Tag Archives: questions

February 22, 2016

When Violence Happens, Our Questions Are Hard

By pbstone

welovekalamazoo

Saturday evening, just a few hundred yards from where I pastor, the sister of one of students in our youth ministry was shot as part of a shooting spree where eight people were shot. Two continue to fight for their lives and six were killed in the shootings.

What do I write about all that is in my heart about this? How do I take what doesn’t really have words and give it voice?

It would be easy to turn this into an opportunity to talk about guns; or to talk about our violence culture; or to make this into some sort of political stump to stand on. But this post won’t be about that. And so if you have an urging within you to say something political, I want to ask you to hold it in. At least for just a little bit?

Political agendas around gun control and a violence culture cheapen, and even belittle, the grief of families and the questions a tragedy such as this bring to the surface.

As a community we are asking the deeper questions – and doubt. Questions that begin with “why.” Why did this have to happen? Where is God in the midst of this? How does a good and loving God allow such things to happen? Why did a father and son have to die? Why were four women, friend, killed for apparently no reason?

These are the questions that need to be asked by the community at this time. These are good, hard questions that get at the core of faith and if it is even worth having faith. Yes, you read that right. I think it is a good thing to even wrestle with if it is worth having faith. (I think I just felt some of your anxiety go up didn’t I?). Unless we get to the root of that question, and if we go to quickly to platitudes, I am not sure we really have faith or if it is a deep faith…?

It’s a question even as much as it is a statement.

I wonder if we can consider for a moment that even Jesus had questions. Deep and difficult questions. Addressed to God the Father.

In Matthew (one of my 4 favorite Gospel accounts) Jesus begins to ask his Father if he has to suffer in the way he knows is coming. Twice in chapter 26 Jesus asks if the “cup” of his suffering might be taken away. The first time is recorded like this, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” Troubled and sorrowful, Jesus asks to not have to go through suffering. In Luke 22 it is recorded that Jesus’ anguish is so deep that his sweat was like drops of blood.

If Jesus is able to question God in such a troubling way, why don’t we? I think it is because doubt and questions make most of us uncomfortable most of the time. We want things tidy. We want simple answers to make sense of our world.

But simple answers elude. Especially now. Especially here.

Let’s go even further. Jesus’ last words on the cross are also a question. Directed at God. Full of suffering, pain and anguish, in Matthew 27 Jesus cries out loudly, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The last words of the pre-Easter Jesus is the question “why” cried out to God. And there is no resolution for Jesus before his death. He dies on the cross with those words still hanging in the air. And unlike at Jesus’ baptism, we are left without a response from Heaven…

I want to invite you to let the question hang there. Why God? Why did six people have to die from a random act of violence on Saturday? Why did it have to happen here, now? Why?

Jesus’ question hung in the air.

And it was in the emptiness of the question that the resurrection took place. It was in the midst of the fear and doubt and hiding of the disciples that God the Father then stepped in.

The resurrection didn’t take place at the Triumphal entry, when it was cool to hang with cat who healed people and stood against the religious leaders of the day.

The resurrection didn’t happen when life was good.

The resurrection took place.

It took place in the midst of deep questions, fear and sadness…

Kalamazoo, let your questions sit out in the open. Ask them. Keep asking them. Jesus loves you.

 

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June 29, 2015

We’re Asking The Wrong Questions

By pbstone

rainbow

I will confess that on Friday, June 26, when the Supreme Court issued a decision constitutionally securing the right for same-sex marriage in all 50 states, I wasn’t sure how I felt. I’m still not sure all that I am feeling.  To be honest it is taking some time to sort through it all.

And not because of same-sex marriage.  And yet, because of it…  🙂

The reason there is this place in me that feels uncertain is this:  We still don’t know how to dialogue. And because we don’t know how to dialogue, we are asking the wrong kinds of questions and making polarizing statements. On both sides.

Social media was flooded, of course. Both heralding the SCOTUS decision and condemning it, everybody was taking sides, it seemed.  And, I think that is part of the problem – the taking of sides. But it’s what we do when we are anxious.  And even the LGBT community and supporters were anxious, even if it was in a highly celebratory way.

And so most of us asked the same question in two different ways – as if life is a coin and there are only two sides.  Version one of the question is something like this, “Do you support the SCOTUS decision? Will you perform a same-sex marriage?”  Version two of the question is something like this, “Do you support a Biblical understanding of marriage? You wouldn’t do a same-sex marriage would you?”

Said differently, they are the same question, “Are you on my side? Do you agree with me?”  

I believe the questions we are asking are designed to put people into a box (for or against), on a volatile issue, outside of the context of relationship.  They are the wrong questions because they create enmity not dialog. They force us into agree/disagree thinking and talking resulting in I like you / I don’t like you behavior. They keep us stuck in a way of dealing with a part of our reality that has been in place for decades and clearly hasn’t worked.

Jesus describes a way of being in Matthew 5:43-48 where we engage in actively loving those we are in conflict with that requires personal connection, face to face interaction, where we develop a genuine love for the others in our lives.  And because we really love the person in front of us, we want to listen.  We want to really hear what she has to say. We want to understand his thinking and values.

But!  Some will say that the most loving thing we can do is sometimes tell someone they are wrong.  And, that’s true.  Imagine with me, though, that because of my love for my children, all I ever did was tell them what I thought they shouldn’t do in order to keep them safe.  Everyday, from birth til they leave the nest, all they hear is what they shouldn’t do.  No genuine “I love you’s.” No listening deeply to their frustrations or pains.  No just walking alongside them through life.  Jus day after day tell them what I think they shouldn’t do…  I wonder if when they leave the home they would say they felt deeply loved…?

What if both gays and those who aren’t in favor of a homosexual lifestyle, were to begin to have a different conversation.  What if we moved away from throwing one-liners over the wall at a nameless third person stereotype and began to develop deep meaningful relationships with one another.

I wonder if we would treat each other differently?  

I wonder if the world might see Jesus more clearly?

I wonder if we would begin practicing the wholeness we can have in Christ?

Can we have a different conversation with different questions?

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