Much of our relationship with God is asking Him to intervene in situations and circumstances that are beyond our control.

This isn’t going to be an article talking about how when we pray we need to spend time listening, being quiet, and meditating on God’s word. All those things are true, and I could never do that subject the justice that John Mark Comer does in his new book Into The Quiet. Buy it today and expand your prayer life beyond supplication and intercession.

What I want to focus on is how we ask God to intervene in our situations, and His favorite way of showing up.

I’m the type of person who likes to be in control. I obviously wouldn’t say I’m controlling, it’s just that everything in life goes better for everyone if I am in control. So why not just make life better for everyone?!

Seriously though, I am independent and stubborn, and I like to solve problems myself without asking for help. This means that by the time I finally give up some control and come to the end of all of my ideas, I will turn to God in prayer.

I’m sure God is so excited when I pray about a situation or circumstance because I know exactly what He should do to fix it! I’ve already run all the possible scenarios, given the advice, done whatever was within my power, and now I just need a little “divine boost” to accomplish the solution I’ve come to. All He has to do is exactly what I ask and then everything in my life and the lives of my loved ones will be solved and He can go back to dealing with “lazy” people who let Him tell them how to live. Not me, I would never put the burden of ordering my steps on God.

Maybe you identify with my deep and sad way of thinking and behaving. Or maybe you are actually a person of true faith and humility and you bring your situations to God with open hands asking Him to intervene and do what only He can do.

Even those who are humble and full of faith, we are asking God to step into these circumstances to change them. We are asking for a healing, a redemption, or a correction and conviction. We want to see the Spirit of God move in power to see someone set free from addiction or come to trust in Jesus for salvation.

We are asking God to do something. We are asking Him to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth as a foretaste of the wholeness and peace that will be in the new heavens and new earth. We want to experience a sliver of the hope and redemption that will be brought to fullness at the end of this broken world. Oftentimes, we experience the opposite.

God doesn’t seem to come through. There is no miraculous healing. The marriage ends in divorce. The loved one dies of an overdose. The lies that others speak about us are never exposed. We are left feeling like God didn’t intervene when He should have and often we are left reeling and asking questions like, “If God is good, how does He let this happen?”

I wish we could get into the complexity of that question and possible responses to it, but that’s not what I’m hoping we focus on today.

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As I was thinking about this concept and reading different narratives in Scripture I really began to see a pattern emerging about how God often chooses to intervene in situations and circumstances throughout history.

From the Garden of Eden, to Mount Sinai, to Jesus being born as a baby, we see over and over again that God chooses to respond to the most intense situations by drawing near.

We know that God is an intrinsically relational person. He is Father, Son, and Spirit in perfectly submissive triune love. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get into Trinity theology.

Eden. God shows this from the very beginning when He reacts to the first major disruption to the world He created when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit and brought sin into God’s good creation. He knew what they had done and chose to come to walk with them in the cool of the evening, just as He had always done. He chose to draw near despite their sin, He clothed them, and disciplined them as a loving Father.

Sinai. We see this same strategy of intimacy on Mount Sinai when Moses led the people of Israel out of slavery. Once the people were safely away from the Egyptians, God brought them to Mount Sinai to reveal Himself through the Law, dwell with them through the Tabernacle, and set them apart as His people to lead them into the promised land.

He could have chosen to deliver His law and instructions to the people through a loud voice. He could have written them all on stones and had all of Israel watch a giant hand carve them. Yet, He chose to call Moses upon the mountain for weeks on end. He was with Moses face to face, intimately, as one is with a friend. (Exodus 33:11)

God could have communicated any way He wanted to, He chose to intervene through intimacy with Moses and with the people of Israel.

Jesus. The greatest example of all, that God chooses to intervene through intimacy, is the incarnation. Jesus being born as a baby, fully human, living an entire life on earth reveals God’s desire for intimacy. Jesus could have been sent to a human body as an adult, taught, been sinless, and died as the sacrifice for our sin, raising from the dead and conquering death. However, it was God’s plan to have Jesus live a life of intimacy with humanity.

“So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. ¹⁵ This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.”

Hebrews 4:15-16

We so desperately ask God to intervene on our behalf or on the behalf of our loved ones. We want to see Him move in power, and sometimes He does.

But more often than not, He intervenes by offering us intimacy. He is the High Priest who understands us and wants to be near us in our suffering.

God showed up at Mount Sinai over 500 years after He was there with Moses. This time Elijah was depressed and felt like no one was faithful to God except him. He was borderline suicidal and did not want to go on. You probably know the story. God told Elijah to stand at the mouth of the cave that he was in on the mountain. When Elijah did, there was a mighty windstorm that broke the mountain, there was an earthquake, and there was a fire, but the Lord was not in any of those.

He was in the gentle whisper that drew Elijah close. God was showing that He was big enough to show up in those powerful and mighty ways, because He is. Yet, like He often does, He shows up in a gentle whisper that begs “draw near” because His favorite way to intervene is through intimacy.

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I’ve been wrestling with a concept for the last couple months. I’m not positive I’ve even fleshed it out to the point I’ll be able to write about it in a helpful way. Maybe this is more about starting a conversation with a concept that keeps popping up in so many areas of my spiritual life.

From August 2010 until August of 2020 I lived in the inner-city of Detroit. I did ministry school, an internship, and hands on ministry at a very small church plant in the heart of the city. In September of 2020, my family and I moved to rural North Alabama to a beautiful megachurch. We now live one hour from the interstate. I used to live 15 minutes from 4 different interstates.

Talk about Culture Shock. Midwest to South. City to Country. Church Plant to 85+ year old Megachurch. I still don’t think people have adjusted to our accents, and we are still getting adjusted after 6 years.

I think we have all experienced different kinds of culture shock at some point in our lives. Maybe it was your first time visiting a city like New York or Los Angeles. Maybe it was your first time going on a camping trip, or a road trip across the country.

When we experience different cultures it can be a strange experience. We usually feel a little uncomfortable or out of place. We look at the natives and wonder how long it would take us to feel at home in these environments.

I was beginning to have this experience of culture shock in my spiritual journey. I have found myself feeling out of place when I’m in environments or moments of intimacy with God. I know I’m a pastor and I’m not supposed to have this experience, but I really don’t think I’m alone. If anything, I think I could be more susceptible to this than those who aren’t working in ministry.

Here is where we come back to the question I opened with:

Will I experience culture shock in heaven?

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I think most of us who are followers of Jesus know what the promise of heaven is. Perfection. No more pain and no more tears. No need for sleep. No more evil. Worshipping in the presence of God and most incredibly: a perfect relationship with Him.

Our eternity is marked by intimacy with God that is uninterrupted by sin. We will be able to worship Him, walk with Him, talk with Him, and enjoy Him forever.

The cause of Culture Shock is that the life you are used to living is very different from the environment or life that you are walking into or participating in.

So, if heaven is deep intimacy with and worship of God, will I have culture shock in heaven?

This leads to a second question,

A continuation rather than an interruption.

I think that is the crux of this entire conversation.

Is heaven going to be a continuation of my life or a strong interruption to it?

Sadly, even as a pastor, I think the answer to that question is more often than not:

An interruption.

The reason that I think people who are pastors or more heavily involved in church ministry are more susceptible to this is because the structure of our lives is built to serve God. My whole life revolves around my calling into ministry. Especially being in a smaller town I’m always having the opportunity to see people from church, soccer, or school in every store or place I go to.

When your whole life, including your job, is about serving God, you can begin to think that doing things for God and for others is the most important thing. I’m already wired as an achiever. I love to do things well, and work hard, and pour out my life for something I believe in.

The thing I’ve begun to realize is that I focus on doing things for God and for others and I choose to neglect: quiet, rest, and intimacy with God.

In heaven, there will be no achieving for God. There will be no pouring out my life to accomplish a work. Eternity will be a perfect relationship with God–the very thing I’ve been putting on the back-burner of my life.

When I get into an environment where people want to be with God more than they want to do things for God or for others I begin to feel the culture shock even here on earth. I begin to feel like a foreigner amongst those who truly desire to be with God more than work for Him.

I want to spend my days beginning to acclimate to the culture of heaven. I want the highlights and the most important moments of my day to be moments in God’s presence. I want my life on earth to be structured in a way that eternity becomes a continuation of the life I’m living with God.

Right now, eternity would be an interruption and I would experience some real culture shock to the life I’m currently living. May we begin to embrace the culture of heaven as we bring God’s kingdom to earth starting with our own hearts and lives.

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Formed, Not Fed

Tech and AI ethics through a biblical-theological lens. Discipleship resources to support the church. Championing great church leaders, women and men.

By Holly Lazzaro

We’ve now had some time to process the Pope’s encyclical, released in May. I am grateful that he wrote it, and I am glad that it had a global impact. In my experience, it was especially effective in starting some long-overdue conversations about what is happening to us as humans in a technologically mediated world. I highly esteem the Pope’s work in the encyclical, so I want to frame this piece by making that clear.

I will focus only on one section, because it surfaces a core facet of the work I do here on Substack and in the real world of tech ethics, which, I think, is why Austin asked me to guest post on this topic. I hope that it helps you to clarify your thinking on the digital world we inhabit and what truth means to us.

Paragraph 100 of Magnifica Humanitas names three issues with AI: the ease with which results are obtained, the illusion of objectivity, and the simulation of human communication.1 The Pope prescribes “vigilance” so that these tools do not 1. weaken personal creativity and judgement, and 2. cause a gradual loss of desire to form genuine human connections. I am on board with his concerns. However, there is a fatal flaw in the call to “vigilance.” Vigilance assumes that we stand above the system, watching it, and choosing whether to be moved by it. However, Scripture, Calvin, and recent research on digital culture all suggest that this kind of vigilance may not be available to us when it comes to our digital ecosystems.

This intersects with another issue. Beyond AI and into all algorithmic interactions, we face a problem in the loss of shared epistemic foundations. In the digital culture there are new problems with what we believe is true, what is presented to us as true, and how that “truth” forms us.

Let’s look critically at the first epistemic destabilization in history: Genesis 3, “Did God really say…” This was not presented as a competing fact, but a question aimed at dismantling trust. Not much has changed since then in the competing forces between truth and lies. But the delivery system for lies has become much more sophisticated, and further, it has been designed to hold our attention so that our “vigilance” on behalf of truth and moral agency becomes muted or even silenced.

Dr. James Williams writes about this in his work “Freedom and Persuasion in the Attention Economy.” The builders of the platforms we inhabit every day were taught how to use variable reward schedules (the same architecture behind slot machines) to keep us engaged. This creates “ongoing dopaminergic effects that deplete a person’s willpower and result in akratic behavior.”2 My friend James loves some big words. But what that quote means is this: we are imperfect, we don’t have infinite willpower, and the small bursts of “reward” from these platforms give us cyclical dopamine rushes that cause us to act against our own judgement (read “vigilance”).

Does this sound familiar to you? Have you found yourself lost in the scroll? Have you decided to take a break from social media, only to feel it calling you back? Do you engage with any online shopping tools and find yourself browsing “suggestions” based on your purchase history? These platforms were designed to keep you on them. In keeping you there, you remain a viable product that they can sell. That’s the hard truth.

Variable rewards don’t need to convince us of anything false. They only need to outlast our willpower, which we already know is a finite and depletable resource. In this way, over time, the platforms wear down choice into raw reaction. The system is gradually bypassing our rational capacity to change our mind.

According to Calvin, our minds were a little lost to begin with. He calls the human mind a “perpetual forge of idols,”3 endlessly manufacturing distortions of what it already perceives about God. Paul makes the same claim in Romans 1: Humanity is not ignorant of truth, it suppresses the truth it already knows and exchanges it for what is easier to live with. So, Williams is describing a system/mechanism, and Calvin and Paul name the human susceptibility it exploits.

These platforms function less like a window onto a shared world and more like a membrane, admitting the information that confirms our preferences and excluding the rest. We call this technological mediation. The feed is not lying, per se, but it is filtering a version of truth according to the user’s exhibited preferences. The more that filter works, the more separated from truth (and each other) we become. This has been happening beneath the surface of our digital lives for over 20 years, ever since Google engineers discovered that user behavior was something they could sell.

Now we also, of course, have intentional misdirection and lies online. These come in the form of synthetic media and deepfakes. Which means we are watching two forms of the same erosion happen at once: one overtly deliberate (falsified claims or images) and one covertly deliberate (software architects training us to stay on the platform for monetary gain). Both erode truth and the fabric of society. I am sure you have seen this crop up in your families, your congregations, your small groups, and your neighborhoods. We have lost shared truth. We have become tribal because we believe our position is the only right position. We “other” more than we used to. We have lost our way.

What is left, then, when culture fails us?

The Church.

A formation problem requires a formative response, and the Church has always known how to do formation: gather for worship, preach the word, offer the sacraments, practice discipline (church leaders guiding members to live godly lives and correct unrepentant sin).

The Church knows that embodied presence matters in relationships. She knows that the “ease” warned about in Magnifica runs counter to our sanctification. She knows the friction of human relationships is what grows and stretches us toward Christlikeness. She knows that it is hard, but worth it, to pay attention to a 35-minute sermon and the “simulation” of a sermon will never suffice. She knows that corporate worship changes hearts and minds. The active life of the Church forms us.

I have decided to start posting and sending out my articles every other week. I’ve been fighting it for several weeks as my life is getting busier I have been fighting to keep writing new content every single week.

My wife finally got me to see that I was refusing to live out the very thing that I’m trying to embody in my writing. I want to be someone who prioritizes the life that is actually in front of me.

The college ministry my wife and I help run has just kicked back off for the school year, I’m coaching both of my daughters’ rec league soccer teams, and I’m about to be out of town for at least half of the next 5 weeks.

I felt like it was my duty to keep writing and that I needed to just fight through this season, when Sarah finally let me know it wasn’t going to make me a failure to cut back how much I’m writing for a season.

Thank you all so much for reading and being a part of this writing journey for me. I’m sure that my writing will be better for you all and I will definitely work to be back to an every week writing as life slows down later in October.

Please leave a comment with anything you would like me to be writing about, I’m hoping to add value so let me know!

“ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE” That is the subtitle of Pope Leo XIV’s Encyclical. So, while it is definitely a writing on the age and time of AI it is steeped and founded on the idea and argument for human dignity. I could spend several articles making the connections between human dignity and AI to get us to where we have a baseline understanding, but Leo already did it exceptionally in his Encyclical. I cannot recommend it enough.

What I would like to do is focus on some of the ideas for human dignity that Leo sets forth throughout the paper. I want us to find a way to integrate the deep human truths that are uncovered to help us shape the way we go about our daily lives with one another, not just in our relationship with technology.

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“Ontological Dignity” is a term I was not familiar with before the Encyclical, so I want to give us the loose definition before we jump into the Pope’s specific description of it. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of being, existence, and reality. Therefore, Ontological Dignity is the idea of the dignity that humanity has based on existing, think intrinsic value, or the value that people are born with automatically.

Pope Leo XIV says this about Ontological DIgnity:

This is the foundation for a conversation about the dignity of human beings that is subtly being challenged by society’s understanding of human purpose and value. I want to spend the rest of our time breaking down a quote from early on in the paper:

The three areas I want to focus on are: “remain profoundly human,” “safeguard the grandeur of humanity..revealed in its fullness in Christ,” and “a heart open to others…willing to listen…seeks what unites.”

Remain Profoundly Human. I believe the way that we remain human is by leaning into the one thing that technology cannot copy–embodied presence. Even once AI is inhabiting humanoid robots they will not be able to have physical and physiological presence with a human being the way another human can. There is something profoundly human about sharing an embodied human experience with another human.

Our temptation is to allow our relationships to operate on a purely digital level. We live as though texting, Snapchat, email, following on Instagram, and Facebook Friendships are the bulk of our friendships.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that relationships that happen mostly through digital means can be real, deep, and formational. I also know that it is completely different from the profound human experience of a meal together. Relationships that grow through the 5 senses are deeper and truer than what we can experience through a phone.

We must fight to be truly present with those we are in relationship with. Embodied presence is the greatest gift we can give a human being in a digital age.

Grandeur of Humanity. Leo is very clear that the beauty and grandeur of humanity is “bestowed upon us” meaning it is a gift. It is also “revealed in its fullness in Christ,” meaning that Jesus is the picture of true and full humanity.

The call is to “lovingly safeguard” this humanity that is a gift revealed in the person of Jesus. This means that we are actively looking for the image of God in others. We are fighting to protect the “profound value of a human life that God has willed and called into being.”

This “grandeur of humanity” is not about whether a person is truly displaying value or merit; it is about protecting their God-given life and dignity because they are created and loved by God.

A Heart Open To Others…Willing To Listen…Seeking What Unites. Leo gives us these three steps as a way to find true progress in the battle to remain profoundly human and safeguard the humanity of others.

These steps are not linear. They do not build on one another. They are very interconnected and have to be in harmony with each other. Having an open heart, a listening ear, and seeking what brings unity rather than separation, rely on one another to be whole.

An open heart requires us to see people as made in the image of God. We must be thinking of the value a person holds as a created child of God, not based on their behavior or contribution to society.

I believe the best way to be willing to listen is to be physically present with someone. It’s hard to listen through messages or text. Even trying to have conversations or true connection through this writing is not realistic. In order for me to truly be open to listening to someone who disagrees with me an embodied, physical conversation is best. We remember that people are real, have feelings, have a story, and it’s okay if it’s different from ours if we will hear them out.

I love that Pope Leo specifically says, “seeks what unites.” It doesn’t say “seeks unity.” This is a shift, not in what we are trying to accomplish, but in how we choose to see. We are choosing to look for ways to agree and connect with people. We are finding the things that bind us together as Human whether we have different religious, political, or cultural beliefs and experiences. We are seeking to find the thread that ties us all together as human beings.

There is so much more I could say, but I’ve challenged us with enough to stay busy for a long time.

May we find a way to be physically present, look for the image of God in others, and come with open hearts, open ears, and eyes that look for the humanity in us all.

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We know that we demonize those who disagree with us. We fight for our tribe. We want to defend our lives and our beliefs. Yet, we are not holding firmly to our beliefs in love. We are not allowing conversation and nuance to help inform our view of those whom we disagree with. We have become closed off with tunnel vision. We force a label on everything in life so that it is simpler to navigate and we don’t have to engage critical thinking or empathy.

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What can bring peace in this world of enmity?

Pope Leo XIV says this in his Encyclical:

The paradox of God’s peace is that it didn’t come through a great war, or through over the top revelation, it came through a baby. God became flesh and dwelt among us as an infant, slowly and deliberately bringing us into peace with Him. That slow, deliberate life made a way for us to become children of God and be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Now, as Pope Leo says, we need that peace inside of us to be “awakened” and “moved.”

Tears, Fragility, Silence, and Struggle. These are the things that should awaken within us compassion and desire for peace. What I notice about each of these words is that they are related to weakness. Each of these examples speaks to the very human part of each person. It looks past the words they speak, the confidence they project, the arguments they stand for; it looks to the weakness that hides under the bravado.

This is not something that comes naturally to us. It is a peace we must fight for. I love that irony. However, that peace is living inside of us through the person of the Holy Spirit, but we must “allow ourselves to be moved.” I think the way we can cultivate this peace to be awakened in us is through Curiosity and Compassion.

Curiosity. I wouldn’t say I’m a naturally curious person. I’m a natural learner and I think that’s quite different. A learner, like myself, loves to collect facts so that I can know correct answers and have things figured out. A truly curious person is someone who is always ready for their own pre-conceived notions to be challenged and they are looking to truly understand things better, not learn facts.

I am always trying to grow my curiosity since I am naturally cynical. I think this is the absolute key when we come up against a polarizing person or topic where our natural tendency is to choose enmity over peace.

If someone has a different political or theological view on something we believe very strongly, our natural response is to defend and attack. What if our response became curiosity? What if we began asking questions to better understand?

I don’t mean the questions where we are trying to trap them in their own “faulty” logic and then spring a “GOTCHA” moment on them once we trip them up in their own web of misunderstanding. I mean a genuine desire to understand the human being underneath the belief or political solution.

Ask questions that help you identify this person’s fragility, silence, or struggle that this belief is helping them cope with. We all have those areas in our life, but we often come to different solutions. If we allow curiosity to lead the way, we can find out why the human being, behind the political agenda, believes so strongly in their ideals. I think we will find out it is to solve the same deep tears, fragility, silence, and struggle we all face within ourselves.

Compassion. Once you have helped to humanize your “enemy” through curiosity, the Holy Spirit inside of you will have the ability to move your heart to compassion rather than judgement. You have allowed curiosity to awaken the peace within you so that compassion can be your response instead of enmity.

Jesus showed us so many times throughout His ministry that He would meet the crowds with compassion. The people were needy, ungrateful, and usually at least a little socially unaware of when Jesus was tired or needed space. Yet, often “he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” 2

He didn’t blame the people for their own choices that made them confused or helpless, He saw past their outward issues and saw the tears, fragility, silence, and struggle within them, which moved Him to compassion and peace.

Leo closes the above quote saying:

At the end of the day, there will always be different denominations, different theological beliefs, different political parties, and different political solutions to society’s issues. The way to remember our humanity in the midst of this polarization and enmity is to find this life of peace through openness and communion.

Openness is the same idea as curiosity. We are ready to hear from other people’s stories, experiences, and worldviews. We don’t come to relationships to convert people to our specific set of beliefs and solutions, we come with a goal to understand and be moved to communion.

Communion doesn’t mean full agreement, it means unity and alignment even with differences. The unity and alignment are found in the “desire that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

May we stay curious, see people as human, awaken the peace within us, be moved to compassion, remain open, and find communion amongst differences so that we can see His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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I want to take on the problem with extremism and polarization when it comes to politics and even religion within the Church. There is so much denominational and theological enmity and polarization that I want us to at least be aware of it, and how technology, media and the algorithm are making it something so very much unlike Jesus.

Over the next two weeks I want to tackle this issue, but it’s so in depth that I want to make sure you know how I want to move through it.

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This week is going to be a little more doom, gloom, and exposure. I want to really open our eyes to what is happening in the Church, and how we are operating in the world as Christians. There won’t be many solutions offered today, but I think it will be good for us to sit and have some deep introspection. Maybe we will even invite the Holy Spirit to convict and correct us.

Next week I want to bring forward some of the solutions and hope that Pope Leo brings in response to his own exposure of the disease that is polarization and enmity in the world and Church.

Now that I’ve got you excited and dying to read more, let’s dive in.

There is a lot to unpack in these quotes. Go ahead and chew on them for a second. Let each phrase and idea sink in a little deeper so that we can truly address them.

Polarization. Conflict. Confrontation. Tribalism. Victim Mentality. Oversimplification.

We read these things about the relationship between nations, or how politics in America looks, and we agree that things are a little crazy and extreme, but are we willing to look at how we as Christians interact with each other or the politics and nations involved?

Regarding Christians And Politics. A large part of my story is spending 10 years at an inner-city church plant in Detroit, MI. Blue city, blue state. For the last 6 years I have served in Northwest Alabama at a mega-church. Red city, red state.

I could write 1,000 words just about the differences in those two cultures, churches, cities, states, and it still would only scratch the surface. What isn’t different in those places is how strongly each set of Christians believe that their political opinion is the direct, inspired, and revealed political opinion of Jesus.

The issue isn’t what political party we vote for, it’s how we treat those with a different political solution than us. The tribalism, polarization, oversimplification, and dehumanization I see from both sides is astounding.

This is exactly what Leo is calling out: “a collective identity in opposition to an enemy, fueled by narratives in which each party portrays itself as a victim entitled to retribution.” We have allowed the media to stir us into a frenzy where we identify ourselves by who our enemy is, then we demonize that enemy as though they are directly trying to harm us and destroy us.

Media and the echo chamber of the algorithm work together to stir us up into a frenzy and stir up fear so that we become confrontational and seek to attack the “other” in order to preemptively protect ourselves.

We use straw man arguments, and refuse to hear the complexities that other worldviews hold in order to solidify our own collective identity and feel the safety of belonging to a tribe.

Where has your political view caused you to see others as less than created and loved by God? How have you accepted a victim mentality that encourages you to attack “them” in order to protect your own?

Regarding Christians And Christians. The church has bought into the “us or them” thinking that Leo talks about. We have become so divided on theological stances, cultural expressions, and missional strategies. “Our’s” are inspired and the only logical and faithful way to interpret Scripture. “Their’s” are heretical, secular, watered down, and possibly demonic.

Before you get too riled up, let me say there are for sure stances, expressions, and strategies that are unfaithful to Scripture and the revealed will of God. There are people who claim to follow Christ, yet they embrace beliefs and ways of living that are not at all in line with Scripture, or the traditional and historical beliefs and lifestyles of the Church. That is not what I’m talking about. I’m specifically addressing the many differences that people can believe and still end up living and loving like Jesus.

Calvinism, Arminianism, Egalitarian, Complementarian, Eschatological differences, beliefs on the Gifts of the Spirit. All can believe differently and be healthy and faithful followers of Jesus. I will concede that many of those stances will affect how loving or how orthodox you are.

Any belief can move you away from love or orthodoxy if you allow tribalism and denominationalism to lead you into extremism and enmity.

Next week I will go more into the solution to this problem of polarization, so please subscribe for free if you would like to get it emailed directly to you!

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For now, I want to leave us in a place of reflection. My prayer is for every one of us that we would embrace the prayer of David in Psalm 139:23-24:

One of my absolute favorite quotes from the Encyclical is where I want to start and then just break it down from there. Be prepared for some conviction and beautiful hope at the same time.

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The first time I read through this section I was so pumped about Leo telling off the tech companies and the “villians” of Silicon Valley that are taking advantage of people and treating them like commodities.

Unfortunately, the Holy Spirit decided to take this moment to speak to what was inside of me rather than what is inside of OpenAI.

I am often guilty of measuring peoples’ worth by how efficient or effective they are according to my arbitrary standards. This is how we are trained to look at employees, co-workers, coaches, athletes, politicians, and teachers. There is obviously value in performing well in these areas, but we cross the line when we assign or deny value to someone based on their deliverables.

What is even more detrimental is that most of us find our own value in what we achieve or produce.

Theologically most people would agree that God does not love us based on our efficiency or effectiveness for Him. We know that our salvation does not depend on our ability to achieve holiness or produce enough good works. Yet, we live as though we think God will love us more or less based on these results.

My wife, Sarah, often says something that resonates and convicts, “I know and believe there is nothing I can do that would make God love me less, but I often have a hard time believing that there is nothing I can do to make God love me more.”

My Primal Question is: Am I Successful? As a result, I am often fighting to produce and achieve, and I fight to be effective and efficient in order to become God’s best child. Talk about a jacked up first-born syndrome. I am trying so hard to get God to love me more. I want to be someone that has value in His eyes and so I believe that I need to be the best at the Great Commission, or the Great Commandment, or Fruit of the Spirit.

Obviously, as you say it out loud it sounds insane and completely false–so why do we live our lives like it is so deeply true?

Here is Leo’s offering:

I’m not sure we have oriented our lives to “recognize the other as a face” or to be “centered on the human person and not solely on performance.”

Often people are either helping us achieve our list for the day, or they are hindering it by driving too slow.

I want to live a life that can slow down for faces. As I’ve mulled this over I realized I look at people a lot, even when I’m talking to them, but I rarely see their face. I am not giving my undivided attention to the person made in the image of God directly in front of me. I’m bad at remembering names and I think it is due more to my scattered brain and unfocused attention than it is being bad at remembering.

If I were to truly give every human being the time and attention they deserve in the present moment, I think remembering faces and names would be a much easier task.

Technology paints a picture of how functional our lives can become. Remove the human (slow) element and replace it with something that will be efficient and effective. Reduce mistakes (humanity) so that you can produce at a higher level. While there is value in being effective and productive, we cannot lose the beauty of imperfection that can be found in face to face human interactions.

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.Growing up, I was not a fan of change. I was afraid of change because it would alter my routine and how I did things. I experienced change as something that created an imbalance in my perfectly controlled life. Change was a synonym with failure because it would mean having to learn something new, or re-learn a new way to do something I’m already comfortable with.

I think part of the reason I disliked change is because my mom was one who had me re-arrange the living room furniture once a month. There are only so many ways to organize a living room, so we were basically on a three month rotation of designs. It seemed like each month we had to try all three designs out and see which one spoke to her, but I’m pretty sure after the third time moving the recliner I just quit and that was the design she was stuck with for a month.

Technology has been a huge help in making simple changes easier and mostly painless. Email, text messaging, Google Maps, and air fryers have all made life so much easier. Communication, travel, and crispy french fries are all quick and easy. Those advancements immediately transformed the way we live.

As an adult I’ve grown to enjoy change. I like new initiatives at work, I like new campaigns or responsibilities. I like the challenge of figuring out or conquering something new and risky. Unfortunately for my wife, I still hate rearranging furniture.

With the exponential advancements with AI and technology that can be advanced by AI integration, we are being promised instant transformation to our lives. Technology has already been delivering on the promise of instant gratification, and it is only supposed to get better. Now you have an instant therapist, pastor, best friend, research assistant, or personal trainer as soon as you open ChatGPT.

We have GLP-1s and Peptides to help expedite our health journeys. We have BetterHelp for instant access to a therapist without having to go through the process of building a relationship or rapport.

Don’t get me wrong, these things are incredibly helpful for specific situations. Access to mental health care and medications to help people with conditions that make therapy, diet and exercise more available is amazing!

What happens with an instant transformation society is that people use it as a way to avoid the long hard work of therapy, diet or exercise when they don’t have conditions that make these accommodations necessary. They are just trying to avoid the long hard work of relationships, grilled chicken, and salad.

When this lifestyle creeps into our spiritual formation we become like a cake cooked too fast at too high a temperature: overcooked on the outside and undercooked on the inside. (I also have a problem with salad.) We look and sound mature and spiritual, but we are actually not well formed and don’t have true depth.

Pope Leo talks about the pace of true growth in his Encyclical:

“A long and demanding journey, often marked by setbacks.” What an incredible description of the Christian journey.

Leo is directly talking about societal moral progress, but the principle applies to all progress made in humanity. He quotes Pope Francis to expound on this concept:

The long demanding journey is exactly that–to become fully human. We can only become fully human by allowing God to transform us “beyond ourselves.” It is the idea that we will find a way to become all that we were truly created to be. Jesus is the example of what it means to be fully human.

Technology is promising us to become human beyond ourselves instantly and with zero pain, yet any meaningful and lasting change is slow, difficult, and “often marked by setbacks.” Humanity is looking to AI, technology, medicine, and political ideologies to be saved. It’s looking to supercharge our ability to self-improve and always have it track up and to the right.

Pope Leo answers this cry for help:

It is not speed, scale, and self-help that must be optimized to grow, it is a “long and demanding journey often marked by setbacks.” It is through “a relationship that liberates” us from the power of sin, and trauma. It is “a communion that transforms” us into people who are healed and fully alive in love.

To have my journey to perfection be instant and painless is appealing, but ultimately it is an undercooked cake–it has the appearance of satisfaction, but inside it’s chaos. True transformation is found through a slow and deliberate process that takes a lifetime.

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I have no idea how long this series will be. I am not going to directly make everything about AI, but I am going to follow quotes and trains of thought that go throughout the Encyclical. (It’s a little over 42,000 words, so there is plenty to cover) I want to talk about human dignity, how we can embrace technology, how we can become more human as technology pushes us to become less human, and hopefully have meaningful discussions about the insights found in this incredible piece of literature.

The first highlights I want to make come from the section of the Encyclical where the Pope tackles Transhumanism in light of AI and Technology.

Told you there is plenty we can cover.

One of the biggest promises of technology today is how much easier it is going to make our lives. As humanoid robots become better at household chores we are seeing a very near future where AI and technology will continue to remove any difficulties we face. I’m falling into this as I get more and more addicted to having our Tesla drive us on road trips. I can’t believe I used to have to use cruise control and keep my hands on the steering wheel like a caveman.

The next step of this promise of an easier life has to do with technology being able to help humanity eliminate any weaknesses. This is where we begin to dabble in Transhumanism when it is related to healthcare.

The simplest definition of Transhumanism is that we can use technology, AI, and the like to mitigate all shortcomings in the human body. We can overcome human biology through improving memory, replacing organs with technology, and advancing the human race past having physical restraints. For an oversimplified Sci-Fi picture–Cyborg pretty much covers it.

So the lie is that if we can directly treat any physical weaknesses with the help of technology and AI, we can eliminate any condition from the human body and reduce suffering.

Technology’s greatest goal and promise is to render human suffering extinct, but does that actually produce human flourishing?

Pope Leo XIV says this:

There are about 15 ways we could dissect this small excerpt but I want to direct us in a specific direction: a flourishing life does not come from a lack of weakness, it comes from growth that can only be found in community.

Technology promises flourishing through the subtraction of friction and difficulty while the Church offers flourishing through the inconveniently hard work of relationships.

Leo goes on to state:

Go ahead and read that again–it’s so rich.

Transhumanism, technological advances, and AI are trying to promise us a life without weakness. If we remove suffering from life, the lie is that we will then only be left with what’s joyful and pleasant. However, it is love, desire, freedom and dreams in the light of trial, suffering, failure, and disappointments that brings about the fullness of human experience.

The very thing that technology is most often removing from our lives is the inconvenience of human relationship and interactions. It is also removing the things in our lives that cause any kind of discomfort. Yet, we find that most of the admirable accomplishments in the history of humanity were formed out of a willingness to step into discomfort.

Acknowledging our weakness is the very thing that frees us from being enslaved to it.

Embracing our weakness is embracing the very thing that makes us human. Humanity is not the absence of limitations, but the ability to acknowledge them and grow in spite of them.

AI is promising that there is a humanity to be perfected. My belief is that the imperfection is exactly what brings us together as a humanity who suffers together and comes out the other side fully seen and fully loved.

I can’t close this thought any better than Pope Leo does:

God’s grace received in Christ embraces our weaknesses and limitations. It doesn’t eliminate suffering and friction–it redeems it. We are being formed into the humans we were created to be through the grace offered by perfect strength becoming weak.

A life without weakness seems like a beautiful promise. It is a promise that the things in you that are broken or limited can be mitigated or deleted.

I think we want to embrace that promise because it speaks to the reality that we feel like something is missing. We acknowledge that the world isn’t as it should be, and that we aren’t as we want to be. We sense that something needs fixed, and being told it can be erased sounds like a quick and easy solution.

These articles and ideas really build on themselves because only from a place of resting in God and abiding in Him to bear fruit can we look at how we respond to God in a healthy way. If we are not careful we take the truths of the first two parts and want to respond to God out of a feeling of indebtedness rather than a place of overflow and deep responding love.

We begin by finding our rest in God to allow Him to cleanse us and make us at home in His presence. Once we are actively made right with Him, we must abide in Him allowing the Holy Spirit to transform us and produce fruit. Finally we are at a place where our lives should respond to this rest and receiving from Him.

I often go back to Robert Mulholland’s definition of Spiritual Formation:

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Steps 1 & 2 involve us surrendering and being transformed by the Spirit of God into the likeness of Christ, but step 3 involves our own will and effort that must be based out of a submission to Him.

How are we called to respond to God? I believe Jesus lays it out for us when asked what the greatest commandment is in Mark 12:29-31

Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

-Love the Lord with all your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

-Love your neighbor as yourself

Jesus is quoting the Shema from Deuteronomy 6. The Jewish people He was addressing would have known well what He was communicating and would have been able to quote it with Him.

If you want a beautiful and clear teaching on the Shema, please take a few minutes to watch these 6 videos (each less than 5 mins) from Bible Project.

If you’re interested in a less smart and not as clear summary, read below:

All your Heart. This was understood to mean the center of your being. Your heart was to be the seat of emotions, your will, your desires, your affections. Your heart is your attention and your focus.

Jesus is telling the people that the very core of who you are must be oriented toward loving God. We respond to God with our hearts by giving him our attention and our focus and by centering our will, desires, and affections on Him.

All your Soul. This one is trickier because we think of this as only our spirit, but what was understood by the Hebrew speakers was the idea that Soul includes your entire being–not just spirit but also body.

Jesus is inviting us to love God with all of our spirit, all of our body. All that we have and are on this earth is to be directed at loving Him.

All your Mind/Strength. This word in the Hebrew Shema carries the idea of your contemplation and your effort. Bible Project describes it beautifully as your “muchness.”

Jesus is showing us that we are to respond in love to God with all of our effort, all of our muchness. We will contemplate Him fully and also use what strength and effort we have to love Him to the extrent of our abilities.

This is where Dallas Willard give us such a helpful nuanced understanding:

“Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.”

When we love God with all our:

We are responding in love to Him the way we are created to.

“The second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Not only are we called to respond to God in love a certain way, we are called to respond to others in love.

Jesus is making it clear that a personal relationship with God and being in loving communion with the Trinity is the foundation and core of our response to God, but it is not the only piece. “Equally Important” is loving others.

This love is the very thing that Jesus exemplified throughout His ministry. He was inconvenienced, He was interrupted, He was taken advantage of, yet, He chose to sacrifice and love and serve those around Him.

Jesus gives us a clear definition of love in John 15:13 as He was nearing the cross:

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

We Rest in God, and Receive from God first, so that we Respond to God by Loving Him and Loving Others. That is how we Be Still and Know That He is God.

This is a guest post from my wife, Sarah Young. She taught this message at our College Ministry Retreat so I asked her if she would write this article and share her wisdom and story with you all!

I had the privilege of speaking to a small group of college age students at a retreat called Be Still. Our goals for the weekend was to learn to Be Still, inspired by Psalm 46:10:

“Be still, and know that I am God!”

My session focused on the word Receive - How to truly receive from God.

I have 5 and 7 year old daughters. When they ask me for something - and that something is more often than not a treat of some sort - I for the most part always want to give it to them. Their hands are out and always ready to receive ice cream, candy, or the treat of choice for that day. Receiving is something that comes naturally to them and never had to be taught. They eagerly receive what I am willing to give them.

When I think about my relationship with God how eager am I to receive all the he has for me? Sure I’ll be quick to have my hands out to receive a quick miracle or an answer to prayer. But what if receiving from God extends beyond the transaction of me requesting and Him answering?

So let me ask you this question - what do you truly need to receive from God? Not a tangible item you are asking for but a transformative thought or feeling that your heart aches for that you can only receive from Him. So let’s explore how to receive this from God.

First, the key to receiving from God is to learn how to abide in God. John 15 says:

4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

This abiding is a mutual dynamic between God and myself. As I as abide in God, He abides in me. What does it mean in a practical way to abide in God - read my bible more, add an hour of prayer time in my day, attend an extra church service? No.

Abiding in God is a continual alignment to the will of God.

This must happen daily, maybe hourly, and if I am being honest some days minute by minute. I ask the Holy Spirit to align myself to God - heart, soul, and mind. Redirecting my thoughts and desires to him more each day. A continual submission to the will of God.

When I abide in Christ, the fruits of the spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentlest and self-control- should be evident in my life. I can strive more and perform harder with the best of them, but this only creates self-manufactured fruits in my life but they are unproductive, short lived, inconsistent, and produce no true transformation.

I often grew up hearing the phrase - There is nothing I can do to make God love you less. And although this is true my type A, over achiever personality needs the reminder more that there is nothing I can do to make God love me more. I want to strive more, try harder, to make God love me more and “reward” me with what I want.

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Second, to receive from God I need to allow pruning in my life. John 15 says:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

I must first allow the Holy Spirit to convict and prune sin from my life. I have been a Christian since I was young and never felt this huge pruning stage in my life. I didn’t have the “cool” testimony that other had from turning from all their debauchery.

But I have been recently feeling the conviction to allow God to prune things from my life that are not necessarily bad. Prune good things - I thought that sounded crazy. Yet I am learning that it is often the “good things” that weigh us down - Binge watching television shows, scrolling on our phones, excessive pickle ball playing (it’s a real craze), my personal favorite of crime documentaries. Because these good things are often the things in my life that I turn to in order to cope when I start feeling overwhelmed, tired, anxious, or just need a little break from life.

These good things may be the exact thing that the Holy Spirit is trying to prune from my life in order to receive more from Him.

So in order to receive from God all that he has for us - a transformed heart, soul and mind we need to learn to abide and allow ourselves to be pruned.

In Romans 7 - Paul, arguably one of the strongest Christians, states:

17 So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. 18 And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. 19 I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. 20 But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

I picture this constant tug of war. My soul is at war to do what is right. Yet, unfortunately I often do what is not right. But there is an ache in my heart to receive all that God has for me each and every day, moment by moment. This cannot be found in behavior modification.

This past spring my wife and I led the college ministry at our church on a retreat. We went away for three days, technology free, and spent time enjoying one another, worshipping, seeking God, and eating good food. It was incredible. Our goal for the weekend was to learn to Be Still. It was inspired by Psalm 46:10:

This verse is usually removed from its context. In fact that is only ⅓ of the verse. Psalm 46:10 is actually:

That last ⅔ doesn’t exactly look cool on a t-shirt or coffee mug so we usually leave that out. The entire Psalm is actually a call on God as Israel’s refuge and strength. They are looking to Him as their fortress and help in times of chaos and strife and verse 10 is what God speaks to the people in response to their cries for help.

It’s super interesting to me to look at the whole Psalm and try and figure out why this famous phrase is in the middle of Psalm 46 and not Psalm 23. The phrase “Be Still” can also be translated and understood from the Hebrew to be “cease striving.”

I think this gives us an insight into how Israel was normally handling opposition, chaos, and difficult times. They were crying for God’s help, but they were also trying to get out of it themselves. If they are anything like me, maybe they were also trying very hard to manipulate God to intervene.

God’s response to them is: cease striving, acknowledge who He is, and He will be honored.

That is a lot scarier than crying out for help and freaking out begging God to show up and save.

So how do we do that?

I believe there are three movements to help us Be Still:

Rest

Receive

Respond

Over the next 3 weeks I’m going to break each of these down based on the teachings and practices we did on that weekend retreat just a few months ago. I hope it is helpful to you as it has been for me.

I could easily write about the need for Sabbath rest and making that a practice and rhythm for your life. It has been so incredibly helpful as my wife and I have attempted to integrate this discipline into our own lives and the lives of those in community with us. It has not been perfect, but it has been a shift that has helped us see and experience the value of rest.

However, I want to focus on two other practices that help me to “Cease Striving.”

-Silence

-Solitude

Silence Removes Noise From Our Lives.

When I think about stillness my first thought often goes to a wilderness scene, but it is almost always punctuated by Silence and Solitude. There isn’t much stillness when I’m with my children, or in a large group, or listening to music, or in a city. Stillness paints a picture of a calm, quiet, and remote place where one can rest.

We find rest for our minds and our hearts when we embrace the practice of silence. It allows us to finally hear the things inside of us that we are often drowning out with noise–most notably the Holy Spirit. He has an opportunity to bring deep healing and rest to us as we unplug and allow Him to have His way.

Sitting in silence is uncomfortable and difficult, but the more we practice a few minutes at a time the more we can become aware of the noise that is in us. Being Still and finding rest in Silence will help us to tune ourselves to the Holy Spirit and allow us to hear clearly from Him to bring refreshing and healing where we need it and neglect it the most.

Solitude Removes Inputs From Our Lives. Silence helps us to remove the noise, good and bad, but solitude helps to unplug us from all of the things trying to influence us. We get away from our phones, our responsibilities, our commitments, and we focus completely on being present to our bodies and the Holy Spirit.

In order to find rest we see Jesus do this over and over again throughout His ministry:

There were so many things and people fighting for Jesus’ attention, so He regularly went away to solitude to get away from the inputs and to reconnect and rest.

What often bubbles up for me first when I reach this place of Silence and Solitude is found in Psalm 139:23-24:

“Any hurtful way” can also be translated as “any way of pain.”

God often exposes my pain when I practice Silence and Solitude. That pain can be from my own sins that have to be dealt with, or they can simply be hurt and pain accumulated from life that I can now offer to him to heal and redeem.

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If you’re familiar with Bluey at all you know that the dad, Bandit Heeler, is a major character in most episodes. They often consist of his two daughters—Bluey and Bingo—playing fun or silly games with him and having so much fun.

My daughters play many of the games that Bluey and Bingo make up. If you’re a dad and you’re familiar with Bluey you know that the example that Bandit sets as a fun dad seems almost impossible to measure up to. He is willing to make a fool of himself in public all for the sake of the bit in a game that his children made up.

My family and I are currently on vacation visiting family friends in Texas. My wife’s good friend, Quincie, and her husband have a house on a lake, a boat, and extra rooms for us to stay at their house with them. They are incredibly generous and it’s an amazing time to relax and do it for the cost of travel!

What’s even more than the uncommon generosity is how much our girls love being with Quincie. Every single day our girls wake up and just ask, “Where’s Quincie? Is Quincie up yet?” My 5 year old has begun just referring to her as “My Quincie.” I offer to take her swimming while Quincie is still asleep and she says, “No. I’ll just wait for My Quincie.”

She proceeded to wait for 45 minutes for Quincie to wake up. During this time she refused to color, play, or do anything so that she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to go swim with Quincie. Every night the girls have begged to do what they are calling “Dock Talks” where they sit out on the dock and just tell Quincie about the show Unicorn Academy. (Solid show, but couldn’t even live in the same zip code as Bluey.)

I’ve seen this unfold over a couple years, but this year their obsession has been more extreme than ever. So I began to watch and try to figure out why they love Quincie so much, and why they love her so much more than me! (That’s only like 60% a joke)

What I’ve figured out is that Quincie and Bandit Heeler have the same super power—they are fully present.

Bandit and Quincie both give their full and undivided attention to the kids they are with. There is no checking text messages, no scrolling, or trying to watch a show—just listening, talking, and being a part of their world.

As a parent I have found one of the hardest things to deal with is how much my girls want my attention. They seem to need me only when I’m busy. They want to tell me stories when I want to watch soccer or read a book. They ask me to play the second after I sit down. It feels like they have an orchestrated plan to make parenting inconvenient.

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This is the same thing we do every time we come to God in prayer. We are asking Him to be attentive, to hear us. We are asking Him to be a part of our lives, we are asking Him to intervene. We want Him to be present and give us His attention.

When I think about the story where the disciples wake up a sleeping Jesus in the belly of the boat during a horrible storm—I see my own daughters waking me up to tell me they want waffles and bacon. “We are going to starve!” Has a lot of the same energy as “We are going to drown!”

Jesus was fully present with so many people throughout His 3 years of ministry: The man lowered through the roof while He was teaching, the woman who touched Him and was healed while He was walking to heal someone else, the adulterous woman who was thrown before Him while He taught.

For each of them: He paused, acknowledged them, gave them His attention, spoke to them, and their needs were met—He was fully present with them despite the inconvenience.

My girls know I’m not as fun as Bandit Heeler or even as fun as Quincie. I used to think that was what made it impossible for me to measure up to a cartoon dog. The reality is my girls just want my undivided attention.

As I mentioned earlier the episodes of Bluey are only 8 minutes long so really Bandit only plays with his kids in 10 minute or so increments. These are not 3 hour long play sessions that take up your whole life.

My new parenting goal is to give them times of my undivided attention so that they know they have me fully. When it comes to the interruptions, I can stop, listen, and help them find an immediate solution. It doesn’t mean they dictate my whole life, but it means they get all of me whether it’s for 60 seconds, 60 minutes, or 60 years.

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In 2020, I found myself for the first time in full-time paid ministry. It was a dream. I couldn’t believe I didn’t have to wait tables or work at an elementary school to have the ability to serve and lead at my local church. I had been in volunteer ministry leadership for a decade and the dream of being in vocational ministry was something I thought of often.

After a couple years, I came to the realization that I was in a very dry place spiritually. I wasn’t experiencing God in my personal life and found myself hitting a wall in ministry as well. It seemed like even though I was living my dream, I had been banished to a dark corner away from fulfillment and the presence of God. I thought that vocational full-time ministry would solve all the difficulties I had experienced in life and in my spiritual journey, yet I barely recognized my relationship with God.

As 2023 began I knew I needed to figure out what had happened so I decided to read two books that I was familiar with by name, and I knew one pastor that had been radically changed by one. That book was Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero. After I finished that book I immediately read The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer.

These two books introduced me into a stream of Christian Spirituality I hadn’t crossed paths with: Spiritual Formation. Over the course of the last three years I have done a lot of reading and research with organizations such as Practicing the Way, 24-7 Prayer Movement, and Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. I would also recommend the book Invitation to a Journey by M. Robert Mulholland.

Obviously it’s only been 3 years that I have been wading into this deep, historic stream of Church History and Spirituality, but it has been incredibly life-giving. So let’s work through my denominational framework:

Things I Cling To

Things I’m Grateful For

Things I Messed Up

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Sabbath has been more than just rest, it has been a complete mentality shift in my relationship with God. It’s less about taking a day off working, and more about realizing that God didn’t create me to accomplish for Him. The Sabbath is to rejuvenate, worship, celebrate, and rest–but it’s also a declaration that God doesn’t need me to accomplish His will in my world. God can work just as much through my lack of working as He can through my efforts. Sabbath has been a gift to my family to unplug, celebrate, and focus on God and each other.

One of the greatest gifts that Spiritual Formation has helped me begin to learn is that God wants my presence more than my performance. I have always believed, deep down, that God saved me so that I could work for Him. He wanted me to serve Him and that was my purpose. I don’t think I was ever explicitly taught that, but it was something I internalized and believed. I’m slowly learning that God saved me to know Him and be known by Him. Obviously the overflow of that is to love others, and live the type of life Jesus exemplified.

In the story of Mary and Martha, I’ve always been Martha. Jesus, however, says that the most important thing is Mary sitting at His feet. Martha was doing nothing wrong, but she was missing the forest for the trees. She was distracted by lesser things–the work of ministry. The most important thing is sitting at Jesus’ feet. We are invited to be with Him and out of that fullness we can live for Him.

The final thing I cling to is building off of what the Charismatic stream began with introducing me to experiencing God through my emotions. I have found a “Theology of the body” as Pope John Paul II puts it. My body is a part of my relationship with God–He didn’t create me as a disembodied Brain and Spirit. Breathing, body posture, health/lifestyle choices, etc. all play a role in how I connect with God.

I would say throughout my life I’ve been exposed and educated in many different Spiritual Disciplines or Spiritual Practices. I would say for sure Prayer, Scripture, and even Fasting have been parts of my story. Practices like Serving also were a major part of how I have experienced God. I think what Spiritual Formation has gifted me is even more examples and strategies to connect with God and be formed into the likeness of Jesus.

Silence/Solitude, Contemplative Prayer, and so many more things have helped fill in gaps to my Spirituality that I didn’t know I had. They have brought new perspectives and new experiences with God that I didn’t have with the disciplines I had in my life before. I want to continue to embrace Spiritual Practices as a way to offer myself to God to be transformed by the Holy Spirit.

I have loved learning so much about Church History as I dive deeper into the Spiritual Formation movement. So many Practices and teachings are rooted in Ancient Christian Spirituality, and I have loved feeling connected to the rich history of the Christian Church. The connection with early Christians as well as Christians from less than a millennia ago, has enriched my understanding of Christianity so much. Before the last few years, I thought of most of Christian history as the time since the Reformation and Martin Luther. It’s been so encouraging to see how Christianity has grown and existed for thousands of years, and to be able to connect to that history is truly special.

If you’ve read the other articles in this series you know where I’m headed. Even in these short three years, I have begun to treat the Spiritual Disciplines as an expansion of how I treated my Bible reading and prayer–a means to get God’s approval to get God’s blessing. I find myself treating the Practices as things to check off of a list. If I don’t do them, I am a failure and God is unhappy with me. If I do them, I am a good Christian and God will be pleased with me and I’ll have a better day/life.

It has been so helpful that in Spiritual Formation there is a continual recalibration when it comes to the disciplines. Dallas Willard explains them as a form of direct effort to offer ourselves to God so that He can do what we cannot do by direct effort–the transformation of our hearts. I have to keep allowing myself to find new rhythms and grace as I explore and attempt to connect with God and be formed by Him.

As I’ve walked through this series I have become so grateful for the journey that God has brought me on. Each season and each Denominational Domino has helped shape me in a way that has been so life giving. God is always wanting to draw me near and I’m so humbled by all the amazing men and women of God that have walked with me through all these seasons, and also for those who have led me through their writing and teaching who I may never meet.

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I want to begin with my disclaimer again:

I want to be clear that I am not trying to minimize or under-represent any specific belief system or denomination. I want to speak in clear terms that are more readily accessible to people who are outside these traditions. Also to be completely honest, I am not the most knowledgeable on all teachings of different pentecostal denominations or traditions, so I am giving you what I’ve taken away from their practices as a 18-34 year old.

I hope that I am generous and encouraging so that those who belong to these traditions feel seen for the positives they add to the body of Christ. I also hope that I paint a positive picture so that those who may even disagree can see the good that these streams of the Church offer to us all.

After graduating high school I moved to be a part of an Inner-city Church Plant in Detroit, MI. During my time in the two year program I did hands-on ministry and took Bible classes from Global University, which is an extension of the Assemblies of God denomination. After two years, I graduated and became a credentialed minister with the AG in 2012, and I have kept my license with that fellowship to this day.

There was something very formative about the culture shock of living in a major city, doing ministry daily, and being educated in an entirely different theological tradition. For the first time in my life I was an ethnic minority, living away from home with roommates, and learning to live a totally different kind of life in ministry.

As I began to learn the teachings of a Pentecostal Denomination, I experienced a whole new person of the Trinity–the Holy Spirit. I used to believe the Holy Spirit was living in me just to help me understand the Bible, but I began to experience Him as a person of the God-Head. A new framework for the charismatic experience of God was helping expand my relationship with Him in areas that had been lacking.

I want to walk this Pentecostal Training through the framework for my denominational dominoes:

Things I Cling To

Things I’m Grateful For

Things I Messed Up

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Things I Cling To. Holy Spirit as a full and equal person of the God-Head. Experiencing God through emotions. Living with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

One of the greatest theological gifts that come from the charismatic streams of the Church, including Assemblies of God, is a robust understanding of the Holy Spirit as a person in the Trinity. I always knew the Trinity consisted of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; but I didn’t realize there was a distinct role and person to be in relationship with.

I’m not going to attempt to give a full theological teaching on the person of the Holy Spirit, mostly because it would be too long and also because I am in no way the best person to give you a full overview. What I want to focus on is the Holy Spirit’s role in prayer, reading Scripture, and my transformation into the image of Jesus. It has relieved the pressure I put on myself to have powerful prayer, be changed by my reading of Scripture, and live out the fruit of the Spirit—He makes the yoke easy and the burden light in those areas.

I am not a very emotional person. I have a face that doesn’t reflect many emotions, so people always think I’m angry. Overall I am not very in touch with my emotions, and I was very prone to making sure that my emotions had no place in my relationship with God. I believed emotions were lies and meant to be suppressed and ignored. However, as I found myself in environments where I was encouraged to engage my feelings, and respond in worship by raising my hands or even jumping! I found out that if I allowed God into my emotions and engaged Him with my emotions, I was able to find healing, hope, comfort, joy, and peace like never before. When we engage God with our whole selves, we allow Him to meet us in every area to heal and draw us near.

Whenever I read 1 Corinthians 12 about the Gifts of the Spirit, I just accepted that those were things for the 1st Century Christians to spread the Gospel in powerful ways, but that I no longer needed to desire them, or expect God to use them through me. As I came into a greater relationship with the Trinity through the Holy Spirit I realized these were things God wanted to use through me to reach people in miraculous ways in the 21st Century.

Things I’m Grateful For. Bold Evangelism. Jesus is the way to hope and joy, not just for forgiveness.

I’m not a huge fan of speaking to strangers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m good with being friendly with people I interact with, but a full blown personal conversation?! Honestly, most of the time I think I’m torturing someone else with my attempts to have a conversation about anything deeper than the weather and traffic. What my Pentecostal Training has helped me break through is putting myself into situations where I had to have conversations with complete strangers about Jesus. I mean going up to someone I don’t know, in public, and asking them if I could pray for them or if they have a relationship with Jesus. It was terrifying. However, thanks to those situations, I know that I can have the courage to step out in faith when I know God is asking me to do something scary.

Before my Pentecostal Training, I viewed Jesus as my sacrifice for sin, my path to the Father, and my way to salvation. Those are all true things, but they weren’t complete. I’m so thankful that I also learned that Jesus can be my source of Joy and Hope, not just forgiveness. Jesus has offered me more than just a saving from eternal death, but a gift of eternal life that begins here and now on earth. Jesus is the source of life and life to the full.

Things I Messed Up. Experience with God equals Emotions about God. If I perform for God, He will perform for me.

When I truly experienced God in an emotional and powerful way, like most, I became addicted to the “feeling of God’s Presence”. I put that in quotations because it was a false idea that people believe in. I fell prey to the idea that God’s Presence was something I had to feel in order to be in His presence. If I didn’t feel it, I didn’t think God was moving, or I felt like something was wrong with me that He wasn’t moving. God in His grace has helped me realize that my experience of His presence doesn’t depend on a feeling and something doesn’t have to “happen.” Simply being with Him, offering my love and attention to Him is an experience with Him.

Finally, I found the Charismatic way to become transactional with God. If you couldn’t tell, this is a serious issue I’m dealing with. (Wait till next week’s article, you may be able to guess what will be in this section.) Instead of believing that if I was good enough, then God would love me and do what I wanted. What I began to do with this new experience of the Holy Spirit and emotional connection with God was create a new transactional formula. If I perform signs, wonders, evangelism, miracles; or if I sing louder, cry more, pray in tongues longer, raise my hands higher–I believed that I could manipulate God to give me the feeling I was desiring. I’m so thankful that God has shown me He cannot be manipulated, but that He is the gift and will satisfy what I need, not what I think I want.

I am so glad to be a part of the Assemblies of God, and I’m thankful for the role that Pentecostal traditions have played in my relationship with God. I am a more whole person than I was before, and I’m glad to have an even fuller picture of what it means to follow Jesus and be in relationship with Him.

Next week I’m going to write about the most recent denominational domino: Being Invited into Formation.

Hopefully now I only offend those who desperately want to be. Let’s begin:

I spent my earliest childhood through elementary school attending a church that was a part of the Calvary Chapel denomination. From a young age I learned the stories of the Bible and all of the best Sunday School worship songs, complete with the ASL motions. As I sat in “big church” I heard the Bible preached expositorally and passage by passage. They never skipped difficult passages, and always gave so much historical context and framework that as a child I was able to understand what the Bible was saying and why it was saying it.

In addition to this church, I went to a Christian school starting in Kindergarten that had Baptist roots. (By the time I was in 3rd grade the church had dropped “Baptist” from their name and switched to “Ministries.” O.G. non-denominational vibes.) Between sound Biblical teaching on Sundays and having Bible class every day and Chapel every week, I was very familiar with the Biblical Narrative and the main overarching story of Scripture.

Scripture Memorization, Sword Drills, and Bible Quizzing were all a part of my childhood growing up. I pledged allegiance to the Christian Flag and the Bible every day and was taught to “hide your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” It was one of the firmest foundations based on the inerrancy and ultimate authority of Scripture.

Middle school and high school had the smallest shift because I began attending the church that was connected with my school. I became a leader in the youth ministry and it was a very huge part of my life. In my sophomore year of high school my Bible teacher took us through the book “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth” by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. Which I found out a year later that it was supposed to be a class for freshman at a local Bible College. No wonder it was the hardest thing I did in all of high school.

I think this is painting a pretty clear picture of what my upbringing was like spiritually and theologically so I want to run this season of my life through the framework I discussed in my last post.

Things I cling to

Things I’m grateful for

Things I messed up

Things I Cling To.

Inerrancy of Scripture. Proper Interpretation of Scripture. Scripture as the Revelation of the Story of God’s redemptive plan through Jesus.

These truths were the foundation of the churches and school I was raised in. I have grown up and tested these things against culture, history, other religions, and anything else you can think of and they have shown themselves to withstand scrutiny.

I have the freedom to explore, learn, test, and experiment with different theologies, different ideas, and different worldviews because I have a foundation in the Truth of the Bible that can be trusted above all else. I do not have to be afraid of new thoughts and ideas because I can simply hold them up to Scripture and see how God has revealed Himself.

I have learned the most responsible ways to interpret Scripture. I don’t get to make it mean what I want, through proper Exegesis and Hermeneutics (Thanks Gordon and Douglas) I can be confident that God is speaking through Scripture rather than me speaking what I want to hear and attributing it to Him.

Finally, I learned how to see the Bible as an overarching story of God’s plan to redeem humanity. His desire for relationship. Our need of a Savior. Jesus’ fulfillment of the Old Covenant and His establishment of the new. The Metanarrative of Scripture and life is clear to me because of being raised reformed.

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Things I’m Grateful For.

Clear Moral Guardrails. Emphasis on living out the teachings of Scripture.

Thanks to the teachings and environments I was raised in, I have very few regrets on the moral decisions I made throughout my childhood and teenage years. I was raised with a clear understanding of the type of life that God had created me to live as far as morals and living out the principles of Scripture.

I was able to become an adult with a strong moral compass and understanding of the flourishing life God promises us in Scripture, and I had a clear understanding of how to live that out. It protected me from living with regrets and making decisions that I would have consequences from my whole life.

I am truly grateful for the examples and principles that I learned from during my formative years. They set me on a path and trajectory to be able to live a life of freedom and flourishing in Christ.

Things I Messed Up.

Knowledge puffed up. Self-righteousness led to pride. God became transactional.

As a passionate person I fully embraced all of the good that Reformed theology offers, but I took it to an extreme that deformed me. I treated God and Scripture as text book and algorithm. If I obeyed the Bible, God would have to do what I wanted. My knowledge of Scripture caused me to become less loving, more prideful, and ultimately less like Jesus. I chose to allow knowledge to puff up, instead of allowing Love to build up.

This formed me into someone who treated a relationship with God as a transactional experience using Scripture to form the rules of engagement. If I do what God wants me to do, He will do what I want Him to do. I wish I did not take the high view of Scripture that I was gifted, and turn it into a high view of self. I became a Pharisee who knew the law so well I believed I could accomplish it.

This lie obviously came crashing down as I realized I was not as holy as I thought, and that I was actually longing for a true relationship with my creator. I was tired of living out of a glorified business contract and I sought to be met personally by the one who made me.

Being Raised Reformed has been one of the great gifts of my life. A clear understanding of the beauty and power of Scripture has been a foundational piece of my journey with Jesus. I am so grateful for the moral guidelines that protected me from mistakes that could still be haunting me.

Even though I have had to unlearn and deconstruct the unhealthy habits and mindsets that I picked up during that season of my life, I can trust in the Bible and the God of the Bible to see me through as I’m formed into the image of His Son.

Next week I’m excited to write about Being Trained Pentecostal as I graduated High School and entered my 20s.

My story of faith has changed several times over the course of my short 34 years of life. I was always raised in a Christian family, and I even went to a private Christian school from Kindergarten through High School. As I’ve reflected on how my faith has been shaped, I’ve wanted to break down how different seasons, denominations and theologies have helped me become the person I am today.

Maybe you’ve had a similar story to me, consistently Christian but very diversely expressed. A lot of people my age have gone through forms of deconstruction to unlearn some unhelpful theology or experiences they’ve had in church. Personally, I have found myself pivot to different streams of the Christian Church to help deconstruct and reconstruct a faith that has had many ups and downs.

I want this to be a helpful conversation for you. I believe we all go through shifts and changes in our faith as we grow older and have different experiences in life. I would like to argue that rather than one specific tradition or denomination having the perfect solution, all of them can work together to create a beautiful mosaic that can help us as we seek to be formed into the image of Christ.

My journey can be pretty simply broken up into a few small seasons. From birth until I graduated high school I would say I was raised Reformed. Now this is an oversimplification that I will break down more in my next article, but there were major Baptist, Calvary Chapel, and non-denominational influences–but they all led to a very “reformed-esque” theology. After high school I went to an Assemblies of God church plant in the inner city of Detroit, Michigan, where I did classes and training to receive my ministry credentials with the Assemblies of God. At about 30 I began to explore what could be considered contemplative or formational writings and teachings.

Here is my only disclaimer for this series: I am still credentialed with the Assemblies of God. I hold to the 16 Fundamental Truths that our Fellowship agrees to. I am currently serving at a non-denominational church with AG and Pentecostal background. I want to be clear that I love the AG and I am proud to be a part of it, and I am also grateful that I can continue to learn and grow from other brothers and sisters throughout all Church traditions and history.

Now that we have all the business out of the way I want to create a bit of a framework that has helped me as I hope to process my history and continue to learn from my present.

There are three key takeaways that I want to walk through for each of the seasons of my life. These are:

Things I cling to

Things I’m grateful for

Things I messed up

Things I Cling To. There are things from each theology and tradition I’ve been a part of that have shaped who I am at my deepest level. These theologies or world views have been so formative for me that I hold to them deeply. They have proven to be life giving and true across so many experiences, as well as through a great diversity of teaching. There are many things that denominations agree on, they just like to use different language to explain it. For some reason they sometimes believe more in their language than the truth underneath it.

I want to point out the most helpful, formative, and truly life changing things that I have experienced and learned. There are things I cling to from the very first church I grew up in, and there are things I have learned in the last couple years that I believe are going to stand the test of time and help shape me into the person I was created to become.

Things I’m Grateful For. Throughout my different experiences in church there have been so many things that I’ve loved. Incredible moments and teachings that have helped me in so many ways. Some of the things I learned, simply give me a clear understanding of those with whom I now disagree. I feel like in many ways I have a better understanding of different theological viewpoints because I have been deeply trained in some traditions that deeply disagree.

I want to point out things from every tradition that have helped me get a more robust picture of what a follower of Jesus can look like, even if it may be something that I no longer fully agree with, or maybe even simply a practice that no longer helps me grow in my relationship with Jesus.

Things I Messed Up. Finally, I want to take ownership of places where I became a Pharisee of these traditions. In every season of my life I have taken true, life giving, God honoring truths and practices, and I have turned them into something that harmed either myself or others.

These are the areas people usually use to argue against certain theological views, however I want to take ownership for how I have misrepresented the Church in its many diverse tribes. Often I’ve found that when you look at the teachings and examples of a denomination, it very rarely is asking us to become Pharasaical in our application. Most of the time that was my own perverted application of a Truth that was meant to help me.

Let’s have a helpful, honest, and hopeful conversation about the different church traditions we have been influenced by. We don’t need to point out what we find unhelpful or even harmful in different streams of the church. There are plenty of places to do that if you want to. Let’s create a space where we can celebrate diversity, learn from each other, and honor how God has brought us so far from where we were.

This verse is very popular in certain streams of American Christian culture right now. For some, it’s popular because of a refocusing on Sabbath, rest, formation, etc. For others, it’s popular because they are rebelling against that way of thinking and they are calling people to love, serve, reach, evangelize, give, and “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

I think this is happening because the “pro-Sabbath” group over simplifies, and the “anti-rest” group has an underdeveloped understanding.

In Luke 10, we find one of the best stories to bring clarity to this idea of “Be Still” v. “Love our Neighbor”.

We know the story of Jesus coming to Mary and Martha’s house. Jesus is teaching in the home and Mary sits at His feet and listens to him teach. Meanwhile, Martha is trying to provide hospitality for Him and the other guests. Martha gets upset she has no help and asks Jesus to tell Mary off for being lazy and not being a good hostess and servant of the Lord. Jesus’ response is this:

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,⁴² but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

V.41-42

Martha is anxious with inward turmoil caused by the many things she is trying to do for the Lord, and Mary has chosen the one thing that is necessary. Some teach that Jesus is rebuking Martha and saying that what she was doing was wrong–I don’t think that’s what Jesus is doing.

Verse 40 puts it this way: “But Martha was distracted with much serving.”

That word “serving” comes from the Greek word διακονία (diakonia), which is more often translated into the word “ministry” throughout the New Testament. Now it hits home for me: “But Martha was distracted with much [ministry]”

How often do you find yourself anxious and in turmoil because of “much ministry”?

Jesus is inviting Martha into a solution for this problem. He doesn’t say the issue is because she is serving and doing ministry. He simply recalibrates her priorities and says that one thing is necessary: sitting at His feet.

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We see throughout Jesus’ ministry and by His example that we are meant to serve, be hospitable, and live a life of inconvenient love. We cannot pretend that this one story with Martha means we are supposed to pray and read the Bible in our rooms all day.

In Mark 6, we see Jesus send His followers out to preach, heal, and cast out demons. Jesus’ disciples returned and wanted to rest and celebrate all that had happened while they were ministering. A crowd began following them while they were trying to get away with Jesus to rest. Instead of rejecting the people, He had compassion on them, taught them and fed them instead of going immediately to rest.

Jesus is very clear throughout His life that we are meant to give our lives away. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

Jesus isn’t saying we are getting it wrong if we are serving others. He is trying to clearly teach something that He was consistently living out by example.

We see over and over again throughout the Gospel accounts that Jesus withdrew to pray. He was showing by example the top priority, the power, and the “one thing that is necessary”. Through this encounter with Martha, Jesus is helping her see that she is simply not settled and at peace because she has become distracted by serving from the One Thing–Jesus.

To my friends who are “pro-Sabbath” and “pro-rest” let’s make sure we are following the example and pattern set out by Jesus: six days of loving, serving, and preferring others.

To my friends who are “anti-rest” and “Sabbath is for heaven” let’s make sure that we are not becoming distracted from having our hearts and minds focused on Jesus because we are too busy with the ministry we are doing for Him.

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Group Projects. No one is neutral in their feelings towards group projects. You either hate them, or you’re someone who lets everyone else in the group do all the work.

Okay, maybe I’m not being fair, but I think you may know where I stand on the issue. I always hated group projects. It felt like I had to work way harder to try and get the grade I wanted. I didn’t like collaborating or relying on other people to accomplish the work. It was messy working out schedules, trying to divide the work–a complete nightmare.

What makes group projects difficult for most people isn’t the complicated work, but the complicated relational dynamics.

Group projects are difficult because they add a relational and human element to the work. When we get to do our own homework and tests it’s just us against the information, but when it’s a group we also have all the personalities and abilities of each individual adding complexity.

I believe there are three disciplines we can use to live a life of Inconvenient Love like Jesus did:

Be Intentional with our Time

Be Relational with People

Be Still with God

Last week we covered the first–Be Intentional. This week we are going to talk about the need to Be Relational:

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I am naturally a perfectionist and an introvert. This is not a great combination for a pastor. What this means is that people and relationships often complicate and inconvenience my natural state of operating in work and life.

I’ve come to the realization that if I want to love like Jesus it is going to be complicated and inconvenient. People are messy, complicated, and often the cause of inconvenience in our lives.

In Matthew 14 Jesus hears of the death of John the Baptist and it says this:

“As soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone. But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns. 14 Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”

Jesus is mourning his cousin, the one who baptized him, and the one who was sent to prepare the way for His coming. He tries to get away with His closest friends and disciples to grieve, pray, and process the pain.

“But the crowds…”

People showed up and complicated, ruined, and inconvenienced Jesus’ plans and desires. Was Jesus’ response anger, resentment, running, or prioritizing his plan? No.

People over Projects. Jesus was focused on His mission which was to preach repentance and that the Kingdom of God was near. (Mark 1:15, 39) Yet, we see over and over again throughout the Gospels that Jesus chooses people over the project of preaching(Mark 2:1-12), or even sometimes over performing other miracles. (Luke 8:40-56)

Jesus made it clear through His actions that His focus and purpose was about people and not accomplishing a project. Jesus knew He was going to reconcile humanity to God, yet He chose to spend a lifetime on earth in order to be in relationship with family, disciples, crowds, and ultimately to understand our humanity and be in relationship with us for all eternity.

God chose a relational way of accomplishing the redemption and reconciliation of creation to Himself. He chose incarnation. It was slow, difficult, inconvenient, and above all relational.

Meaning is in the Mess. People and relationships are messy. If you don’t believe me, talk to teenagers about friendships and dating. Our closest friends and family are proof that relationships complicate life. When people need favors or help moving, it’s not when you were hoping you could spend your day lifting heavy appliances for 3 slices of Little Caesars.

If you think about the most meaningful moments of your life, there was some mess involved–biirth, graduating high school, marriage, having a child, moving to a new city, learning a new job. Meaning was found in things that were more complicated than they were simple.

Technology and “advancements” are always trying to promise us that it will remove difficulty from our lives. The proposed solution is to make life clean, easy, fast, and ultimately, impersonal. When we don’t have to go through the struggle to learn or accomplish we lose the meaning and accomplishment that is attached to messy and hard work.

Anytime we choose people, we are choosing a messy life. It will be difficult, it will be complex, it will have ups and downs, but it will have a deeper meaning that is found in the toil and being human together.

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