Kosovo Reflections Part 3 - Art and the Infinite

It doesn’t take you long to figure out that art in Kosovo is a big deal.  As you walk down the main streets of Prishtina, you encounter restaurants, music stores, coffee shops and apparel outlets.  The call to prayer is sung from multiple Imam towers just as the sun is rising and dance beats pump out of club speakers as it sets.  Statues stand in public squares as timeless reminders of those whose hands formed the foundations of the country.  The national library, various church cathedrals and mosques were erected as pathways to enlightenment. 

Art is everywhere.

It is inescapable.  It is bound to culture as much as language is.

However, what is perhaps most surprising is that art defies definition.  Something that is so widespread and obvious escapes all attempts to box it in and give it an identity.  Many different people have attempted to define art.  Leo Tolstoy was quite possibly the first man to question what art is.  He tore down his society’s view of art as a way to acquire pleasure and urged people to consider it as a condition of life, namely the interaction between man and man.  He described art as a process where one man, who desires to “join others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications” (by picture, story, song, etc.).  By Tolstoy’s definition, art is a way of relating to others through artistic communication.  In fact, relationship is the initiator of the desire to create art.

Other philosophers have taken this thought further by describing art as simply (or not so simply) form and content.  The forms of art are the elements, the principles, and the materials used to make art.  The content of art is trickier to pin down as it encapsulates the underlying message, emotion or idea that the piece of art was created to communicate. 

An example of form and content could be drawn from Van Gogh’s “The Church in Auvers”.  The form would be the use of the elements (texture, space, shape, colour, etc.) and principles (movement, unity, harmony, etc.).  The content would be the message of the painting: noticing that the light of the sun brightens the foreground yet the church is in shadow and holds no light of its own. John van Sloten noted that Van Gogh’s conflicted feelings about the Church were represented in his view of the Church’s shortcomings, which is why the church stands in darkness.

Art, then, is something that expresses human life to bring union between all people.  It is like a voice to culture, describing it and enriching it.  It is the vision of the human soul’s passion and yearning.

During my trip to Kosovo, I was privileged enough to meet many different types of artists.  Music is a very large part of the culture, whether it is in the secular city circles or the traditional village circles.  I played with emerging guitar students, met beatboxers and dancers, and was blown away by the beauty of some people’s voices as they sang with passion and sincerity.

One of the towns we played in organized a cultural exchange of arts as a tribute for unity and peace.  We watched as young Kosovar artists displayed their craft in traditional dancing and in music.  In return, we exchanged our music and had many conversations afterward about music, arts and the meaning of these in our lives.  It was as if, by viewing each others' artistic expressions, we began to understand the other people.  The walls that had displayed how we were different from each other didn’t seem as high or as thick anymore.

How could art work in this way?  What is in the purpose of art that makes it function in this capacity?

History traces art back through the evolution of human cultures and the need for people’s expression of life (marriage, war, death, etc.). Indeed, music did come out of culture and out of the need to express the events in our lives; however, something that I have found lingering around the concept of culture and what it means to be human is a connection between our desire to create, our desire for relationship, and our ability to perceive beauty.

While Tolstoy was eager to reject metaphysical philosophy, many others have raised questions as to how art even exists.  For art to speak, beauty must be present in it.  For art to be meaningful, desire for relationship must move the artist to express themselves.  For art to exist at all, it needs to have a conscious intelligent being with an aesthetic vision to create.

So the question becomes more complicated.  The question “Where does art come from?” becomes “Where does creativity, beauty and our desire for relationship come from?”

Whether you read it literally or figuratively, scripture paints us a vivid picture of our original nature, before sin and before the fall.  We see God as the Creator of creation.  We see the relationship between the Father, Son and Spirit united in one being.  We see the quintessence of beauty portrayed in the goodness of creation being ruled by its Creator.

And we see humanity, created, stamped with the image of the One who created it.  To be human was to be in relationship with God, to enjoy beauty in its fullness, and to express the creativity given to us by our Creator.

What has changed?  We have fallen, yet we remain in our humanity with God’s image stamped into the fabric of our souls.

Art points to who we were created to be, to reflect our Creator.  We were made to be creative, relational, and able to distinguish beauty.  In art, we find part of our original natures...and also the connection we have with our Creator.

And more...

Art comes not from ourselves, but from the highest forms and content.  Life, we realize, is the artwork of the Creator.  It is the canvas that the divine Artist applies paint to.  It is the drama that slowly unfolds, ever nearing to its conclusion...

~~~~~

Around the time that he finished his painting of “The Church in Auvers”, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his friend Bernard:

            “[Christ] lived serenely, as a greater artist than all other artists, despising marble and clay as well as colour, working in living flesh.  That is to say, this matchless artist, hardly to be conceived of by the obtuse instrument of our modern, nervous, stupified brains, made neither statues nor pictures nor books; he loudly proclaimed that he made…living men, immortals.

            …Though this great artist—Christ—disdained writing books on ideas (sensations), he surely disdained the spoken word much less—particularly the parable.  (What a sower, what a harvest, what a fig tree!)

            …These considerations, my dear Bernard, lead us very far, very far afield; they raise us above art itself.  They make us see the art of creating life, the art of being immortal and alive at the same time.”

In Loving Memory...

2 days ago I sat in a chair at the Hamilton General Hospital.  Florescent lights cast a harsh white glow over everything in the room.  I never really liked being in hospitals.  Perhaps it was because I always felt that death was just around the corner or in another room, waiting for the time when it would be allowed to steal a person’s life away.  Its presence was elusive, but always constant.

I saw there looking at the rigid and broken body of my grandmother as she lay there in her bed.  She was a shadow of her former self, stricken with the degeneration time brings to us all.  On this day, death was in the same room, waiting to take my grandma from this world.

Though I was aware of her laying there, my thoughts were not of the present time.  I was in a moment of reminiscence, recalling a time when she was healthy and well…

~~~~~

Having been raised by a single mother who needed to work twice as hard to support two people, my grandma shared the responsibility of raising me.  Even since I was a toddler, she was looking after me while my parents were working during the day.  After my mother and father divorced, she would often look after me when I came home from school.

During those times we would watch the classic movies from her era.  I grew up on movies like “A Night to Remember”, “Great Expectations”, “Robin Hood”, “Ben-Hur”, and many others.  We would also play board games a lot of the times, and I got quite good at the game “Uno” by the end of elementary school.

left to right: Myself, Grandma, Great Aunt Pat

She was also a faithful woman of God and she knew her Bible more than many people I knew growing up.  I’m not sure how many times she had read through the Bible, but I know she participated in the “Read a Bible in a Year” schedule every year up until I was 23 years old.  My grandma was also the one who really taught me all about the Bible and the works of Jesus Christ.  It was through her that I came to have some knowledge of God and though I went through many dark times in my teens, that knowledge lifted me out of the darkness and saved my life. 

My grandma’s faith was simple and she found much satisfaction from it.  Many people in my generation don’t understand what it is like to have a simple faith, especially the people I know from college.  Today, one needs to be able to defend one’s faith using non-religious evidence.  We often need to be certain about what we believe before we are able to believe it.  The faith that doesn’t need justification is lost to us.  At the very least it is deemed irrational and of those that are of poor intellect.

What was beautiful about my Grandma’s faith was that she never needed to have her faith justified.  She was interacting with God on a daily basis and no information from science or philosophy could ever change what she experienced.  She knew God existed because He was active in her life.  That is something that I find both challenging to understand and incredibly beautiful to witness.

As I sat there, I dwelled on who she had been, but I also began seeing her for who she would be.  I saw her as a woman glorified in Christ, running around with a newly resurrected body that would never be broken.  I saw her catching up with her brothers and sister, who had been waiting for her for several years.  I saw her walking with God, being embraced by His love and affection for her.

I saw her, for the first time, as the woman that God has intended for her to be.  And that was more beautiful than anything I had seen in my lifetime…

I was brought out of my ruminations by the time…it was time to leave, and I knew it was the last time I would see her in this world.  I held her hand gently in mine and said, “See ya later grandma.”  Then I walked out of the room with my mom beside me.  2 days later, she passed away…

~~~~~

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust."
Psalm 91

Kosovo Reflections Part 2 - NEWBORN

We arrived at Prishtina airport at around noon.  The weather was surprisingly similar to that of Southern Ontario.  As I stepped off of the plane I got my first glimpse of Kosovo, rolling hills that surrounded the airport.  In the distance I saw the edges of Prishtina, the capital city.  The houses were orange and white, the colour of baked clay shingles and plaster.  Prishtina was the city I was to spend the next few weeks in.  It was a completely new experience for me since I have never traveled to Europe before as an adult. As we drove, cars whizzed by us in the slow lane.  The roads were packed with cars ranging from jury-rigged DIY vehicles to BMWs and Mercedes.

During our first day in the country, we were just trying to stay awake in order to sleep off the jet lag later that night.  Just before dinner, we decided to take a stroll around the city center.  We had to learn traffic etiquette very quickly.  Cars don’t normally stop if you just wait at a crosswalk.  You have to begin to walk across for cars to stop for you, which they do (usually)!

We walked around for a bit, enjoying the new culture and scenery.  The sun was just beginning to set as we arrived at a strip plaza with an interesting monument standing in front of it.  There before me was the word NEWBORN, constructed from pieces of sheet metal that had been welded together.  At 3 meters high and 20 meters wide, this typographic piece of art was a very strong expression of how the nation felt when it finally achieved its independence.  It was a symbol of their freedom and liberation.  It described their birth as a new country and a renewed people.  I stood in wonder at this monument wondering how I could convey the feelings I had within me.

~~~~~

The idea of freedom is one that is confused and muddled here in the west, as it probably is elsewhere in the world as well.  What is freedom for one person can be the opposite for another, yet all we seem to talk about here in the west is individual freedom, rights and liberties.  In North America, freedom is often thought of as the ability to choose for oneself, to be expressive or outspoken, or to have political rights.  But is that was freedom really is?

If freedom is the ability choose, then won’t having the most choices we can have to choose from in any given situation make us more satisfied and happier?  Barry Schwartz, a psychologist, presented evidence of the opposite.  He notes that a particular dogma is frequently found in western industrial societies which states, “To maximize the welfare of our citizens, we must maximize their individual freedom.”  Freedom in this sense is the ability to take control of our own welfare by acting on our own, thus to maximize the freedom to act on our own we must maximize our choices.  He then shows how at a certain point this freedom of choice becomes paradoxical. 

Imagine walking into a chocolate store and marveling at their wall of chocolate bars.  Each one is different, some look appealing and others not so much.  You have not tried any of these varieties before, so you are eager to taste them.  After narrowing down your selection to a handful of choices, you realize that you only have enough money for one.  You must take your pick of the best of the best of the best of the selection of choices.  It is hard to make up your mind because you are considering what each experience will be like and you want to have the best.  Finally, you make your decision and make your purchase.  What Schwartz found was that people will tend to contemplate a reality in which they chose one of the other options.  By the time they finished eating the chocolate bar that they had purchased, they felt less satisfied with their purchase because they (in some fashion) were aware of the many other realities in which they were more satisfied with the other products than they were satisfied with their choice in the present reality.  The more choices there were, the more realities there were to cause regret.  So if this is true then does maximized choice really create maximized freedom, or does it make us a slave to our desire for ultimate satisfaction?  In this sense, can we define freedom as merely our unlimited ability to choose?

Freedom of speech is an popular topic of many media sources these days.  Anything from Westboro Church’s protests to the occupy movement, people are eager to express their opinions because they believe it is their right to be able to express them.  Of course, legally in North America, it is…but it is here where we run into problems because some of what people say can take other people’s freedom away.  A prime example is the aforementioned Westboro “Church” of Topeka Kansas.  This is a group of people who protest people’s funerals with such statements of hatred and offence, that it cannot be ignored.  The family of a deceased soldier have the right to be free to bury their loved one in peace and respect, yet the people of Westboro deny them of this freedom by shouting out things like “God hates American soldiers.”  This freedom of speech then serves to oppress.  This is not to say that we should not have the freedom to speak our opinions.  The occupy movement was recognized as at movement for social justice for those affected by the increasingly capitalist economy in America.  In this case, a person's suffering is expressed in a desire to be free to work.  It is when our speech becomes rotten and oppressive in nature towards others that freedom of speech just becomes another weapon to wound and enslave.  And the idea that freedom can be used to enslave is also paradoxical if not outright contradictory.

But what about political rights?  Democracy is the best, right?  We have seen the news headlines of America helping other nations like Iraq, Egypt, Libya and even Kosovo achieve “true” democracy.  People seem to think that all humans should have the right to vote.  Obviously this is true in democratic countries, but is democracy freedom?  Sure it puts power into the hands of the majority, but what about the minority?  How can the majority explain freedom to the minority?  Is it just about the greater good in an individualistic culture?  Try to explain the greater good to an unborn human baby that has had its life ended, its body removed from its mother and discarded like a piece of rotten meat…all decidedly ethical by people who have reduced human life down to mere biological processes and stages of cell division.  Does freedom oppress and destroy life for the mere satisfaction of others?

If these things are not what true freedom is, then what is true freedom?

In the western worldview, we are all individuals competing for success, recognition and reward.  The corporate ladder is made to climb.  Our opinions are made to be heard.  Our choices are our own to make.  Is this really the best paradigm for living a fulfilling life?  Will we always be stepping on other people’s toes to catch a glimpse of the freedom that we long for, but will never see?

What if freedom was something else entirely?

Let me tell a story about a people.  This people became separated from their Creator, the One who gave them complete freedom.  This people were given chance after chance to become reconciled once again with their Creator, but they failed repeatedly.  They were instead enslaved by their religious laws, their selfishness, and eventually by other nations.  They yearned for release!  To be freed from oppression and slavery!  Even more so, they sought freedom from the fallen state of the world, from humanity.  They looked forward to the promised day when their Creator would renew them as a nation, to free them from their slavery and cure them of their brokenness.  They sought to be resurrected and reborn free from their separation from their Creator.

This is the story of Israel and Yahweh, the God of Abraham.

Freedom, then, is not about being able to do more and say more.  It is not about being able to vote against “liberals” or “conservatives”.  It is not about experiencing the most that we can in life.  It is not about maximized choices. 

Freedom, instead, is about becoming who we were created to be.  It is accepting our true selves, the people we would have been had we not become separated from the One that created us to be free.  In accepting freedom from the One who created the desire in us, we are then free to forgive. 

We are freed from bitterness and hate.  We are freed from self-loathing.  We are freed from “seeking our self-worth from the opinions of other people”.  We are freed from the standards we have for ourselves which we constantly fail to meet.

"We are free to love. 

We are free to be loved”…

~~~~~

Israel looked forward to a day when the imperfect would fade and the perfect would be made fully known.  The day when all wrongs and rights would be judged by the supreme Judge.  The day when all that is wrong in the world is made right.  When nations will have no reason for borders.  When wars and speeches of hate are silenced and peace flows through our hearts.  When love overcomes all and our satisfaction is found in the very One that made us who we are.  The One who understands us more than we understand ourselves.

In that time, we will be reborn.  We will be liberated from the oppression of sin and brokenness.  We will be NEWBORN…   

Kosovo Reflections Part 1 - Getting to Know Kosova

Several day ago, I returned home from the country of Kosovo.  Most of the people I have talked to about this trip responded to me by asking questions like, “Kosovo…Where is that?” or for those who remember the news headlines many years ago, “There was a war there a while ago, right?”  My guess is that this ignorance about Kosovo is in part due by the small size of the country, but also because it was officially recognized as a country by NATO in the year 2008.  I hope that anyone who doesn’t know anything about Kosovo, will learn much about it through my posts.  In this post I will list some interesting tidbits about the country that I found to be important in understanding Kosovo and its people.

1. Geographically, the Repulic of Kosova lies north of Greece and directly south of Serbia.  The climate is similar to where I come from in Canada, hot and muggy in the summer and cold and damp in the winter.  The landscapes vary depending on where you are in the country.  I had the opportunity to travel to all parts of Kosovo and witnessed its rolling hills to the east, soaring mountains and their lush valleys to the west, and expansive farmlands in between.  All in all, the landscapes are beautiful as is the weather (most of the time). 

2. Kosovo is home to approximately 1.7 million people, 92% of which are Albanian and 4% of which are Serbs, and 4% are other peoples like the Turks, Bosniaks, and Roma.  About two-hundred thousand of those people live in the capital city, Prishtina, which is also the city I stayed in during the three week trip.  The people of Kosovo are warm to foreigners and are (for the most part) pro-American due to NATO’s involvement in their independence.  Their patiortism for the United States can even exceed those of Americans, especially on the 4th of July (remember, fireworks can kill!). 

3.  Something that the people of Kosovo have that many people in North America miss out on is strong emphasis on family unit.  Kosovo has a soft honour based culture (that is typically found in eastern cultures) due to the influences of the Ottoman Empire in their past.  This honour is what motivates people to do many of the things that they do (western cultures are typically guilt based) and to the goal is to bring honour to oneself by bring honour to the family (though this traditional mindset is becoming less the case with the introduction of secularism).  Still, even today families stay together for most of their lives in houses that are four or five stories high and large enough to fit an entire extended family in it.  In my time there I did not see a single western style single floor house made for one couple and their children.  This showed me how the importance of family in Kosovo even influences the construction of houses and neighbourhoods.

4. Kosovo is filled with young people.  There are so many young people that the nation's median age is actually 26.7 years old. One man I talked with said that over 50% of the population is under 30 years old.  That being said, there is a growing gap between the older traditional generations and the younger secular generations.  It becomes more evident that the youth are slowly taking over as you walk through Prishtina's core at nighttime and observe club after club pumping out music until the early morning.  We were fortunate to spend time with many young people at an arts camp and after our concerts, but we were also privileged to meet some older individuals who retained the knowledge of their tradition as well as the events of the Kosovo War that took place in 1999.

5.  The food in Kosovo is some of the best that I have had.  Much of it is inspired by other European countries, however there are some traditional dishes that I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to try.  The most common thing to eat is something like Doner (meat roasted on a vertical spit, usually beef, lamb or chicken) or Burek (a thin flaky pastry that is filled with cheese, minced meat, or fruit sauce).  A good drink to have with your dinner is Ayran (plain yogurt mixed with salt and water) which could be considered an aquired taste for some, but is delicious with pizza or other rich and spicy dishes.  In Kosovo there is a bakery on almost every block and each one offers freshly made pastries.  There is also no shortage of coffee shops, which act as the local hangout spots for younger and older adults.  The people of Kosovo are known for their café hopping (jumping from café to café), especially on rainy days.

6. Music in Kosovo is a big deal!  Most of the mainstream music channels are saturated with pop and hiphop genres; however, there are smaller and newer subcultures that prefer rock, metal and country music as well.  We had heard that the most popular metal band in Kosovo was called Troja (pronounced Troya), but unfortunately we were unable to grab a taste of the band while there.  Very few city dwellers seem to listen to the traditional Albanian style music.  To be exposed to that one would have to travel to a town outside of the larger cities where their style of folk music is handed down through generations.  The çifteli is one of the primary instruments used in Albanian music, which is very reminiscent of traditional Greek music with a middle-eastern flare.

There is much more that I could go on, but I wanted to save some for more focused posts.  Kosovo definitely made a mark on my heart and its people a fond impression in my memories.  There is no doubt that I will be back to play some music again in Kosovo, only a matter of time…

On Waiting...

Way back in the years of my childhood, I remember how I spent time with my grandmother.  She was the quintessence of patience and virtue.  I remember one specific day when she took me with her to the doctor’s office.  We sat down there in the waiting room (where were the toys that medical practitioners usually keep in the lobby?) and waited  I still am unnerved by how slow time passed by when I was 6 compared to now.  What must have been hours went by and still no nurse came into the room to admit my grandmother in.  I became jittery and fidgety.  Sitting there in that room was the worst torture anyone could do to me.  I whined and complained.  How could my grandmother do this to me?  Make me wait for hours on end for something that had nothing to do with me?

…and waited.

Her eloquent response to my whining was profound, “Patience is a virtue, Dear.”

~~~~~

Patience is one of those virtues that seems to be put to the side in my culture.  In North America, patience seems to be a worthless virtue.  Literally everything is designed so that we don’t have to be patient!  Computers are getting faster, access to internet is more widespread, work schedules are tighter, and even food can be made and served in under five minutes.  It somewhat disturbs me how the mindset of my culture has been conditioned to expect prompt service and to always be 120% efficient with our time.  Waiting is unheard of!  If we are made to wait, it is to the point of offense.  Our time is being wasted and time, of course, is money.

I am occasionally deluded by the thought: you know, I’m actually a pretty patient person.  Then I promptly look down at my smartphone because I can’t wait to get home to check my e-mail.  Sure, society is always on the go and you have to keep up or get left behind, but are we losing a valuable virtue just because we don’t have time to learn it?

Nothing in my life shows me how impatient I am more than my times of self reflection and prayer…especially in time of prayer.  This past spring, I was made very aware of how much my culture’s impatience is flowing through my veins.  The speaker of my college’s conference spoke about waiting on the Lord.  He spoke about how, as an international worker, he needs to spend a lot of time in prayer.  He admitted that the first few hours are usually spent climbing through thoughts and feelings before his mind is clear, at which time he just waits.

This concept of waiting was not new to me, but in that moment as he spoke of it I knew that I had no knowledge of what it was like to wait on the Lord in that manner.  The most I had ever spent in prayer was an hour, and that was difficult enough!  How could someone spend up to 6 hours or more in prayer?  I wouldn’t know what to…say…

Why do we have to say anything?  Do we have to constantly have words at the ready?  Why are we so opposed to silence and stillness?

The Bible’s authors knew a good amount about this.  To be still and know God.  To wait on the Lord.  In the Old Testament a psalmist wrote:

 “I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning.” (Psalm 130: 5,6)

Waiting for the Lord means many things according to this passage.  Note how in this passage the psalmist compares his time waiting for the Lord to a watchman waiting for dawn.

Waiting involves the passage of time.  I hate how time passes by now like water through my fingers, when it once stood as unmoving as glass.  I forget many times when I feel that I am off course or not doing enough, that God’s timing is much different than mine and that I must exercise patience as that time goes by.  Like when I was young, this process is torture to me.  It is sometimes accompanied by periods of feeling that God is not there, that He has moved somewhere else for the time being.  It is hard not to feel depressed in these times.  Though it is tough, we must move on and hope…

Waiting involves the hope that what we are waiting for will come.  I find myself continually looking to the future for a time when God would make Himself better known to me.  I think that this culturally engrained vision of only looking forward prevents us from seeing what we have now.  Instead of seeing how God is with us, we look to see where God might be leading us.  Maybe we should be more concerned about the present?  We might be surprised by what we find…

Waiting involves trusting that God will move and speak.  I under exaggerate when I say that this part is really hard for me.  Again, my culture’s imprint on me is by how much we plan for the future so that we can be prepared for anything.  Unfortunately, we can’t control most of what comes our way.  The weather cannot be stopped, I cannot end my constant aging, and many other events come to pass without warning.  One of my struggles is to trust that God has things under control, even when I don’t.  This is a work in progress for me that makes itself evident every day.

Lastly, waiting involves seeking.  Unlike many other concepts of waiting, this one was a brand new concept for me to swallow.  Through my first years of college, I found myself expecting that God was just going to start talking to me or give me signs without doing anything myself.  I was rarely reading scripture or spending time in prayer.  I wanted God to just make Himself known to me, to fix me and change me, without getting my hands dirty and stepping out of my ‘coasting’ shoes; but how would the Lord ever be seen if I were not seeking for Him?  How would a watchman see the sunrise if he fell asleep?

Seeking while Waiting

So how do we wait and seek, that we might find?  Spending time in Scripture and in prayer is a good start.  The conference speaker compared his time in prayer to waiting for the bus.  He said that one cannot wait for a bus and work in the garden, or wait for a bus and do the dishes.  One must be at the bus stop to be waiting for a bus.  Similarily, you must be in a position of waiting for God if you are ever going to hear from Him.

One of my friends put it this way: if you are planning on catching a fish, you have to cast your line into the water.  It doesn’t mean that you will catch a fish every time you cast your line, but you will never catch a fish if you never cast your line.  In out seeking for God, we sometimes hear from God.  It doesn’t happen every time, but how would be hear unless we are in the act of seeking?

Prayer is only one way to open yourself up to God, but it is something that all of the prophets and apostles did to seek God.  It is well known that Christ often left the apostles to go off and pray alone, that he might hear from the Father.  Prayer is the heart of a person.  If we are to made to put out identities in God yet we are not praying to Him, it is like a marriage where one spouse starts ignoring the other.  Eventually there will be a large rift between the two that can only be remedied by communication.

~~~~~

I am constantly learning what it means to wait on God.  Life tests my patience everyday.  I end up having to shift my mindset from “my time is important” to “God will work when He deems it time”.  Does this mean I just wait in life?  Well, no.  We have to live, earn money, pay bills, etc.; however, out connection with God should be lived out as well, so that the hook is in the water constantly throughout the day.

In under a week I will be in Kosovo.  I have no clue as to what God will show me while I’m there, or what God will accomplish in the hearts of men and women.  I pray that God would show himself to my team and I as we try to relate to people about life and music and what is beyond all of that.

I feel as if I’ve been waiting for so long, but now God is moving in incredible ways.  The sunrise is approaching.  I just hope that I will be awake when it comes.

The Cost of Discipleship (Part II) - From Worship to Sacrifice

At the end of January, my college hosted a conference of ministry leaders from all over the globe.  This conference is held each year and tends to be the largest and most anticipated event of the school year.  It consists of three days of music, fellowship and information packed seminars that share with everyone how God is moving in the world.  I had seen four conferences in my time at college, but this one felt much different right from the get-go.  The conviction in my heart from my winter’s dark night of the soul still burned in my heart when the speaker began his four part series…

The music had just ended for the opening session and as I sat down, the man began to speak.   

“This, what we are calling worship these days, is very good emotional preparation for self-sacrificing love.”

The words which he uttered carried great meaning, beyond what many members of my culture would understand.  I will attempt to journey through the thoughts which were presented and which changed the way I viewed the world and my own faith.

The Beginning of a Journey

When I began my time at Heritage College & Seminary, my goal was to become a worship pastor.  I loved music and had a passion in my heart to serve God through the gifts that he had given me.  Throughout my time in the Church Music program, I learned a great many things about what worship is and is not.  I discovered that I had many misconceptions of the nature or worship and I also discovered that many (not all) church goers today are as clueless as I was about worship.

In North America, the word worship has almost been reinvented.  People throw the word around when talking about a certain genre of music, or for a time in which we praise God through music.  I do not discount the qualification of these things as worship, but worship is such a deep concept that merely using the word to describe these things teaches people a very oversimplified concept of worship that ends short of what true worship calls us to do.

So what is worship?  We immediately arrive at a problem with the word as we deal with translation issues from the original Hebrew and Greek languages.  The word worship originated from the old English word weorthscipe which, when broken down, means worth/value (woerth) and shape/condition (scipe).  Together it can be defined as acknowledgement or recognition of God’s worth.  This seems to be more congruent with our understanding of what worship is; however, there is a large gap between the old English language and the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.

To start, there are several words translated into the word worship.  Aboda (Heb.) in the OT typically refer to service associated with work done in the temple.  In the NT, latreia (Grk.) is linked to service or sacrifice, such as the OT allusion that Christians should offer up their lives to God as a sacrifice (Rom 12:1). 

Another set of words is also used: proskyneo and its Hebrew equivalent shachac.  These terms refer to a position of submission (and therefore a recognition) of God’s sovereignty.  Positions such as bending the knee or bowing down are paired with the acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty and are observed as ways of expressing a worship filled heart.

The words show us the ancient cultural understanding of our relationship with God, but how does this affect our view of what worship is in relation to humanity?

Many people have written on the topic of worship and how it operates within the human heart.  Louie Giglio sees worship as “our response…to God for who He is, and what He has done”.  John Piper understands that worship is the end to all things, that the universe was made to display the worth of his glory and that humans were created to reflect it.  Two common elements remain constant in every definition of what worship is: a) worship is something that includes God as He is, and b) we respond or reflect His glory through our words, actions and lives.

Worship is a relational concept that even stems into our understanding of the Trinity.  Harold Best describes the Trinity as the "uniquely Continuous Outpourer who continually pours himself out between the persons of the Godhead in unceasing communication, love, friendship, and joy."  

He continues in his book Unceasing Worship:

“We were created continuously outpouring. Note that I did not say we were created to be continuous outpourers. Nor can I dare imply that we were created to worship. This would suggest that God is an incomplete person whose need for something outside himself (worship) completes his sense of himself. It might not even be safe to say that we were created for worship, because the inference can be drawn that worship is a capacity that can be separated out and eventually relegated to one of several categories of being. I believe it is strategically important, therefore, to say that we were created continuously outpouring—we were created in that condition, at that instant, imago Dei.”

By understanding how we were created, we attain a glimpse of what we should strive to become.  If we understand that worship is constantly coming out of us, we can identify the objects or entities that our worship reflects.  If we worship sex, our lives reflect it.  If we worship money, our lives reflect it.  If we worship God, our lives reflect it.

To Lose One’s Self

What does all of this talk about worship really lead us to?  What is the relevance in our lives?

As we reflect back on the conference and the speaker’s words, we see more of the picture.  Our western understanding of worship is highly emotional and limited to musical worship.  His words are a critique and a challenge.  Why do we go to church each Sunday, raise our hands in “worship” and not follow it up with our lives?  The worship in which we participate on a corporate level should serve as preparation for the rest of our lives.  The time we spend in worship at church prepares us for self-sacrificing love in the world with our lives.  It prepares use to give ourselves up for Christ and the good news which he has left for us to share with the world.

It is, then, the offering up of our lives as sacrifices to God that worship calls us to commit to.  That is the cost of discipleship.  The prophets knew it well, the apostles knew it well, the martyrs knew it well.  What will our response be?

*****

As the speaker continued, he cited the same passage which had been convicting me every since I arrived home from Kazakhstan.  He emphasized a painful passage that continually shows me my selfish and sinful nature.

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

It was apparent for me that I valued my life as a westerner a considerable amount, even more than I valued the mission of Christ.  The words finally sunk in.  To deny myself was to lose my life for Christ.  Not to specifically go out and die in His name (though that is sometimes where the path ends in this world), but to give up all I know and love so that Christ is the highest desire that I have, that I may lift my cup to that height and have it filled with nothing less than the love and glory of God; not money, not relationships, not any of the many pleasures of the world; that my worship would reflect only Him.

It is a tough call, one that is completely unnatural.  The speaker mentioned that to seek God in the full degree of the task is the most unnatural thing that humans can do.  We will scoff and try to justify our lives.  That is the nature of western culture.  We do not understand these things the same way that believers do in areas of the world with high levels of persecution and oppression.  Sometimes we need to hear a different perspective, from someone who understands what the cost of discipleship is in an intimate fashion.

Though my rational mind screams at me to stop and be reasonable, my heart yearns for a sweeter aroma.  It longs for freedom. 

It places its hope in that which the eye cannot see.

After Kazakhstan - The Cost of Discipleship - Part 1

Have you ever come to a point in your life where it was as if you were approaching a fork in the metaphorical path of time?  You first see it as you come around a bend in the road, but as you get closer you realize that at some point you are going to have to make a decision on which direction to take.  Sometimes there are road signs.  Go left and you will be successful, go right and you will surely be doomed (though most often life does no give us two extreme choices like that).  Other times there are no signs whatsoever and you must choose solely on instinct or from the knowledge of your surroundings.  You may know that the left eventually leads to a river of fresh, rejuvenating water and that the right will lead north, which is further into the forest.

This past August I came to one of these forks in the road.  One way lead back to education, the other way led to solely working and paying off debt.  The only thing was that I was given a day to make up my mind.  Two days later, I was moving all of my things into my college dorm.

After the trip to Kazakhstan, I had much time to myself in contemplation of what I had experienced.  I was sure of many things.  New convictions had made themselves known in my life.  I came back with an awareness of society’s fragility and endless vanity.  I was ashamed in myself, for the years I had wasted on useless things.  I grieved at all of the opportunities I had passed by to bear witness to God’s love and grace through my own life, the words from my mouth and from the deeds of my hands.  I questioned everything over again.

The words I had uttered in Kazakhstan were coming around and piercing my heart as if they were a red hot blade.  These words were indeed the sharpest of any in the world, sharp enough to sever soul from spirit.  They presented a reality I had known for so long, yet my heart had not understood the depth of their command

            “Whoever wants to by my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

There are several things happening here.  First, Jesus had just finished telling the disciples that he would experience great suffering, rejection by the elders, chief religious leaders and killed. 

Second, he made it known to those he spoke to that if they truly wanted to follow him, they must adopt a new worldview which does not include the ego as the center of importance.  They must deny their pride and desires of the flesh.  They must give up their personal lives, possessions, time, energy, minds and bodies to the service of the one they wish to follow.  When Christ approached the apostles, he asked them to follow him, and then began walking.  The apostles either had to choose to follow this “rabbi” which meant giving up their jobs and saying goodbye to their families and personal comforts…or they could’ve just ignored Christ’s words and continue living life following other idols. 

Could they keep up with Jesus as he walked away?

Third, when Christ tells those around him that they need to pick up their cross daily, he invoked a strong, deeply rooted series of emotions inside of his audience.  The cross represented different things depending on which ancient near-eastern ethnic group you belonged to.  If you were Jewish, to be hanged on a cross was to be cursed by God.  In Deuteronomy, God established a law that states

“if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God)...” (Dt. 21:22-23)

God made it known that anyone who was hanged on a tree is someone who has committed a sin of such severity that they were to be put to death.  By the time of Christ, the cross represented this same curse, but in a different way.  If someone’s sin made them worthy of death, they would be stoned.  In that time, they had the chance to ask forgiveness of God; but if they were condemned to be crucified, they were being cursed to God with no chance of redemption.  On the cross, God forsakes the sinner…

If you were Roman, to be hanged on a cross was to be shamed by men.  The cross was not just viewed as a horrific means of death.  It was also a means of portraying shame upon the person being crucified.  Those who were crucified were stripped naked, beaten and tortured, hung from the crucifix (often for several days of agonizing pain and suffocation) upon a well-traveled public path.  The cross was reserved for the most despicable people, mostly escaped slaves.  There was no greater form of humiliation and dehumanization as the cross in the Roman world.

 

Christ knew what was coming; he predicted his death to his disciples, but he didn’t stop there.  He told them that they must pick up their own cursed crosses and die each day.  This death was to be a death to their worldly self which conceded too its fleshly desires.  To follow Christ meant to give one’s self up and to face a world that would curse them, humiliate them, and dehumanize them.

Could people keep up with Christ?

The reality of the cost of discipleship hit me hard.  I knew that I either had to give up my whole life, or to give up my faith.  There is no room for an intermediate state.  Either one is in all the way, or “out of luck”.  As I started school again, I constantly questioned my motives, my faith and my sanity.

In wintertime, I had grown so tired from the weight of unanswered doubts and negative thoughts that I arrive at a place where I began to rebuild my faith from the foundations.  That week made me realize something though: Faith means very little unless you are willing to put time and energy into it.  The more that you invest or put on the line for your faith, the more important your faith will become to you.

In the following weeks of January, I felt something for the first time in my life.  I felt as if I was not alone.  Every time that I opened my Bible, the words struck my heart’s strings.  My body resonated with their vibrations.  I was putting time and effort to spend with God and giving Him the invitation to speak to me…

And I would not fully understand the extent to which He would take advantage of that invitation until the last week of January…

Could I keep up with Christ?