Thoughts From My Journal on What Calvin Miller May Be Doing at This Moment...

This morning from my journal: I was drawn to thinking of Dr. Calvin Miller, author, pastor and professor, who died this year, August 9th, 2012, at the age of 75.  His written works include The Singer Trilogy, The Celtic Path of Prayer, Life is Mostly Edges, Sermon Maker, Into the Depths and his most recent (that touched and helped me beyond any other) Letters to a Young Pastor.  This isn't a complete list of his works, but a good start.  He also has written several children's book and many poems.  Much thanks to Pastor Roger Daniel of Caffee Junction Church of God for introducing me to this great man and writer.  Though I never met him in person, he retired from Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama where I live, and he lived in Trussville just a few miles from where I now pastor.  It seems that we were destined to meet, though it never happened, but one day I'm confident, in Christ, we will.  On the day of his death, when I saw the Tweets concerning his passing... I couldn't help but cry.

Here's the entry from my journal dated Tuesday, November 20th, 2012...

For some reason I'm thinking about Calvin Miller this morning. A man I don't know except through his writings.

 

What a writer and thinker he was here upon this earthly realm.  What a writer and thinker he must now be on that eternal shore where he is no longer inhibited by the limits of mere human expression.  His mind has now been unlocked as the blinding scales of our humanity have been peeled away by Christ's own fingers. 

 

Some might think it absurd to imagine that in Heaven there is writing.  I imagine that the best writing is done there.  Here we're only given a glimpse of the writing potential that exists when no prohibition is made to the artistic expression of such a beautiful form of communication as when the mind has finally been liberated to righteousness, holiness and unhindered perception, now having an eternal vantage point.

Oh the words Calvin now has access to that express such fullness of concepts no human tongue has knowingly uttered; except, perhaps, in some form of charismatic spattering that most of the Christian world condemns as emotional ecstasy.  Those unknown languages, are at his full disposal now, and the concepts he once struggled to string together here (oh that I "struggled" as he) now flow in holy ecstasy expressing the beauty and grandeur he knows now so vibrantly.  Down here, he only could guess at the grandeur he penned in books published on dirty, used presses.  There the grandeur is now bathing him in golden warmth where his soul is satisfied, and his writings printed in angelic hues of electric light on parchment peeled from Divine Presence.

I imagine him with some holy pen (holy because everything in Heavenly is illuminated by light that emanates from God's own Son so that it can be seen and grasped by spiritual hands) feverishly writing of all the new things his eyes have been awakened to.  Perhaps one complete sentence there, though no time at all passes, has taken him here 10,000 years to scribe.

He probably shares in a writers guild with those passed away writers such as Paul, with his letters; Isaiah and Jeremiah, with their oracles; David and his son Solomon, with their poetry and praise; Moses and Esther, with their stories of Presence; Spurgeon, with sermon; Charles Wesley, with song; Tolkien and Lewis, with sheer genius.  I hope, also, that Oscar Wilde is with them having now learned the craft of grace.  He pens now not from the perception of hedonism and sensual exploitation, but from the perception of perfect Love he found on his death bed of sickness from a life wrecked with human taking and grief now redeemed by glowing, piercing beams of grace.  I think they're all, also, waiting in anticipation for their sons Lucado, Zacharias, Chan and Platt to arrive. 

I hope they'll let me sit in on such an eternally, exquisite guild one day.  Not because I'm ever to become an "accomplished" writer such as they, but because I've cried out to the Spirit in my journals of desperate weakness.  In those cries, I hope, something of those inexpressible ecstasies spilled unknowingly onto my pages in groanings that were not written in any audibly recognizable tones of intellectual purpose.

I'm not quite sure what turned my think this morning to Miller, but, for whatever reason, the thought of his writing finally being loosed in Heaven gives hope that Spirit filled writing will be loosed on Earth as well.  The writings that Calvin now engages must be wonderfully expressive and fully complete in a way his human hand never achieved.  I think of him spilling his liberated heart out in divine poetry that no human here can read, but one day, by the heavenly sea, we'll recline and read and marvel still at the works of the Spirit through Calvin Miller.

"There's A Monster Under My Bed... Jerry Sandusky"

As a father, I go to great lengths to dispel the fear of monsters from the mind of my five year old daughter Madilyn.  Of our four children, she, being the youngest, is the last in need of her daddy to defeat the monsters that lurk in the shadows of her bedroom.

It's a great trophy of victory that I have won to have convinced my other three children that monsters don't exist, and it's all because their daddy, who can not be defeated -- after all I am stronger than all other daddies -- has single-handily chased them forever away from our abode. The older three go to sleep soundly each night knowing that monsters don't play Chutes and Ladders in their room once their eyelids have closed tightly.  My job as a father... complete (well, nearly).

Sadly, we've recently learned, again and again albeit, that monsters do exist.  And after having convinced my children that monsters don't exist, I'll have to teach them again how to protect themselves from these supposedly non-existent entities that, actually, in fact do exist.

Jerry Sandusky, former assistant coach for Penn St, proved this recently to us.  He reassured us again that monsters exist.

Many young, innocent boys learned this tragic tale first hand at Jerry Sandusky's home and on the campus of Penn State.  They, however, had no one present to protect them and ward off their monster.  Their monster took the most tragic form: caregiver and father figure.  This disguise dehumanized these children to the point that their ability to ever live sane, normal lives has been greatly diminished.  How will they ever fully trust again?

I'm sure they will question their self worth until the day they die, if not for the restoring help of our Loving Father -- to which the title itself will be the greatest of hurdles.  Their only knowledge of a "loving father" proved to be a grotesque, manipulating monster hiding in the most twisted, unassuming disguise... a father figure.

Society though did, exactly what I've done throughout this blog.  I labeled Jerry Sandusky.  We needed too.  If he's a monster, atypical of humanity, then we can rest assured knowing that what Jerry Sandusky has done is the exception to our race and not the norm.  We need him to carry a label other than human so that we can sleep soundly at night and ward off fictitious monsters that pose no real threat.  We don't, however, want to deal with the monster that is ourselves:

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9

 The acts he committed are so heinous, and 99.9% of the people reading this article have never ever considered doing something so heinous, at least I hope this to be true.  What he did repulses us. But naturally speaking this is humanity's true nature peeking its monstrous head up through the thin crust of supposed civility brandishing our truest hues of gray scaled colors.  Sandusky won't be cured by 500 years in prison.  The punishment here, in my opinion, doesn't fit the crime because of the devastation to these, now, young men can never be calculated.  It just proves to show us that humanity is desperately wicked.  It further proves that mankind needs saving.  Humanity needs resurrection from the sin and death we bath in daily.  We're entirely saturated in it.  Even the best among us has a human heart, and that if its inner most secrets were known publicly we'd be very embarrassed by its contents.

"All of us have become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
    and like the wind our sins sweep us away."  Isaiah 64:6

Let us learn from this despite having too many teachers already, that the only hope for humanity DOES NOT exist within us.  Our only hope of salvation comes from above.  The only hope we have from our desperately wicked ways is the fact that there's a Loving Father who knows no sin, and doesn't have a human heart.  He desperately wants to save us from the monsters lurking in the shadows of our own rooms... that is, our hearts.  In Christ is true salvation, perfect love where we need not be afraid any longer of who we are and the vast potential for wicked that lies silent at times but explodes to the surface in lucid moments of exposure.  When the pleasantries have all been exhausted and the thin veil of niceness has been worn thin, humanity shows itself truly and no amount of self help or self actualization can ever save us.  Our salvation is not further conformation to this world, but true and ultimate transformation where we become new creatures -- something that didn't exist before -- in Christ (I Corinthians 5:17).

God help humanity.  Help us because we're broken...

To understand our sinfulness is to see our need for salvation.  Jesus sees it.  He did something about it.  He didn't just label us "monsters" then went on His divinely merry way.  No.  He redeemed us from the curse of sin and death by becoming just like us... human.  Yet He conquered the monster of sin, because He knew we could not.

This is what we need to learn from this tragic scandal... that we are in need of saving.  We ignore this too often.  And no matter how many times humanity rears its ugly head, we keep ignoring it.  We dissolve the problem down and isolate the problem to the label "criminally insane" and ignore the reality that evil does in fact exist and it is immediate in our common humanity.  This is the great deception, that evil doesn't exist and is only an ideology of the theologically minded.  This attitude continues in the statement, "Who can believe those religious, Jesus believing nut jobs anyway?"  The world can agree with it or not, but we nut jobs corner the market on understanding evil.  In order for us to come into the hallowed ranks of "nut-job-ed-ness", we have to first admit our wickedness.  Christ promises us that if we confess our transgressions -- which is church speak for admit we are evil -- that He'll just as quickly as we can ask forgive us and place His own heart within us.

Before you quickly dismiss the Jerry Sandusky scandal as just another sick-o exposed and behind bars, let the reality sink in a bit that we share his human DNA.  We may not share his same evil proclivity, and would never even think to, but we share the same evil that keeps us separated from our Loving Father.  So, tonight, as we tuck ourselves into bed, and we turn out the lights to go to sleep, let us go to bed knowing that we have a perfect, loving, heavenly Father who courageously wants to ward off and rid our hearts from the monster that lurks within our own humanity.  He has chased them all from under our beds and we can rest soundly in Him, if we will believe.

Proverbs 30:7-9

"O God, I beg two favors from you;
      let me have them before I die.
First, help me never to tell a lie.
      Second, give me neither poverty nor riches!
      Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”
      And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name." (New Living Translation)

I can't help but think how this text defines our country.  Out of meager means, starving to death during winter, unable to sustain ourselves, we began a journey to become a nation free of religious persecution.  And God did bless.  Then growing rich, we have forgotten God.  Oh we remember Him when we become desperate at times.  When we need some miracle to sustain our comfort, or to keep us further rooted as transient citizens here below where we aren't supposed to feel at home... then we remember Him.

I can't help think of myself.  Of how when things are going so well we are content to blow a kiss toward Heaven  Blown kisses are but a long distance disconnect from an actual embrace of the Holy and Divine -- we're too busy to actually run toward Him and kiss Him with our own lips as we're fine to do it from more than an arms length.  Who needs the disruption of crossing distance to be near Him?  We have all we need and then some.

Grant me these two things as well, God.  Give me just enough to satisfy my needs so that there's a constant need to be near You so that I don't forget You and say, "Who is the Lord?" And let me not lie and say "All is well with my soul, for I know Him!" when I do not.

Matthew 28:19 (NLT)

"Therefore, go and MAKE DISCIPLES of all the nations, BAPTIZING them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Matthew 28:19 (NLT)
 
Just some questions to consider about this scripture...

First of all, ask ourselves, "Who am I discipling to be a follower of Christ?"  Do we come up with any names?  If not, then how do we change that?

Secondly, who is this scripture intended to instruct?  (Us! The body of Christ.  All Believers. Or at least this is the way that I've always heard it preached from every pulpit making the plea for all to go and preach the good news of Jesus.)

Lastly, has the fact that the practice of baptism being relocated to the "ministry" given us "non-ministers" the sense that it's no longer our responsibility to MAKE and BAPTIZE followers of Christ?

I'm sure someone can offer a worthy theological treatise (I know that's above my skill level) on why the "ministry" alone is allowed to baptize people; and hearing it I might concede with their argument.  But just a simple reading of this text, acting as if I had never read it before , leads me to believe that this is also a part of my responsibility as a follower of Christ.

Maybe the intention of Christ was to raise up licensed ministers to fulfill these duties.  I'm not bemoaning licensing, and I surely can see the chaos that might ensue if every believer was out performing rogue baptisms with no sense of organization or hierarchical structure. The question I ponder though is whether or not the distinction between licensed ministers and the rest of us has sort of mentally relieved us from the duty of making disciples? Have we transferred this responsibility from ourselves to the professionals?  This is just something to consider...

And maybe rogue baptisms would be a good problem for the church to have...  it seems that if this were the case, it would mean that we were out there fulfilling the commission of the referenced text. I think God might forgive us for that...

Romans 1:20 (NLT)

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.  Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities -- His eternal power and divine nature.  So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

1 John 2:1-2 (NLT)

My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin.  But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous. He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins -- and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.

1 John 2:15-17 (NLT)

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.  For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions.  These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave.  But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

Colossians 3:2-3 (NLT)

Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.