Nathanael Rowe

Speaking of damaging other people’s properties, I am reminded of a pair of events that happened in High School.  While the goal may have been for these two events to be unrelated, I believe they were.

One day Justin, Ian, and I were riding back home from surfing at the beach.  We were in Ian’s hatchback, Justin was sitting shotgun, and I was sitting behind him.  I did not have my own window, but I had to spit so I asked Justin to scoot forward so I could spit out his window.  Ian instantly advised against this as he thought the spit would just backfire and go all over his rear window, I of course disagreed and proceeded to spit out the window.  Well just like Ian thought, a nasty loog instantly splattered all over his window.  He was furious at the fact that I had done exactly what he told me not to do.

A few weeks later, Ian was riding shotgun in my 1986 Dodge Caravan.  Somehow he found a razor blade and started cutting my inner upholstery and ceiling as I drove.  I looked over at him and noticed what he was doing, all I could say is, “What are you doing?”  He calmly put the razor blade down, and stopped destroying my car, but he showed no remorse.  I am pretty sure he was getting his revenge on me for spitting all over his car, but only he really knows.

Since I got back I have been slowly working on typing out Ryan and my adventure in book format.  It is not an easy job, but I really want to finish it.  I think if the trip taught me anything about myself, its that if I really want to do something, I can.  And right now I really want to write a book.   Not to make money, because it likely won’t, but instead because I feel as though the trip is worth being written about.  I had such a unique and wonderful time over those six months, and I am sure Ryan did too, and I think what we did, and what we learned deserves to be shared and documented in something tangible and accessible.  Whether people want to read about it is a whole other story.

So in my free time, I am typing away, and often times what comes out is quite poor, just like these blogs here.  However, my goal is not to write a great book, I think an editor or if need be a ghost writer can do that, so instead my goal is just to write a crappy book.  That really takes the pressure off for me when I think of it like that.  I imagine a lot of people get stuck writing cause they want it to be great, but if you are willing to overlook that, you can get a lot more done.  It is still challenging, but I am glad I am trying this.

So I have recently started working at Skateside in West Long Beach.  It is an interesting job, Basically my job is to hang out with skater kids from the hood.  Anyway, in my first 2 weeks there, I heard twice about a kid who bought a board on credit from a local shop owner, one who donates frequently to Skateside, but out of the $55 he owed the owner, he had only paid $10 in the last 4 months.  The shop owner was of course upset, but the cool part is that after Sean the pastor heard about this problem a couple times, He decided it would be best to simply pay the shop owner for the kids debt.  The crazy thing about this, is that this wasn’t a good kid.  In fact the rumor is that he is using the money that he was supposed to be paying the shop owner to buy weed.  I mean someone might understand paying for a kid who is good, but just couldn’t come up with the money.  However hearing about a kid who got his debt paid even while he was in the midst of being kind of jerk seems a little weird, a little awkward, but yet that is the very thing Christ did for us.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – Romans 5:8

So now if this kid ever goes to pay off his debt, the shop owner will just simply tell him, “Oh, don’t worry about it, your debt has been paid.”  Imagine the feeling if your a kid and you go into a skate shop to pay off your debt and that is what the owner tells you.  Now who knows where this kid will end up, or if this will even help him in the long run, but the cool thing is the amazing connection this story has with the gospel.  My prayer is that this kid will hear that his debt has been paid, and that something will click in his head, that there is someone who loves him.  And yes for the sake of this story that someone is the pastor, but hopefully he will realize that there is a God who loves him too, and that he has paid an even bigger debt on his behalf.

I have this buddy Joe, who is about twice my age.  He goes to church sometimes at Parkcrest, but is an agnostic.  Tonight he called to talk motorcycles, but instead we ended up talking for about 2 hours about Christians and this guy named Jesus.  What

is funny, is that after talking to his agnostic for 2 hours we both realized that we had some of the same questions about Christianity.  The issues that he struggles and debates over in his own mind are the same ones that I do.  His frustration with that is, that we he talks to the average church goer about these issues, their response usually boils down to, “well God said it and I believe it.”  By the way this is not a very convincing argument to a non-believer.  So when he hears this he confessed that he assumed that this is simply a tenant of Christianity, Blind Faith.

So our conversation’s main theme was that this is not, nor was it ever a true tenant of the Christian faith, but for some reason this seems to be how we like to make our disciples now days.  Lets face it, it is much easier to lead a bunch of sheep that do exactly what you tell them without question, but I do not think this was the purpose of the shepherd metaphor.  The Hebrew culture and scriptures are full of people who did just the opposite, not granted there were many times where they were in the wrong for this, but still God’s chosen peop

le were a group that tended to disagree with him.  In fact, one of their fore fathers is said to have actually wrestled with God.

This afternoon, I had lunch with Al Siebert, who is a great thinker and leader here in Long Beach.  We were talking about how so many institutions whether it be churches or schools are very concerned with passing down certain aspects of their particular theological system.  And so I asked Al, “Why don’t we just teach all the valid opinions on an issue, and then let the students make up their own minds?”  Like for instance, instead of teaching Calvanism, or Open Theism, Or Arminianism, why not just teach all three, and allow the students to make up their own mind.  Their are plenty of smart and dedicated followers in all three categories, so why should we try and limit someone’s thought process on a non-essential issue?

Al’s response was this, “Because we are more concerned with creating people who think exactly like us.”

It was kind of a sad reality, we are more concerned with creating like minded thinkers than we are with creating people who can think critically and be challenged with these issues for themselves.  What was interesting to me, and something I shared with my buddy Joe over our phone conversation is that Jesus seemed to not concern himself too much with creating people who think the same as him, and a lot more concerned in discipling people to do the same things he did.  He didn’t seem to spend much time talking about the theology behind predestination and free-will, or the different theories of his own atonement, but what He did spend a lot of time on was showing them how to heal the sick, how to care for the poor, how to love the unlovable, and how to depend on God fully throughout all of those things.  Jesus cared about making proper doers, not proper thinkers.

All of this is to say, I realized my buddy Joe was somewhat stunted in any potential spiritual growth because any question he had didn’t really have an answer, let alone a thoughtful counter question like Jesus had.  And so as a thoughtful person talking to many blind sheep he can’t help but think that all there is to being a Christian is just blindly following Jesus.  The truth is this is the case for the majority of any line of faith or political ideology, there will always be a surplus of people who hold firmly to their beliefs simply cause they were told to.  But to reach the Joes of the world I think we are going to have be a lot more thoughtful in how we train up our disciples.  For one, they need to be OK with not having the whole theology thing nailed down, and be comfortable with the wrestling that can occasionally happen on this journey of following God.  And even more importantly we need to train the next generation to be doers because that is what Jesus did, and that is what changes the world.

So I just got out of the sequel to Boondock Saints, and while it wasn’t as good as the first, I was still pleased with its common theme of pure awesome justice delivered by the hand of God.  Its an awesome story of how two guys are called by God to eliminate evil, to literally kill off evil men.  It is a great plot line that makes for a fun movie, but it forgets some pretty common themes in scripture.  Themes I have recently been pondering.

For starters the film is right to assume that we are in a war.  I was just listening to the book on tape, “Let the nations be Glad” by John Piper, and in the second chapter he makes the very important point to say, we (Members of the Kingdom of God) are in a time of war.  The problem is that all too often fellow members of the Kingdom buy into the lie that we are in a time of peace.  This simply is not so, what better trick can the adversary play on us than to fool us into thinking we are not really at war.  With that kind of blindness, what soldiers are there left to stand for anything.

Jesus said it like this,

“Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” (Mark 4:18-19)

I think we are unfruitful because we have forgotten that we are indeed in the time of war.  Evil must be fought against, it can not be allowed to continue in it’s present state, but our war is not against flesh and blood, our war is against the powers of this dark world.  See in the movie, they make it real easy to define the enemy as other humans, but that is not who our war is against, in fact that is who our war is for.  The very man who does evil is also the very man Jesus came to rescue, so our fight is for the lost and so called evil of this world, and that makes the battle a lot more complicated.

So I ask myself this question, how do we fight a war against powers that we can not see or interact with?  Even more how do we avoid the all to easy conclusion of hatred and anger towards our fellow humans, who we know we are fighting for, but all too often behave as though they are the adversary himself.  Satan fights his battles much like a coward who sends children to war, he sends humans to do evil against other humans, leaving us no choice but to fight against the very creation we were sent to rescue.

I do not know completely how this war is fought righteously, but I do know that part of it is to simply expose the evil and darkness all around us.  Paul says in Ephesians 5:10-11,

“Find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”

So I propose this, that part of our jobs as members of this great Kingdom is to expose the wickedness and evil for what it is.  To stand up for what is right and let brightness overcome the dark and disgusting parts of this evil world.  We must expose evil before we can vanquish it, so where is evil in your city, in your neighborhood, in your home, in your own life?

I have seen it all to often within me, and it saddens me, but we all need to expose our own evil, to recognize that we are fallen, and to admit that we only have ourselves to blame, then the real fight can begin.