Broken

I was fumbling in the cupboard, when out tumbled our solid steel 1-cup measure. It fell to the countertop, landing on a small serving dish we received as a wedding present. Crack.

Two weeks ago, my hand slipped as I was filling up the reservoir for our humidifier—not the first time I had dropped it, but this time it was mostly full; down it fell into the bottom of the bathtub. Crack.

I love making things. I love making new things out of leftovers and waste. I love fixing things that other people would throw away (sometimes after they have already done so). I love improving things that aren’t even broken, like waxing our kitchen drawers so they slide more easily, or changing the circuitry in a toy to reduce the volume of its sounds. There are dozens of things in our home which I have built, rescued, fixed, improved upon, or otherwise fiddled with.

So it makes me very sad when I break something beyond repair. Beyond repair? Me and my tube of porcelain epoxy will do our best, but I know it’s not the same. It won’t be as strong, and it won’t look as nice. Some things can be fixed back to the way they were or better, but a lot of things cannot.

I tried to fix the reservoir for the humidifier, but even with silicone sealer along the crack, it still leaks too much to be useable. I’m going to try once more with superglue, but it may well be finished. I know that it’s only $50 to replace it, but in some ways, the inexpensiveness of it actually makes it worse: Much less than being something carefully considered before purchase, and then maintained and adapted over a long useful life of service, it is a handful of cheap plastic parts which were designed and built not to last, but to perform a minimally satisfactory function, and be discarded at the first sign of trouble.

Is it wrong to feel so sentimental about stuff?

The Tract Lady

“Do you know where you’re going when you die?”

My friend and I sat on a bench, overlooking the pond in our local park. We’ve been friends since university, but are now also colleagues, working together at a small engineering company. We were in the park on business: testing a small autonomous watercraft. I had my nose buried in a laptop, making some fixes, while he was absent-mindedly driving the boat.

The unmanned catamaran we have is striking and unusual. We often have people approach us when we’re testing in the park, so I have a brief spiel I give, where I explain how it works, and what it’s for.

This lady was different, though. She was there to talk, not listen.

My friend stared away. “Not interested. Have a nice day.”

~

“Where am I going when I die?”

Dallas Willard calls this the gospel of sin management. In its purest form, it says, “I’m a sinner and deserve eternal punishment; by believing in Jesus, he pays for my sins on the cross, so that when I die, I can go to Heaven.”

For a long time, I would have identified that idea as the kernel of my faith—at least, if asked to think about it. This would have been the key fundamental around which everything else was assembled. “Being good” was important, it just wasn’t the most important. How important was it? That’s hard to say… the main purpose of being good seemed to be so that believers could lead by example, be wordless witnesses, that kind of thing.

~

I don’t think I believe that any more. Or rather, I might… it’s just not the kernel.

Heresy? Here’s your heretic:

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt. 24:34-40)

When does Jesus ever ask someone where they’re going when they die? What he does do is offer physical healing, acceptance, and hope. He offers moral guidance. He says “your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more.” He tells people to give their possessions to the poor. He talks about being renewed, being born again. He says that we must be like little children to enter his kingdom.

Jesus talks a lot about his kingdom. Some people think he’s talking about heaven, but when you look at it that way, you start to wonder what the point is of life here on earth, as a Christian. Is it to hand out tracts in the park? Why? So they can join up with us and hand them out too? What’s the point? If that’s all there is, being a Christian is just a waiting game; if that’s it, I’d rather be an atheist who knows his destiny, and knows to make the best of his brief time here on Earth.

~

Works-based salvation gets a bad rap in conservative churches. Christianity’s big differentiator is supposed to be that salvation (“going to heaven”) is a free gift, rather than earned by doing good things.

But no, salvation is by faith alone, we hear, a message typically attached to a passages from Paul’s letters, like Romans 5:1. It’s an empty message, though; it leaves Christian living in the limbo I describe above. If my religion makes me feel like the best-possible scenario is to get hit by a bus tomorrow and skip the whole earth-thing, I think I must’ve made a wrong turn somewhere.

The thing is, when Jesus talks about his Kingdom, I don’t think he was meaning a castle off in the clouds somewhere. I think he was talking about something here on earth, now—the kingdom that we as his followers are supposed to be building. The “good news” is not an airy-fairy intellectual message about sin debt repayment, it’s the whole story of Christ, that he made us and loves us and wants us to love him and love each other. It’s that Christ is coming back someday to put the world right, and until he comes, we are his hands and feet to begin that task. The good works that we do are not to earn an after-death salvation, but are to bring his kingdom on Earth. And it’s participating in that kingdom which actually saves us—not from the future penalties or consequences of having committed sins, but the bondage of the sin itself.

How’s that for salvation?

~

What about when we do die? I don’t know, but I’m content to let God sort that one out. I don’t think Jesus put a huge priority on that in his teachings, so I’d rather not either. There are an awful lot of good people in this world who don’t “accept” Christ, and an awful lot more who have lived and died and never even heard of him.

There are also a lot of really rotten, wretched, selfish, materialistic Christians out there.

So I’m not sure what the story is with the afterlife. I believe in it—Jesus tells the other thief that he will join him in paradise. And I also believe in grace, because that thief sure didn’t deserve what he received. God designed and made us, and sees our hearts. I don’t think thoughts of future judgment (or judgment-avoidance) should be the basis of our faith, and nor should they be the basis of how our faith is presented to unbelievers.

~

These are not totally new ideas. We’ve been thinking about them a lot more recently, though, in large part prompted by the books Evolving In Monkey Town and The Divine Conspiracy. I don’t think I’m ready to identify myself as a post-evangelical, but a lot of the issues in that movement resonate with me. We both found it very refreshing how Rachel Held Evans (in Monkey Town) chronicles her own growing willingness to entertain doubt, to put aside what were previously unquestionable fundamentals, and to actually wrestle with difficult questions.

Which is really what this is all about. What I’ve got here is just a starting point. What’s exciting is seeing our faith as a dialogue—something we’re working out as we go along, something we’re emotionally and intellectually invested in, and that we can be passionate about. Some worth living in the here and now, for ourselves, for Clara, and for our community.