I go to an awesome church. Having grown up "churched", I can speak with some authority on the subject. When I was a teen, I went to a Baptist private high school during the week and an Assemblies of God church on the weekend. For those of you who don't know what that means, it'd be like having Ted Kennedy for a father and dating Ann Coulter. You spend pretty much every waking moment defending the one to the other, eventually forgetting that, beneath the surface, they are both essentially two sides of the same coin.
The church I go to now is different. It is a relatively large church (some might even dare to label it a "superchurch" but I certainly haven't seen a cape, and frankly, it seems like there's Superchurch kryptonite all over the place), with its own unique issues, but for the first time in my life, I look forward to going to church. I love the people. I love the grace embedded in the message. I love the unique and daring approach to getting that message out there.
So a while back, I got involved with the programming team.
The programming team meets weekly to hash out the upcoming services. They examine the content of the message and organize the music, the stage design, any medias, and special events, even the announcements and offering, to best accent that message. Occasionally I have been able to contribute something helpful and occasionally I have been able to create a cool media to assist the service. It has been very, very enjoyable to be a part of the mechanism of such an awesome, potentially lifechanging message so effectively and artistically presented.
So I was surprised to discover, a few weeks ago, that I was getting a little reticent to go to the programming meeting. Wednesday would roll around and at some point in the morning I'd ask myself if I was going to the meeting. This, in itself, was a curiosity. Usually, there was no question. Of course I was going to go. I loved it. I looked forward to it. And all of a sudden here I was asking myself if I was really planning on it, and I'd find myself sorta saying "eeeehhh" with that little wobbly hand gesture that we think means "take it or leave it, whatever, I don't care" but that really means "neh."
And I sorta stopped going. On the surface, I knew I was particularly busy with work. We were selling our house and planning to move away. I was working on starting a new business. On the surface I just told myself I was too busy and preoccupied. And for a while I didn't look beyond the surface, because that was all I wanted it to be. Preoccupation. Busyness.
Well, I finally dug under the surface a bit and discovered there was more. Duh.
A saying goes around our church, and it is this: What is the thing behind the thing?
For instance, somebody might come in and say "Hey, why the holy heck don't the Pastor of this crazy church ask everybody to bring their Bibles and open 'em to the appropriate chapter and verse when he's preachin'?" Which is not something we do, and thankfully, if you ask me. After talking about it with this person for awhile, she might actually discover that, really, the lack of Bible totin' at church isn't really the "Thing". The "Thing" might be that religion has become a formula to her and she finds it easier to be told what to do than to seek Jesus herself. The "Thing" might even be that her world is more palatable if there are obvious codes of conduct that make it easier to determine who is good and who "needs prayer". There is almost always a thing behind the thing. What I learned for myself is that I am more or less like an onion, with layer after layer peeling back. There is a thing behind the thing behind the thing. Behind the thing.
So I went for a long walk and started peeling.
I figured the best way to determine why I was disinterested in going to the programming team meetings anymore was to examine, firstly, why I had wanted to go in the first place. Here's what I learned:
The thing: I wanted to contribute in a meaningful way to the powerful message my church was weekly presenting. I wanted to use my talents to support that message in an undeniable way. I am a damn talented guy, and I know God didn't give me all this talent just to make cool pictures and amuse people. So there I was, contributing in a big way, boosting the message, making a difference, sacrificing my time and energy for the good of the Body of Christ.
Yadda yadda.
The problem was I knew in my heart I was too essentially arrogant to be that altruistic. Thus I came to:
The thing behind the thing: I wanted to be seen and noticed. At heart, I am a performer and a ham. I have refined that urge now to the point that I cultivate accolades with my talents and skills, rather than by jumping up and down in the middle of a group of people yelling "Look at ME! Look at ME!" But that is still, in a different guise, an essential motivation. I wanted to get involved with the programming team because it would allow me a regular, huge audience for my cool movies and medias. Afterwards, people would approach me in the lobby and heap accolades on me, and I would smile and be all humble and thank them and soak it all up like the shameless attention hound that I am. Hear this: I don't like this about myself. And yet, I knew, under the altruistic layer of "Contributing Meaningfully to the Message", this, my tendency to muckrake praise with my talents, was possibly even a greater reality.
And yet, I do get that kind of praise everyday. I am fortunate enough to work (and be pretty durn good) in an industry that allows me to create and get attention for what I create. I have told my wife that it's fortunate that I get paid, but that's not why I do what I do. I do what I do because in the end, somebody always says: "Wow! That's fantastic! You're a GEEEEENIUS!" Thus I didn't really need the accolades and praise I got for making the cool medias at church. It was just gravy. There had to be something else. And that led me to:
The thing behind the thing behind the thing: I wanted to be involved with the programming team because the programming team was special. The programming team represents the hub on which the rather large and important wheel of the church turns. The pastors are on it. It wasn't quite a status thing (although no doubt that was some part of it). It was that I liked the pastors. I liked all the people on the team, the music leaders and the behind-the-scenes directors. They are thinkers and readers. They are funny and smart and beloved. They are challengers and people who appreciate being challenged. I wanted in. I wanted to be part of their circle. I wanted them to be my friends.
Because if they were my friends, if they invited me into their society and called me one of their own, then I'd know that I, like them, was a likeable person.
If that happened I knew I'd be able to like myself as me. I'd be able to accept myself and believe I was worth something beyond the cool medias I could create, beyond my rather prodigious skills. I realized I was weary and disillusioned with being defined by my talents, by what I could do. If the programming team welcomed me in and made me a friend, beyond the mere team meetings, then I was worth something as me, not just as the maker of the cool movies.
The problem was that the team didn't know it. And I was too proud to ask for it. The problem was that the good, wonderful people of the programming team already had their circles, their society of friends. Their dance cards were full. They might have made room for me, probably would have if I had told them what I wanted, what I was seeking. But that is the curse of wanting friends to prove your worth: if you have to ask for it, it nagates the hopeful benefit.
And when I finally realized what I had been secretly hoping for all along, and realized it was too much to ask and even unfair to ask, I became less interested in going. After all, I wasn't getting what I really wanted out of it. I know that is pathetic and selfish, and I know I will probably go back again now that I have learned this and accepted it. I know I will go back with a slightly purer motive (hopefully something that looks a little more like the original "Thing"!)
But before then, I made one more discovery.
The thing behind the thing behind the thing behind the thing: Is grace. What is it about that?! This whole thing about Grace is just so big, so nearly incomprehensible, so frustratingly too-good-to-be-true that ever since I was introduced to it (through my church, not so ironically) I have been struggling with it and fighting with myself and God about it and approaching it and backing away like a deer in the woods afraid of a trap but SO attracted to the gorgeous scent of it.
Grace says God loves me for me. Even more astounding to me, God likes me for me. Not just as one cell in the whole organism of humanity that God has to love because He made it. ME. Alone. Not for what I can do, or how funny I can be, or the talents in my hands, or the money in my bank account or the frikkin' car I drive. Me. The fact that minor key music makes my heart shiver. The fact that I am torn in the middle of my soul at the point where my ego pulls against my self esteem. The fact that I like to get attention, like a puppy grinning when you rub its belly. All the little quirky things that just make me essentially and irrevocably me. God loves them and likes them and wants to be friends with me because of them, wants to love on me because of them. All because of this baffling, unfair, unjust notion of Grace. Grace that means God sees me as He made me. Not as a jar full of duplicity and faults and doubt, trying desperately to perform new and amazing feats to distract and divert. How can that be? Is it possible? I circle this apparent truth like that deer... wanting to take it, but fearful in my core. Terrified in my core.
So I have tested it elsewhere, in places that matter less, where it is a little safer. Like the programming team. Just to see if it could be. To give it a trial run. And that's just no good. Humanity doesn't work that way, I think. We can try, and thankfully we get close sometimes. But only God truly sees us as us, not as the things we do, not as performers and posers. I guess that's a little of what it means when it says "man looks on the outside appearance, but God looks at the heart." I guess that's what that Biblical King was relying on when he turned his face to the wall and said, essentially, "God, you know how many times I've been a screw-up, but you also know that my heart has always been yours." He knew God didn't keep score counting deeds. He knew that God didn't mete out His love based on merit. He knew God loved him for being him. Period.
I want to know that. I don't yet. But I am smelling it, flaring my nostrils like that deer, trying to inhale it through the air, trembling on the knife edge of ecstacy and terror. And I know that it was essential to learn that there is no true human counterpart to it, no easy human training-wheels version of God's Grace that'll make that final leap of trust easier. We can only hope to be a shadow of it, and that I get. But the real thing is as different from our human conception of it as lightning is from a lightning bug.
Well, it's Wednesday. I wonder if I'll go to the programming meeting?
