My last post blurred the line between rationality and decision-making. I made it sound as if to make a decision properly is to rely only on reason, and that reason should have the main place in decision-making. Reason, in fact, should NOT have the main place in decision-making.

The person who says, “I feel this, therefore I will do that,” is on shaky ground. The person who always does exactly what seems logical to him is on equally shaky ground. If I want to do something wrong, I can justify it rationally as easily as I can long for it emotionally. In fact, when someone does something wrong, it is almost always because he 1) desired to do it (emotion), and then 2) figured out a way to justify it (reason). Wrongdoing is always most powerful when we can find ways to not make it seem wrong, and that’s up to the intellect. In other words, reason and emotion will both serve the god of self if there is nothing to put them in line — if they are not expected to pay homage to something that transcends them both.

That something is wisdom. Wisdom places demands on both emotion and intellect. Wisdom says, “It’s not what you feel that matters, and it’s not what you think that matters. What matters is what is best.” This is a critical distinction. When I’m trying to make a decision, I can ask all day, “How do I feel,” and I can ask all day, “What do I think,” but only wisdom asks, “What is best? In this particular situation, what is the greatest good that can be done?” Just asking the question, “What is best” removes me from the equation in a vital way. It gets to the possibility that what is best may be something other than what I think and what I feel.

When the path of wisdom is followed, it will lead to what is ultimately best for both the individual and society. Think of some examples:

Despite how much some people desire to have extra-marital affairs and how hard they work to rationalize them, the world and everyone in it would be better off if everyone in every relationship were faithful.

Despite how often we fear telling the truth and how we justify lies, the world and every individual in it would be better off if everyone spoke truthfully.

Despite our great desire to get ahead in life by trampling other people down, the world and everyone in it would be better if that never happened.

To these examples you might reply, “But that’s not the real world. In the real world, people DO lie and they DO trample on others to get ahead. So I must do those things also because that’s the world I live in.” That seems logical, right? But if you say this, you show how reason can be used in service to evil. This is exactly why it is not a good idea to make decisions solely on what is logical. The statement above is logical, but it is not wise – it is not what is best. It may appear best to the individual in the short-term, but it hurts other individuals and ultimately our whole society, as we are increasingly unable to rely on what others tell us or trust those around us to not trample us underfoot. This creates conditions of paranoia, suspicion, and fear which have small immediate consequences as you don’t know who to trust, and massive global consequences in the form of wars and genocides. The path of wisdom ultimately has us do what is best for ourselves AND for the society we live in. It takes into account the fact that we do not do anything in isolation. If you feel you must lie, it’s because you are part of a society where others also lie. The others that lie do so because they are part of a society where those around them do — including you. The truth is that no one “must” lie and all those who do have chosen to rely on a logic (twisted though it is) that leads to evil in their own lives and evil in the world.

As I have said, both reason and emotion can be made to serve the god of self. So reason and emotion must be expected to seek something higher, and that something is wisdom. Immanuel Kant got at this something higher when he postulated what he called the “categorical imperative.” The categorical imperative stated that we should only act in ways that everyone in the world could act without contradiction. In a world where everyone lies, truth is meaningless and there can be no trust, and therefore no relationships, so I should not lie. In a world where everyone cheats on their spouse, the marriage vows would be meaningless, therefore marriage itself would be meaningless as a committed union, therefore I should not cheat on my spouse. In a world where everyone cheats at game play, rules would be meaningless and since rules define games, games themselves would be meaningless, therefore I should not cheat. Though generations of philosophers have found exceptions to Kant’s imperative and poked various holes in it, it gets at the idea that something should lie above and beyond the self in our quest to make proper decisions and act morally. Wisdom is that something.

There are millions of brilliant people who make terrible decisions for their lives — chances are you know a few of them. There are millions of deeply caring, highly emotional people who make terrible decisions for their lives, and you probably know some of them as well. Neither reason nor emotion is sufficient as a basis for making decisions in life. That is, if we say we truly want to do the “best” thing. If all we want is what will serve our own interests and make us feel good, then either reason or emotion — alone or together — will serve to get us what we crave.

I just returned from Catalyst Conference 2007 in Duluth, GA. It was a good conference. But I don’t want to write about Catalyst 2007. I want to write about Catalyst 1999.

1999 was the year of the very first Catalyst Conference. John Maxwell and Andy Stanley and some other leaders knew that America had a leadership problem on its hands. Young pastors in churches all over America were being suppressed and were finding themselves without the platform to do the creative and exciting ministries they envisioned. They envisioned a conference where they could tell young pastors, “God made you how you are. Use your gifts and abilities to do something extraordinary! Don’t allow the old ‘system’ to press you into its mold!”

Because that’s what happens. I grew up in a church culture that did that in all kinds of ways. It passed along messages like:

• Rock and roll music is sinful and irredeemable. God could never use it for his purposes.
• Dancing is lustful and therefore a sin.
• Pop culture is sinful. Its movies are evil, its television is perverted, its music is vile (see above), and it is therefore to be feared and avoided.

Now these may seem like fairly innocuous messages, whether you agree with them or not. Unless you happen to be a person who loves rock and roll, dancing, movies, and other elements of pop culture. That was me. It was me loving those things, and it was me feeling defective and sinful for it.

The reality is that music speaks to me in ways nothing else does. Nothing else even comes close. In fact nothing else even comes close to coming close. I can put on some headphones (or ear buds nowadays) and get lost in music for hours. I’m fascinated by its rhythms, its sonic textures, its lyrics, the way the words rhyme or don’t rhyme, and by the way some songs just capture parts of the human condition (i.e., my condition) like nothing else can. Next to God and my wife and kids, music is my first love. I’m not much of a dancer, but I love movies, several TV shows, and a lot of other pop culture as well. It engages me, stirs me, challenges me, and brings me joy (and yes, sometimes nauseates me as well, then I have a blast talking about how nauseating something was). And I grew up believing all these things were wrong and sinful to one extent or another. By way of extension, I believed I was sinful (or at least that others believed I was sinful) for loving these things.

But I can’t help it that I like music. I can’t help that it moves me like nothing else. It’s how I was made. When music starts playing, I’m a goner. I just am. I can’t go to sleep to music, or study to it, because when music is playing it commands my full attention. Music is never background for me. In October of 1999, I went to a church where music — my music — the stuff that moved me and spoke to me — was celebrated. Not just music with the appropriate number of JPM’s (“Jesus’s per minute) but music that didn’t even mention Jesus at all. Not just music that verbally declared God’s power but music that channeled that power whether the original artists understood where it came from or not. I was at North Point in Alpharetta, GA, but I was home. I was captured that day by the most powerful thing that had ever captured me. The power of music combined with the power of the church. I literally stood in awe that day. It wasn’t long into the band’s first set that I leaned over to my wife Christy and said, “Why shouldn’t church feel this way?”

The band was playing loud, and the music was everywhere, and we were enfolded in it. The song they were playing? U2′s Beautiful Day. No disrespect to Just As I Am or Amazing Grace and their ilk, but I don’t think any song I’ve ever heard in any church has ever resonated with me as deeply as Beautiful Day did on that day in October of 1999. It was a beautiful day, because that was the day I was liberated. That was the day that I realized there were churches that understood what resonated with me and were willing to pull it into the church and allow it to do even more powerfully what music had always done in my life.

My question was a good one, and I’m still asking it. Why shouldn’t church feel this way? Why shouldn’t our music reach out and grab people by the throat and say, “We won’t just tell you about God’s power – you’re gonna feel it in your bones before you leave here today.”
That day at North Point, I was grabbed by the throat. Nothing had ever felt so powerful and so amazing in my previous church life until then, and by that time I had been a pastor for six years.

So what about today? Today is 2007, and all over the community where my church is, there are people who grew up believing there’s something wrong with them for loving music, loving movies, and being moved and inspired by art and pop culture. I want Wildwind to be a place that does to them what Catalyst Conference did to me eight years ago. Every week there’s someone in our church who has decided to give church one more chance. Why should they ever come back after that? It’ll just be like all the other places that have made them feel lousy before. Or there’s someone who thinks to be a Christian is to be down on everything that brings joy into life. Or someone who’s just looking for an excuse to make fun of us and can’t wait for the music to be lame and irrelevant so they can tell their friends they went to still another church that doesn’t get it.

Think about it. The message of Christ itself is a polarizing message. It’s difficult to accept. Jesus told us that would be the case, and we’re nuts if we think we should try to make the message more acceptable than he did. But as long as I have anything to say about it, we’ll let the message be the hard part — the part people might trip over. And we’ll do our best not to trip them up with music that stinks, that is done poorly, or that is irrelevant to their lives and experiences. We’ll always seek to grab people’s attention with the music, to shake them and say, “You think this is powerful – you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

My life has never been the same since that day in October of 1999. I want Wildwind to create as many of those transforming moments for as many people as possible. Wildwind owes its existence largely to the power of that moment, where a young pastor said to his wife, “Why shouldn’t church feel like this?” and then decided to start one in our area that does. Who knows how many disenfranchised, put-off, overlooked people there are out there right now who don’t even know how deeply the church could speak into their lives? Who knows if some just might get a hint this Sunday, this month, this year, when the countdown reaches zero and the band sends the message, “We are serious about your world, your life, the things you love, and the things that speak to you. Let us show you.” And who knows, if they feel the power in that moment, how they might be transformed and who they might become. Melodrama? Possibly. Overwrought and unreasonable expectations? Maybe not so much. I believe this can happen. After all, it happened to me.

Matthew 5:48 is troubling in the New International Version of the Bible.  Jesus says,

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Ummm.  Yikes? 

Today I have been inspired and encouraged by the way Eugene Peterson renders that in The Message.

“In a word, what I’m saying is grow up.  You’re kingdom subjects.  Now live like it.  Live out your God-created identity.  Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

I love this idea about what it means to be perfect.  To be perfect just means to grow into the people God created us to be.  Peterson has Jesus saying, “Grow up.”  Perhaps no two words are more precious and more needed in the church than these.  Grow up.  Stop being petty.  Get over yourself.  Get a life — the life I destined you for before you were ever born. 

I turn 40 next July and I think maybe I’m just beginning to live out my God-created identity.  Or maybe it’s just now beginning to feel comfortable for me and like something I understand in some way and am proud of.

Grow up.  Put away the attitudes of your past.  Put down the constant whining of that part of you that is still very much a baby.  Grow up.  Realize that you will not live forever.  Your life ebbs away even as you type.  Only babies, only children live as if there will always be time.  Time to love and laugh and work as hard as possible and to invest in those we love.  Time to live in peace with ourselves and with each other.  Time to shuffle off one life of idyllic naivety and take on another — but not the life of cynical jadedness that some believe is the alternative.  The alternative, or the natural progression, from idyllic naivety is not toward cynical jadedness, but toward mature wisdom.  Cynical jadedness is an imposter.  It masquerades as wisdom but is really just pompous negativity, dismissive of every kind of joy and sweetness and innocence and faith that it finds.

To grow up is not to become cynical and skeptical and jaded.  To grow up is not to claim that some holy book has every rule necessary for successful living already written out.  To grow up is to take on the mantle of a God-created identity and learn to live in it.  Anything that comes out of me that is not consistent with God’s character is not part of the identity he created for me.

I like the band Megadeth.  Last night I went to see them in concert in Grand Rapids.  As I stood in line, looking quite out of place, my mind began to wander.  This was a tough crowd by almost any standard and I imagined doing something to accidentally provoke a confrontation.  As that movie rolled in my head I asked myself again and again, “Would you have the courage to allow someone to hit you and to not hit back?”  That is, after all, clearly what Jesus required.  The longer I concentrated on that question the more nervous I became that, should I ever be in such a situation, I might fail to respond as I should.  Thinking back on that episode in my devotional time today I realized that I displayed both maturity and immaturity.  It was mature for me to consider taking Christ’s words seriously and “turning the other cheek” (this is one of Christ’s commands most frequently dismissed).  It was mature for me to want to do what Christ commanded.  But it was immature for me to be fearful or overly concerned.  After all, not only was it all in my imagination anyway, but fear is not from God.  And since my concern over whether I would do what would please Jesus led to a bit of self-castigation that I in fact might not, that was clearly not from God.  God does not grow us up by guilt-tripping, criticizing, or belittling.

It is easy to fall into ditches in the spiritual life.  It seems those who fall into the ditches on the left often deride those who have fallen into the ditches on the right and vice versa.  As for me, I wish to avoid ditches on both sides and simply grow up, one step at a time, as I learn what it means to live out my God-created identity.