A Tale of Two Covenants, a devotional thought

In 2 Kings 18:31-37, the city of Jerusalem is under siege by the Assyrians, and the people come out to parlay with the Assyrian general. He says some utterly shocking and blasphemous things about what they intend to do to the inhabitants of the city once they've conquered it (it really is R-rated), and how YHWH can't stop them, any more than any of the other gods of the other nations could. And then in 2 Kings 18:31, he says, "So this is what the king of Assyria says: make a covenant with me, and every man can 'eat from his own vine and drink from his own cistern.'"

Considering what they'll be eating and drinking if they don't (see v.27), this seems like a fair deal.

Only: the word he uses there, "covenant," is a really loaded one. Because the people, right from the beginning of the story, have been in covenant with YHWH. That is the story: God covenants with his people, promises to guard them and guide them, and invites them to love him and serve him. So, in suggesting that the Jerusalemites make a covenant with him, the king of Assyria is also telling them to abandon their covenant with YHWH.

Of course, I'm not standing on a city wall listening to a horde of ruthless barbarians threaten to slaughter me and mine if I don't surrender, so I can't imagine the very real terror that must have swept the city that day, and how tempting it would have been for Hezekiah to cut covenant with Assyria and be done with it. But at the same time, this passage leaves me wondering: where, and how, and when have I made a covenant with the systems of this world, because they promised to bring me peace or spare me difficulty, even though in cozying up like that, it meant abandoning, or at the very least neglecting the covenant God's made with me?

May God help us all see the "worldly covenants" in our lives for what they are; may he keep us faithful in covenant with him, even as he himself is faithful.

Notes from the Ashes (Part I): Some Reflections on Pastoral Burn-out

It was just over a year ago now that I went through one of the darkest periods of my ministry, if not my life.  It was a season that started after a long run of emotionally demanding ministry challenges, a few hard disappointments in a row, some big uncertainties looming up on the horizon, and my worst self getting the better of me one too many times.  Before long I was exhibiting all the classic signs of burn-out—severe depression, physical exhaustion, difficulty making even simple decisions, unexpected and uncontrollable bouts of anxiety, and what those in the biz call “escape thoughts.”

After a few months of being like this, it all came to a head one very dark Sunday evening, when an unexpected email from a well-meaning friend expressing some concerns about my ministry, launched me into a startlingly intense and disproportionate explosion of frustration, fear and despair.  I say “startling” because when the storm passed, the uncontrollable eruption of emotion was so alarming to me that I finally admitted to myself, and my wife, that I needed help.

About a month later I was off on stress leave for emotional and physical exhaustion.  About three months after that, after a good deal of self-work, some pretty serious work on my life with God, and some much-less serious but vitally needed rest, I was back at my ministry post, with fresh clarity on who I was as a pastor, renewed heart for the ministry, and new depths in my life with God.  I was, in the words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “an older and wiser man.”

The medical term for what happened to me, I think, is “clinical depression.”  The corporate world calls it “burn-out” and the church sometimes calls it “compassion fatigue.”  I just call it “my dark time.”  It was very real, very raw, at times very scary, and, while I wouldn't wish it on anyone, God used it to help me become the pastor he has called me to be.

For the next few weeks here at terra incognita, I intend to share some practical and/or spiritual lessons I learned from my experience, some of the things God was doing in me through that time, and some of the things I wish people had told me about burn-out while I was going through it.  My purpose here is three-fold.  First, inasmuch as all this happened a year ago now, I think it would be personally helpful to review what I went through, to remind myself exactly how I got to a place I never want to be in again.  Second: one of the things that God said to me early on in my recovery time was that none of this would be wasted, that a deeper, more authentic ministry would grow out of the pain I was in; so perhaps sharing some of these spiritual insights is a way of humbly holding him to that promise, to redeem my burn-out by offering it as help and hope for others.  But most importantly, third: if you, or someone you know is now where I was then, or close, or on the way there, my hope is that these travel notes from someone who’s been down the path before may be of help to you.

To start it all off, let me offer four simple things I learned about burn-out that were very important first-steps—not to my recovery itself, necessarily, but to my getting to a place where I could begin to recover.  In a way similar to how acceptance is the first step to recovery of other kinds, these are four things I needed to hear someone I trusted say to me, before I could begin to heal.

1.  Burn-out is not a sign of failure but of strength. 

I know that sounds like the nonsense motivational speakers say when they want you to believe that "obstacles" are really "opportunities in disguise," but the thing is, when someone burns out, it’s because they've been doing too-well for too-long what other people would have given up on long ago.  Or think about it like the fuse in a car.  When the fuse blows, it’s not because the fuse failed, but because it worked: there was an overload on the system and by “blowing” the fuse did its job and protected the system from frying.  The burned-out pastor is like that fuse, inasmuch as he or she “blew” to keep the emotional load from frying the whole system (the local church or ministry context).  Refusing to “blow” and letting the emotional load fry the system would have been the real failure.

2.   You are not alone. 

Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, Peter Scazzero, Bill Hybels, Rob Bell and, as far as I can gather, the Apostle Paul himself, have all been through what you’re going through.  One of the lies I believed early on in my experience, a lie that was keeping me from seeking the help I needed, went like this: “if you do ‘burn-out,’ your credibility as a pastor (such as it was) will be shot.”  So imagine my surprise, as I began reading about burn out, and I discovered that almost every contemporary church leader I’ve ever admired, respected, taken cures from or tried to model my ministry after, have themselves been through this thing called burn-out.  Knowing they’d come out the other side older and wiser helped me to believe I could, too.

3.  This is not "just in your head." 

Burn-out is as much a physical thing as it is an intellectual or emotional.  This was huge for me to realize because it forced me to accept that I could not "keep pushing" by sheer mental exertion alone, anymore than a guy with a broken femur can just "walk it off."  

(I’ll share more about this later, but here’s how it was explained to me:  your brain is built to run naturally on "feel-good-hormones" like endorphins, oxytocin and what not.  These chemicals are produced naturally by things like rest, sleep, physical exercise, good nutrition, making love to your spouse, enjoying the company of good friends, and so on.  If you deplete your system of these hormones because you’re running it too hard without doing the things that replenish them, your body will start producing adrenaline—a stress hormone—to keep it running instead.  This is like if you run out of gas for the car, so you use some high octane rocket fuel because it’s all you’ve got; it’ll run for a while, but eventually it will destroy your engine.  If you’ve been running for months on adrenaline, eventually the system will shut down, and no matter how hard you turn the key, it ain't gonna start anymore.  The only way to heal is to do those things—rest, exercise, recreation, friendship, nutrition—that replenishes the tank.)

4.  Depression is real. 

I would have "said" this before my dark time, of course, but after the dark time, I actually "get it." People who have experienced depression have different terms for it—the noon-day demon, the black dog, and so on—that try to put their finger on what it’s like to be depressed.  I often describe it like this: “It’s like, the sun’s shining.  You can feel the light on your face, feel the warmth on your skin, see the blue sky, and yet your brain tells you with all seriousness, ‘nope.  It’s another cloudy day.’”  I never thought I stigmatized people with depression before, until I faced my visceral resistance to seeking help for my own depression, and suddenly I realized all the prejudices and stereotypes and judgement I subconsciously harbored about “cloudy Dee,” that I never realized or admitted before.  It could be that exorcising those things—judgment, prejudice and stereotypes about depression—was one of  the things God was doing through my burn out.

If any of this is resonating with you today, let me encourage you to take it seriously.  One of the other things I learned about burn-out is that there's sort of a lag-time with it—that is, often we are burned out months before the "running on adrenaline" catches up to us and we finally have to admit that the tank is empty, so the sooner we're honest with ourselves, the better.

Burn-out is not the end of the world, but it is the end of some things—a false kind of self-sufficiency, an unrealistic perception of yourself and your limits, in-authenticity and dishonesty about where you're really at with God. But as someone who's been through it, let me humbly suggest that for us to grow in the ways of Jesus, the sooner those things come to an end, the better.

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You gotta cleave to someone, A Devotional Thought

In 2 Kings 18, you come across a simple single verse that, if you'd been reading 2 Kings right from the start, would, and should turn your head.  It's at the start of King Hezekiah's reign and it simply says, "he did right in the eyes of the Lord."  After years, and years, and years of kings who piled sins upon sins upon sins, along comes a king who "did right in the sight of the Lord, just like his father David." 

This is extremely rare. A few other kings get this accolade (Asa, Jehoshaphat, Josiah), but Hezekiah is in a category all his own. He even removed the high places, and he's the only king in 2 Kings to do so. 2 Kings 18:4 is a sit up and take notice kind of verse, about a sit up and take notice kind of king.

And here's what I notice when I sit up: the secret to Hezekiah's spiritual success is that he "clung" to the Lord (dabaq, 18:6). The word there that describes Hezekiah's commitment to YHWH is actually the same word that Genesis 1 uses when it talks about Adam and Eve and the first ever marriage, and it says, "for this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and cleave (dabaq) to his wife." Hezekiah's faithful commitment to YHWH was of marriage-vow quality: he clave to the Lord. There're a few other times this word gets used in 2 Kings, and all the rest are bad: Solomon "clung" (dabaq) to his foreign wives and they led him astray, King Jehoram clung (dabaq) to the sins of his father and led Israel astray. 

To modify Bob Dylan only slightly, "You gotta cleave to someone..."  We are designed, that is, to be betrothed to something, to someone.  We have clingy hearts. Unlike the Kings before him, who set their clingy hearts on anything but the Lord, Hezekiah clung to God, and millenia later he's still remembered for it. And the challenge of his story is that we would do the same, and fix our clingy hearts on Him.

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part VI: Bill Cipher among the Powers

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In a previous post, I shared some observations about the true nature of spiritual warfare—namely that it has to do with truth, not power—and then I suggested some ways in which Lil’ Gideon, one of the central villains in the Gravity Falls series, exemplifies this particular struggle.  In that post, I suggested that this was only half the story, however, and that the other half—the other main villain in Gravity Falls, and also the other main aspect of spiritual warfare—would half to wait until another post. 

As our final installment in this series, today’s post will have to serve as that other post; but before we get into it—what a bizarre “dream demon” named Bill Cipher, Dipper and Mabel’s arch-nemesis and Gravity Falls resident evil, has to do with spiritual warfare as the Bible understands it—before tackling him, that is, it might help to spend some time talking about something the Bible refers to as “the powers and the principalities.”

Almost like the triangle-framed eyes that dot the landscape of Gravity Falls, once you become aware of them, you’ll start to notice the “powers and principalities” all over the place in the New Testament.  They are especially prominent in Paul’s writings.  In Romans 8:38, for instance, Paul expresses his deep-down conviction that “neither angels nor demons ... nor any powers” could separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  In Ephesians 1:20, Paul envisions Christ enthroned “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”  In Ephesians 3:10, Paul says that God’s plan was to display his wisdom, through Christ, to the powers and principalities.  In Colossians 2:15, he says that through the cross of Christ, God has disarmed and triumphed over the powers and principalities.

I could go on, but the point is, Paul, and the rest of the New Testament writers with him, seems pretty convinced that a) there is something spiritual about the systems of power and authority that we see in the world, a spiritual dimension to them that isn't immediately obvious to us but is very influential; and b) that through Christ, God has exposed, unmasked, disarmed, defeated and in all other ways overcome the Powers.

A number of contemporary theologians have spent a fair bit of time trying to understand what the New Testament is really talking about when it talks about “the powers and principalities” like this.  I’d suggest you read guys like Hendrik Berkhof, Walter Wink, William Stringfellow or Richard Beck if you’re curious.  For today, let me just say that, whatever else it means, this talk about "the Powers" is a way of describing the “invisible structures” or the “inner reality” of human life together.  As a theological category, “the powers” refer to the spiritual dimension that is inherent in any human effort to order society, from political and economic institutions, to cultural or religious ones to technological ones.   All such “organizations” of human society are, of course, useful and necessary; but they are also inevitably “spiritual,” and, owing to the fallenness of human nature itself, inevitably fallen.  In their fallenness, the powers exert unintended, often unrecognized spiritual influence over us, behaving, in Henrdik Berkhof’s words, “as though they were the ultimate ground of being and demanding from [people] an appropriate worship."  

We might point to the cult of Roman Emperor worship for an ancient example of “the Powers.”   We might point to the psychological impact of advertising media for a modern example; we might point the influence of the internet on our social interactions for a technological one; and we might point to the inexorable power of the global economy for a economic one.  In each of these examples, it is easy to see how very mundane, necessary, everyday things can indeed take on a life of their own, and begin to exert an influence over human beings that transcends any one individual person (anything that’s “too big to fail” is surely a “power” in the biblical sense).

If this isn’t making any sense to you, maybe think about that novel Lord of the Flies from your High School days, and reflect for a few minutes on how quickly the efforts of those castaway boys to order and maintain their society start to “possess them” in ways that none of the boys would have chosen on their own.  That’s about as good a picture of “the powers” at work as anything I’ve come across. 

But if it is making sense, let me turn your attention towards Gravity Fall’s central villain, Bill Cipher.

Bill is, as I mentioned before, a “dream demon.”  That is, he inhabits a spiritual dimension parallel to, but also inaccessible to ours, and is only able to affect our reality when someone conjures him and/or opens themselves to him, as Gideon does in Episode 1.19, or as Dipper does in Episode 2.4. 

Of course, Bill’s nature as a spirit-being is not in dispute.  What is disputed—hotly disputed in some corners of the world-wide-web—is who he actually is.  I've heard a number of theories, the most “out-there” of which is that he’s actually the spirit of Dipper himself, come from the future to haunt the past.

I don’t buy that one, but I do have a theory of my own.  It rests on the following facts: a) that Bill bears an uncanny likeness to the “all-seeing-eye” that can be found, among other places, on the back of the American Dollar Bill; b) that his name is actually a none-too-subtle reference to this very symbol—he is, in fact, the “bill cipher”; c) that in one episode he offers some off-hand advice to “buy gold,” and has been known to make other allusions to stuff straight out of the worst conspiracy theories; and d) that his triangle-framed eye symbol can be seen all over the place in Gravity Falls, when you start looking for it.

Who is Bill Cipher?

What if he was a quirky Disney Show’s stab at the very same thing the Bible is talking about when it talks about “the powers and principalities”: the “inner reality” or “spiritual dimension” that is a very real and inevitable part of human social institutions?  As the “bill cipher,” Bill is evocative of, if not directly symbolic of, the spiritual dimension that is inherent in our economic systems—the way the “Almighty Dollar” exerts an influence over us so pervasive that we could almost call it spiritual.  (And just in case this seems too far out there, let me point out that one of the show’s regular themes is the corrupt lengths Stan’s prepared to go to, and the whoppers he’s prepared to tell, in service of the Almighty Dollar.)

To be clear, I am not saying that Alex Hirsch had any of Paul’s writings about “The Powers” in mind when he sketched a pyramid with a single eye in it and made that the arch-villain of Gravity Falls.  I’m only suggesting that whatever Bill represents in this show, it’s the same stuff that the Bible would use the term “Powers and Principalities” to describe.

And if it’s true, then let me suggest that the Bible takes our struggle with the Powers and Principalities as seriously as Dipper and Mabel take their struggle with Bill Cipher.  More seriously, in fact.  

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, Paul said, but against the powers and principalities in the heavenly realms (cf. Eph 6:12).  Whether or not Bill is really one of “the Powers” in the biblical sense, “The Powers” themselves are very real, and for Christians the struggle to live free from them—the struggle, that is, not to put the Powers and Principalities at the centre of life, the struggle not to offer them free sway over our ambitions, motives and decisions, the struggle to submit them to the Lordship of Christ—is very real, too.

And who knows, but maybe the story of a couple of kids fighting a fiend like Bill Cipher, armed simply with their love for each other and a good book, maybe that's as good an analogy for our struggle against the Powers as any you'll find in an animated kids show.

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part VI: Bill Cipher among the Powers

In a previous post, I shared some observations about the true nature of spiritual warfare—namely that it has to do with truth, not power—and then I suggested some ways in which Lil’ Gideon, one of the central villains in the Gravity Falls series, exemplifies this particular struggle.  In that post, I suggested that this was only half the story, however, and that the other half—the other main villain in Gravity Falls, and also the other main aspect of spiritual warfare—would have to wait until another post. 

As our final installment in this series, today’s post will have to serve as that other post; but before we get into it—what a bizarre “dream demon” named Bill Cipher, Dipper and Mabel’s arch-nemesis and Gravity Falls resident evil, has to do with spiritual warfare as the Bible understands it—before tackling him, that is, it might help to spend some time talking about something the Bible refers to as “the powers and the principalities.”

Almost like the triangle-framed eyes that dot the landscape of Gravity Falls, once you become aware of them, you’ll start to notice the “powers and principalities” all over the place in the New Testament.  They are especially prominent in Paul’s writings.  In Romans 8:38, for instance, Paul expresses his deep-down conviction that “neither angels nor demons ... nor any powers” could separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.  In Ephesians 1:20, Paul envisions Christ enthroned “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.”  In Ephesians 3:10, Paul says that God’s plan was to display his wisdom, through Christ, to the powers and principalities.  In Colossians 2:15, he says that through the cross of Christ, God has disarmed and triumphed over the powers and principalities.

I could go on, but the point is, Paul, and the rest of the New Testament writers with him, seems pretty convinced that a) there is something spiritual about the systems of power and authority that we see in the world, a spiritual dimension to them that isn't immediately obvious to us but is very influential; and b) that through Christ, God has exposed, unmasked, disarmed, defeated and in all other ways overcome the Powers.

A number of contemporary theologians have spent a fair bit of time trying to understand what the New Testament is really talking about when it talks about “the powers and principalities” like this.  I’d suggest you read guys like Hendrik Berkhof, Walter Wink, William Stringfellow or Richard Beck if you’re curious.  For today, let me just say that, whatever else it means, this talk about "the Powers" is a way of describing the “invisible structures” or the “inner reality” of human life together.  As a theological category, “the powers” refer to the spiritual dimension that is inherent in any human effort to order society, from political and economic institutions, to cultural or religious ones to technological ones.   All such “organizations” of human society are, of course, useful and necessary; but they are also inevitably “spiritual,” and, owing to the fallenness of human nature itself, inevitably fallen.  In their fallenness, the powers exert unintended, often unrecognized spiritual influence over us, behaving, in Henrdik Berkhof’s words, “as though they were the ultimate ground of being and demanding from [people] an appropriate worship."  

We might point to the cult of Roman Emperor worship for an ancient example of “the Powers.”   We might point to the psychological impact of advertising media for a modern example; we might point the influence of the internet on our social interactions for a technological one; and we might point to the inexorable power of the global economy for a economic one.  In each of these examples, it is easy to see how very mundane, necessary, everyday things can indeed take on a life of their own, and begin to exert an influence over human beings that transcends any one individual person (anything that’s “too big to fail” is surely a “power” in the biblical sense).

If this isn’t making any sense to you, maybe think about that novel Lord of the Flies from your High School days, and reflect for a few minutes on how quickly the efforts of those castaway boys to order and maintain their society start to “possess them” in ways that none of the boys would have chosen on their own.  That’s about as good a picture of “the powers” at work as anything I’ve come across. 

But if it is making sense, let me turn your attention towards Gravity Fall’s central villain, Bill Cipher.

Bill is, as I mentioned before, a “dream demon.”  That is, he inhabits a spiritual dimension parallel to, but also inaccessible to ours, and is only able to affect our reality when someone conjures him and/or opens themselves to him, as Gideon does in Episode 1.19, or as Dipper does in Episode 2.4. 

Of course, Bill’s nature as a spirit-being is not in dispute.  What is disputed—hotly disputed in some corners of the world-wide-web—is who he actually is.  I've heard a number of theories, the most “out-there” of which is that he’s actually the spirit of Dipper himself, come from the future to haunt the past.

I don’t buy that one, but I do have a theory of my own.  It rests on the following facts: a) that Bill bears an uncanny likeness to the “all-seeing-eye” that can be found, among other places, on the back of the American Dollar Bill; b) that his name is actually a none-too-subtle reference to this very symbol—he is, in fact, the “bill cipher”; c) that in one episode he offers some off-hand advice to “buy gold,” and has been known to make other allusions to stuff straight out of the worst conspiracy theories; and d) that his triangle-framed eye symbol can be seen all over the place in Gravity Falls, when you start looking for it.

Who is Bill Cipher?

What if he was a quirky Disney Show’s stab at the very same thing the Bible is talking about when it talks about “the powers and principalities”: the “inner reality” or “spiritual dimension” that is a very real and inevitable part of human social institutions?  As the “bill cipher,” Bill is evocative of, if not directly symbolic of, the spiritual dimension that is inherent in our economic systems—the way the “Almighty Dollar” exerts an influence over us so pervasive that we could almost call it spiritual.  (And just in case this seems too far out there, let me point out that one of the show’s regular themes is the corrupt lengths Stan’s prepared to go to, and the whoppers he’s prepared to tell, in service of the Almighty Dollar.)

To be clear, I am not saying that Alex Hirsch had any of Paul’s writings about “The Powers” in mind when he sketched a pyramid with a single eye in it and made that the arch-villain of Gravity Falls.  I’m only suggesting that whatever Bill represents in this show, it’s the same stuff that the Bible would use the term “Powers and Principalities” to describe.

And if it’s true, then let me suggest that the Bible takes our struggle with the Powers and Principalities as seriously as Dipper and Mabel take their struggle with Bill Cipher.  More seriously, in fact.  

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, Paul said, but against the powers and principalities in the heavenly realms (cf. Eph 6:12).  Whether or not Bill is really one of “the Powers” in the biblical sense, “The Powers” themselves are very real, and for Christians the struggle to live free from them—the struggle, that is, not to put the Powers and Principalities at the centre of life, the struggle not to offer them free sway over our ambitions, motives and decisions, the struggle to submit them to the Lordship of Christ—is very real, too.

And who knows, but maybe the story of a couple of kids fighting a fiend like Bill Cipher, armed simply with their love for each other and a good book, maybe that's as good an analogy for our struggle against the Powers as any you'll find in an animated kids show.

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The battle belongs to the Lord, a devotional thought

There's a place in 2 Kings 16, where King Ahaz is under attack by the Arameans.  These are the same Arameans that, a few chapters earlier, YHWH had miraculously and quite handily routed, delivering his people from their war-mongering ways.  Chapter 16, however, comes a few chapters later, and now, things are looking rather grim for King Ahaz.

Ahaz does what any worldly military leader would do in that situation.  He sends messages down the road to the King of Assyria, telling him, "If you get me out of this mess, I will be your servant and your vassal."  To seal the deal, he takes gold and silver from the temple of YHWH, and send it to Assyria as a tribute.

This should, I think, strike to the heart of any serious reader of the Book of Kings-- and certainly it would have for those it was originally written for:  Instead of turning to the Lord for deliverance from the enemy, Ahaz turns to the Assyrian war-machine for help, the very same Assyria that, in just a few chapters, is going to surround Jerusalem and utter blasphemous defiance against YHWH and his people.  As if that wasn't bad enough, he pays him with gold from YHWH's own house.  The gold that ought to be adorning the house of the Lord is used to hire a mercenary army to deliver Ahaz from an enemy that the Lord has shown himself time and time again quite capable and willing to defeat.

The irony here, I think, is meant to make us tremble.  But it's also meant to make us wonder: how and where do we rely on the systems of this world, and especially, the enemies of God--to get us out of our messes, instead of turning to the true and living Lord, who alone is able to deliver? And worse, do we pay them the tribute due to him, is only they'll pull us out of the mess?

May he show us what it really means, where it's written, "The battle belongs to the Lord."

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part V: And Nothing but the Truth

Early on in my ministry as a pastor, one of the things I really struggled with was the idea of spiritual warfare.  This is not because I doubted Peter, when he warns us that our enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour; and it’s not because I didn’t take Paul seriously, either, when he insists that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  I’d read the Book of Revelation in all seriousness.  And I’d read The Screwtape Letters with all earnest. 

But I’d also read one too many books by Frank Peretti, and I’d heard one too many episodes of Bob Larson’s Talk Back, to embrace popular evangelical teaching about “Spiritual Warfare” unreflectively.   I’d seen how speculative, fanciful, and demonstrably unbiblical some of this stuff can become; and, indeed, how manipulative and exploitative and controlling.  So I was cautious in how I spoke about spiritual warfare, and hesitant to give it much emphasis in my ministry.

And, then, by God’s grace, I came across the writings of Dr. Neil Anderson, the author of books like The Bondage Breaker and Victory over Darkness.  I don’t embrace his teaching without careful reflection, either, but I believe he’s a got some very godly, very biblical, very wise things to say on the matter, and I know that he’s helped many believers experience deeper levels of spiritual freedom in Christ. 

In The Bondage Breaker in particular, I came across something that shed clear, bright light on what spiritual warfare is really all about, and has radically transformed the way I think about it, and understand it, and approach it in my ministry.  It has to do with the difference between “power” and “truth.”

In the popular imagination, he says, spiritual warfare is a power struggle between some “demonic stronghold” and some outside agent, external to the person in bondage.  But it’s not power that sets the captive free, it’s truth.  “Living in defeat,” he writes, “believers often falsely conclude that they need power, so they look for some religious experience that promise power.  ... But the power of the Christian lies in the truth.  ... In contrast, the power of Satan is in the lie, and once you expose the lie, you break his power” (emphasis mine).

This has been a very clarifying thought for me, and theologically it resonates deeply.  In one sense, Satan is already defeated (Heb 2:14).  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus God has triumphed over him (Col  2:15).  He’s still prowling around, of course, like a roaring lion, but the true Lion of Judah has powerfully crushed his head for us.  Resisting him now is not a power struggle as much as it is a truth struggle: a struggle to appropriate and live out of this truth.

This brings us, at last, to Gravity Falls.  Because, as I’ve pointed out in previous posts, whatever else this show is about, it is very much about spiritual warfare.  It’s a secular version of it, of course, one in which all of the lines that Christians would want to draw between good and evil, light and dark, angel and demon, are pretty hazy, but still, the conflict of the show is quite literally a spiritual conflict.  From episode to episode, the Pines twins find themselves confronting no end of spectres and spirits, ghosts and ghouls, most often defeating them with secrets gleaned from that mysterious journal.

There are two characters, in particular, that exemplify this spiritual conflict.  One is a diabolically mischievous “dream demon” named Bill Cipher, and the other a phony child psychic named L’il Gideon.  We'll tackle Bill Cipher in another post; for today I’d like to talk about L’il Gideon, who is, in many ways, an easier first target in our theological analysis of the show.

We first meet L’il Gideon early on in Season 1, when his “Tent of Telepathy” rolls into town and everyone is taken in by his supernatural psychic powers.  Everyone, of course, except Dipper and Mabel Pines.  They will eventually expose him as a fraud, but not before he becomes one of Gravity Fall's central villains, Dipper’s arch-nemesis and Grunkle Stan’s greatest adversary.  As a character, his resemblance to the worst kind of televangelist, complete with flashy suit and perfectly coiffed hair, is a bit too close for comfort, and his show at the “Tent of Telepathy” is more like an old time gospel hour revival meeting than it is like anything else.  Add to this the one-eyed-inverted-star that is his insignia, and the pact he signs with Bill Cipher, and you’ve got the makings for one epic spiritual showdown.

But if there is something spiritual about Dipper and Mabel’s conflict with L’il Gideon, it’s notable to me that it’s not power that eventually defeats him.  They will try all sorts of power-plays to outwit him in the course of Season 1, but it’s not, like I say, power that wins this spiritual battle.  It’s truth.  The truth, namely, that L’il Gideon’s so-called psychic powers are really a sham, and he’s actually been spying on Gravity Falls via thousands of close-circuit tv cameras hidden around town, discovering secrets about people that he can then “discern,” “predict,” or “intuit” in his phoney-baloney psychic act.

The details aren’t especially important.  What is important is that, for all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo that L’il Gideon dabbles in, in the end it’s the truth, quite literally that wins the spiritual battle against him.

There are, like I said, many things about the spiritual conflict in Gravity Falls that Christians, biblicaly, would find difficult to swallow without a big old spoonful of sugar.   And unlike Gravity Falls, a fully biblical understanding of the Truth doesn’t, in the end, lead us to data, or evidence, or facts, or concepts, but to a Living Person, to the Christ, that is, who said he was himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  So there’s probably a lot Alex Hirsch and I would beg to differ on.  But in this one thing, I think, we would agree: that in the end it’s the Truth (not power) that sets us free.

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The High Places, a devotional thought

You can't spend any serious amount of time in the Book of 2 Kings without eventually asking some difficult questions about "the high places" in your life.  2 Kings 15:31-38 is a good example.  It's talking about a King named Jotham of Judah.  It starts off by saying that "he did right in the eyes of the Lord"-- and for the record, this is pretty rare, in of itself.  Most of the Kings who get mention in 2 Kings are noted for their wickedness.  Of very, very few is it said that they actually did right in YHWH's sight.  So this should cause us to sit up and take notice.

But then comes the qualifying small print:  "Only," it adds, "the high places were not removed.  People continued to sacrifice and burn incense there" (v. 35).

The idea in 2 Kings is that, unlike the surrounding pagan nations, that would have had shrines and temples to their Ba'als and Ashteroths sprinkled all over the countryside, God's people were meant to have one single place of worship for the people, the Temple in Jerusalem.  This is a big deal in the Hebrew Scriptures.  There's only one place where YHWH can and should be worshipped, and maintaining that one place helps to ensure that his worship doesn't get watered down and mixed up with the worship of other things and other gods.  The "high places" in 2 Kings compete with and muddy-up the single-minded, single-hearted devotion to him that God wants for his people.

And it's interesting: however good any of the kings in 2 Kings might have been, it's (almost) always qualified with this disclaimer:  only they didn't tear down the high places.  And we're meant to find something, I think, humbling and challenging in this.  Because like Jotham, we, too, have things that compete with, or muddy up, single-minded devotion to God.

I won't go into detail on the high places in my own life, except to say that Jotham's example leaves me praying, that God would gently but surely point them out to me, and help me put an end to any sacrifice or worship that may be going at their altars.  May his mercy give us all grace to tear down the high places.

A View of the World from Gravity Falls, Part IV: Jesus and the Participatory Fandom

Last week, Alex Hirsch, the creative mind behind the Gravity Falls series, did an AMA on Reddit in the persona of Bill Cipher.

I wouldn’t have even known what sentence meant a year ago, let alone the significance of the event, except that I have three kids at home I can consult to keep from being a total internet ignoramus. 

Reddit is a social media site that allows users to post content to categories of interest (known as “subreddits”), and vote other users’ submissions “up” or “down,” determining their position in the feed (in any given subreddit, more popular posts appear higher and less popular posts appear lower).  An AMA (Ask Me Anything) is a subreddit—a special interest page—where users can invite and answer questions from other reddit users about, well, anything.  Astronaut Chris Haddfield has done an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, as have Madonna, Woody Harelson, David Copperfield, Al Gore, Bill Gates, and, like I say, Alex Hirsh, the creator of Gravity Falls.

Piqued curiosity can be settled in one fell swoop by visiting the sureddit in question, here.  

Alex Hirsch has done AMAs on Reddit before, but in this particular AMA he answered the “anythings” he was asked in the persona of Bill Cipher, the arch-villain of the Gravity Falls series, whose true nature, identity, background and motives have generated no end of speculation on the internet.   The uninitiated can find out more about Bill over at the Gravity Falls Wiki (see here), along with a virtual Encyclopedia Britannica’s worth of info on the Gravity Falls universe.  For those in the know, an AMA with Bill Cipher was a pretty big deal, inasmuch as he ostensibly gave away all sorts of clues about what’s to come on future episodes, and generally added gasoline to the bonfire of theories blazing about Gravity Falls.  You can see one enthusiastic reviewer’s analysis of the event here, on one of the many Youtube channels devoted (in both senses of that word) to the show:

And if this hasn’t yet satisfied your curiosity about all things Gravity Falls, you can also visit the show’s official YouTube channel, “The Mystery of Gravity Falls.”  Or you could browse the veritable library’s worth of fan fiction—amateur short fiction written by fans, cast with characters and set in the universe of the show—over at https://www.fanfiction.net/cartoon/Gravity-Falls/.  Of course, if you’re really old school, you can check out the Gravity Falls Facebook wall, or simply visit one of the thousands of fan blogs about the show (of which, I suppose, this blog is one).

But don’t do any of that until I make my point here.  Because I’m not just trying to be an internet tour guide for all things Gravity Falls today, I’m trying to draw attention to a fascinating, and, I think, important cultural shift that occurred sometime between my childhood and the childhood of my kids.

When I was a kid, being a fan of something was, primarily, an act of reception.  That is to say, you received, passively, if enthusiastically whatever it was, the object of your fanaticism: the show, the movie, the book, the comic or what have you.  To be sure, there were ways to engage actively as a fan back then—you could play at being Spider-man, for instance, or purchase books about the Star Wars movies, let’s say; you could buy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys or argue with your friends over who’d win in a fight between Vader and Spock—but all this active engagement happened externally to the creative sphere of the thing in question.  It was engagement, but it wasn't creative participation. 

This is the crucial difference, and the reason I’m blogging about it today.  Because whatever else the glut of internet access points to the universe of Gravity Falls signifies, I think it points out how being a fan of something in the internet age is much more a participatory act than it has ever been before.  A fan-hosted YouTube channel attempting to decipher all the mysteries of Gravity Falls, fan-produced fiction expanding the world of the show, fan-edited wikis, an AMA on Reddit—these things are more than simply active engagement.  Inasmuch as they exist in and contribute to the same sphere of influence that the show itself inhabits (namely, the World Wide Inter-Web), they are, in fact, a kind of creative participation in the Gravity Falls Story.

If this cultural shift in what it means to be “a fan” of something—from active engagement with to creative participation in—is making sense to you, then let me wonder out loud if the up-and-coming generation, my kids’ generation, that is, aren't being conditioned to evaluate things—stories, ideas, concepts,  Truth—based not simply on rational criteria, or even on intuitive “gut-level” reactions, but on the degree to which they allow creative participation in the story telling, the idea generating, the conceptualizing, and so on.  While staunch modernists may balk at such a slippery statement, let me put it like this:  I wonder if, for “kids these days,” those things are “truest” which offer us something we can collaboratively participate in, rather than simply accept, receive, assent to or consume.

That was genuine wondering.  I’m not sure if this is how the up-and-coming generation will, in fact, make epistemological evaluations.  I have my hunches, but they’re just that: hunches. 

But even on the basis of a hunch, let me offer two inter-locking points as we continue our theological analysis of Gravity Falls.  First: in the modern era, much hay was made out of the deeply rational co-inherence of the Christian Faith—it is, in fact, a very satisfying way of looking at the world, logically speaking.  And in the post-modern era, much was made of its aesthetic qualities—it is a lovely story to live by.  But in the era of the social network—the era that gave us Gravity Falls, and the kids who enjoy it—in this era, what will shine especially is Christianity’s participatory nature.

The Christian Faith is not just a Truth we are invited to accept or assent to, or consume.  It is a Living Story we are invited collaboratively to participate in: to find our lives by losing them in this beautiful, compelling, logical, but especially collaborative life with the Creator.

And even on the chance that I might be on to something here, let me offer the second point.  Ministries that seek genuinely to introduce young people to Jesus—the kids of the kids of the boomers—kids like my son and daughters, that is—kids of the as-yet unnamed post-postmodern era—will do well to find ways to show them and remind them, and convince them, that Christianity is not just a truth to be believed, it is a Story to be lived.

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On Doing it Wrong but Getting it Right, a devotional thought

A few days ago, I shared some thoughts about King Jeroboam in 2 Kings 14, and how God used him to deliver Israel in spite of his sin.   In 2 Kings 15:1-10, you see a similar thing happening with a king named Azariah, in a way that is both encouraging, but also deeply challenging.

It says that while Jeroboam was reigning in Israel, a king named Azariah came to the throne of Judah. Azariah, it says, did right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father Amaziah had done. It's far less frequent for 2 Kings to say a king did right in God's eyes, so this stands out. 

But then, just as you're ready to pat Azariah on the back, verse 5 says that the Lord "afflicted Azariah with leprosy." Another book of the Bible, 2 Chronicles, will explain why (apparently Azariah tried to offer incense in the Temple when only the priest was supposed to...a big no-no) but in 2 Kings it just sits there unexplained and rather starkly. 

Azariah did right in YHWH's eyes, and yet he was afflicted with leprosy. 

This story sort of directs our thoughts in two equal and opposite direction. On the one hand, it humbles us, to realize that "doing right in God's eyes" does not necessarily mean we will be spared difficulty, hardship or struggles; Azariah "did right in God's eyes" but still faced affliction.   At the same time, however, it encourages us, or should, to know that our afflictions (even those afflictions we bring on ourselves, as Azariah did his) do not exclude us or preclude us from "doing right in God's eyes," and accomplishing beautiful things for him.