The choice of joy when tragedy happens

By sheer coincidence, I seem to have a habit of migrating toward places that are infamous for gun violence. I went to college in Kent, Ohio and live about an hour away from Chardon. I now live in Littleton, home of the Columbine shootings. And now, most recently, I learned that Newtown is just a short drive from where I spent the first six years of my life.

Like trying to peel your eyes away from a train wreck, I couldn't stop watching the coverage of the shooting, particularly the interview with Robbie Parker, father of six-year-old Emilie Parker, who was killed on Friday. I bawled watching it several times in a row, because while I'm not in any way envious of the suffering this man and his family are enduring, I am envious of his faith. Just a day after his daughter's death, he spoke at his church and said that he wasn't angry, and he even extended grace toward the family of the shooter. It seems clear that he refuses to wallow in pain, but is choosing to trust God with it instead.

I've read several blogs over the last couple days, attempting to answer the big "Why does God allow these things to happen?" question. Some answers are more satisfactory than others, but there's no way to fully answer that for sure (and this is coming from a seminary student!). But I will say this much: I know that God is good because of the way this man, a flawed, ordinary man, responded in the wake of every parent's worst nightmare. His response is not a typical human response. Because let's face it, bitterness is easy. It's expected. And certainly, it's understandable after a tragedy like this. But bitterness doesn't come from God, and if we are truly following him, I don't think he'll leave us to wallow in it forever.

If nothing else, this proves to me that the holy spirit is more powerful than we can know. You may say otherwise, and instead just call the man crazy or especially brave, but I don't think "brave" or even "exceedingly compassionate" are good descriptors. They just aren't big enough. I call myself a Christian and I believe in forgiveness, but if I was a parent of a murdered child, and the killer was still alive, I'd want nothing more than to hunt him down and kill him myself.

I don't see it much in the winter time because it's usually covered by a sock, but events like this make me remember why I got my "Choose Joy" tattoo. My circumstances at the time of getting it were completely different, but the point was to have a permanent reminder of the fact that true joy is something this world can't touch. It is not dependent on circumstances, it is not the same as "happiness," because joy is not an emotion. It's a deeply-rooted assurance that who we are and what we're made for does not change even if we're hurting, even if our possessions are taken away, even if our loved ones turn on us or are called to heaven sooner than we'd like. Joy, like love, endures all things. No kind of tragedy can touch it.

I love the interview with Robbie Parker, heartbreaking as it is, because it shows that the source of his hope is in something bigger than himself. We can put our hope in temporal things, and in other people, but the tragedy in Connecticut is a reminder that nothing, not even people, are permanent. We need to come to terms with the fact that nothing on this earth is fully guaranteed, nothing in life is guaranteed except God and his sovereignty.

There's much more I'd like to say about the nature of forgiveness, and my own muddled opinion on gun control, but that may be another blog. The latter subject has certainly been beaten to death several times over the last few days, so I may just leave that one to experts who are far more articulate than I.

What I really want to emphasize is this: faith is not something that you have when everything is going well in your life. When tragedies like this happen, faith is the rock that reminds you this pain is not wasted. Faith is what you have left when everything else we trust shows its lack of permanence.

"So you go to cemetery...I mean seminary!"

There's a reason why the word "seminary" is often confused with "cemetery." Some people say this as an accidental slip-up, while others are intentionally "punny." As one professor said, "Seminary life can have two effects: you end up contained in a Christian bubble and completely unprepared for the real world, or you can be challenged to a point where you severely doubt your faith." As my first semester of grad school comes to a close, I think that I'm somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

I have learned something about myself: I am often guilty of camouflaging my beliefs depending on my environment. I'm tempted to "water down" my faith when I'm with my non-Christian friends in Kent, while simultaneously trying to "pump it up" when I'm surrounded by Christians at Denver Seminary.

This may be shocking to some, but I've discovered that I fall under the category of "liberal" in Christian Bubble Land. Realizing this has made me love and hate my non-Christian upbringing. On the one hand, I am grateful to have been raised in an environment where I was encouraged to think for myself. Consequently, I have a better understanding of the objections non-Christians have with Christianity, and that greatly influences the way I go about sharing it. But on the other hand, sometimes I wonder if I'd fit in better if I did grow up in Church World. I get irritated when some Christians constantly harp about "the lost," because I know from experience that God uses people of varying beliefs without them ever knowing it. I have issues with evangelicals who center their ministry on agenda over genuine relationships and a desire to learn from others. I think we miss out on opportunities to love if all we care about are conversion rates.

I've listened to students and professors who grew up in the Bible Belt, and for lack of a better way to say it, sometimes they made me uncomfortable. I despise "Christian-ese" and the few times I've caught myself using it ("God spoke to my heart," "accepted Jesus into my heart"...lots of "heart" euphemisms in Church language!), I cringed with fear that I was becoming "like them." All my judgments of how I used to perceive Christians came back: stiff-necked, arrogant, allergic to anything secular. I want to be devout without being a stereotype. I don't want to lose whatever it is that makes me approachable to people of different backgrounds and viewpoints.

It's because I care about being approachable to non-Christians that I refuse to be a part of the Messianic Judaism program at Denver Seminary, or take part in Messianic Jewish events. That has been an on-going battle this semester; people hear snippets of my testimony and immediately jump on the "You should be in the Messianic Jewish concentration!" bandwagon. In my Training and Mentoring class, we'll have to interview three non-Christian chaplains about how their faith affects their work. There are a few Jewish chaplains in the area who refuse to take part in that assignment. One of them said "Sorry, but I can't have a discussion with a student who attends a school with a concentration designed to target Jews for conversion."

I sympathize with that chaplain. There was a time when I wasn't sure what to call myself; clearly, now that I am a believer in Jesus, I can't define my faith as Jewish, but what about my heritage? Where does one draw that line? Eventually, I came to the realization that there isn't anything Jewish about my faith anymore, and to present it as such would be inaccurate and offensive. Make no mistake: the gospel in and of itself is offensive to many, but the way we present it should not be.

I think, with all due respect to those who call themselves Messianic Jews, that that title actually prevents discussion and promotes hostility. I've had many a frustrated discussion with Christians who feel the need to convince me to change the direction of my ministry, because I have "so much to offer" with my "unique" background. I'm not disputing this, but I'm also a little tired of the novelty status that comes with that "unique" background. As one new friend pointed out, there is no differentiation between Jew or Gentile, Greek or non-Greek in Christ. I don't require any special "title," especially when that title carries such stigma, and is also a misnomer. Technically all Jews are messianic; they just don't believe he's come yet. I could go on and on about this...but that topic deserves its own post.

That's only a smattering of things I've learned this semester. More thoughts and reflections to come, once my Hebrew final has been conquered...