katniss part 1

I rode on a motorcycle for the first time the other day. It was a rash decision, which is very unlike me but very much like Katniss. As I sat there, clinging to the driver, I thought what the hell am I doing? I’m flying through the dark, going 60 mph up the deadliest highway in the nation, wearing a t-shirt for protection. 

I pictured the Grim Reaper pulling up next to me on his death-cycle, fueled by fresh souls, my hand involuntarily shooting out to give him the middle finger. He just shakes his head wrong move, lunchmeat.

I’m going to die.

And yet, in the very next second, I was filled with total calm – almost an indifference.

Whatevs, if I fall off, I’ll just tuck and roll, like Katniss would do. If my arm gets all torn up and riddled with gravel, I’ll just make a salve from native plants and tie my bra over it. No big deal.

Who is this Katniss and why is she making me so stupid?

I’ve been reading the Hunger Games and who knew I would see reflections of God in a tween book series? I don’t want to ruin it for others, so quick synopsis:  it’s a futuristic series about a girl named Katniss who is chosen to participate in The Hunger Games, which is her country’s take on the gladiator games. She and 27 other children are thrown into the woods to fight to the death for the entertainment of wealthy spectators who watch via hidden camera.

Twisted, politically charged and totally addictive.

It’s been putting me in this weird combative/survivalistic mindset. I see everything as a challenge, an obstacle to destroy. I imagine my life as a battle and somedays that doesn’t feel so far off.

Sometimes you go through something so horrific that, by human instinct, you build armors around your soul. You bury your most precious selves so they won’t get damaged. You grow scaly shields of sarcasm. You go numb. You barb your words. You retreat quietly. You hurt before you can be hurt. You hide. Psychologists say that these types of reactions can be lumped into two categories: fight or flight. I think we all like to think we are fighters – that we’d win the Hunger Games if such a thing existed. But the truth is it is much easier to flight - to hide - and at times, just seems smarter, safer. 

I told a friend I saw myself in Katniss and she said she was hesitant to say so, but that she thought the same thing. At first, I was flattered. I am such  a badass. Until her words sunk in. I was hesitant to tell you. In the end, Katniss isn’t really a character to be admired. She is a survivor – but because she deals in cowardice, manipulation and apathy. What I first saw as courage on her part ends up seeming like recklessness. She is someone who has nothing to lose. And that's not someone I want to become. 

I was talking to my mom recently, telling her about my battles. Telling her how weary I feel. How I feel constantly under attack. And she reminded me that at the end of the day, people who chase God have an enemy in this world. There’s a powerful darkness that resists goodness, grace and love. It would be stupid to act like there isn’t – there’s evidence all around us. We’re all in some form of turmoil. She reminded me of my Sunday school days, learning about the armor of God. How it’s real- it’s not just a silly teaching tool. 

And the Katniss in me sat up to listen.

My mom said the first thing you notice about the armor of God is that it leaves your back exposed. Apparently, God didn’t create us and equip us to retreat. He prepared us for a fight. 

And this is somewhat startling to me. 

I guess I associate fighting with rash people, with angry people, with reckless people.  I guess I thought that angry people fought and Christians loved. Christians surrendered. Christains said “well, God has a plan in this”.

We use a lot of soft words in American Christianity and maybe it’s because we live in a country with serious relational voids, but it ends up making me feel weak. Like amidst all of the meekness and forgiveness and Grace and humility, the word “fight” feels too sharp. But the more I learn about love the more I realize that real love – not romantic comedy love or soft, spineless love, but Bible love-is synonymous with strength, with battling and grappling and FIGHTING. 

In His words to us, God tends to place love in direct contrast to fear, time and time again. Sociologist Robert Griffith Turner tells us “you must choose love or fear, you cannot have a little of each.” 

Love is not passive. Love is not a retreat. Love is not hiding.

Love is fighting.

Jesus – the physical embodiment of Love- left us with armor. He gave us belts of truth and breastplates of righteousness and swiftness that comes from the Gospel of peace and shields of faith and helmets of salvation and swords of the Spirit – not so that we can haul them off to some cave and wait out the pain and hide from our attackers. He left us all of that stuff so that we can fight through this life. He says in Ephesians “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” In other words, fight until you have nothing left…and then fight some more.

I’ve heard it said “be kinder than necessary – every person you meet is fighting some sort of battle”. I believe this. The bad things in this world don’t just happen to us. We were thrown into this arena for a reason. If you’re running from your battle, thinking it’s safer, smarter, more self- preserving, more Christian to hide, hear me when I say this:

turn around and fight.

Reject fear.

Choose love.

Fight for the things that truly, in-the-name-of-Love-ingly matter. 

Fight for your family. Fight for your marriage. Fight for your sanity. Fight for your relationships. Fight for unity. Fight for wholeness. Fight for forgiveness. Fight for justice. Fight for growth.  Fight for your health. Fight for joy.

Because at the end of the day, you weren't meant to be a Katniss. You were created to fight for things that matter- not because you have nothing to lose, but because in a world of thieves that come to kill and destroy, He chose to give you life. and He died so you could live it to its fullest. Hiding and retreating doesn't count as living. 

He’s given you everything you need. Now say a prayer and turn around.

shriveled.

i've said before that the writer i resonate closest with is the apostle paul. he was the guy who grew up religious and followed all of the rules and then one day realized that following rules would never get him to Heaven. so he went around telling people about the silly relief that comes from free Grace.

but (it's about to get real now, readers) lately i haven't felt so paulish. it's been a strange year for me and lately i have felt less like a fiery intellectual and more like a...david.
david is the lovable screw-up of the Bible. the gilligan, the joey tribbiani, the george o'malley. he is the guy who loves God fiercely and earnestly but just can't seem to get it together. 

i know from the outside, most people don't associate me with this type of person. and there are a lot of things that i do have together. but on the train, under starlight and on the backs of my sleepy eyelids, i see it. i see my shadowlife. and i'm a david.

she who flounders.

i love God. i love Him ferociously. but i just can't seem to stay faithful. and it's not that i blatantly reject Him - flip off the heavens and chase a life of hedonism- it's just that i...wander.

and i think i understand part of what my problem is - what david's problem was: we understand Grace and unconditional Love. and we understand it maybe all too well.

i was raised by such beautiful parents - by such a loving father - that i've never had the trust issues that i see in so many of my peers. i'm not so surprised when people love me or so grateful when they are gracious to me. i take it as my due: that is how people should act.  and i don't say that to sound like a jerk, i say it to make a point.

you see, i think that i spend this life walking on the edge of a swordblade between paulish ways and davidish ways. i learn to take my facedown gratefulness for His pure unconditional Mercy and balance it with the other extreme: the tendency to take His goodness as my due. the sad habit to so wholly understand the pursuing God that i walk over Him as i wander away.

does this make sense?

i started this post with the vague goal of discussing the tension between discipline and freedom. but now all i really want to say is this:

if i'm being honest, the reason i haven't written in so long is because i have been empty. not in a dramatic way. but in the way i can imagine that david felt when he wrote psalm 42 saying "my soul pants for you, God". i've always wondered what that would feel like, to want God like water.
but the more i think about it, the more i meet my inner david, the more i realize: you don't ever WANT water. i think thirst is different than hunger in that we get some sort of pleasure from eating. sure, we need food to live, but eating is so often a social thing - a pasttime, a habit, a craving, a reward. thirst is usually just a need.
pure survival.

i'm realizing that maybe david didn't write psalm 42 because he was such a faithful pursuer of God and had a such a fervent zeal for His law. i know people like that but i'm not one of them and i know david wasn't. we wander and we flounder and we stumble after Him. not because we're so good that we want to but because we are human enough that we know we need to. we don't wake up hungry and say 'mmm i could really go for some God right now'. our skin starts to flake off and our lips crack and our tongues dry out and we start panting and admit 'ok, i need some God.'

and that's the big difference.
i need God because when i'm not in touch with Him, when i wander away, i have nothing to share. no good fruit to show. no good words to write. no good stories to tell to you, readers.
and sometimes it takes me months to dry out, to shrivel, to realize and admit that i need water. but here it is, after months of famine:

readers, i need some God. and i pray and hope that someday, like david,  i will get grey and wrinkled and wise and somewhere along the line, i will learn to wake up every day, greet the morning and greet my God and fill my cup with His goodness.

kingdom.

here is a post i wrote right after christmas but have since kept in blog purgatory, unsure of whether it made sense or not. but then, after a candid performance review- type meeting with my boss, i decided you know what? everything doesn't always have to be perfect. sometimes it just has to be something i enjoy and work hard for. so here it is.

as you probably know by now, i have - as my friend Mike says - "very specific feelings" toward many things.

like sequels.
generally, i'm not a fan of unplanned sequels. most movies or books that were meant to stand alone should stay that way. nothing good can come from adding on. there are, of course, exceptions to this rule, including Sister Act- in which the second clearly surpasses the first, due to the addition of Lauryn Hill; and The Might Ducks trilogy, which I don't even feel the need to justify. But for the most part, sequels like Legally Blonde 2, Dumb and Dumberer and The Land Before Time (parts 2 through....13?) ruin it for everyone.

that being said, i was wholly against Shrek Forever After, the 4th installment in a series that was already pushing it.

but this is not a movie review blog. it is a blog about jesus and i'm getting there.

it wasn't until christmas eve this year that i noticed how often Jesus is spoken of as a king, especially in christmas songs. maybe it's because these songs were written in monarchial societies or because "king" rhymes so well with "sing" or "bring" or "5 golden rings"... i guess sometimes phrases like that tend to fade into white noise after a lifetime of christmas eve services. but this year i was surprised to find myself full-out crying during 'joy to the world' and realized that something's shifted.
and i think it's safe to blame shrek 4.

(spoiler alert... but seriously are there any other adults out there, lining up to see this movie?)
in shrek forever after, shrek gets a glimpse into what would have happened if he was never born. in a world without shrek, princess fiona was never rescued and the kingdom of far far away falls into the hands of the evil rumplestiltskin. this beautiful and peaceful kingdom falls into ruin -  it becomes a land ravaged by famine, void of justice and patrolled by witches who throw molotov pumpkins. good people are either forced into rumplestiltskin's service or forced to live in hiding. it's all around depressing.

i guess before this year and before Shrek 4, i always thought of christmas as just kind of a pre-easter celebration. it always seemed a little grotesque to celebrate the birth of a baby because we know He grows up to die for our freedom. but this year, standing in christmas eve service, caught up in that surreal warmth that the candlelight songs always give me, my mind kept looping back to the idea of a kingdom without a Good King. if Jesus was never born, Goodness never would have been introduced to our human existence. sin would still be free to ravage our world and our kingdom - chucking molotov pumpkins at our souls.

and i heard them read those words they read every year:

" the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. "
and i think the human heart can only bear so much significance, so much beauty, so much gratefulness, before it starts to spill out of our eyes.
so as the music swelled and i looked out into a sea of tiny lights, i thought of a world ruled by a bad king, suddenly receiving it's true King. a king that ancient books say we will call Wonderful Counseler, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. and i realized we're not just celebrating the eventual sacrifice of Jesus (although yes, that is the worst/best thing ever), but rather the defeat of a bad king. the rescue of our kingdom. the introduction of light and hope.

and maybe this is something that every kindergartener already knows and i'm just late to the game. what else is new? but i warned you that this post was iffy.and so yes, joy to the world -  not just because He died, but because He came to stay. we celebrate the birth of a God who is called Emmanuel. a God who has been, since that silent night, everlastingly, delightedly, firmly and decidedly AMONG US.
because just as darkness is merely the absence of light, hell is a kingdom absent of God. He will bring us GOODNESS AND LIGHT. He is very near and He is redeeming this kingdom.