The word “father”, for some stirs warm feelings of fondness, and comforting strength, while for others it stirs loathing, or fear.  For some the word seems strangely disconnected from any real experience, and feels more like a set of letter on a coffee cup. At any rate, God had a plan for Fatherhood, beginning with, and always ever, expressing His true nature. No wonder there is such a war against this idea.

For me wrestling with this word has been a significant part of my journey.

I had a father, but the dent he left in my life was just that.  A dent.  I knew more of what he didn’t do, than what he did do, and what he did do, seemed to leave a trail of hurt, and abandonment.  Somewhere between that dent, and this day, I have waged a war of my own.  I have waged a war to re-define in my heart and in my own family what it will mean for me to be a father.

Interestingly that war has entered a new phase, as my last teen-ager turned twenty last month.  The word ‘father” changes again.

So at the risk of sounding like I think I got it right, I want to say a few things about that wrestling match. I want to say a few things that I have learned, in learning to think like a father.

1. My own fear of being a father only affects my kids if I let it keep me out of the game. Just stay.  That is more than many do.  Mistakes are not fatal, and there is really only one perfect Father anyway.  My job is point them to meet Him, and try to live with them the way I see God live with us.

2. ” Bring up a child in the way they should go” is not a directive based on a list of right and wrong.  “The way they should go” is unique to each one.  Job one is to discover who they are, so that I can help them become that person.  How totally fun, and absolutely terrifying to discover that each of my kids is absolutely their own person.

3.  My job is to teach them to choose well, not simply to get them to blindly obey.

4. It is a tightrope to see all the potential that is within them and to love them absolutely in their unfinished state. Encouraging growth without communicating disapproval is crucial to move them through to adulthood.

5.  I want to carry all their difficulties, but really loving them means allowing them to develop the strength to carry their own struggles.

6. Their fully developed personhood is the goal, not your comfort, or preferences.

7.  Give them your heart before you give them your thoughts.

8. Look them in the eyes.  It”s how they know they are in there.

9. Model what you want them to have and be.  Your words are empty if you do not live it in front of them.

10. Hug them. A lot. Do it again.  I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable.  Hug them.

11. Words can hurt.  I don’t care what the nursery rhyme says.  I have done much more counseling for people regarding the words their fathers’ spoke to them than for any sticks and stones.  Speak into them what you want to see grow in them.

This year I am watching my kids move up and out of our home. The mixture of emotions has been surprising and surprisingly strong.

I am proud.  They are wonderful people.

I am sad.  I like having them around, but they should move on.

I am thrilled.  I see them pursuing the lives they were made for.

I am frustrated. I think of what I could have done better for them, and it is mostly too late.

Here is the state of the war. The word “father” used to mean to me, “the scary guy who was never around and ultimately left everyone hurt and unprotected”. I picked it up.  I beat on it for a while.  I laid it down, I pushed and prodded.  I cried and cussed.  I turned God loose on the word, and sometimes I wouldn’t even let Him near it.  Every day I picked it up again and it looked and felt a little different.

Today the word means “the one who gives life and identity”.  It means, “the one who is there and loves unconditionally”.  Today it means one who gives hie whole heart to his children even though it is not their job to take care of it. Today the word father means “one who watches four amazing adults take whatever I have given them, good, bad, or ugly, and take their turn at the world”.  Today it means a collection of heart-filling memories that I will always have even when they live in different homes or different countries.

God re-defined, and is again re-defining the word “father” for me.  How about you?

Me: (to distressed couple) “Tell me how you would like things to be in your marriage.”

Distressed Husband, “I would like her to stop…”

Me: (interrupting quickly) “I asked what you wanted, not what you don’t want…”

Distressed Wife, “I wish he would not….”

Me (again interrupting) “It is important to define what you want…both of you clearly know what you do not want, but you must set as a goal, things that you DO want.  It is highly unlikely that you will end up with what you want, simply by getting rid of what you do not want.”

When we are frustrated or disillusioned we are very clear about what we do not want. It is much more difficult to envision an image of what we do want. We unconsciously fall back to the default setting; what I wish would stop.

Today, I find myself counseling another distressed Bride.

The church worldwide and blogwise has so many wry and biting observations about who is doing what wrongly. We have become experts on which part of the church is doing which apostate thing, or holding which heretical doctrine.

Sadly, it is just as unlikely that we will arrive at a unified and spotless bride by pointing out what is wrong with everyone (else), as it is that a couple will end up satisfied by getting all the negatives to cease.

Three years ago, I set out to write my book.  I went away for a week, and wrote many chapters.  I came back, and re-read what I had written. I threw ninety percent of it away.  I had written a book to correct the mistakes I perceived in the church.  Such a book would only have been one more mistake in a sea of perceived mistakes.

I went away again, and wrote for something instead of against something.

I have pictured in my mind the last few days, a gathering of Christians with a family therapist. A crowd of reformed thinkers sat in a room with a crowd of charismatic feelers. All around the room, the Catholics, and the evangelicals, and the emergent dudes gathered in their factions, (I mean, respective seating areas…).

The Counselor speaks up and says, “Tell me what you want…”

Immediately each group begins to point out the flaws of the others, declaring what they have right and the other has wrong, certain of what every other group needs to correct, and get right.

The Counselor speaks again and says, “It is highly unlikely that you will have what you want by declaring what you do not want. What do you want?

Then, one by one a spokesman (or woman) steps forward from each group, and weighs in.

“I want The Life of God to come forth on a broken world…”, says one.

“I want  Jesus to be made known for Who and What He is…” chimes in another.

“I want lost and broken humans to find wholeness and restoration in God’s Presence.” some declare.

“I want the Truth of God to be seen as the Hope of all humanity…”

Several are beginning to catch on now.

“I want people to begin to see God’s Truth as a path to right and healthy living,”

“I want to see more people on their way to Heaven.”

“I want to see Heaven evidenced on the Earth…”

“I want to see the Body of Christ come to Unity as God’s expression on the earth…”

“I want to see people changed from the inside out, becoming more generous and loving…”

“I want to see people, through the Power and Wisdom of God, solve the problems of the human race.”

“I want to see Justice done and evil eradicated…”

The family leaves their seating areas, gathering around the Center, as each begins to describe what they DO want. As they gather, it becomes less evident which seating area they had occupied, as each group mingles around the declarations.

“I want every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”

“I want to see God’s Mercy declared and demonstrated to humanity.”

Soon the voices become a chorus and faces are all looking up instead at one another.

I know how to have what we don’t want…I wonder what we all want?

So tell me, what do YOU want?

Like Atlantis and the Fountain of Youth, most people had dismissed The Code as a myth—another lost ancient treasure, hidden forever. From generation to generation, continent to continent, and culture to culture the whole human race seemed to know that a secret key to life existed, somewhere. They knew because they had heard about it firsthand, or their day-to-day experience confirmed their awareness that something like The Code must exist to make sense of it all. If such a document could be found and decoded, it would provide the key to virtually everything—peaceful co-existence, the restoration of everything broken, a better life on earth.

Though everyone knew that it must exist, no one knew exactly what it was. There were those who claimed to know, and their claim could not be proven wrong since The Code had never been found. No wonder that after centuries of conjecture about the legendary artifact, most people were doubtful when a team of experts claimed to have discovered it at last. They had followed clues from ancient documents that led them to a site in the Middle East. While excavating there they uncovered an artifact that was unlike any other, not just in its physical composition, but in every other way.

The Code was not written on a typical scroll used in antiquity; it was inscribed on a very strange material. Were it not so clearly ancient, it would have appeared that it was made of some sort of primitive plastic or acrylic. It was firm and didn’t have the flexibility associated with paper, papyrus, or animal skin. It was solid, yet light could pass through it. The strangest aspect of this “document” was its shape—a slightly concave oval, just a little bigger than a football. This curvature made the writing on the document seem a bit distorted. Many of the scientists who examined it postulated that, at some point, the document must have been subjected to heat and had reached a melting point, causing the warped effect.

Evidence continued to indicate that this was indeed the document which had once seemed to be only a myth. Curiously, the writing spanned a number of centuries and was recorded in several languages. Therefore, the linguistic team had great difficulty translating the message, and the cultural interpretations were very complex. In response to these challenges, the greatest minds of the day were gathered to unlock the mystery of this “key to everything” code. Linguists, archaeologists, sociologists, anthropologists, geologists, and even some specialists in religious history all came together to solve the mystery of The Code.

The team’s consensus was that the message written on this object gave helpful direction and instruction, but it did not seem to be the world-changing Key of Truth that everyone had been led to expect. It was meaningful and provided some insight, but many began to doubt whether this was actually the document the world had been hoping for. Either it was the wrong document or the expectations had been unrealistic. Surely no single code could change all that was wrong with the world! Nevertheless, the team kept working to decode the rest of the document.

One day, one of the sociologists was busy intently examining historical documents and cultural records. His son had accompanied him to work, and it wasn’t long before the seven-year-old was drawn to the mysterious object lying on the table behind where his father was engrossed in research. The boy picked up The Code and, with great curiosity, began gently turning it over in his hands. What happened next changed everything: He placed it over his face like a mask.

Gazing through the object, the boy gasped, “Dad! Where did all these things come from?!” His eyes were wide with amazement and his jaw dropped as he slowly looked around the room through The Code. Then, he removed the object from his face and looked around a second time. “It’s all gone!” he exclaimed, obviously puzzled. Again he lifted the “mask” to his face, in wonder. The room was once more filled with things he had not seen only a moment ago. The sterile laboratory was transformed into a garden-like setting with shimmering trees and plants—if you could call them that—growing everywhere. Familiar objects looked different when viewed through the lens of The Code, and the boy noticed a glow that shone around, and from within, his father. He marveled at several large shining beings, some of them nearly eight feet tall, standing by their side. As the boy took off the “lens,” the appearance of the room returned to normal.

The child definitely had his father’s attention now. The man approached the boy and carefully took the Code from him. Following his son’s example, he placed the object over his face like a mask. At first, it was difficult to shift his focus away from the words and symbols he had been studying so intently, but when he stopped looking at them and began looking through them, he saw things in the room he had never seen before. Like the boy, he could see the towering beings and the plant-like objects. Then he noticed the light shining around his son, just as his son had seen around him. He had never witnessed anything like it! Even when he took the “mask” away from his face, his perspective remained changed. Having looked through The Code, he now knew the world around him contained much more than he could ever have imagined. He realized that the hidden key of the artifact was not only the ideas it contained, but also what could be seen when one looked through it. Interacting with the document in this way would allow people to discover a reality they had never before considered. The real power of The Code was not that it provided new information, but rather a new way of seeing.

The man excitedly shared the discovery with his colleagues. Strangely enough, not everyone who looked through this giant lens could see what the boy and his father had seen. In fact, when many members of the research team tried looking through the ancient material, their vision was totally unaffected. They were so trained to examine the language or the make-up of the thing itself that, even when they placed it over their faces, they could not look away from those elements. In other words, their way of viewing The Code didn’t change—they were still looking at the words and symbols, instead of looking through the document. Eventually, some of the team realized their mistake and began to shift their focus from the micro-elements of the document and looked through The Code instead.

Sadly, those who could not see anything differently began to tell everyone who could see differently that they were delusional. The cynics believed the others were either deceived or deficient in some way. These men and women were never able to look past the object of their study to see the world that could only be seen through the lens, so they tried to lower the expectations of those who had not yet looked through the lens at all. They said that everyone was mistaken about The Code. As exciting as the discovery was, they insisted that it was not the key that would change the world after all. Yet, in spite of the cynics, those who looked through The Code in the same way the child had now had the power to see everything in a new way, to view the reality contained in a different dimension, and their world was never the same.

I couldn’t keep it in much longer. 

Jesus mission was not education. He was not here to bring motivation or inspiration. His mission was always unwaveringly liberation. To His core, He knew exactly what this meant. As a result, He was calculating and relentless in His pursuit. Every word, every move, every step was an intentional move to free men from the prison of their minds, and untangle the knots of the knowledge of good and evil.

Clearly Jesus defined freedom in a particular way, and watching what He did can help us understand how the author of freedom thinks about freedom.

What He did, was take a group of men and traveled across the countryside teaching them how to change everything they encountered and touched. Think of it this way. He was showing twelve guys, and a crew of persistent women what it looked like, and how to practice dominion over the creation.

“Fever go away”, He would say, and then make sure that His followers caught what had happened.

“Peace be still”, He would say to a storm, and then turn and be sure their eyes had been on Him.

Encountering a crowd of religious know-it-alls? He peered inside their hearts and told stories. “Once upon a time there was a man who owed a little bit of money…” and then He would steal a glance at His disciples. “Get it?”, the gleam in His eye would say.

A scared insecure tax collector? A shame filled near-death prostitute? A self-confident Pharisee? All of these fell under the sway of Jesus restoring God’s blueprint to the cosmos.

Two things stand out to me about Jesus strategy.  First He spent the bulk of His time teaching them how to be and what to do, not rules and restrictions. Second, He taught them on the move, not in a classroom.

Jesus was restoring God’s intended design. He was showing men and women how Adam and Eve might have taken dominion over the creation. Contrary to our religious mindset, He was not spending His time trying to get them to behave well.

Jesus was showing them how to step into the role for which they were created.  We were created to take dominion over the planet. Over the kingdom of darkness. Over sickness. Over Hopelessness. Over fear and insecurity. All of these things  and more, were designed to be subject to us. Jesus took His team on the road and showed them how to do this.

Any prohibitions He may have handed out were all in the context of teaching them how to be who they were made to be, and do what they were made to do.  He was not showing them what not to do. He was showing them who to be.

Secondly, His approach to this was to go and do, and teach on the way. People who are learning about something they are already doing have an entirely different learning process than those who are learning about something they may do someday.

You teach athletes their game out on the field, not in a classroom. Wilderness education takes place with hungry people in cold forests. They are very motivated to learn about how to eat and how to stay warm.

Classrooms minus experience teach information, and implicitly, they teach passivity.  If you want someone to grow and learn, take them right out in the middle of reality and then begin to show them how to be.

Jesus did not come to educate men about how to avoid bad behavior, and strategies for better Bible scholarship.

Jesus did not come to motivate people to get up off their chairs and try harder.

Jesus came to liberate people from the prison of the world that had been wrapped around our minds.

Saturday is the “day in between”, the day we can celebrate what God has said, that has not yet come to pass.  Saturday, between the crucifixion and the resurrection is a day to remind us that much of life is lived between the seemingly impossible promises of God, and their final fulfillment.

“I will rise again” seems a hollow promise on the day when the lips from which the promise was uttered are cold and lifeless in a grave.

When hope is completely obliterated and no sign of God’s goodness is visible, Saturday reminds us that the feelings of fear, or hopelessness can be stifling simply because we do not yet see the end of the story.  Saturday reminds us that God comes through, even though today we may feel He has abandoned us.  Saturday reminds us that death has a power of it’s own, and sometimes it’s a necessary step to reach Sunday.

I think this year Saturday can speak to the season of the church today.  Old things are collapsing around us.  Systems and even leaders we once put our hope in are increasingly lifeless.  Could it be that these things are not dying because God gave up, bur because God works through resurrections.

Whether in your personal circumstances, or in the season of the world system.  Celebrate Saturday.  God loves to set us up for new life and overwhelming surprises.

Adam and Eve had a way of perceiving reality in the Garden, that none of us have at this point in history. Hence, our search for what we lost is conducted by the very broken mechanisms that suffered in this terrible fall.

If I lose my glasses, I have two problems. I have lost my glasses, AND the way that I find lost things IS what I lost. I now search with impaired vision.

The human race, now, is stuck searching for the Life that we all long for, while viewing the world through our own limited (whether you think so or not….in fact, even more so if you DON’T think so) vision and understanding.

Everyone is searching for what we lost. Not everyone knows they are searching. Many simply think they are trying to enjoy life. Enjoy what? Enjoy LIFE, the very thing that we lost. Man’s effort to live in the way he feels is most right, or most satisfying is his search for what was lost. Something drives us all, and the common factor in the whole human race is our disconnect from the most essential thing, our Source of Life and Identity; our disconnect from God.

Some search in the knowledge of evil, and dive into uncontrolled pleasures, experiences or roles. Others search in the knowledge of good and try to do right and do the good things they believe will result in life and godliness.  It is the search itself that is impaired.

The Problem that Jesus came to solve begins with the disconnect of the human race from their source of life. It evolves into an increasingly empty soul aching to be filled; like a pair of lungs that pound when the owner holds their breath. The next step in the Problem is that the search itself is impaired, resulting in solutions from one branch or the other in the tree of death.

One branch eagerly seeks to fill with self-stimulating destructive behavior like drugs, sex and country music. The other branch seeks to fill the soul with good behavior, like ministry and service, originating from the knowledge and will of an empty soul. The danger of the second branch is that many believe they have found the right answer and stop the search, regardless of how empty they remain.

Here is the progression.

• I am disconnected
• I am increasingly empty
• I seek to fill my emptiness
• My solution is based on my knowledge of good and evil
• Therefore I fill myself with myself
• I am increasingly empty
• I either double my current efforts or jump to another solution
• My solution is based on my knowledge of good and evil
• I fill myself with myself
• I am increasingly empty
• I now jump to another branch (I am empty because I am bad)
• My solution is still based on my knowledge
• I either try harder or give up

Sin can look like bad behavior, but sin is really the absence of God from a disconnected, self-initiating soul. Bad behavior is the result of sin, but in many cases so is good behavior. Then our knowledge of good and evil causes us to examine and try to change behavior without ever changing trees.

The Problem that Jesus came to solve can quickly and easily make us misunderstand the Problem that Jesus came to solve.

Hear the words of Jesus again, “…if you knew who I was, you would ask, and I would give to you rivers of living water.”

It has always been intriguing to me that Jesus teaches in such a way as to disguise, or even hide truth.

At that time Jesus said,

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. -Matthew 11:25

As soon as He was alone, His followers, along with the twelve, began asking Him about the parables. And He was saying to them,

“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables, so that WHILE SEEING, THEY MAY SEE AND NOT PERCEIVE, AND WHILE HEARING, THEY MAY HEAR AND NOT UNDERSTAND, OTHERWISE THEY MIGHT RETURN AND BE FORGIVEN.” - Mark 4:10-12

Since Jesus intentionally hides truth, the first thing we can assume about the problem that He came to solve, is that it has nothing to do with being sure we have our information correct.  It seems He is eager to not feed our knowledge of good.

If we are not careful as we consider His teaching approach we will ask the wrong question; “why has God hidden truth?” This question will make God seem stingy. The right question is, “to whom, or more importantly, in what way has God revealed truth?”

God has revealed Truth in a very particular way; one that cannot be perceived by the knowledge of good and evil. A significant part of the problem that Jesus came to solve has to do with restoring a way of knowing truth that was once primary to the human race. If God makes His truth available to the “wise and learned” He would actually feed the beast that killed us all. Our knowledge of good cannot in any way bring us into proximity of Life, or the Source of Life, any more than our car could take us to Hawaii. If our wisdom and learning are the vehicle, Life can never be the destination.

God has not so much hidden truth as He has made it available on the path to which He is trying to draw us.

He is trying to be sure that we do not mistakenly believe that we are The Way, while coming to understand that He is.

The fact that God hid truth in His teaching method is not a commentary on God being a difficult old man, rather it is God addressing the very problem that Jesus came to solve. Knowing more information as a way to approach and know God is part of the very sickness He came to cure.

Jesus came to solve the problem of men having lost the way that we find lost things. We must learn the kind of truth that sets us free in a particular way. We must learn it in the way that we learn from parables.

How do we learn from parables?

The way that we learn math is very different from the way that we learn poetry. The way that we learn physics is very different from the way that we learn music. In fact, music is a great example. Music can be learned as an art, and we end up with the great blues and jazz players. Or it can be learned as a science and we end up with technical wizards who have little soul. Imagine learning it as both art and science.

Teach a lesson on the pursuing Grace of God. You will inform the mind. Tell a parable about a lost son, and you stir the inner man. The mind and Grace may be incompatible in the same way that science and love can be incompatible.

Measure heart palpitations. Observe glandular changes. Quantify hormonal shifts.

Or

Swim in a sea of longing that can both drown and thrill you when the mere thought of your lover comes to mind.

Which of these ways of learning is compatible with the kind of love your wife hungers for?

And what way of learning is compatible with the Kingdom of God, the restoration of the human soul, and the deep need of the lost human race?

We learn from parables not just the things they say, but we learn to hear on channels beyond our intellect. We learn to have ears that hear, and to have the eyes of our hearts opened.

Jesus came to solve the problem of ears that hear but do not hear, and eyes that see but do not see. How could he teach in ways that access the mind, while starving the eyes of our hearts? It would be incompatible with the problem He came to solve.

Not Jesus

 
The above quote is a derivative of a real quote from Jesus in John Chapter 10. We would never use this language, but at some level, our new lenses, the knowledge of Good and Evil, leave us with this perception of the mission of Jesus and His expectations of how we should all respond.

Too often we think that Jesus came to solve the problem of rule breakers gone wild. We may not often put it in this language, but we think of Genesis 3 as a chapter about how sin entered the world. God issued a rule (“Don’t eat from that tree…”) and Adam and Eve broke the rule. Now the whole human race is composed of rule-breakers through the lineage of Adam.

If this is true, then Jesus came to pay the legal price for rule breaking, and buy our pardon for the rules that we have broken and will break. I hope He came to do much more than this. I am convinced that He came to do much more. This is why it is important to continue to examine the problem Jesus came to solve.

Genesis, the beginning of all things, can actually give us rich and deep understanding of human nature and the significant effects of the fall of man. The roots of truly impactful psychological understanding can all be found in these early chapters. The roots of the deepest needs of a man’s soul can also be found here. We simply have to read beyond our “rule-breaker” mentality.

The problem that Jesus came to solve can actually affect our understanding of the problem that Jesus came to solve.

Adam came into existence and had his nature established in a very unique way. God took non-living dirt, and injected it with His Living Breath. The Spirit of Life made inanimate dirt into a somebody. Adam went from nothingness to absolute identity and nature in a single breath.

Adam’s biology, as well as his nature, as well as the processes of his mind and body all came from the Source of his nature; the Breath of God. His heartbeat, and his perceptual mechanisms all came from the amazing fact that Adam was deeply connected to his Source.

The previous post indicates that Adam and his bride had a way of seeing that allowed them to see things growing on trees that you and I have no ability to see.

They saw by the Spirit, we see by our natural eyes. The Presence of the Breath of Life inside the human race gave them identity, nature, and their ability to perceive/interact with reality. Men strive for identity, nature and understanding through their natural senses; their knowledge of good and evil.

Though it is true that Adam and Eve broke a rule, that is the least of their worries. The rule had a reason. God’s prohibition against eating the fruit of that tree was designed to protect the essential spiritual nature of His offspring. The specific rule that they broke changed their source, and therefore changed their identity, their nature and their perceptual mechanisms.

As a result they changed us all. The essential source and nature of the human race moved from a vital connection to a Spiritual Source of Life, to an attempt to derive self-hood from our own knowledge!

Like unplugging the power cable from your laptop, and trying to draw power from your data source, Adam and Eve left us drawing on a our own knowledge. What we once received in uninterrupted flow from our vital connection to God, we now try to draw from a single source, our own soul. Like trying to plug an extension cord into itself, with no power source, power; life, was no more.

Adam has only one way to interpret and respond to this crisis of disrupted nature. He looked (through his own knowledge) at himself and saw that he was naked. He interpreted (through his own knowledge) and felt ashamed. He began to formulate solutions (through his own knowledge) and tried multiple ways to hide his nakedness. In this condition, what he did not do tells us as much as what he did do.

While we see him cover his nakedness with everything from foliage to finger-pointing, we do not see him approach God. Our knowledge always gives us inadequate solutions because it gives us inadequate definitions. Adam thought he was in trouble because of his nakedness, never realizing he was in trouble because he had separated from his source.

Today we think that we are in trouble because of our range of behaviors and soul-states, but seldom realize that we are truly in trouble because we are separate from our source of true life.
Listen to the real words of Jesus from John 10.

“The thief comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy, but I came that you might have life and life more abundantly”
Really Jesus

The problem that Jesus came to solve was that His children had tried to become their own source of life, and had no life within themselves. Jesus came to give back the very thing that Adam lost in Genesis 3.

In your thoughts, from what have you tried to draw life? When you think about making your circumstances better, what are the first things that come to your mind?

What if the fall of man affected more than our ultimate destination, and more than our nature? What if it also affected the way that we know things?

Did you know that the way you know something actually matters more than what you know?

Like a pair of glasses we look through, but never look at, Adam and Eve left the Garden with a new nature but also a new set of perceptual mechanisms. As a result, the whole human race views reality through a common set of lenses; The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

As startling as it is to our Christian pre-suppositions, the chapter in the Bible (Genesis 3) that contains the narrative of the problem that Jesus came to solve does not contain the word “sin” at all. Before you run screaming from my blog, you should know that the concept of “sin” is all throughout the chapter, but by the nature of the problem that Jesus came to solve, we think of sin in all kinds of one-dimensional and non-helpful ways.

Lets look again at Genesis 3, but this time let’s think differently.

To set up the next several posts, I would actually like to begin with Genesis 2:9 to help us set the scene for what comes next.

Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. - Genesis 2:9 New American Standard

The reason it is important to set the scene here, is that the scene looks different to the players before Genesis 3 than it does after the tragic fall. Don’t miss it. Look again.

We all know what trees look like; green leafy things with branches. But if we follow the imagery a bit further we discover something that none of us have ever seen; at the end of these branches is something called Life and Knowledge. Adam and Eve had a way of seeing, that allowed them to see what we are entirely unable to see. They could see life and they could see knowledge. This way of seeing is part of what we lost, and it is this new way of seeing that sets us up to easily misunderstand the problem that Jesus came to solve.

Jesus makes this statement in John Chapter 3, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things?” Interestingly He was also referring to trees, and the kinds of things that are visible and invisible to the human eye. It would seem that if we are going to be teachers and leaders we must have some need of learning something about this issue.

In the next several posts I want to help us all think differently about the problem that Jesus came to solve. Start by considering that what we see, may not be all that is present to be seen. Start by considering that what we see is directly connected to the way we see.

Can you think of a time when you saw a person or a circumstance in a whole new way? How did that change things? Have you ever seen you relationship with God in a whole new way? How did that change things?

I was in a frustrated place and time in life. It had something to do with a certain number of years in “vocational ministry”. This is a term we use when we get paid to do stuff for God. I had reached whatever the tipping point was, and I was beginning to consider that maybe God was a bad boss. And so the argument began, right there among the cow products. (this is a term we use in place of other terms)

“Okay, God, I think it stinks that…” I began. The complaint was more a sense bubbling up than anything I had really thought consciously, until that moment, but it was rising fast.

“Okay, God, I think it stinks that I have to be the Free-est person at the church where I serve.” I finally protested.

For years, one of my core values has centered around the statement that “Free People free people”. Taken from Jesus directive to His disciples when He told them, “Freely you have received, freely give.” I teach that this means we will give away whatever is inside us, so we must take care of what is inside us. Technique and strategy are secondary, personhood is the well from which others will really drink. Because of this, I hold myself and my team to a standard. We must tend to our own souls first.

The years had passed and the ministry had grown. The numbers of people drinking from the well increased every year. Now whole churches were beginning to draw from our waters. This should be exciting right? But I was tired. I was beginning to dry up, and had far less to give than in the early years.

So I complained. I was certain it was God’s fault. He was just asking too much of poor little me. Strangely, He was not as quick to take responsibility.

“I think it stinks that I have to be the free-est person at my church,” I had uttered accusingly. Then He answered. I hope you know what I mean when I say “He answered”. Somewhere in my spirit I had a strong sense. The sense became words in my mind. I always say that I hear a voice and it is smarter than me. He answered.

“Bob,” He seemed to say, even a bit gently, “I made you free, you made it a job..”

“Wait,” I felt the word desperately rise up in my mind. I was quickly losing my scapegoat. He seemed to think it was my fault. Why, I would never do such a thing to myself. Why would I possibly treat myself so poorly?

I had no more allowed this thought to flit through my consciousness when that Voice started to respond to the ill-formed question. I was pretty sure it had been a rhetorical question when it passed through my consciousness, but God seemed to take it seriously. It was almost as if He took me more seriously than I did, and that is exactly what He began to talk to me about.

He told me how much He wanted to care for my soul, and He let me know that I had not been trusting Him or others enough to allow anyone else to take me seriously. I have needs too. He began to tell me why I had not been trusting Him, and He began to remind of times where He had provided for me, but I had opted to handle things on my own.

Let me take this opportunity to warn you about talking to God. He wants to talk to you about you. He wants to talk to you about you, and about Him, and about the ways that you relate to each other. He wants that conversation far more than He wants to talk about your circumstances.

That day, I argued with God, and He won. I am grateful He won. It had been very tiring for me to keep winning.