First Chapter - first installment

Alex Cunningham flung open the door to the Second Story Bookshop, and the jingle bells announced his presence.  He rushed up to the coffee counter, his leather jacket crinkling, and the scent of peppermint and a breeze of cold air followed along.  He approached the counter, his reddish hair glinting under the Christmas lights.

“Sorry I’m late!” he said to no one in particular.  Alex quickly shed his winter wear and went behind the counter, pulling on an apron.  “What’ll you have?” he asked the next person in line.

Alex was relieved to be at work.  The smell of coffee and the sight of shelf after shelf lined with books seemed like a haven.  He had just left his girlfriend Annie’s place, where they had been in a desperate argument, the fifth that week.  Things just hadn’t been the same since his motorcycle accident last spring. 

But it wasn’t long before the bookstore worked its calming magic, and Alex turned his mind to the task at hand.  Soon the lunch rush was over, and Alex was free to head upstairs to his office.  It was Friday, and for Alex, that meant ordering and scheduling.  Alex made his way between the tables and the stacks to the stairs.  His office was upstairs, all the way in the back, and he shared it with Drew, the book purchasing manager.

Alex had worked at Second Story since July.  Before his motorcycle accident, he was a finance guy at a small local business.  But after his month in the hospital, he was only able to work part-time.  By the time he was ready to go back to full-time, the small business had folded.  So here he was, the café manager.  Certainly not ideal, but better than nothing.

As Alex entered the office, he noticed again the chaos that was his and Drew’s office.  Neither one was super detail-oriented, and they didn’t have enough storage space.  There were boxes along the wall, and piles of paperwork on every conceivable surface.  They had a halfhearted filing system going in the big filing cabinet that stood on the wall between their desks.  But it seemed like a lost cause. 

Drew Reynolds was already in the office, hunched over his keyboard.  “Hey Drew,” said Alex. 

“Uh, hello Alex.”  Drew didn’t even look up.  He was looking especially gaunt today, and there was a yellowish tint to his skin that made his dark hair look even darker.  His Calvin Klein jeans and Abercrombie sweater hung loosely off his limbs.  Drew was always well-dressed.  But about a month ago, it had become obvious that he was a really sick guy.  His clothes had begun to just hang off him, and his ordinarily lively face took on a more and more despondent look.  Today Alex could see that Drew was failing fast.

“How are you feeling today, Drew?”  Alex hesitated to ask.  Sometimes Drew would talk to him, sometimes he’d become angry, and sometimes he’d just speak in monosyllables for days at a time.  Alex could never predict which it would be, so that made venturing to care a dangerous proposition.  But Alex thought it was worth the risk. Drew didn’t seem to have many friends, and with his recent break-up, he seemed to become more and more withdrawn from life with each passing day.  Some days, Alex felt like he might possibly be the only person who cared a little bit about Drew. 

“Well, Alex, I feel like shit, as a matter of fact.  And my *!@& father picked last night to spring another lecture on me about the status of my mortal soul when I called to talk to my mom.”

Drew paused, his face becoming redder by the second.  “The jerk was supposed to be at a church meeting, but I guess it was cancelled, so he picked up the phone instead.  I don’t know why I even bother, anyway.  Nothing good ever comes of those phone calls.”  Drew threw a challenging look over his shoulder at Alex and then turned back to his work.

“But your mom must have been glad to hear from you,” Alex said.

“I didn’t even get to talk with her.  About five minutes through my father’s diatribe, I couldn’t take it anymore and hung up.  No way was I gonna call back later to talk to her.”

Alex raised an eyebrow.  He ventured, “That’s awful, Drew.  But your dad must really love you, to talk with you about your spiritual life like that.”

“Love me!  If that’s what you call love, I don’t want any part of that.”  Drew swung his chair around to face Alex.  “He doesn’t love me.  He can’t accept me.  He can’t accept who I am.  He can’t accept that I don’t fit that perfect image he laid out for me when I was two.  All he was ever concerned about was whether all the people at church thought he was a good guy or not.  And he’s made it very clear that how I choose to live has ruined his picture-perfect family and life.  According to him, it’s amazing that the church even lets him collect offering now.”

“Well, God l—“

"And don’t even talk to me about God!” Drew’s eyes flashed.  “According to my father, God hates me as much as my father does.  I don’t want to hear about any of that B.S. today!”  With that, Drew jumped up and stalked out of the office.

Alex’s body sagged as his eyes followed Drew out the door.  He sighed.  He could not get this right.  It had been quite a struggle for him to even get to this point.  When he first started working with Drew, they’d hit it off.  They had a lot of fun together, because they shared the same sense of humor and love of mischief.  They used to set up pranks for the other staff and watch as they usually went off without a hitch.  But when Alex found out about Drew’s then-partner, Eric, well, he’d gotten really uncomfortable.  It had never occurred to him that Drew could be gay.  And what was he supposed to do about that?

Alex had grown up in a church where being gay was a “sin,” and he was pretty sure that sin was supposed to be confronted head-on.  He knew that he was supposed to do something from Matthew 18--go to Drew alone first, or something like that.  And then if Drew didn’t repent, Alex could take someone else along. 

Alex cringed when he remembered the time he’d tried to follow that plan shortly after he’d learned about Eric.  It was a month before Drew had even talked to him again.  But obviously this whole love-oriented message wasn’t getting through either.  Every time he so much as breathed a word about God, Drew blew up at him.  And from the way Drew looked today, he might not make it much longer himself.  He NEEDED to get right with God.  And Alex was sure that he should be encouraging Drew to do that.  Wasn’t that what a serious follower of God would do?

Alex slammed his fist against his desk.

Agh!  Why does everything have to be so hard? 

Seriously, following God is supposed to lead to peace and love and happiness.  But ever since I got out of the hospital, it’s been one conflict after another.  How am I ever going to keep going like this?

Alex turned back to his inventory sheets and tried to focus.  But he couldn’t quite get rid of the nagging suspicion that he was missing something–some kind of skill or piece of information that could help him reach Drew.  There must be some way, right?  

God loved Drew, of that he was sure.  God even wanted Drew to spend eternity with him.  So how was God going to get through to him?  And how was he, Alex, supposed to be a part of that?

Seeing behind the questions continued

So the first thing I should say is that I really think the person who did that YouTube video was joking.  It's satire, and he's poking fun at the inconsistencies of the Christian belief system.  It's oversimplified.

The question that the guy asks is, "Why does God want to send me to hell?"  He says that Jesus doesn't have to send him to hell, because he's Jesus, and should be powerful enough to choose.  He also says that the type of love that demands worship is conditional, and that he would have expected God to be more noble than he is as a human being.

I think all of these comments has an emotional component.  I see that the question about hell has to do with the goodness of God, God's right to judge people, and why would a loving God send people to eternal judgment.  No matter what logical or rational explanation you give, the question is still going to remain--how can God do that?  And really, the question is why.

There's also an expectation that God should be better than humans, but the God that he understands God to be is capricious and makes decisions on a whim or based on shallow reasons (ego, etc) rather than good ones.

The only real way to work through these questions is to understand the character of God that's revealed in the whole story of God.  Telling stories and allowing someone to engage with the person of God, with the person of Christ, is the only way to come to any resolution.  Maybe there's a way to rationally explain all of this, but for a person whose barriers are primarily emotional questions, no rational answer is going to satisfy.

One of the visions for this blog and the connected website is to create resources for people to use to both understand and understand how to tell the stories of God.  I don't think there's any other way that a generation of feelers is going to know Christ.

Seeing behind the questions

So my community has been discussing this video for a couple of years.  Every once in a while, one of us will bring it up on the computer again, and we'll sit around and watch it.

I think it demonstrates the futility that a lot of people feel about talking about their faith with other people.  Everyone is afraid they're going to get into a conversation like this, and that they won't know what to say or how to say it.  And I guess if you're prone to emailing people about faith, it would be really easy to get stuck in a conversation like this.

But this kind of situation has never happened to me.  I think it's because when I talk about faith, it's usually after I actually have a relationship with a person, where they know a lot more about me than just what I believe.  And when someone brings up something that they struggle with, most of the time I empathize with them and talk about how I've struggled with the same questions.  Sometimes I'll offer how I resolved the conflict or question in my own mind.

But rather than engaging at a rational level, answering all the questions that are on the surface, I'd also want to engage with the emotional barriers I see.  I see a couple of potential ones here.  What do you see?

Tomorrow I'll talk about the ones that I am guessing could be behind these questions

Imperfect stories

I went to see the new Narnia movie tonight.  It was a good show--ok characterization, ok pace of action, etc.  But all of the richness of the spiritual connotations was replaced with humanistic philosophy--basically, you can make yourself better and better.  So that was a disappointment.

They kept the conversation with Aslan and Lucy at the end, though, where Lucy is asking if she'll ever see him again.  Aslan responds that he's known by another name in her world, and she has to get to know him by that name there.  And he says something about how she had all these experiences in Narnia so that she would better be able to recognize him in that world.

And how many of us, as children, read those books and allowed the view of Aslan to affect the view that we had of God? 

It's a little scary to me, actually, especially now that I'm writing fiction.  There are lots of ways that we portray God in the world, especially if we are claiming the name of Christ.  There are lots of ways that we can screw up how people think about God; there are lots of way that we can harm their willingness or ability to hear from or about him.  So I guess that story telling isn't any different.

And yet if my assumption that storytelling is powerful, maybe more powerful than making claims or statements, then it's really important to be careful of the stories we tell.  The way we frame those stories, the way we understand how God interacted in those stories has a great impact on what we're communicating about him.

I've been thinking about this too as I go through a children's storybook Bible in the evenings.  There are so many ways that our theology or background affect how we read the stories.  You can sometimes guess at the perspective of the story-writers based on what they leave out or how they frame things.

Imperfect people reflect the image of God imperfectly.  We also tell imperfect stories.  But I think it's important that we be reflecting and story-telling anyway.  So I'm going to keep on telling mine.  But I'm also going to keep praying that God will lead and guide my words and protect others from the damage that my imperfect stories could cause.

Stories that transform

It amazes me how much stories get inside people.

I grew up reading books by Michael Phillips.  He had this whole series about a girl named Corrie Belle Hollister.  Every year or so, another book would come out.  She'd be another year older, and so would I.  Her spiritual journey affected mine.

It sounds a little scary, that some fictional character, who doesn't even have a relationship with God, who can't believe anything because she's not real, could affect my spiritual formation so much.  But there's no denying that that's what happened.  I look back on those books now and on all the books I read by Michael Phillips, and I see how much what I believe and how I live was formed by what I read.

So I wrote a book.  It could have been a nonfiction book.  My community has a lot to say about emotional barriers to faith and how to engage those in a natural way.  But as we talked about how to communicate the ideas, we realized that the only way the ideas would make sense is if they were played out in people's lives.  Ideas in the abstract are just ideas.  Ideas that are modeled, even by fictional character, have the potential to change us if we let them.

And I've had a small group of people reading and giving feedback.  And every single one of them said that the book was transformative in their lives.  That's the power of story.  And I'm amazed.  As a piece of literature, the book leaves a lot to be desired.  I could spend another 2-3 years developing the characters and the setting and making the point of the book more subtle.  But as a story that has the potential to model and transform, it's good enough--it does its job.

So it's on its way.  This coming week I'll finalize all the details, and next week it will be sent to the printer.  Shortly after that, it'll be available for purchase on Amazon.  It seems unreal, this journey of writing.  I think I thought that some day I would be a writer.  I just didn't expect it to happen quite this soon.

Second Story - Coming soon!

cover design by Dave Malec

So... I'm a little excited about this.  I just got the cover back from the designer for the book.  Soon the whole thing will be off to the printer.  I'm expecting the book will be available in January.  Click here for a brief synopsis of the book.

Reflections on Immanuel

"It all makes sense now, of course, 20 years later.  At the time though, it was dark.  Very dark.  I couldn't see then that God was with me.  Sure, he said he would be.  In the Bible, you know?  'I will never leave you or forsake you?'  But it didn't feel like it then.  Not at all."

"Even with all the weird things that happened....  This old lady sat down beside me at the bus stop that day.  She talked about inane things.  Ridiculous things.  Like the weather.  But when I got up to get on my bus, she grabbed my hand and smiled at me.  Quietly, she said, 'God loves you, honey.'  On that day, of all days."

"And then that guy at the grocery check-out.  He was a little creepy, I have to admit.  But his creepiness led him to pay for my groceries.  Up til that very minute, I had no idea how I was going to pay for them myself."

"So now I can see it, looking back.  God really was with me, even then.  He was present.  Not the way I expected him to be.  Not how I wanted him to be.  But he was there."

I gathered today with a small group of Christians in my community to talk about stories and telling stories to express the truths found in Scripture.  One of my friends talked to us about "stories that compost" and a process of examining a Bible story and then asking 3 questions:
(1) What did you like about the story? 
(2) What bothers you about the story?
(3) What questions do you have about the story?

At the end of that, we all took a few minutes to write a story as a sort of reflection or meditation about the ideas presented in the Bible story.  So we looked at Matthew 1 today, about Joseph's response to the news that Jesus was coming and that he should just go ahead and marry Mary.  As we talked about the story, we noted how God's presence as Immanuel was a theme that flowed throughout.  As I paused to write, that was the overwhelming thought that came to my mind.  So I wrote the narrative above as my "story."

There's something about interacting with a story at that level that requires you to internalize the truth of it in a different way.  I must have read Matthew 1 25 times before.  I have thought about Jesus coming to earth at least once a year around Christmas time.  But have I really considered Jesus's presence with us as Immanuel in this way?  Have I reflected on his presence with us through his people in the same way?  Have I really allowed the story of God's presence to intersect my own heart and life? Probably not.

There are lots of ways to tell the stories of God.  I've talked before about telling our own stories and how God has intersected our own lives.  And without taking away from the truth of what actually happened, I think we can also imagine what those ideas might mean in our own lives and the lives of those around us.  And we can learn to tell the heart of the story using words and stories that make sense to those around us.