laughing, praying, or praising. The neighbors must find this unsettling; I find it fascinating.

I suspect that my longstanding protest against materialism has made me susceptible to another time-honored heresy: Gnosticism, the belief that matter is inherently evil. Gnostics wondered how a perfect God could be defiled in imperfect human form. Gnosticism had to be struck down repeatedly in order to reach an orthodox understanding of the Incarnation: Jesus was fully God and fully human. The Word became flesh (John 1:14).

The Incarnation shows us that matter is not all there is. But it also shows us that matter matters. Jesus came a long way to take on our molecular structure. He pointed to other kinds of existence, telling his disciples, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about" (John 4:32). But he also fully inhabited our bodily reality, so much so that many of his miracles involved food, drink, physical healing, and even resurrection. One of his final earthly acts was to cook fish on the beach for his friends.

So maybe our bodies aren't the cars that drive our souls to the altar. Maybe they are an integral part of what we lay on the altar, and are up for healing and holiness with the rest of us.

After all, Jesus called us to love God with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Just as his words disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, they call the overactive to stillness and activate the overly still. They restore the soul to those who overemphasize the body, and redeem the body for those who focus only on the soul.

"The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you," says The Message translation of 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. "God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body"—even if that means shuffling forward in a continuous motion, one step at a time.

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