Vengeance or Lovingkindness

I have been observing for a number of months the sad saga of a dear friend who is the victim of a corrupt judicial system in another state. He has been held in prison much longer than permitted by law without a trial and has been subjected to abuse and deprivation under harsh conditions while one corrupt judge after another has manipulated the system to avoid allowing him the freedom he deserves. They have repeatedly ignored all of his requests for justice and accountability by the court and in the last report I received yesterday I heard they even laughed openly at the mention of God by my friend.

Their words echoed closely the sneering comments of Pharaoh in Egypt when Moses demanded freedom for God's people. When confronted with the authority of the God of heaven Pharaoh said, “Who is God that I should listen to Him?” This was almost the same comments heard during a very recent hearing for my friend. When my friend heard them say this he is said to have almost cried – but not for himself and the injustice he is enduring but for the people who are so hardened against God that they will sneer and laugh at Him openly and despise His authority.

But what alarmed me was a comment of the person relaying this information to me. They added that they were certain that God was going to be very angry with those people for scoffing at Him in this way and that they are in great danger because of their comments. I know that this long ordeal that has dragged on in one form or another for several years now has been a tremendous drain on this close friend and I feel great sympathy for everyone involved. But I also am aware of a deep reservoir of bitterness in the heart of the person who has been keeping me up to date on this situation. This comment about God being very angry with these godless, unjust abusers is reflective of the feelings of many people throughout the ages who have endured injustice at the hands of others. But what I am confronted with is this: what does it say about not only God and His attitude toward those who flaunt Him but about us when we so desperately want to believe in a God who gets very angry at people who make fun of Him or who are hurting us?

What I am starting to perceive is that many Christians may be using their belief in a sovereign God to be their vicarious agent of revenge for the injustices committed against them. Being a Christian, they may feel that it is inappropriate to seek revenge on their enemies directly, but the intensity of their anger and bitterness inside is unavoidable, so as an outlet of release for all their rage they use God as a secondary means of threatening those who clearly are demonstrating the characteristics of the enemy. They use talk of stern judgments and thrive on ideas of a very angry God thundering down punishments on those who are clearly in the wrong. This gives them a little bit of hope and comfort in their terrible situations in hopes that someday Someone all-powerful is going to step in and even the score and inflict the pain and suffering that we feel is due to all those who exploit us.

But again I ask, what does this say about the God that we claim to love and serve? How is it supposed to attract those who do not serve Him now to want to come to Him? What about those enemies who are so heartless and unjust – does our attitude of vicarious rage cause them to want to repent and seek God for healing?

It is nearly an unchallenged assumption on the part of many Christians that the main method of inducing God's enemies to repentance is to threaten them with severe judgments and eloquent descriptions of “the wrath to come” on them if they continue to follow their evil ways. And I am not suggesting for a moment that there is not terrible judgments and punishments in their future if they do not repent. But the real crux of this question is, do those judgments and punishments come directly from the hand of an angry, revenge-seeking, offended deity out to settle a score, or are those judgments and awful punishments part of the natural consequences of violated eternal principles that are unavoidable if we reject the protection of God's mercy and grace that have already long protected not only those who have openly despised Him but ourselves as well? Is it possible that all of us are just as deserving of damnation and vengeance as those who more openly live in violence and wickedness? Is our relative righteousness compared to theirs somehow an insulation for us against suffering the wages of sin like we sometimes wish upon them?

For the past few years I have grappled with this issue of a God who seems more reflective of our own evil cravings for revenge and a desire to inflict pain on our enemies than on some of the plainest statements of Scriptures showing God to be very different than what we like to imagine. Just a few days ago I discussed some of this with another friend who was very reluctant to listen to such ideas about God as I was sharing, preferring rather to stick with beliefs in a God who will someday commit His “strange act” as most theologians like to refer to it. It is commonly accepted that someday God will finally come around to apparently see things the way we see them and get even with all those who refuse to accept His forgiveness and love for them like we want Him to.

It is then added by some – to the great confusion of the whole idea – that He is going to do this while feeling great sadness and pain for what He is somehow forced to do to end the great controversy. But it is believed that there is no other option for Him, so to get rid of evil He is going to have to torture the rejectors of His mercy in flames of hell for some period of time. But the farther we get into these theories the stranger it becomes to our teachings of justice and mercy. Generally it is said that mercy simply is suspended or dispensed with at that point since it is no longer available to the lost. That somehow gives God license to kill and torture some of His children in revenge for all the evil that they have committed against Him and against those who have been saved.

But the more I have pondered this and studied this subject and prayed about it and listened to the Spirit of God, the more I find these doctrines and beliefs totally unacceptable and even blasphemous in my opinion. These are not just “strange acts” for the God that I have been coming to learn about over the past few years but are closer to the characteristics of the very enemy that He is seeking to defeat. For God to suddenly adopt some of the tactics and attitudes of Satan to finish off Satan would be an irony that could easily sow seeds for further questions about Him that could linger on throughout all eternity. Maybe it is a strange act for very different reasons than we suppose concerning that word.

I realize there is enormous pressure on people to embrace these kinds of ideas about God when they are suffering under oppression from evil men. But is this really the Christian's hope that we should be encouraging? And furthermore, is this the spirit that will attract those same enemies to want to repent and turn to God for salvation themselves? What kind of witness are we bearing for the God we claim to love and serve when we promote such emotionally charged ideas about Him? Are we really being faithful witnesses for God or might we be found guilty ourselves of violating the ninth commandment?

I think the quickest way to find answers to all of these questions about God and the way He feels toward those who violently oppose His will is to carefully consider the life and example of Jesus, particularly during the awful treatment He received from sinful men during His last hours at Calvary. What attitude did He display toward those who clearly were out of line with any notion of justice or mercy? How did He react when tortured and abused to death by the very ones that He had come to rescue? The primary mission of Jesus to this earth was to reveal to us just how God feels about us and the real truth about His heart. Jesus and the Father have absolutely no discrepancies in their attitudes towards sinners. So if we do not see Jesus condemning or craving revenge against those who mistreated Him, how can we justify our desires to use God as our agent of revenge against those who mistreat us?

This is a very hard teaching for Christians to accept or even consider most of the time. That is because it betrays into the light our fleshly desires for revenge and retaliation that are so unlike the real truth about God. Unfortunately, religion has too often sought to conform our ideas about God more into our own image than to seek to truly understand the revelations about God that have been somewhat obscured through the filters of human messengers. But the truth is still there to be seen by anyone who is willing to lay aside their preconceived prejudices and allow the Holy Spirit to warm their heart with the real truths about our heavenly Father that have been kept in mystery and darkness for long ages.

Imagine the chances of Saul of Tarsus becoming a Christian and challenging the whole world to take a serious look at God if the early believers had embraced these beliefs about God that are so commonly held today. If those believers had been more interested in revenge against all the horrors that Saul was putting them through than in obeying the instructions of Jesus to pray for and love their enemies, I don't think Saul would have had much of an attraction to joining with them after His encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. But quite the opposite, I firmly believe that it was the intercessions of those very Christians that Saul was persecuting so violently and their Christ-like attitude in his face while he was trying to terrify and torture them that was the real source of the unavoidable pricks of conscience that Saul could never escape inside of his soul.

When Jesus exposed Himself to Saul on the road that day that turned his life totally around, it was not the first time that Saul had felt the strong persuasions and attractions of love and grace in his life. The constant witness of people who were choosing to act in the spirit of Jesus while he was abusing them was the most powerful weapon that could be used to disarm the lies that filled the mind of Saul. These repeated exposures to the presence of Jesus in the lives of His followers added to the convictions of the Holy Spirit reinforced by the prayers of Saul's enemies for Him, and this all became very painful for him as resisting them became a constant battle inside of his heart.

When Jesus showed up on that road, He was no stranger to Saul's mind by this point. Saul had long been hearing and resisting inwardly the sweet kindness and strange compassion of God in his soul that was so different than the stern, vengeful kind of God that Saul had grown up believing in. This idea of God as a merciful, forgiving, kind Father who treated people with infinite compassion and tenderness consistently was totally foreign to the religion that he had believed all his life. But it was the kindness of God that ultimately brought Saul to his knees in repentance, and nothing has changed in the years since that time.

I myself am just learning about this God and these truths are still seeping into my own thinking and perceptions. I too feel the pressure of wanting to endorse an angry, vengeful God when I am mistreated or witness horrible abuses of those I love. But I too must be reminded that the desires of my flesh will never bear truthful testimony about the true nature of God's feelings toward me or my enemies. God's ways are not our ways and God's thoughts are not our thoughts. I want to be transformed into the perfect image of God and not slip into the mistake of trying to form Him into my image.

O give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting. (1 Chronicles 16:34) When I looked up this verse on my computer I found that this phrase occurs 46 times in the Bible. I have come to see it as something of an anchor for my faith. God's lovingkindness really is everlasting.

Purpose of Probation

What would be the problem caused by Jesus coming back before every person had made a final decision about which side they were on?

Discussions on this topic almost always focus on questions about the real meaning, timing and circumstances surrounding the “close of probation”. But what is the significance of this “close of probation” from God's perspective?

"Let the one who does wrong, still do wrong; and the one who is filthy, still be filthy; and let the one who is righteous, still practice righteousness; and the one who is holy, still keep himself holy." (Revelation 22:11)

There is a lot of discussion and argument that revolves around how to get ready for this event. Most of the theories about preparing for Jesus' Second Coming and the “close of probation” generally center on perfecting “righteousness” in one's life which is generally assumed to mean eliminating all bad behavior. There are so many misconceptions about nearly all of the words and concepts in this debate that I don't want to get involved in that right here. What I want to focus on is an understanding that I have been coming to perceive, that the real issue here is the curing of both evil and righteousness. The completion of this curing process is extremely necessary to produce the iron-clad insurance that will prevent evil from ever rising again. And in my thinking, this is probably the core reason why it is so important for Jesus to tarry until every decision is fully cured, every character fully developed.

By curing, I am talking about the concept of maturing, developing, settling, like curing pickles in saltwater, not so much the idea of healing although that is an important part of what happens for those who are saved. This curing is more along the line of marinating something in a broth or juice so that the thing being marinated fully takes on the flavor of the liquid around it.

But the curing process is not just for the sake of the individual who is finally cured. It is part of a collective curing process whereby the whole universe becomes completely settled in its awareness of the inevitable results of following any other way but complete harmony with God's ways, the unbreakable principles of reality. This not only seals the hearts and minds of God's people on earth but seals all the intelligences of heaven. It also seals the hearts and minds of those who have chosen rebellion instead of repentance.

However, this sealing is not an arbitrary seal imposed by God on anyone but is a natural process of maturation from the choices of that individual. This sealing is represented as being carried out by the angels of God, but as with many other things like punishment and plagues, God and company accept responsibility for the natural progression that is built into the very principles of reality that He has set up in the first place. To not accept that responsibility would be to allow someone else to lay claim to it and to abandon responsibility, and God never sidesteps responsibilities. He will rather take the blame for anything even when misplaced, untrue or unfair than to give occasion for the enemy to have a potential foothold for any of his deceptions and lies about God.

If Jesus were to return before the final sealing was accomplished through the maturing of the choices of each person, there would then be some if not many who had not finished the sorting through of their options internally and had not yet made their own final choice as to which side they would choose for eternity. I cannot even imagine the enormous complications involved if God were to become impatient with waiting and rush prematurely to bring His children home. But a huge problem would be exposed when the confusion became obvious about which ones should be taken to heaven or should be left on earth.

This is where the issue of judgment comes in. Judgment is not about God determining the fate of everyone else but the maturing and exposing of their character to the point that there is no desire for them to ever want to change sides. The righteous will have become so settled in their mind and heart that they want to be like the loving God that they have come to know, and the lost will be so settled in their lies about God that neither side will ever be willing to change their minds again. The lost may appear to want to be saved when they see the riches of the New Jerusalem, but it is not because their hearts are melted by the love of God but from fear of the consequences of their rejection of His love.

Those consequences are likewise not something imposed from the outside onto them unnaturally. The punishments of God on the lost are not something forced upon them against their will but are the natural results of their resistant will when it is exposed to the presence of perfect love.

So again, hypothetically thinking, is it even possible to imagine what might happen if Jesus were to return sooner than it was safe to do so, before every person had settled in their mind their responses to the convictions of the Spirit of God about the offer of salvation? One thing that seems to be true is that God would be seen as very unfair in exposing them to His lethal presence before they had finished deciding whether to accept His offer of preparation for that encounter or not. And because God is never unfair in the slightest, that makes this scenario completely impossible.

It is our own very twisted ideas of salvation, the Second Coming and the rules of the great war between good and evil that give rise to our speculations and confusion about the timing of the coming of Jesus. There is enormous confusion about the elements that must be in place before this phase of the controversy can be initiated. Nearly all of our religious notions about the coming of Jesus are rooted in selfish reasons. We are more interested in getting ourselves away from people we don't like and circumstances that make us uncomfortable than we are in revealing the real truth about God's perfect character, His faithfulness and His everlasting lovingkindness. And as long as our desires for heaven are rooted mainly in selfishness instead of a desire to reveal God's true glory, we ourselves are not ready or safe to be saved and encounter His presence up close.

So it is not only the maturing of evil that must be allowed to be completed but it is the maturing and perfection of our own motives that must take place before it will be safe for us to be exposed to the real glory of God in Jesus that will be seen more clearly at His Second Coming. Many Christians today glibly believe that they are ready right now for Jesus to come and take them away from this earth. Most Christians have mistaken ideas about what it means to prepare for that great event. But it is God's mercy and grace that prevents Him from allowing Jesus to return while we remain in mortal danger of being exposed by the revealing light of His glory. It is not until we have our minds and hearts radically transformed by believing the real truth about God – totally different things about God's nature and character than what is commonly assumed now – that we will be safe to encounter the intensity of love that would destroy us in shame otherwise.

Shame is part of the essence of the fire that burns from the inside out whenever God's presence is encountered at close range by someone who has not fully embraced the truth about His character. That consuming fire is not something imposed by God onto them from the outside as a punishment. That fire is a natural consequence of lies buried in the heart being exposed to and yet resisting, truth that is unavoidable in the light of His glory. And the feelings aroused in that encounter will be shame, fear, terror, even hatred and all the other negative feelings that we are capable of experiencing. It is the overwhelming intensity of those emotions that will ignite the fire that consumes the life of all who resist the real truth about God's love, mercy and perfection.

Since Jesus refuses to allow anyone to be short-changed by not having enough time to finish their choices, He is going to allow events in the end times to coalesce together to compel everyone at some point in history to come to a final maturation of their characters at the same time. We cannot figure out now fully how that is going to take place, but we do have clues from the Bible. But it will happen whether we can understand it or not. Instead of trying to figure out how it is all going to happen, we need to spend our time and energy focusing instead on discovering the real nature and truth about His glory, His character, His beauty, His righteousness. The closer we get to perceiving the real truth about His loveliness and His consistent mercy and forgiveness and kindness, the more matured His character will be reflected in our own life.

Searching for Real Truth

I switched on the radio today to try to find some good music to listen to at the request of my family. What we heard initially was a speaker from a typical Christian ministry giving a simplistic version of what is often called “the gospel” trying to appeal to people and to convict them of why they should turn to God. But instead of making me feel excited about knowing God better, the words of the speaker only stirred up some very intense feelings of jealousy for God's reputation that was being unwittingly maligned by the many false assumptions about Him they were presenting.

More and more I find myself out of step with the mainstream of Christianity and the philosophies they promote about religion and God. Because of the confused and mixed messages that are almost always present in religious teachings I find myself wanting to scream out in protest at times, wishing that the real truth about God could become more obvious to people claiming to be representing Him. Instead, the messages most commonly given are along the lines of beliefs in an angry God being appeased by a loving Jesus who died a terrible on the cross to prevent us from being fried in hell if we will just somehow feel sorry enough for doing bad things that offend Him.

All of my life I have had some version or other of this kind of teaching presented by everyone around me and this was usually labeled as being the gospel. But something deep inside of me also felt confused by the duplistic nature of the things being taught and for the life of me I could not figure out how this could really be called “good news”. There was always so many requirements that had to be met, so many attitudes that I was somehow supposed to conjure up to satisfy the demands of this “gospel” that I just couldn't see how this could really be viewed as good news, at least for me. It seemed more like a competition to see if I could jump through all the hoops laid down by God before I could be accepted into heaven and on the other hand a God trying to find some reason to keep me out.

But what I have come to even more resent in the past few years is the underlying assumptions that are almost never challenged of a God who will inevitably turn on His created children and lash out in anger against anyone who did not meet His minimum requirements to get into paradise. Something about this whole theology just rankles deep inside my soul no matter how much rationalization the teachers and preachers do to convince me that it is somehow fair. And to top it off, when they can't produce enough reasonable evidence to integrate beliefs about a loving God and teachings about a vengeful hell together, they quickly resort to their trump card to shut down all discussion about the subject – the “strange act” syndrome or the “mysteries that we just can't know”.

This final move to shut off all thinking or questions about the inconsistencies between a God of love and a god of hateful vengeance smacks all too much of the mind and soul intimidation exercised most forcefully in the Dark Ages when religion imposed its harsh beliefs about God on every human being under their dictatorial control. Anyone daring to question the strong pronouncements of the church were quickly branded as heretics and were threatened with similar torture and pain that was commonly believed were the methods used by the God they believed in. The same kind of thinking still underlies much of religion today even though people think that the reformation has changed everything. The problem is, I don't think the reformation has ever really been finished. There are still very important truths about God that remain buried under the misconceptions of sinful men because of false interpretations of teachings in the Bible.

As we listened to the discourse on the radio for a few minutes before I got some music CD's playing, we heard the speaker talk about our need to be saved from the punishment for sin in hell. I then heard my daughter comment that what we really needed was to be saved from him. She was referring to the speaker on the radio, but it occurred to me that in fact what this religious teacher was really saying was that we needed to be saved from Him – God.

And that betrays the core issue that has bothered me all of my life about these confused notions of what really constitutes the gospel. For in nearly all of the teachings that are going around called “gospel”, it is ultimately God the Father that is either implied or explicitly taught to be the one that we need to be saved from. It is the “wrath of God” that is usually presented as the dire threat from which Jesus was sent to “save” us and only in doing whatever formula the teacher subscribes to are we supposed to be able to avoid that terrible fate. The formula presented is generally unique to whatever denomination or even cult that happens to be offering their path to salvation. But all of this is becoming very strange and disturbing to me as I see more clearly what constitutes the real gospel as taught by the Bible.

The more I learn (which is partly because I continue to ask lots of questions about assumptions and the real meaning of words) and the more I study the Bible on this subject, the more attractive the real truth becomes about the true nature of salvation and the real truth about how God relates to and feels about us. It is not that there is no real danger to be concerned with or that there will never be any such thing as hell. It is just that nearly everything we have assumed about these things have been based more on traditions in religion than on solid biblical study with open minds and hearts and led by the true Spirit.

The exciting thing is that there are more and more people in the world beginning to wake up to the real truths about God. I believe that His Spirit is in the process of waking up anyone who is willing to be taught, who is willing to reexamine their own beliefs and assumptions whether they are religious, atheist or anything else. Those who are truly honest in heart and hungry to know the real truth about reality are going to be blessed with fresh revelations of truth that are going to go far beyond anything that any present denomination teaches today.

This is why I believe that it is extremely important for people to not get stuck thinking that others can supply them with all the truth that they need to be saved. When we depend on any church, any teacher, preacher or theologian to be our source of salvation truth, then we are shorting ourselves of the access to fuller truth that God wants to reveal to those who are hungry to move us past what others claim is complete truth. We must not allow ourselves to make anyone our standard or source of truth without a willingness to go to the Source ourselves and learn to listen to the Spirit of God instruct us personally.

Many fear that if each person chooses to listen directly to the Spirit of God individually that the result will be chaos and disunity. But this attitude betrays a lack of real trust in the ability of God to communicate with His children. It also betrays a secret desire for control through human means to achieve the unity that can only really be produced by divine methods. The Bible teaches that all children of God will be led by the Spirit of God – not by any human agents. As that Spirit communicates with each person it will be seen that the real unity that Christians long for will occur naturally because the Spirit never contradicts itself and all truth will be seen to be in harmony with the Bible. But the ongoing revelation of truth may not always agree with the traditional interpretations and spin put on things in the Bible by humans trying to achieve doctrinal control over other people's faith.

What I have been learning is that all concepts and doctrines must be checked and reexamined, even repeatedly, in the growing light of the glory of God's character as revealed in the life of Jesus. If anything is the slightest bit inconsistent with the testimony and example of Jesus about what God is really like, then it is urgent that we become suspect of that teaching and be willing to reconsider what might be another way of perceiving it. I have found this to be an excellent way to flush out subtle errors in doctrines and teachings that all my life I assumed to be fact simply because my teachers and church insisted they were true. It is not enough to have Bible texts all lined up to prove some belief. Just because someone can quote the Bible does not mean that their conclusions are in line with heaven's perspective. More and more I am seeking to ground myself firmly on consistency of faith that must align with the Bible and most of all with the witness of Jesus' life and the promptings of His Spirit instead of simply believing what anyone else teaches or preaches.

I am still very blessed, instructed and even corrected by listening to various speakers or reading some of their material. But at the same time I always keep uppermost in my consciousness that everything I hear must be referred to the Spirit of God that dwells in me. Anythings that seems to be out of line with what I have already been learning personally from God needs to be examined by the above standards and I consciously ask God's Spirit what He thinks about it. Sometimes He confirms that I need to take it seriously and adjust my own attitudes, assumptions or beliefs. Other times He reveals that this person is not the complete repository of truth no matter how advanced and in tune with God they may be. They are not to be my final source of truth, they are only agents that God can use to add to what He has already been teaching me in my own journey toward knowing the real truth about Him.

This has brought me a great deal of peace as I no longer feel I have to feel guilty for not agreeing completely with every godly speaker or teacher. I realize that God may be teaching me things that they have not yet learned and at the same time is teaching them things that I have not yet learned. He definitely can use them to increase my own perspective of truth, but I do not have to give up what He has already shown me if it happens to differ from what they are saying. I do remain willing to once again challenge my own beliefs, but it is so refreshing to find out that God is never offended by anyone challenging or examining anything that claims to be truth. In fact, He is pleased when we are willing to begin thinking and questioning our assumptions. If our heart is pursuing a knowledge of His heart and an experience of knowing Him personally, He will be faithful to guide us in the right direction and takes responsibility to continue to draw us into a fuller understanding of truth.

What I am searching for are others who are willing to ask tough questions that motivate us toward a deeper appreciation of the real truths about God. I am hungry to dialog with people who are loyal to the Bible but not dogmatic in their prejudices. I want to connect with other hearts and minds that are willing to remain humble and open to new truths as God brings them to us and yet courageous in sharing these truths with others even when it is not popular with a church. And most of all I want to have a spirit free of bigotry and intensity. I am coming to realize that when I start to feel that “intense” feeling inside when others disagree with me that it is not reflective of the real Spirit of Jesus. This intensity is actually a counterfeit of the passion that God has to unite our hearts and lives with Him.

I want to have much more of the pure and holy passion that I am beginning to perceive in the heart of God and much less of the intensity of bigotry and defensiveness that characterizes much of the religious zeal seen in this world. I want to learn the ways of God, to share the feelings and emotions and reactions of God, to come into sympathy with Him and to see reality through heaven's perspective. This is my desire and my prayer and I believe is also His desire for me.

Carry Your Part

This is just a late note about something that happened a couple weeks ago. But since it is still Christmas time it is worth posting.

Last year about this time we heard about a concert in a nearby town put on by the Coles County Barbershoppers. Since we have always enjoyed Barbershop music we were eager to enjoy some music in this part of the country that seems to us somewhat devoid of opportunities like this.

The concert was as good as we hoped for and after the concert my desires to once again be involved personally in music were again revived. As we passed through the handshake line with the many chorus members in the hall, I asked one of them how viable it was for me to join this chorus. Since I sing bass I figured that it might be quite likely they wouldn't have need for any more since it is so easy to find people that sing that part.

They encouraged me to just show up on a Tuesday night where they practice after the holiday break and start singing with them. That is exactly what I did starting in February of this year and have been enjoying the music ever since. This holiday season I was privileged to be able to join the chorus in two performances of their Christmas concert myself. While standing in the handshake line after the last concert I remarked to the man standing next to me that it was in this very line one year before that I had been inspired to join the chorus myself.

This has been a real blessing for me over the past year. This chorus is lead by a father-son team who are passionate about music and care about the men of this chorus from their heart. I have observed that this is more than simply a professional singing group. These are people that have been learning to be involved at a little deeper level of caring for each other than simply showing up and learning their part each week. While the directors can be very tough on us at times and sound very nit-picky, it is clear that they also realize the volunteer status of each person and they have a knack for inspiring us to want to blend our voices in ways superior to the average singing group. They believe in us and want us to discover that we can be better than we assume we are.

That is the kind of person I want to become much more than I have been. I have been learning just a little more about the God who believes in me far more than I have ever dared to do. To see this attitude in others in the way they treat me reminds me of my own need to believe in other people and see past their faulty performances to see what is latent in their heart. I want to perceive the inner beauty and potential in what appears to everyone else to be nothing but ugliness. I want to be an inspiration for someone who has never dared to believe in themselves. In short, I want to be a channel of hope and encouragement that ever flows from the heart of God.

Legacy

I am starting to sense that I need to align myself differently with the legacy of my father than I have done thus far. Up to this point I have generally seen his combativeness, his meddling in other people's spiritual lives and his critical relationship toward the church as things for me to totally avoid. As a result of all these faults that to me were so obvious in his life I have found it difficult to perceive clearly many of his true strengths of character, things in his life that were worth emulating and admiring. I am not saying that I don't think there are any there, I am just saying that it is hard for me to see them clearly from my close proximity as one wounded by many of his mistakes.

I have spent many years very slowly and sometimes painfully working through a process of healing from much of the damage caused in my life by my dad's mistakes. I don't believe that it is wrong to say that, for an important part of my own healing has been to finally admit that many of the things that happened to me were in fact wrong, hurtful and not in line with God's ways. My perception of God was severely distorted by my dad's mistaken ideas about Him that were so prevalent when he was growing up. When I finally could see those faulty beliefs in the light of truth and identify them as part of the causes of the deep wounds in my heart, then my heart could begin to come back to life, to be willing to take the risk of coming back into the light very tentatively and consider functioning as a heart is supposed to function in relationship with others.

For this healing to continue and deepen, my willingness to identify the real causes of the lies embedded in me like slivers and burrs buried deep in my flesh has been a critical and necessary element. I realize that there is still much more internal healing that needs to happen as more memories are uncovered and more pain is exposed to the light of grace and the real truth about God. But now I am sensing that it may be time to move into a more advanced phase of my healing and to begin to see even more truth about my dad that will have a different kind of maturing effect in my life. It is time to begin to move beyond seeing clearly the faults of my dad and without ignoring those or hiding from them again, it is time to add a knowledge and awareness of the other aspects of his example that are worth appreciating, are worth emulating, the unique character traits that were important and that have been passed on to me as God-ordained gifts from my family heritage.

God designed the human mind to function under the “rules” or principles of family-type relationships. And even though sin has largely wreaked havoc in this area as Satan has sought to obliterate every trace of God's original purpose for family governance of His people, the hard-wiring is still in place within every human and the plan of salvation is God's way of reviving these ancient paths in the brain and to awaken them to be used for their original purpose once again. The more we understand the true purpose and design of family relationships, the more unity we are going to see among God's people and the more effectiveness and power of the gospel will be displayed in the lives of His children who will reflect His character of perfect love to an amazed watching world.

I am starting to feel conviction that it is time for me to become more aware of the noble traits of character that kept my father going for so many years even though his early years were filled with trouble, pain and weaknesses. I need to have the stories of his life reviewed and re-analyzed from a new perspective so that the parts of my father that reside inside of myself can know how to act properly and be utilized to accomplish what God intended for them. For those who are trying to follow God in obedience, each generation receives the opportunity to build on the past generation and to take the work of character development much farther than the last. If I am willing to be honest and fully aware of how my dad failed to follow God's ways, even though that was done in ignorance, but to also become fully aware of how my dad developed character that was in line with God's ways that may have made him a non-conformist with others around him, then I can be prepared to know both what to avoid in my own experience and just as importantly know what to leverage to my advantage and to God's glory.

I have been alerted in the past few weeks to little things about what I remember of my dad that I previously thought were things to avoid at all costs but are actually things that partially need to be strengthened. Though especially in his later years his strengths became more and more perverted due to the pervasive bitterness that was taking over his soul and spirit, the underlying strengths of character that served him very well in earlier years are still worth emulating. And since I have been invested through the principle of inherited family tendencies with many of the character assets of my parents, I need to learn how to sort through all these various legacies from them and make use of the ones that are worth keeping and learn to leverage them more astutely for my own growth. If I do this properly, I think that there may be immense inner power available that I am currently very unaware of lying latent inside of me like a trunk full of treasures gathering dust and undiscovered in an attic.

I don't feel competent to identify completely all that is good or bad from my dad's past, but I do know that God can be trusted to guide me through this sorting process to discard that which is harmful and to incorporate and strengthen that which is needed in my own experience and character. What I am coming to realize is that in trying to reject the faults of my father I can unintentionally also throw out some of the things of great value in my haste to unload the pain from my past. Now that I have been freed of much of the pain of my past and feel more secure in the arms of my real Father in heaven, I feel Him urging me to go back and reconsider some of my previous evaluations and to take back into my life the things that He shows me are really worth keeping and incorporate them into my own life.

It is sort of like sorting through the tools in a garage filled with all sorts of junk, collections from many years and strange things that I am not completely familiar with myself. I actually helped do this very thing with my adopted daughter a few years ago. After her dad died we began to sort through her large garage and shed that was packed to the rafters with all sorts of things: tools, lumber, car parts, parts for nearly anything imaginable as well as antiques, furniture and lots and lots of junk. She knew almost nothing about the usefulness or value of many of these things and was very afraid she would discard something of value. But at the same time she felt suffocated living in a house overflowing with things she knew she would never likely use herself.

It took us several years of sorting, negotiating, waiting for memories to subside and emotional releasing for us working together to reduce the huge inventory of stuff in that house. She came to depend on me to give her guidance as to the identity of many of the things she was totally unfamiliar with in order to decide what to do with it. I myself had to be very cautious and disinterested in my assistance even though I was doing most of the actual work of sorting, rearranging and deciding what was worth keeping or selling and what should just be hauled away. I had to be very careful under the circumstances not to ask for anything for myself even though there were some tools I could have used from this huge stash of inherited stuff. There were boxes and boxes of various tools and many things that I could have used in the work that I do. But because of my unique relationship with her and because of her extreme sensitivity about everything under her control, I learned to just keep my desires to myself and just give her my opinions about whether or not she should keep each item and what she might possibly do with it if she did not want it.

It is starting to feel a little bit this way in looking back on my own pile of character traits passed on from my ancestors to me. I am not wise enough to always know what is valuable and what should be tossed out or burned. Because of my lack of perspective or experience I have to depend on outside advice and guidance to learn what I need to get healing for and what I need to learn to keep and even utilize for my own life. For there are many very valuable tools from the past that if I learned how to use them properly could save me a great deal of expense and time trying to recreate them for myself through hard experiences. I likely will find that I don't have to necessarily go out and reinvent the wheel so to speak when I already have a number of them sitting around in my inner garage. I just need to learn how to use them properly and trust in God to teach me how to implement them better than how my parents used them.

One thing in particular in my dad's life that has caused me mixed emotions was his boldness in “standing up for truth” in the face of any and all opposition. On the surface this looks like a no-brainer for religiously-inclined people. The cliché sounds very noble, but behind the scenes I experienced pain of embarrassment and also saw how his boldness was often not exercised in love and true compassion. What I have observed over the years, not only with my own father but with many like him, is that this attitude of boldness is used as a religious excuse for judging and condemning others while claiming to be a defender of truth. Because of the abuse of this God-given gift of boldness, I have tended to lean very strongly in the other direction most of my life. Since a very young age I have tended to be somewhat timid and sensitive to not offending others unnecessarily. That has ended up producing in my life a very strange mixture of both of these elements that is not necessarily a good outcome. I have often been both aggressive and hurtful while at the same time being very fearful and withdrawn. It is something like having the worst of both my dad and my own character flaws mixed in together.

I now realize that the real problem that caused my dad's strengths to become misdirected and hurtful many times was his misunderstandings about the real meaning of most of the religious words and concepts taught in the Bible and the church. He certainly knew the standard ideas of religion and had a very strong grasp on doctrines and theological facts, but like most of us he had almost no true experiential knowledge of the spirit side of truth and had very few encounters with real love. Thus his experience was very lop-sided and he became more and more unbalanced as he got into his later years.

But his legacy has caused me to be almost paranoid about this tool of boldness. As a result I have tended to gravitate more toward avoidance of confrontation which I still believe is better than the damaging outbursts that caused my father so many problems. But God is wanting to teach me how to be bold in His way and for His glory instead of for my agenda and opinions like my dad did. Because God has spent years retraining me as to the real meaning of many of the religious words and concepts of His kingdom, I am far better positioned to utilize the element of boldness in ways that could honor God's reputation instead of damaging it like my dad too often did.

I am not saying that my dad ever intended to hurt God's reputation. That was the last thing he wanted to do. But because of his partial ignorance about the real character of God, and because he had so little real unconditional love shown to him, and because his heart was so deeply damaged and unhealed from his early experiences in life, he spent nearly all his life trying to do religion the best way he could figure out. But the outcome was that he used many of God's tools entrusted to him in ways that were not always the best for God's family or for his own.

But I have the wonderful advantage of being able to see all of this in much greater perspective than he ever could. I have the ability to see both what to avoid as well as what he had that laid a better foundation for me than what he started with. And it is this latter area that I am now realizing that I am lacking in knowledge of at this point. It is his strengths that I need to become more familiar with and it is my privilege to learn how to use the tools passed on to me in ways that will honor and strengthen the work of God in other people's hearts instead of using them abusively in ways that tear apart the work of God in hearts. And as I do this, the legacy and efforts of my own dad over his years of trial and error will be used by God to not just honor God but will greatly improve and enhance the reputation of my own father.