The New Lonely

/ ethanrenoe / 2 Comments

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Last night I was at a restaurant with a dear friend of mine. We were on the patio having a great conversation when a married couple sat down at the table next to ours. We were bewildered as the husband took out his smart phone, began playing electronic music out loud, and set it on the table for the remainder of the meal.

We are a people terrified of silence.

I often bemoan to my friends and family about how lonely I am. The irony being that I am complaining TO my friends and family. I think our culture has twisted up this word, loneliness. We can each name half a dozen songs about being alone in a crowded room, or maybe while sitting next to a lover, but is that really loneliness?

Tom Hanks was lonely in Castaway.

Will Forte, in Last Man on Earth, is lonely.

My guess is, you are not lonely.

I think what we confuse for loneliness today is actually some modern unrest inside of us. We have this lack of peace within ourselves that calls for constant noise and distraction. And when no one can hang out on a Friday night, we call ourselves ‘lonely’ because that void inside of us is about to act up. We’re about to have to face ourselves.

Praise God for Netflix.

I watched a movie recently where this Middle Eastern Christian monk is talking about silence. He says Sure, you can go to a quiet place like a forest or a desert and it will be quiet for a while. But, he says, There is another kind of silence that is much harder to attain. And that is the silence within yourself. A stillness in your soul.

My guess is we’re not lonely, we have a lack of peace within.

So I came up with a term for this, and to be honest, I guess it’s not that original. I was thinking about how this feeling we associate with loneliness really comes from somewhere else, perhaps an overload instead of a lack. We are always connected digitally, and therefore, more disconnected personally.

We have noise coming into our bodies constantly, so why would we expect there to be silence in our soul?

It’s the New Loneliness.

We are the New Lonely.

I think the more we try to fill our heads with music, podcasts, Netflix/Amazon Prime (you Primers aren’t getting off the hook either), social media, sports, news, or whatever your drug of choice is, the less we will be at peace with ourselves. And therefore, the more ‘lonely’ we will feel.

Our loneliness is not one induced by too few friends, but by too much noise.

Too many flashing lights and screaming sirens.

When was the last time you sat in silence and thought? A favorite writer of mine named Muyskens once said that We live in a culture that esteems accumulation, but the Christian life is one of subtraction rather than addition.

I live in Chicago, where I am always seeing a lot of people. And most of these people are distracting themselves. They have their earbuds in, their head sunk onto their chest, gazing into their device. Or maybe they’re tourists, snapping a steady stream of photos and selfies just so they can look back on that time they went to Chicago and took a crapload of pictures. (this is another blog post altogether…)

Why are we so discontent to not be where we are? With the people we are with?

What are you so scared of missing online that is not present where you are?

That was a tangent, but I’m tired of the angst social media has created in my life along with most of my contemporaries. We are more distant from ourselves, more reserved from those around us, more polished online than in person, and we are very very lonely. Social media creates and plants within us desires we didn’t previously have. It’s a cruel loop.

Perhaps the way to escape the New Loneliness is to trim down the input we take. Turn your phone off and go for a walk.

Don’t take a picture of it.

Pray.

Talk to yourself.

Think.

Talk to a friend.

Don’t take a picture of them.

Have any of my Christian friends actually obeyed Psalm 46:10, or have you just posted it to Instagram?

“Be still and know that I am God.”

e

 

How to Be Attracted to Someone

/ ethanrenoe / 1 Comment

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There’s something I think a lot of Christians struggle with talking about. And it’s not because it’s necessarily shameful like pornography or eggshell-sensitive like homosexuality. It’s just simply confusing and perhaps a little awkward.

And that is, attraction.

In my quest to find that one person that will satiate my endless romantic antics and abate my lonely groanings, I hear a lot of advice. I’ve been single far more than I’ve been in any kind of romantic relationship, so the maxims and pop-dictums on how to find “the one” have flooded my ears for years.

The most common topic deals with a certain dichotomy that supposedly exists in all of us, especially Christians.

Look at her soul, not her body….

Ethan, How can you be so shallow as to like her personality and not be attracted to her INSIDES??

Her personality is what REALLY matters.

Essentially, I have realized that many Americans are functioning Gnostics.

The Gnostics were a first-century group of heretics that believed in a firm division between the physical body and the immaterial soul. Their theology allowed them to believe that God only cares about the soul, therefore, you can do whatever you want with your body. This thinking had taken hold of the Corinthians, and Paul addresses this issue in 1 Corinthians 6:

“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?

The Corinthians had that saying about the stomach and food, which implied the same was true of sexual arousal. When you’re hungry you eat; when you’re turnt on, you hook up…

Paul points out that no, the body is NOT meant for pure pleasure and disposal, but it is meant to honor God. Human bodies ARE in fact important, because Jesus Himself, the very Son of God, entered into one. Therefore, what we do with our bodies matters.

Now, that was a slight rabbit trail, but now we’re getting back on track.

As a single Christian man, I have been critiqued by many of my friends for often just looking at ‘a girl’s outside,’ rather than some unseen quality that we often refer to as one’s heart, soul, personality, etc.

And yes, if you were to marry someone simply because they’re a fox, you would be a fool. There is definitely the trap of putting too much emphasis on the physical body, but that’s for a different post.

But how equally foolish to only look at someone’s invisible qualities as if their body did not exist!

Our bodies are our God-given vessels through which we experience, act, and take part in our life. They are meant to be healthy, serve others and honor God. And they reveal a lot about our internal lives as well.

For instance, who wants to eat food from a skinny chef? Would you get a tattoo from someone with clear skin or be personally trained by someone whose shirt cannot contain their belly? Often I’ll see a man who is too fit, which often speaks to some kind of quiet insecurity. Our bodies matter and they say things about us.

I think that to divide an individual up into little parts is, in essence, to do violence to them as a whole human being. We are not effervescent spirits floating in some abstract realm, having conversations and thinking together. We have tangible bodies that can hug, spit, slap, poop, pinch, and break. We feel pain when our skin is sliced, and we indulge in the tenderness of a lover’s kiss.

Yes, we humans have bodies, souls, and spirits (unless you’re a dichotomist, which is another theological/anthropological conversation entirely), but they are also one. We are not divided entities, but are united into one person. I believe the membrane that divides the three is far thinner than some of us have been supposing, and from this has come some breezes of Gnostic theology. We are scared to embrace our physical bodies. We are scared to be attracted to another human.

If and when I ever end up falling in love with a woman, it will be because she has a splendid heart and a love for other people.

BUT,

it will also be because my eyes and my hands find her attractive and are drawn to her. Her body will draw my now to it, and hopefully she will feel the same. We will not be divided persons, but will be holistic humans, loving each other emotionally and physically. No one loves another person using their unseen attributes.

That’s just ridiculous.

I want to be attracted to an entire person. Organs and all.

I do not think good looks are just ‘the cherry on top.’ They’re certainly not everything, but I think as Christians, we have undervalued physical attraction.

You have permission to be physically attracted to someone.

e

P.S., I’ll be talking more about this topic on an upcoming episode of my new podcast! Check it out here and stay tuned for plenty more episodes coming at you soon!

Why I Got a Spongebob Tattoo

/ ethanrenoe / 2 Comments

I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis for the first time a month ago and decided it was my favorite book ever. I had also had a hankerin’ to get a new tattoo, as I hadn’t gotten one in over two years, so I decided the two should be connected.

I wish I could sit across from you in a coffee shop, stroking my lengthy sophisticated beard and explaining to you the deep meaning behind my hip new tattoo, and how its geometric angles and minimalistic simplicity reflect the nature of the Triune God, but that’s not the case.

I do have a number of deep meanings behind the tattoo, but when I tell you what it is, you’ll just laugh.

The first meaning is friendship. The tattoo wasn’t even my idea, but was the result of a lot of brainstorming between my friends Rachael, Robb, and I, who all got the tattoo together. (Technically it was Rachael’s idea first…) The three of us have a special connection now that we will have the rest of our lives, or until one of us caves and gets it lasered off (my money is on Robb). It’s not so much about what it is, but the special fact that three of us in the world have this on our calfs, and always will.

The second meaning is even deeper.

In The Great Divorce, Lewis paints a picture of heaven and hell and the difference between them. People in heaven are real. They are solid and have weight. They are presented as people who let go of their earthly desires and embraced what they couldn’t see from earth.

Meanwhile, the people from hell are more like phantoms. They have no weight. They walk atop the grass without even pushing the blades down. They are all angry and stuck in their old selves, wrapped up in grudges, pride, and complaints. They are restless and bitter. They don’t really matter because they clung to what was not really important.

They are people who were made for another dimension, but wandered astray.

So, in order to represent this, my friends and I got a tattoo of a character from Spongebob Squarepants. Doodlebob.

We got Doodlebob.

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In this one episode, a magic pencil falls from the top of the ocean into Bikini Bottom. Spongebob picks it up and soon discovers that whatever he draws comes to life. So naturally, he draws himself and it comes to life. The problem is, this 2-dimensional version of himself is evil and starts destroying the city.

At the end of the episode, Spongebob entraps Doodlebob by throwing paper at him, and the 2-dimensional doodle is captured where he belongs: on paper. Once he is back in his 2-D world, he is happy and content.

When he returns to the world for which he was originally designed, he is at peace.

Saint Augustine said, “My soul is restless till it rests in thee,” which, coincidentally, I’m thinking of adding to the tattoo because it wouldn’t look confusing at all.

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Just as Doodlebob was not at peace until he found rest in the 2-D world he was designed for, we are wanderers in a dimension not our own. This tattoo is summed up by another C.S. Lewis quote (which would be too long to add to the tattoo):

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

This tattoo, facetious as it appears, reflects the angst in all of us that longs for the next world. Or as described in The Great Divorce, we’re all looking for that high country.

“Hell is a state of mind – ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

I get shivers every time I read that last sentence.

e

Good to be Naked

/ ethanrenoe / 2 Comments

 

Engaged45

He sat me down and said
it’s not as much about what she looks like on the outside,
my grandfather told me,
although that is nice,
it’s not as much about her suntanned body
as it is
the sunshine that shoots from her eyes
even when she’s sixty-six,

he said,
sure sex is great
and a good body is exciting at first,
but eventually,
it’s just good to be naked,
it’s nice to be naked with the same old person,
my grandpa said,

and some people
think their parents are still chaste
and never do it,
but I’m glad my grandparents
are still magnets growing old,
as I hope to be old with someone
too.

Porn and The Doughnut man

/ ethanrenoe / 7 Comments
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For the record…this is NOT Chicago’s #1 doughnut shop.

I sometimes work at Chicago’s #1-doughnut-shop-4-years-running. And eat far more doughnuts than any human should.

And sometimes, I close the doughnut shop, which includes one of my favorite parts of working there (Aside from…did I mention free doughnuts?). The location has a little window which opens to the sidewalk, where there is a constant stream of pedestrians. In the last 15 minutes or so of business every day, I start boxing up the doughnuts in 4 and 6 packs so I can give them away.

There are few things I love more than popping open the window and leaning out to yell “FREE DOUGHNUTS!” to people as they pass by.

“Wait…they’re really free?” is the most common response.

I shove the box into their hand and their day is instantly made. Their face brightens and I can tell they are bursting to tear that box open and dig in.

Last week, I was closing up shop and slid the window open to see a man digging through the trash can a few yards from me. Without hesitation, I held up the big box of Chicago’s favorite doughnuts and said, “Hey man, I’ve got some fresh doughnuts for ya!”

He looked at me, shook his head, and tossed out a limp ‘nah.’  Then went back to picking through the garbage.

I was blown away.

Who, when offered the best doughnuts in the city, turns them down in favor of rummaging through a public trash can??

Not a minute later I realized I had just witnessed the gospel. I saw myself in the trash man.

I would be remise not to mention C.S. Lewis’ famous quote here:

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

I realized that I am constantly trying to find my own path to pleasure. I am always trying to satisfy myself, be it with pornography, girls, money, et cetera.

The reason we can’t simply sit and let the Lord satisfy us is that we don’t trust Him. We don’t think He’ll really come through of us, therefore, we feel this need to provide our own satisfaction…which never really works, does it?

I think part of the problem is this: Whenever I have messed up in the past, with pornography for example, I immediately begin to pile the shame and guilt upon myself.

However, I don’t think Jesus is standing there wagging a finger at me the way a master stands over her dog after he pooped on the rug again. In fact, I don’t think He even wants us to feel bad about screwing up again and again and again and again.

But I do think He is sad for us.

Instead of condemning us, I think Jesus is a few yards away hanging out a window offering us free doughnuts while we dig through the trash.

He has so much more to give us, so He stands there and watches us dig through the garbage, hoping to find something of worth. Maybe this year I’ll find that job that will really set my life up right…Or maybe next week I’ll garner the courage to talk to that cute girl at the coffee shop. Then…THEN I’ll feel whole!

He wants so badly for us to see Him, and what He is offering us. Jesus addressed this Himself in John 6:35-36

Jesus answered, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger, and whoever believes in Me will never thirst. But as I told you, you have seen Me and still you do not believe.”

We keep hearing Him calling to us and return to sticking out noses in the trashcans. We can’t imagine that Jesus could possibly have something better for us than what we could scrounge up for ourselves.

Jesus doesn’t want you to quit looking at porn.

…or whatever your habit of choice is.

He doesn’t want you to simply resist this one urge so much that you are beating yourself up. He wants us to realize that the pleasures He is offering us make everything we could find for ourselves look like trash.

When we accept that He has pleasures stored up for us beyond our wildest dreams, we will no longer want to return to those old habits we’ve been trying so hard to kill. They’ll simply fall away like powerless dead leaves.

They’ll start tasting like garbage.

e

Experimenting with Grace

/ ethanrenoe / 5 Comments

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It seemed like every ounce of flesh wrapped around my bones pulled away from what my pastor was saying. I found myself resisting the truth he was speaking with the same furor as I resist putting my hand in a flame.

“Look, Ethan,” he told me, “it seems like you don’t have a relationship with God as much as you do with laws and rules.”

What?

I internally recoiled from his words. I couldn’t be one of those guys.

Could I possibly have become the pharisaical monitor of right and wrong? I love God! I thought to myself. I’m, like, the opposite of a rule-follower.

He proceeded to move forward and deconstruct many of my actions the past few months, for which I am now apologizing to you, my readers. I owe you an apology for being prideful, and worst of all, for watering down the gospel of grace.

See, as insightful as I thought I was, I was still living in a place of labeling certain actions as ‘good,’ and others as ‘bad.’ Today I realized that’s not true.

Because God is not about self-improvement.

He doesn’t want us to slowly pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, and slowly, over the next fifty years or so, to crawl nearer to Him. He isn’t sitting there, checking off columns as He observes our Good and Bad actions.

Robert Farrar Capon puts it more distinctly:

Grace cannot prevail until law is dead, until moralizing is out of the game. The precise phrase should be, until our fatal love affair with the law is over—until, finally and for good, our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.

I realized that so many of my actions the past few months have been contrary to Christ-like living, even though they were praised as just that.

I went on TV 12 times in one week, nearly every time, mentioning that I am a Christian and I am grateful for what Christ has done for me. But what did this do? It made me more appealing to many Christians, and less appealing to non-believers. It didn’t reflect the weakness that Paul showed, or the humility with which Christ conducted His ministry, but a braggart gospel of power and of myself.

A few months later, I announced a new campaign to talk about pornography, and specifically my struggles with it, which was also lauded with praises of being ‘vulnerable’ and ‘encouraging.’ But it really was just a careful packaging of my sins so as to just be appealing enough: Ethan the humble, broken hero.

“That’s not what confession is,” my pastor told me today. “True confession should make everyone you confess to want to flee the room. Confession is a painful, self-depricating, and nauseating exposure of our true selves. When confession is true, we are exposed; we do not do the confessing.”

I am not a good person.

Therefore, every action I have ever done is not a good one. Confession is letting another human being catch a glimpse of this (because OH! how we use every mechanism in our arsenal to hide ourselves: humor, intellect, godliness and good looks, to name a few).

And if I am not a good person, and nothing I can do will make me such, what am I striving for?

“There are two types of repulsive sinners,” my pastor continued. “Prostitutes and Pharisees.”

It clicked.

“By fighting so hard to quit struggling with pornography, you’re really just trying to convert from a Prostitute to a Pharisee. It’s sin management. You don’t have a porn problem, you have an Ethan problem.”

God is not interested in self-improvement.

He is interested in perfection. Anything short of perfection repulses Him.

So what is my option then? I wondered. Surely God doesn’t want me to keep walking in sin!

“You’re a whore right now. Don’t aspire to be a Pharisee,” he said. “The only option is death.”

I nodded as I detected a whiff of grace in the air.

Grace is not a completion of laws and rules. It is not a mere forgiveness of wrongdoing, but it is setting ablaze the entire law book. It is violently demolishing the systems we have constructed to dictate how life ought to be lived.

In grace, Jesus moves toward us and takes upon Himself our sin and shame. This was a trite phrase until my pastor put it this way: “Ethan no longer has a porn addiction. Jesus does.”

What?! Jesus doesn’t have a porn addiction! Jesus is perfect!

We so often talk about Jesus taking all of our sins to the cross, but when it becomes more tangible than abstract, we shudder. Surely Something so holy cannot move so near to us and take our burdens from us! Surely He can’t be that good!

If Jesus truly comes to us with an offer to trade lives, the implications are huge. It means He takes ALL of our life, and gives none of it back. It means an utter destruction of sin.

It means we die.

Paul wrote, “it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me.”

If Jesus takes our entire life, what do I get? I get Him. I get His perfect life.

Daily I am tempted to return to the Gospel of Good Works. Shame whispers into my ear that I’m not good enough, and if I just improved a little more, then I’d be okay. Shame calls us back to a god that says just be a little better, then I’ll chill with you.

The voice of Jesus says, I did not come for the healthy but the sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

So, my friend, are you being scorched by the holy? Is He drawing so near to you that everything else you have bound yourself to has melted away, or are you still clinging to your handful of good deeds like a child holds a mound of sand?

We are a sinful people of weak faith.

And we are approached by a God whose terrible strength extends an open hand and invites us to let Him kill us.

And what a beautiful death it is!

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.
John 12:24-25, The Message

e

Tinder Swipes Right On Religious Market With ‘Christian’ Version of App

/ ethanrenoe / 3 Comments

Jail66

LOS ANGELES—Tinder CEO Sean Rad announced Friday that Hatch Labs was launching a Christian version of the popular dating app. “Many people just assume Tinder is for hooking up. They have reasons to think that, but that’s why we are launching the Christian version of the app.”

Rad hinted that the new app would have zero pictures of the users, so as to avoid “shallow” perceptions of people, since, “Christians shouldn’t be looking at external beauty. A lot of my Christian friends have told me that they should be more focused on the person’s soul, and to be physically attracted to someone is sinful.”

In the place of a selfie or group photo, the user’s main photo will feature their favorite Bible verse overlaid on a picture of their favorite scenery. Rad made it clear that the goal of this app was to make the digital dating experience “as deep as possible,” and the removal of actual portraits was crucial.

Rad also announced that they would be partnering with none other than legendary Christian love guru Gary Chapman to make the app completely kosher. “In place of the five secondary pictures, you will rank your five love languages from most important to least,” stated Rad. He did not specify if these would be the “giving” or “receiving” love languages.

Rad concluded his press conference by hinting at a spot on one’s profile for their Myers Briggs score, but that he had to finish his current Brene Brown lecture series before anything could be set in stone.

“I’m really excited for this to launch,” said Rad. “I think it will take all the shallowness out of digital dating, and hopefully eliminate the possibility of any sexual behavior. I’m so tired of the term ‘hook-up.’”

e

Self-Proclaimed ‘Proverbs 31 Girl’ Discovers the Rest of the Chapter

/ ethanrenoe / 1 Comment

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SEATTLE—The day began just like any other. Stacey Kipper, 20, opened up to her favorite verse in the Bible at a coffee shop near her dorm in order to Instagram her quiet time. Proverbs 31:25 reads, “She is clothed with dignity and strength, and she laughs at the days to come.”

“I was debating what kind of picture to go with today,” Kipper confessed. “Should it be of my hazelnut mocha latte and my Bible, or just the latte with, like, the verse as the caption?” Kipper then went into detail about potentially overlaying the verse on top of the picture when something happened that changed the rest of her aesthetic quiet time.

“I happened to notice that the highlighted, underlined, annotated [verse 25] had some words before it…and after it!”

Kipper then relays the inner turmoil which unraveled after reading verse 24, which instructs her to make linen garments and sell them. Or the harrowing verse 15, about waking up while it is still dark: “Like, sometimes I have to get up early if I’m greeting at my church. And one time, I woke up when it was dark because Chad asked me to go for a run with him. But every day?? That seems a bit much.”

Kipper was also confused by the necessity of buying a field (v. 16), and having strong arms (v. 17). “Yah, I’ve never had much upper body strength,” she bemoaned.

Now that several hours have passed since this jarring discovery, Kipper relates her current state: “I realized that if I kept it as my favorite verse, I would have to, like, change my life and do more than laugh in all my Instagram pictures.”

Kippers has not yet landed on a new favorite verse, but says Philippians 4:13 and Jeremiah 29:11 are in the running.

“I just want to pick one that can’t be taken out of context. I don’t want to be surprised like this again.”

e

Letter to an Atheist

/ ethanrenoe / 1 Comment

Chicago93

After a several-hour-long Facebook conversation with a friend of mine who is an atheist, I decided the best way to continue the conversation was to sum up some of my thoughts in a letter. Hopefully this speaks to some of you and opens up future conversations.

Dear Friend,

I’ve been sitting in this coffee shop for about an hour trying to think of which articles or videos to send you that would really ‘do the trick.’ But nothing has come to mind and nothing really seemed to fit exactly what I wanted to say, so I figured, why not type up a letter that will say just what I want to say, in lieu of an in-person conversation?

You told me you’ve been an atheist for many years, and it has not helped you satiate the aches and pains within your soul. Therapy and medications, while they can be helpful, have not seemed to abate the void, or however you want to refer to it. C.S. Lewis talks about a longing for joy which is ultimately what led him to Christianity from atheism. It was not a longing for rules or for some false sort of religion that led him to seek out God, but the search for joy.

Contemporary pastor and writer John Piper strongly echoes Lewis’ sentiments when he preaches, and in his monumental book Desiring God, in which he coined the term ‘Christian Hedonism.’ This refers to the fact that humans are made to seek out joy, happiness, and satisfaction (eudaimonia) at all costs. Christianity is, essentially, a human coming to realize that the greatest heights of joy and the ultimate source of satisfaction is to be found in Christ.

The Catechism states that the chief end of Man is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This is the source of much of this thought. If we are not enjoying God, but are merely submitting to Him out of sheer will, or even worse—out of fear, then we are doing Christianity wrong. Hebrews 12:2 says that “For the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus underwent the most painful and humiliating death a human could endure for the sake of joy! It was not because God the Father told Him to, or that He would be in trouble if He didn’t.

In the same way, we are drawn to God because of His kindness, because we see some sort of joy in Him. Men and women who stand on street corners and yell at people to condemn them are not reflecting the heart of God, who draws people to Himself because of His love and kindness. Psalm 37:4 says to “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” God calls to us and offers us joy and delight.

The biggest hurdle you seem to be at seems to be the first step, though: Believing that He exists. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” I’ve been at that place, looking for a god to relate to.

In Genesis, there is this story of Jacob wandering through the wilderness and one night a man comes to him and they begin to wrestle on the ground. They wrestle all night long and eventually the other man realizes he has been overpowered, so he touches Jacob’s side and throws it out of joint. The man (who is God, it turns out) renames Jacob ‘Israel,’ which means “he wrestles with God.” I think the best Christians are those who wrestle with God. I have little respect for those who believe whatever they are fed without wrestling with it and crying out to God, begging for an answer.

Of course, in the present secular atmosphere of our hedonistic culture, the hardest problem tends to be finding a god to wrestle with. And that is where I have been many many times. And I think the best things to do are these:

Pray. It sounds weird for me to tell you to pray, because to you, it may seem like speaking words into an empty room. But think about it this way: IF there is a God, and IF He really wants you to come to Him, doesn’t this seem like a good place to start? I mean, what do you have to lose? The worst case scenario is you waste five minutes (or more…) talking to an empty room. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you.

Join a community of Christians. I would love to take all my atheist friends to church. But many of them wouldn’t go to an actual church with me, and if they would, we often live in different cities. Having conversations like this can help give you a taste of what it’s like to be a Christian. Find people (or just keep talking to me!) who will let you ask the hard questions and reply in a loving way. Christianity is not meant to be a solo endeavor where we just have some kind of ethereal connection to God and follow certain do’s and don’ts. It is a life lived in a community that consistently shows each other grace because each one of us has received grace from God.

And I guess this brings me to the gospel. WHERE DO I BEGIN??

The gospel is not men working hard enough to earn favor from God. It is not a reward system of doing good things and ‘getting’ heaven. It’s not something that is meant to enhance your life and make you happier (though that is essentially a result).

Each of us has screwed up. We have had hatred in our hearts toward others. We have lied. We have cheated. We have been greedy. This is not a matter of adding up our ‘good deeds’ and weighing them against our ‘bad deeds.’ Imagine instead that you’re hanging from a chain that is connecting you to God. It doesn’t matter which link in the chain you break; if one breaks, you’re falling. And so has each one of us fallen.

This means that you, me, and Hitler are all on the same level. There are no degrees of fallenness when it comes to our standing before God. And no amount of giving to the homeless or petting impounded puppies is going to reverse that.

I learned a new phrase recently: felix culpa. It is Latin for ‘happy fault.’ I love it because it encapsulates so much of the gospel. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden of Eden. This was a bad thing. But because of it, the entire narrative of Jesus coming and dying for us, so that our sinful state may be redeemed came about. His body was beaten, broken and killed. Another fault. But how happy are we Christians that His body was broken! Happy fault. His blood poured our so that ours doesn’t have to.

Buddhist monks sit in caves, striving for nirvana (self emptying), and when it is attained, they light themselves on fire to purify their souls. Catholic monks whip themselves bloody to punish themselves for their sins.

Jesus’ blood fell from the fissures on His body so that ours doesn’t have to. His blood has removed our sins because He was the only one who did NOT sin, yet was punished as if He did.

Felix Culpa. Happy fault.

And what did Jesus say as the soldiers were pinning Him to the cross? “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Jesus is the embodiment of grace and love. And since He was fully God, He shows us what God is like. God is grace and love.

I think you may see religion as people following certain rules in order to try to please some god. But Christianity is different from every other religion in the world, because we believe that our God came to us, while we WEREN’T seeking Him! (Romans 5:8). Christianity is a free gift and all you need to do is accept it. It’s like Jesus bought you a boarding pass and paid for the ticket and all you need to do is get on the plane.

Of course, these metaphors break down, but you get the idea.

The greatest gift in the entire gospel message is that we get GOD! In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Christianity is not about using Jesus to get eternal life. He does not merely point us the way to salvation. Rather, he says come to me to have eternal life. The greatest gift we can receive is God Himself!

Which brings me back to my first point: Joy. By binding ourselves to God, we find the greatest and deepest source of joy imaginable. Galatians 2:20 says that “it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me.” This means, yes, we will have our deepest desires fulfilled, but our desires will be changed! We won’t look for satisfaction in things like money, fame, sex, drugs, etc. But we will delight ourselves in God! Because He will give us a new life.

Becoming a Christian is not self-help or life-improvement. It is getting a NEW life! It is being born again. You were born once, and the first life does not seem to have gotten you what you want. So coming to Jesus means being born again into a whole new life! It’s far more than I can explain in this little letter so I’ll leave it there.

There is so much more I want to say, and I wish this was a conversation not a dialogue, so I’ll end it here with how my dad ends most of his prayers:

I praise God that because Jesus walked out of His grave, we too will walk out of ours.

In Christ,

Ethan

The Naked Jesus

/ ethanrenoe / 2 Comments

crucifixion-1943 copy

A couple years ago at my college, a student group put on an event to educate students about pornography and the sex industry. I paced through it, thinking I had already seen all this before. The exhibit opened with scientific facts about the chemical effects of pornography on the brain, showing how it rewires our mental pathways to crave porn.

Heard them before.

Then there was a room of testimonies, people shared how porn had damaged their lives and relationships. As sincere and moving as these stories were, I had heard them before too. I mean, these addiction stories were basically my own.

But then we moved to the last room.

On the wall was a painting. Eye level. About 4×3 feet. At first glance, it seemed like a typical crucifix painting. There hung Jesus on the cross, bleeding and ashamed.

But then you looked a little lower.

And then you realized that he was not wearing any garment to politely cover the Savior’s genitalia. There was no loin cloth to protect the Lord from disgrace.

It was jarring to realize I was looking at Jesus’ penis.

In many ways, the fact that artists have typically covered Jesus up while hanging on the cross has done a disservice to our perception of His scope of atonement. We are used to seeing Him, battered and bloody, yes, but at least with a shred of decency left and a towel wrapped around his midsection.

One of my theology professors would always say we postmodern people do theology like this: And then he would crouch and cover up his crotch, like an embarrassed child who had jumped out of the bath and been caught by the babysitter. We will talk about God in relation to anything but our genitals.

We try to ‘clean up’ the crucifixion.

Today I got curious and checked for myself. Sure enough, all four gospels tell the same story:

Matthew 27:35  When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

Mark 15:24  And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.

Luke 23:34  Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

John 19:23  When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic.

Historians have pointed out that a crucifixion was not only a torturous execution, but also a shameful humiliation. That’s why victims would always be crucified naked: One last insult to injury.

Now, why is it so important that Jesus was crucified naked?

Throughout the millennia, artists have tried to restore to Jesus His dignity by covering up the shameful bits. They have censored the truth of scripture in order to protect young eyes.

The reason my school displayed the painting was to remind us that, while Jesus has absorbed all our sin and wrongdoing, He has also absorbed all of our shame. He was not covered up in order to maintain His dignity while dying on the tree; He was stripped and exposed, so that even until the end His atoning work would be seen as victorious, even over our sexuality and shame.

J. Vernon McGee writes:

He was crucified naked. It is difficult for us in this age of nudity and pornography to comprehend the great humiliation He suffered by hanging nude on the cross. They had taken His garments and gambled for ownership. My friend, He went through it all, crucified naked, that you might be clothed with the righteousness of Christ, and so be able to stand before God throughout the endless ages of eternity.

Something I have been thinking through recently is how I too have dichotomized my sexuality from my spirituality. As American Christians, I feel like this is the norm. We go to church over here and think and talk about sex over here. And if I looked at porn, I hid it from God until enough time had passed that I could go and safely confess.

But what I have realized recently is that this is wrong. When I begin to see my sexual desires as something good, something given to me by God, it is easier to align them with His will. When I realize that I don’t have to hide my desires from Him, but rather give them over to Him, it becomes easier to escape temptation and have peace that I can trust Him with my desires. I can trust Him to bring me a wife in His timing, and I don’t have to fear that He’ll never give me one because I have these bad desires.

I think many of my struggles with pornography came from this thought that ‘sex is bad, dirty, and shameful. I need to hide these thoughts from God.’ A lot of them came from a fear that my desires for sex were bad, and therefore I was a bad person. But God loves healthy sexuality. In reality, Jesus has taken all of my shame and all my twisted views of sex to the cross and destroyed them when He was crucified naked.

He has redeemed our perverted views of sexuality. He has taken every last centerfold hanging on the walls of our minds and torn them to shreds.

He was crucified naked so we need not be ashamed anymore.

e