Author: jonathan.kimball

This past spring, I took a course on Reformed theology from the University of Dubuque as part of my studies towards becoming a commissioned ruling elder. Basically, we read the entire Book of Confessions, plus study materials. The final project was a statement of faith, with engagement of the confessions and of scripture. I’m not 100% happy with my result, but this is more complete than my previous statement of faith.

In our Dinner & Discipleship group at church, we are reading through Sabbath as Resistance by Walter Brueggemann. The first few chapters are focused on how we as individuals organize our lives. Chapter 4, which we just discussed, shifts the focus a bit to how the church behaves.

Humans are tribal by nature. The ancients understood this. The “individual” was essentially invented by Descartes. Subsequently, both philosophy and theology shifted to addressing how we, as individuals, believe, or how we respond to God. The Old Testament especially, but the New Testament as well, addresses how we behave within a tribe or nation, and how that tribe or nation should interact with God. God did not choose Abraham alone, or Moses alone, to bless. God chose them so that a nation, Israel, would be blessed. Indeed, many of the individuals that God chose throughout the Bible didn’t have very good lives. Prophets like Elijah were always on the run; most or all of the apostles were martyred; and of course Christ was crucified and bore all the sins of the world. Though these individuals suffered, their tribe or nation was blessed through them. Jesus proclaimed all humanity to be His nation.

¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20 (The Great Commission)

My “tribe” these days is the congregation where I worship, the Mission where I volunteer, and to a lesser extent, my colleagues at S&T and internationally in IEEE. I’m going to try to read the Bible as addressing us as a community, rather than addressing me as an individual, and to try to understand how I can play a role in transforming my tribe into Christ’s Kingdom.

²⁹ Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;³⁰ you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Mark 12:29-31

If something is important, Jesus said it more than once. We see this Great Commandment in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Let’s break it down a bit. First and foremost, love God with all that you are. Second, love your neighbor as yourself. This is really two statements: love your neighbor AND love yourself. In loving God, we learn how to love others and love ourselves.

This stands in contrast to another recurring message throughout the Bible: We are all sinners before God. And yet, we are charged with loving each other just as we love God, who is perfect. We are called to repentance, which involves acknowledging our own sins, but also to love ourselves as God loves us.

I recently listened to a great podcast, an interview of a therapist who is gay and Christian. She makes the point that you need to love yourself as you are, and accept yourself as who you are, first. Then, you can begin the process of becoming more whole: more healthy, more holy, more loving of God and others, more of who God wants you to be.

This relates also to an audiobook I recently listened to, Atomic Habits by James Clear. My motivation was to put in action the challenge I discussed in my last post. Briefly, Clear makes the point that in order to change your habits (whether to eliminate a bad one or add a new one), you must know your habits. You must acknowledge reality before you can change it. You must know yourself as a beloved child of God before you can become who God wants you to be.

I’m writing this on a day when the United Methodist Church at a special General Conference has voted to maintain its bans on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” as clergy, and on same-sex marriage. This is denial of the second half of the Great Commandment writ large. It comes from a place of not loving the UMC as it is: a church that seeks radical hospitality, welcoming all those who seek God. It comes from a denial of who people are. Nobody chooses to be gay; they choose instead to accept who they already are, who God made them to be. I wish that I had words of comfort for the individuals, congregations, conferences, and clergy who must now decide whether to stay in an unwelcoming denomination or depart. I do not. I know that similar decisions (though for the opposite reason) have had painful consequences for ELCA and PC(USA). I grieve for them all.

I just finished Radical by David Platt. While there is much about it that I disagree with, I’m working on the challenge he makes at the end. The overarching theme is that Jesus’s call to His followers is far more radical than what most of us do. Coincidentally, this week’s lectionary Gospel reading is Luke 5:1-11, the story of Jesus calling Simon (Peter) and his partners James and John, sons of Zebedee. The key verse: “When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.”

This is hard. I am not at the point where I can leave everything behind. Too many people depend on me. And yet, I can make small changes in that direction. Which brings me to Platt’s challenge: to spend a year with the following changes:

• Pray. Pray every day for the world. It’s unreasonable to pray for the whole world every day and have any depth, but over the course of a month or a year, pray for God’s people everywhere.
• Read. Read the Bible–the whole Bible. There are lots of ways to do this. I’m using the Bible In One Year app from Alpha. I had started that a while ago and kind of fell off the wagon. I’m back at it now.
• Give. Give sacrificially to something that furthers God’s kingdom. Be involved, so that it’s personal and not just financial. For now, I’m focused on The Rolla Mission.
• Go. Go somewhere outside your normal life to spread the Gospel. One thing I’m considering getting involved in is Solar Under the Sun, which provides solar energy to communities in the developing world. The idea is to (1) serve far away communities, (2) spread the Gospel, and (3) see the Gospel in a new light.
• Community. Be a part of a Christian community. I have that already in First Presbyterian Church of Rolla.

A big part of being successful in this will be keeping myself on task. Every morning, my routine is to play on my phone while I drink coffee. Just a complete waste of time. I need to make a series of small changes so that I spend my time wisely.

Lately, I’ve been listening to an audiobook of The Book of Joy, which is based on interviews of the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The section I just listened to addressed the role of suffering. The general theme was that suffering sets our joy in sharp relief, so that we may know joy. That is, we do not experience joy despite suffering, but because of it.

Meanwhile, I’ve read some stuff from Queer Theology, in particular their online magazine Spit & Spirit. In one column, Brian Gerald Murphy, the publisher, writes, “I am thankful to be queer….My experiences because of my sexual orientation profoundly shaped (and continue to shape) my life. They helped me to question my previously unquestioned beliefs. They brought me into contact with diverse people and opinions. And, perhaps most strikingly, they guided me deeper into the Christian faith.”

In physics, the principle of relativity dictates that any inertial reference frame is indistinguishable. That is, as long as your speed is constant, it doesn’t matter what that speed is. What you can feel is a change in speed. What you can see is a difference between two different reference frames. In a similar way, people can’t really feel their conditions, but can feel a change in their conditions. They can see how they compare to other people.

If a person has never experienced hardship, or setbacks, or challenges, it’s hard for them to really know joy. At the same time, it’s hard for them to really have empathy. I would say that by most measures, I’ve had a pretty easy life. In my career, I had to go through some setbacks, though, before I was toughened up enough to be really successful. If I had not worked in industry between MS and PhD, my math skills would probably be better, but I don’t know if I’d be able to handle the frequent rejection that is inherent to academia.

I also had to experience some pain in my personal life before I could really grow spiritually. Parenthood has a way of making you realize how little control you have over your life, and my wife’s illness has made me realize the limits of human knowledge and that there are unsolvable problems. Now, I can more readily appreciate the good things in my life, and can also empathize more with people who face challenges.

I think that’s part of what Brian Gerald Murphy was saying. When he had some experiences that did not match up with what he was taught or believed, he transitioned from a simple, shallow faith to a deep, complex relationship with God.

I’m almost done listening to an audiobook of The Book of Joy. It was written by Douglas Abrams based on a week-long interview of the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I highly recommend it. They talk at length about Eight Pillars of Joy:

• Perspective
• Humility
• Humor
• Acceptance
• Forgiveness
• Gratitude
• Compassion
• Generosity

One theme that seems to run through the whole book, though, is service to others. The more self-focused your perspective, the more you work towards improving your own condition, the worse you feel. If on the other hand, you are focused on other people’s condition, and how you can help improve it, the more joy you find.

This makes sense to me from many angles. Certainly, volunteering at the Mission is a high point in my week. Although economists might tell you that the basic unit of society is the individual, anthropologists will tell you that it’s the tribe. Humans were made for connection, for mutual interdependence. Tribes only survive as long as each individual makes the well-being of the tribe and its members a higher priority than the well-being of the individual.

This theme pervades the Bible as well. All those rules in the Old Testament are fundamentally about ensuring that individuals don’t aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors, however they might be defined. In the New Testament, service to others is emphasized again and again. :

²⁵ But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ²⁶ It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, ²⁷ and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; ²⁸ just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Matthew 20:25-28

So the question to me, and to whoever might be reading this, is: How can we best serve others? Not to sacrifice just for the sake of sacrifice, but to get the most bang for the buck. Maybe not to affect the most people, but whatever we do, it should have an impact. Maybe I can’t bring about world peace, but I can help one person find peace. Maybe I can’t show love to the whole world, but I can show love to each person I encounter.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m working on figuring out a ministry to the LGBT community. Now, there is danger in being an open ally, but that danger is nothing compared to the danger that someone who is openly gay or openly transgender faces. So rather than worry about my reputation or whatever, I should keep my focus on how I can share God’s love with people who have been abandoned and ostracized, and have a real positive impact on individual’s lives.

What is your calling? How are you called to service? And what are you prepared to sacrifice in service to others?

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel,^[i will save it. ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷ Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 

Mark 8:34-37

Merry Christmas! I’m visiting my in-laws right now. I am blessed with a great family–wife, kids, parents, siblings, and wife’s family. I know not everyone has such a loving family, or has had a falling out. I hope and pray for reconciliation. Know that we are all reconciled in Christ, and one day we will all know His peace. Meanwhile, we just catch glimpses of His Kingdom.

Everyone has two families. There’s the one that they’re born into, and then there’s the one that they choose. By that I mean, in my case, my wife and kids; my dear friends like Sharon, Jenny, Missy, and Mary; and my church. Both families are so important! Not everyone can be born into a kind, loving, welcoming family, but everyone can choose a family that builds them up.

In Luke 12, Jesus tells a parable warning against an abundance of possessions, and that we should not worry about the future. We are promised abundant life, not a life of abundance. What is meant by abundant life? It’s people, it’s relationships, it’s love and belonging, it’s hope for the future. As we remember Jesus’s birth in a humble place, we realize that he and his parents had very little in the way of material comforts, yet they were rich beyond measure in God’s love.

May God bless you likewise!