Tod Bolsinger

A Path to Peace: A dissenting View

Blogger and pastor Brad Hightower wrote me a personal and thoughtful email, disagreeing with the "path" that I am heading with these series of posts on creation, nature and recreation.  Brad is a smart, sincere and committed guy (whom I really enjoyed getting to know over lunch one day) and I appreciate and respect his perspective.  We obviously disagree a bit on some of these things and so in the name of healthy dialogue, I asked Brad if I could post his email and then my response.  So, today, Brad's email. Then next post, my response and we'll see where this heads.  Thanks Brad for stirring things up a bit!

Tod,
I really have an honest question or maybe an honest
contention.

Let me state my perspective and a bit of my story.

I used to be a pretty stressed out guy. In fact three
years ago I was driven away in an ambulance for "chest
pains". It turned out to be stress. Well, today that
is totally changed. I work probably twice as hard as I
used to, I haven't had any vacations to speak of, but
I am as peaceful as Mother Teresa. In fact since that
time three years ago, I have started to pastor a
church on top of my six kids and my day job.

This has come about by redoubling my use of the
teachings of Jesus as the kingdom way to true
happiness and a heavenly quality of life.

I think this relates to our culture considerably. We
live in a stressed out culture and we as spiritual men
and women have a perfect answer to a stress free life.

What do most people use to relieve stress. Answer:
creation. Yep, most of my pagan friends (and I have a
lot) go on vacation. In the church, the same is true.
We enjoy the creation. That is the way that the world
finds peace. Of course this path takes a lot of money.
So usually we buy a travel trailer and seek to retire.
Is it possible that anyone in your church has likewise
choosen this less than spiritual path? (or is that
only a problem up here in south Los Angeles). LOL

I think this is simply another way to medicate.
Instead, there is a better way, a way of spirituality
and being of service.

So my point is a pretty big one: "Is your approach to
"seeing God's glory in all the earth" the spiritual
path by which we are actually called to "see God's
glory in all the earth"?"

I have found that when we take an orientation toward
life which is pure in heart, then in all things we see
God. When we live one day at a time, when we purify
our hearts of all resentments and fear and the love of
money, when we see the care of God and then simply do
unto others, then we see God in all the earth and live
in perfect peace. I have found that this relieves me
of any need to get away from it all.

This is basically my take on the sabbath.

Love ya,
brad

PS. Also, so you can get a bit more on where I am coming from with the "path to peace" stuff I talk about in this comment. You might
look at an essay I posted. I posted a very extensive essay on my discipleship method called Discipleship 101. This is my whole blog point in one post.

Last Child in the Woods

As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests.  Nobody in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming.  But I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams.  A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest--but not the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude or lay in a field listening to the wind or watching the clouds move.

Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, p. 1

When I was a kid I lived in a vanilla-white, bland suburb.  It was simply a housing tract.  It had no town center, no downtown blvd. Not even a Tastee-Freeze.  But for most of my growing up, my house backed onto an open field with orange groves and trails to ride our bikes.   

In our neighborhood were lots of other fields and hills all for exploring, card-board sliding and catching pollywogs in the creeks. 

(Note: They are all gone now.  If you go back to my old town you'll find no fields, no cardboard sliding hills and a lot more houses.)

When I was four we moved for a year back to my parents' hometown that was smack in the middle of a redwood tree grove.  And every vacation we visited places like Sequoia National Park with it's giant trees.  Orange trees, redwood trees, Giant Sequoias.  It's amazing that for a kid who grew up in a suburb east of Los Angeles, I have so many memories of trees.

Last year, when our family went on vacation to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons with some friends, all the kids discovered the joy of climbing trees or walking in the woods, of exploring trails. 

Yesterday my son came home from seventh grade concerned that his life science teacher was going to object to the trip we have planned next May to go to Costa Rica for spanish language school.  He said, "Dad, the teacher said that every week we have a mandatory science lab class and we can't miss it.  What am I going to do about Costa Rica?"

I said, "Do you think that we could convince your life science teacher that living in a rainforest for two weeks is a good lab class?" 

He shrugged.  (I sure hope so.)

P.S. My friend Steve writes about watching the clouds move with his family in Kaui. 

My New Favorite Color

Crater Lake Blue

Where Do You Want to Play Today—Inside or Out?

It was 97 degrees outside and 42 degrees inside.  And we were inside.  Way inside.  No, we weren’t pumping the air conditioner, we were spelunking.  Actually spelunking is a bit too technical for this mile long hike through a lava cave.  It was mostly just a cool walk with an old Coleman lantern lighting the way.  But we were a good 80 feet underground hiking through the cold, crowded darkness toward nothing more than the dirt end of the tunnel.  No marker, no view, nothing really.  Just a solid sand wall that meant that you had to turn back and head out.  (So I guess we were outside.)

And we were having a blast. 

The further we went into the cave, the lower the ceiling became.  It was dark and cold and kind of creepy.  As we came upon the last 300 yards or so, anyone over 5 feet tall needed to get on hands and knees and crawl. 

Some of the adults in our party decided that a nice “comfortable” rock would be a good resting place while I crawled along with the four kids.  Ages 12, 11, 10, 8 they hooted and hollered and encouraged big, old, slow Dad along.  For the two youngest kids in our party, this was heaven.  They had to lead, my young daughter even got to carry the lantern because I couldn’t crawl through the cave and shine the light at the same time.  (“C’mon people we’re heading on!” My daughter yelled as the commander of this cave exploration team.) We finally got to the end of the tunnel, cheered and exchanged low “fives”. 

When we came upon the rest of the adults on the way out, the kids were a good 20 feet ahead of me.  My crawling pace was no match for their scampering little legs.  When I finally caught up, my wife said to me, “You should have seen the girls’ faces. They were so proud of themselves, so excited.”  They were genuinely having fun playing in a cave marching a mile in the cold dirt, hanging onto a old gas lantern.

This memory is in such stark contrast to the now famous quote from Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv cites a fourth grader who says to him, “I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

And I have to admit that left to themselves, my kids will often opt for playing indoors.  They’d gladly watch TV all morning long if we let them.  When we trudge through some long miles in the car on the way to a beautiful spot, will let them watch a DVD.  (I even jumped in the back seat and watched “Because of Winn Dixie” with my daughter while my wife drove us down the I-5 heading out of Sacramento.)  But something happens to us when we get out and play. 

Not only did we hike in a cave this year but we last year we walked seven miles through the Narrows River canyon in Utah.  This year we hiked in the rainforest, plunged off of rocks into huge pools in a river in Belize and swam in Crater Lake in Oregon. 

According to Louv, this is not only fun, but important and healthy to a growing generation of kids who can use the internet to find and spout out more facts on the rainforests than they can possibly remember but rarely get to climb a tree, catch tadpoles or watch clouds go by during the day and stars at night. 

After ten years of research Louv is convinced that kids’ disconnection from nature is a contributor to a number of different dire consequences including a diminished use of the senses, attention problems, and increased emotional and physical diseases.  What is most interesting is that kids who actually live in areas most proximate to nature don’t necessarily experience any more nature than kids in urban and suburban settings.

We live in a beach town.  It’s the end of August.  And yesterday my kids started back to school (their summer cut obscenely short by the current emphasis on test scores and increasing school funding).  When my seventh grade son did a quick “get to know” discussion in one of his classes, he asked his partner what his favorite hobby was.  The boy said, “Video games.” 

Better than X Box

I looked back up the river to where I’d heard his voice.  The cry was both excited and a little nervous.  “Fish on! Fish on!”  My 12 year-old had hooked and was awkwardly stripping line to reel in his first “big” fish on a fly rod.  Our guide ran back to help him and soon he was holding in his hands the slimy, beautiful prize.  

A few hours later as we hiked back to the car, we found ourselves nervously high-stepping down the stream side path like a couple of drum majors, our hearts racing, adrenaline pumping, our subconscious kicked into gear by the unmistakable clatter of not one but five different rattlesnakes.

The beauty of the canyon, the thrill of catching some fish, the excitement of a little danger, a slightly warm turkey sandwich, a few melted Mint Milanos and some cold water to slake the hunger that we hadn’t even noticed until then--I looked at Brooks and said, “This is way better than X-Box!” 

To my delight, my soon-to-be teenager agreed.  And this was just one day of many of just one vacation of many that we have enjoyed together. 

“Better than X Box.”  It became our motto the past two weeks. 

When looking at the blue of Crater Lake and then diving off a rock into the cold, clear water. 
When going through a class 2 rapid with only our life vests. 
When watching an osprey effortlessly pull a trout out of the Rogue River or watching giant Chinook break water for just a brief moment. 
When staring silently at a bald eagle soaring to a lofty perch.
When riding our bikes across the Golden Gate bridge or looking at a full moon so big it seemed to make daylight out of night.

It was all “Better than X Box.”  Not that my son doesn’t like X Box.  In fact, he likes playing video games a lot.  Since we don’t have an X Box or a PlayStation in our house, it is always a treat when he can play at his cousin’s house or at a friend’s.  And sometimes I worry that he’ll become like so many kids who think the ultimate adventure is lived in cyberspace or through a video screen.  So when we go on vacation, we are deliberate about trying to teach our kids that life is best enjoyed and true re-creation is best experienced as close to God’s earth as possible. 

Over the next few days, I’ll share some more stories, some more pictures and some reflections from a book I am reading called, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”   In the meantime, please check out my photo albums for some updated pictures of some of the beautiful places that we were able to see.

Guest Blogger: RYR in the OC--Conclusion

Well, my time’s up. Thanks again to Tod for sharing his readers with me, and thanks to all of you who have contributed to, and challenged, my thinking.  Before I finish, I wanted to take note of the fact that the life Jesus offers his disciples is wonderfully real, but it is not blissfully painless. The life of discipleship is not an easy life. Jesus says in Mark 10:30 that, in addition to houses and families and fields, we will also gain persecutions.  Perhaps Jesus includes this as a foreshadowing of martyrdom to come, but perhaps he is also saying something about the nature of families, houses, fields, and all good material possessions. All good things come at a cost. If we would follow Jesus, he promises that we will have all the good things that come with this life, as well as the headaches that go with them. Relationships will still require great effort to nurture and maintain. Fields will still need to be plowed and planted, their crops brought in through difficult labor. Houses will still have to be built and their roofs repaired after hard rains.  The difference comes in the fact that now this work has eternal purpose and quality to it. We come to understand that the difficulties of life are not to be fearfully avoided, but gratefully embraced as the means by which God makes us spiritually mature and capable people. Whether the “persecutions” of life come in the form of great violence or small struggles, as followers of Jesus we know that he has the power to form us and transform us into His likeness through them. 

Christian community is material, but it is not materialistic.  It has possessions as an important part of life, but not the defining part. At its best, it sees the blessings of God’s provision not as ends unto themselves but as a means of building up each member of Christ’s new family.  In such a community, material things have purpose beyond personal enjoyment. We begin to enter into life of an eternal quality when we stop viewing our material wealth as a means of creating personal identity, but corporate ability.  Wealth is a valuable tool for the creation of community because with it we have the potential to provide hospitality, comfort, aid and enjoyment to those who need it.  Wealth, properly utilized, creates relationships where eternal life can come forth. Luke notes this when, as a mark of the authentic relationships being formed in the early church, he describes the believers as “having all things in common” and sharing meals together. In Luke’s opinion, these events were nothing less than miraculous (Acts 2:42ff). That is, they could not have happened apart from the alchemy of God’s Spirit, such that physical possessions became the stuff of heaven.

After discussing the Rich Young Ruler over coffee, a friend and I walked out to the parking lot and saw a luxury car with the vanity plate DEECYPL. I admit that this seems ironic to me, but isn’t it possible to be rich and be an authentic disciple? Can we enjoy the material goodness of this world without being materialistic? Jesus would say, emphatically, yes. But only with the help of God’s transforming Spirit.

PS: Even if you drive a junker, make minimum wage and swim in credit card debt, to a kid living on the garbage heaps of Manila you are still a rich young ruler.

I welcome your continued thoughts on how this part of the gospel can be effectively communicated to the Rich Young Rulers of Orange County and beyond.  Email me at [email protected].

Thanks Morgan for the great series (and especially this excellent concluding post).  I'll be back tomorrow with some vacation pictures and ruminations including a new series entitled "Better than X-Box"   Tod

Guest Blogger: RYR in the OC #9

My lease on this space has just about expired, but I want to make sure we take a look at the teachable moment Jesus has with his disciples as a result of the Rich Young Ruler’s decision to walk away. Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  He adds that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:23-25).” “Then who can be saved?” The disciples ask. Jesus looked them square in the eye and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible (vs. 26-27).”  The situation is not hopeless. But Jesus is making a basic point: The reason a camel cannot fit through the eye of a needle is because there is too much camel.  We cannot place our trust in God and enter into the abundant living of the Kingdom if we have, in this sense, too much ego.  If we want to experience the abundant life Jesus offers, we are going to have to put the camel on a diet. This is where the spiritual disciplines come in.

The fact that Peter has a difficult time with this teaching indicates that folks inside the church can struggle with false perceptions just as much as the unbelievers outside it.  We too can become preoccupied with material success. Hearing Jesus talk of selling everything in order to gain treasure in heaven may have left the disciples with the impression that Jesus is calling all of his followers to a life of poverty. Many of think that Jesus is just another holy man trying to talk us out of something tangible in the present in exchange for something intangible (and thus unreal) in the future.

But Jesus makes it clear that the blessings of Kingdom-living are both real and available right now. “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age…. and in the age to come eternal life (Mark 10:29-30 italics mine).” The abundant, generous, eternal life Jesus promises is a present-tense life.  This is not “pie in the sky by-and-by.” If we would relinquish our claim to “the good life” on our terms, we will receive the “the great life” on his terms. He promises to provide a home and a family for us where we know we belong and know we are valued. It will be a place that will provide us with the resources to grow as mature, capable people. It will be a place in which we can do meaningful work, the results of which will last forever. In a word, Jesus is promising us the church. Had the Rich Young Ruler been able to obey Jesus’ command, he would have learned that there is nothing you can give up for the kingdom that will not be replaced with that which is more satisfying, more fulfilling, and more true.

Tomorrow’s Conclusion: How Material Things Become the Stuff of Heaven

Morgan Murray is the Pastor of Community Presbyterian Church of San Juan Capistrano, CA and has been guest blogging for me a series called, The Rich Young Rulers of Orange County.

Guest Blogger: RYR in the OC #8

My friend and colleague Morgan Murray is giving us much food for thought about Rich Young Rulers and their relevance today.  Thanks for Guest Blogging for me, Morgan. While people have been reading this, I have been visiting my brother and Beth's sister in Oregon.  Hopefully, I am catching some fish, too!

I’ve been sharing an extended meditation on the story of the Rich Young Ruler in the gospel of Mark.  I started this series of blog entries by suggesting that the RYR is a powerful metaphor for considering the spiritual condition of young affluent professionals in Orange County. But I think it’s safe to say that the issues the young ruler has around money, status, and identity are common to all of us.  When the man comes to Jesus asking how he can inherit eternal life – how he can have a life that matters - Jesus says, “You lack one thing.”  What is that one thing?  It is the thing nearly all of us lack.  With the exception of Mother Teresa and other saintly souls, we lack complete confidence in God’s goodness.  Even Henrietta Mears, a famous Bible teacher and profoundly influential figure in evangelical circles, when asked what she would do differently if she could live her life over again replied, “I would trust God more.”

This world teaches us is that if we give up the identities we have built around our titles, our academic degrees, our zip codes and our social/political affiliations, then we will have no identity at all.  Not only will we believe that we will become nothing, but we will stay that way forever.  This is our greatest fear – the fear that drives us to work as hard as we can, earn as much as we can, control whatever we can, and impress as many people as we can.  The fear of being nothing drives nearly everything we do unless we can trust God’s love, acceptance, and provision over our own efforts.

We fear that we if lose our stamina, status and stuff then we become nothing. But Jesus knows firsthand that this not true.  Because of his experience in the wilderness Jesus can offer us, so Dallas Willard asserts, “the assurance that our universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be.”  In order to receive this assurance, we must begin by trusting that Jesus knows what he is talking about. The form this trust takes looks different for every person. For a paralyzed man it was to obey Jesus’ instruction to “stand up, take your mat and walk” (John 5:2ff).  For Peter the fisherman, it meant leaving the only life he’d ever known to follow Jesus around the countryside. For you, it may mean sitting in a parking lot with your head on the steering wheel, asking Jesus to take charge of your life and really meaning it. In the case of this young man, it meant relinquishing the wealth of his life and all the identity he had bound up with it. Regardless of how it looks to someone else, for each of us it is a moment of complete surrender to Jesus’ authority. Regardless of how it might feel to another person, for each of us it feels like the biggest gamble of our lives.

Monday: Putting the Camel On A Diet

Guest Blogger: RYR in the OC #7

Morgan Murray is guest blogging for me on a series about the Rich Young Ruler.  If you are like me, it may sound hauntingly familiar.

Tod

Yesterday I suggested that Jesus’ invitation to the Rich Young Ruler to “sell everything” and follow him should be the happiest moment in this young man’s life. Instead, it becomes the saddest. Why? The Rich Young Ruler does not have the capacity to imagine an identity for himself apart from his possessions. It is very much like a doctor saying, “When we amputate your leg you will make a full recovery and live a long, healthy life.” But all the patient hears is, “you will spend the rest of your life without your leg.”  The most awful part of the story is not that the young man is shocked and grieving. These would be appropriate responses. The terrible moment comes when he walks away. He has come to the Great Physician, received the best prognosis possible (if he will submit to the treatment), and decides against it. He may go seeking second opinions until he hears the one he wants. But Jesus, knowing his diagnosis is correct, so desires that we have whole and fulfilling lives that he will not sugar-coat the truth for us or withhold it because it might be too much for us to take.

It would be fair to ask how Jesus is qualified to make this diagnosis. If we go to the beginning of Mark’s gospel, we find the answer.  After baptism, “the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him (Mark 1:12-14).” This would be the same as saying that Jesus went to medical school and graduated at the top of his class. In Henri Nouwen describes Jesus’ temptation as the place where he confronted the three big compulsions we face: The compulsion to be relevant (turn stones into loaves), to be spectacular (throw yourself down), and to be powerful (I will give you all these kingdoms).

We now know why Jesus is so certain of his diagnosis. It is because he has “been there.” We think of Jesus as a working-class carpenter and spiritual teacher, but he is also the incarnate Word, the true Son of God with all of God’s resources, power, and glory at his disposal. He has confronted the desire to be relevant and spectacular and powerful; exactly the things the young man’s many possessions would gain for him. In the solitude of his temptation experience, Jesus was able to affirm his relationship with God the Father as the only source of his identity: “You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” In a very real sense, Jesus is calling the young man to remove the scaffolding of status, self-image and stuff in order in discover his true identity as a beloved child of God. Jesus has done it, and come out on the other side assured of his relationship with God (angels attended him) and certain about his life’s purpose: “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God…”

This is the kind of assurance Jesus want to offer to us.

Tomorrow: The Biggest Gamble of Our Lives

Guest Blogger: RYR in the OC #6

The Rich Young Ruler of the OC, (Continued by our Guest Blogger Rev. Morgan Murray)

To the world, you are your stuff. And perhaps the reason the Rich Young Ruler is “shocked” by Jesus’ teaching is that Jesus doesn’t see him this way.  Jesus doesn’t see the status or the stuff.  He sees a suffering soul, weighed down with capricious and oppressive expectations of the world.  We remember what Jesus says: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt 11:28-30).”  Before this man can take on the “easy” burden of following Jesus, Jesus knows he must lay down the heavy burden of wealth.

Isn’t it possible to unburden ourselves of the world’s expectations without giving everything away?  Yes, Jesus will say to Peter, it is possible – with God’s help.  But Jesus knows it is impossible for this man to separate Who-he-is from What-he-has. The fact that this young man walks away so abruptly confirms that Jesus is right.  The young man is like a patient who is told that unless his leg is amputated, he will die from gangrene. A doctor would only prescribe such treatment when it was clear that a patient would die with an infected limb or live without it.  Jesus understands that this man will eventually die a permanent, spiritual death if he cannot separate his sense of himself from his possessions. If we see that Jesus’ instruction to the young man is really an invitation to find a new identity – a new way of looking at himself as intrinsically valuable as a beloved child of God – then we can see that what Jesus is saying here is one of the most beautiful and life-giving expressions of God’s love to be found in the Bible. This “hard teaching” is in fact a “loving teaching.” I believe we could fairly paraphrase Jesus’ this way:

Friend, you have certainly done your best to be a good person, but there is still one thing missing. You have not experienced the unconditional love and acceptance of God. It has nothing to do with what you possess or what you’ve accomplished. But until you have separated yourself from these things, you will never be able to trust that there are no-strings-attached to what I want to offer you. So here’s what I want you to do: Sell everything and give the money to people who don’t have anything. Don’t give it to me, because I neither want it nor need it.  I want you for you, and I never want you to believe otherwise. After you’ve given everything away, I promise you that you will be free of the world’s phoniness and will start living in the Kingdom’s truthfulness. Then I want you follow me so I can show you how to get the most out of this new life.

I wonder if the young professionals of our day know that a life defined by unconditional love and freedom-from-phoniness is an option. As my lottery-winning friend’s experience shows, any person whose values are shaped by our materialistic culture cannot see such an offer as credible. To open oneself to Jesus’ offer of friendship is indeed to open oneself to a different reality. It is to open oneself to the possibility Jesus describes simply as “The Kingdom of God.”

Tomorrow: Where the Great Physician Went to School