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washedI love the 1991 movie What about Bob? staring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss.  On the surface, it’s about a guy named Bob Wiley, who has obsessive compulsive disorder (among other things).  As the movie begins, we’re to think that Bob is “crazy.”  This being the case, he seeks professional help from Dr. Leo Marvin, a noted psychiatrist (played by Richard Dreyfuss).  Leo seems to be the picture of mental and emotional sanity.  In fact, he just wrote a soon-to-be bestselling book called Baby Steps, a work so significant that he is going to be interviewed by Good Morning America at his vacation home.  Along comes Bob, to interfere with his life.

Bob is afraid of death, which is what drives him to obsessive behaviors.  He is afraid that his heart might suddenly stop beating or—as he puts it—his bladder will explode.  He is paralyzed by fear, to the point that he is terrified of elevators, busses, water, or any public place.  It seems that his fear of death is the thing that’s causing him to be “insane.”

But Bob is not the only insane one in the movie.  Bob is afraid of death, but so is Leo.  However, Leo’s tremendous fear of death expresses itself differently.  While Bob seeks to deny his own death by controlling and cleaning everything, Leo seeks to deny his own death by becoming immortal.  Have you ever noticed that about the movie?  It’s really not a movie that’s just about Bob—what about Leo?  Leo is just as fearful as Bob is.  Leo is just as crazy as Bob is.  Leo has an overblown ego and longs to be on par with Sigmund Freud.  Leo wants to be world-renown, legendary, and a household name.  How does Leo cope with the thought of his own mortality?  By becoming immortal, having a name that goes on forever in the history books.  Bob has his coping mechanisms, but so does Leo.

The movie is really asking us to identify with either Bob or Leo.  We all, along with Bob and Leo, have something in common: the fear of death.  Ernest Becker’s 1974 book Denial of Death, helps us to understand this.  Becker argues that human personality is shaped by one’s own method of denying the fact that you’re going to die.  Everyone is afraid of death; everyone seeks to suppress his or her own mortality.  We can’t stand the fact that we’re just “fancy worm food.”  No human should have to live with the knowledge that one day, slimy, defecating worms will win.  That’s madness.  The more you meditate on that fact alone, the more that it’ll drive you insane.  Humans seem so strong and so dignified, yet, not matter who you are, in the end, the worms win.

That’s what Bob knew, which is what makes him not so crazy after all.  In fact, by the end of the movie, Bob is the sane one and someone else takes his spot in insanity—Dr. Leo Marvin.  By recognizing his own mortality, not hiding from it, but laying it out on the table, Bob is healed.  By denying his mortality, Leo goes insane.  The movie is making a powerful statement, isn’t it?  Those who are humble and own up to their own creatureliness will be saved; but those who are arrogant and persist in narcissism will be lost.  (Those who seek to be like God will be kicked out of Paradise!)

But there’s another reason why Leo goes crazy and Bob finds health.  From the first moment of the movie, Bob seeks help for his problems.  Leo does not.  Leo seeks fame; Leo seeks escape; Leo seeks only those things that will add to his resume.  He doesn’t want to help anyone, but himself.  At the same time, Bob confesses his struggles, seeks help from those around him, and doesn’t stop finding ways to help those who are in need.  Again, Bob finds help and Leo goes insane.

The fastest way to madness is to make this world all about you.  That’s what we learn from Bob and Leo.  The route to healing is to confess your shortcomings and seek help from outside yourself.  By the end of the movie, not only has Leo’s narcissism caused him to become mad, but also, it caused him to blow up his own house.  Bob’s behavior, on the other hand, led him to emotional health, a wedding, and a successful career.

Some people say that faith is just another coping mechanism; they say that God is a crutch.  But this is simply not true.  A coping mechanism is something that you do to deal with your fears by hiding them (denying them).  So you drink, shop, seek fame, seek pleasure, seek control, and so forth, as a way of denying your death.  You hide your fears with the help of the coping mechanism.  Coping mechanisms are used to ward off the worms.  But this is ridiculous, because nothing within our own resources can make death go away.  Who are we fooling?

Faith, on the other hand, hides nothing!  Faith actually requires the opposite.  To have faith is to be honest and express the truth about yourself.  Faith gets it all out into the open.  So you confess that you are just fancy worm food; you own up to the fact that you don’t have what it takes; you recognize that you’ve fallen short; you don’t deny that you’re scared, hurt, lonely, and lacking.  To have faith is to be authentic with yourself and others.  Most of all, to have faith is to seek help from outside of yourself, something that coping mechanisms will not allow.  Coping mechanisms depend on individual strategy and self-maintenance.  Faith says, “I don’t have what it takes and I need help.”  Like Bob, faith depends on the resources that come from outside the self.  Or you could say that atheism is proud and faith is humble.

Just read the Psalms in the Bible sometime.  The Psalms are brutally honest about life.  “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity” (Psalm 32:5).  “Darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18).  “Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me; my enemies trample on me all day long” (Psalm 56:1-2).  “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4).  Scriptures like these feel real to us, don’t they?  They express how we often feel, they hide nothing.  They know me.

The one who has faith makes the pivotal turn: he rolls his fears over onto God.  He seeks help from outside of himself and from outside the dismal human condition.

In order to regain your sanity, you have to become like Bob.  You have to lose your life in order to find it.  One of the most healing things that you can do is truly to experience your anxieties and fears and then give them over to the Lord.

Just to focus on your problems and not on the Lord (and get help from outside of yourself) is “depression.”  Just to focus on the Lord and not acknowledge your problems is “denial.”  To roll one over onto the other is “faith.”

There’s a kind of madness that leads to life and a kind of madness that doesn’t.

© Samuel Kee, 2013

pennyI’ve discovered a way to get rich quick.  And it’s in the Bible, so it’s cool.  You don’t have to buy anything, either.  In 1 Corinthians 8:9, we read:

“For you know that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

It’s a celebrated and accepted fact that Jesus became poor.  He left the glory of heaven for the gory of earth; he put aside his treasures in order to take up our trials.  He died with neither property nor penny.  He sank to every dirty depth of human depravity, dying on a criminal’s cross, as mockers spit in his face and his friends ran the other way.  Jesus became poor.  He is the definition of “poverty.”

Nonetheless, we are not as easy to admit that we are rich.  We freely believe and admit that Jesus became poor, but we never think to admit—or believe—that we are rich.  Yet, that is exactly what this verse teaches us.  Jesus became poor and we became rich.  They are two sides of the same coin.  By his poverty, we become rich.  In other words, you can’t separate the two.

If Jesus became poor, then we become rich.  There’s no denying it.  If we proclaim the one, then we must embrace the other.  The quickest way to get rich is to put your trust in the poverty of Jesus.  We call upon Jesus to pay for our debts, which he did on the cross.  Taking our debts away from us and nailing them to the cross, he exchanges them for his treasure.  He absorbs our poverty and we are lavished with his plenty.

Down on yourself?  Down on life?  Turn over the coin of Jesus and look what’s on the other side.  On the other side of his poverty, are your riches.  Those who rely on the cross have more wealth than this world has ever known or could ever hold.  They have riches that every bit of gold on earth points to and anticipates.  And nothing can take away these riches, which are stored in an eternal place.  No amount of money can buy unconditional love, acceptance, worth, meaning, joy, forgiveness, and grace—and no one on earth lives for anything other—and each of them can be yours through the poverty of Jesus.

© Samuel Kee, 2013

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Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack, and Jack liked to go fishing. His favorite place to fish was his uncle’s pond. One day he went out in a small row boat as he usually did and began to catch a lot of fish. He would cast out his line, let it fall, catch a fish, and then reel it in. He placed fish after fish in the buckets that he brought, filling five buckets full of fish. At the end of a long morning of fishing, he inspected the five buckets full of lifeless fish–we’ll, except for one of them. One fish was stubbornly moving around. That didn’t matter, he thought, it would be dead by the time he rowed back to shore.

But it wasn’t. In fact, Jack brought in all of the fish, as he usually did, and dumped them out on a picnic table, so that he could inspect his work. All the fish were dead, except for one fish. He figured that he would start to clean and fillet the fish, starting with the dead ones, and work his way to the one living one, hoping that it would be dead by the time he got to it.

An hour or so later, he came to the last fish. But it was not dead yet; it was flipping and flopping around on the table, just as alive as ever. Though just a boy, he knew that this was a remarkable thing. So, he came up with a plan: he would train the fish. He filled one of his empty buckets with water and put the living fish inside of it for an hour. Then he took the fish out of the water for fifteen minutes. Then he put the fish back in the water for 45 minutes and took the fish out for 30 minutes. Then he put the fish in the water for 30 minutes and took it out for 45 minutes. Then he left the fish out of the water for fifteen minutes and took it out for an hour. He continued this pattern over and over until the fish could stay out of the water for an entire day. In fact, he eventually trained the fish so well that it never needed to go in the water again.

Jack fell in love with his new fish and it became like a pet to him, in fact, it was his pet. He even named the fish–Homer. Jack and Homer became best friends. Homer behaved much like a dog. He slept in Jack’s bed, ate from Jack’s hand, and he even responded to Jack’s commands, such as “roll over,” “play dead,” or (Jack’s favorite) “staring contest.”

Jack made Homer a little leash and took him everywhere. Yes, they were the best of friends, a boy and his fish. On occasion, Homer would try to follow Jack to school, and Jack would have to chase him back home by throwing pebbles, saying, “Go on home, Homer–school ain’t no place for no fish! They’ll skin you alive!”

One day, Jack’s mom sent him to the grocery store to get eggs, bread, and milk. Jack put Homer on his leash and the two friends walked the path to the grocery store together: across the field, over the bridge, down the road, along the sidewalk, and into the front door of the grocery store. Jack arrive just fine, but when he started to tie Homer’s leash onto a sign post (fish aren’t allowed in grocery stores, you know, at least not walking ones), he noticed that the leash was light. He quickly looked down at the bottom of the leash and he gasped. The leash was empty! Homer was gone, leaving behind an empty loop at the bottom of the leash where he used to be. “Oh no!” Jack cried, “I lost Homer! I must go back and find him.”

Jack began carefully to retrace his steps from the grocery store: he left the front door, went along the sidewalk, down the road, across the bridge, and–”Oh no! A hole!” Right in the middle of the bridge was a small hole. Timidly, Jack got down on his hands and knees and leaned down toward the hole. He peered through the hole and shuddered in horror. There, below the bridge, laying in the water, lie Homer–drowned.
***
There’s a lesson for us here in this story about Homer the fish. Yes, it’s a funny story, but it points us to a simple truth: things don’t survive outside of the environment they were created to be in. The truth is that a fish cannot survive outside of water, much like a human cannot survive in water. He may if he depends on boats or oxygen tanks but even then, he won’t survive for long. No one can train a fish to survive outside of water. Things die when they are not in their natural environment.

And no one can train a human to survive in this world, outside of Heaven, which is our true environment. You may think that humans survive quite well in this world; but you would be nearsighted in thinking so. We may be able to survive a few moments in this world, just as a fish might be able to survive a few moments outside of the water, but what is a few years–even 100 years–when compared to 100 quadrillion ages of time? It’s nothing, just a mere breath, a rustling of the wind.

Ask yourself why humans die. There has to be a reason. Why don’t we live forever? And don’t give me that nonsense about thermodynamics or the expansion of the universe. Why do things fall apart in the first place? Why does everything decay in the first place? If the second law of thermodynamics or any other theory were really so natural, then why do I have this idea of eternity in my head in the first place? Why do I want to live forever–even better, why do I think that I ought to? It seems like something has pulled me out of the water and everything in me longs to go back. It’s one thing to be able to describe the process by which I am dying outside of the water, which is what science can do, but it is another thing to tell me why I die when everything in me wants to live. Is there a reason why I should not live forever? The most natural thing in the world is life; death, as we all know in our guts, is not. Death is not normal to those who have been created to live. That’s why we cry, question, and fight against it. No fish has ever cried that he was in the water.

If this world is not our natural one, then what world is? Humans, and even all of creation, were created to be in a world with God. Being with the Supernatural is actually what’s natural. We cannot survive in a world without God. We are all witnesses of this fact: everything falls apart. The only world in which we can survive is the world in which God dwells. This world is called Heaven. Heaven is our true home.

Blood Path

samuel kee —  March 12, 2013 — 1 Comment

5In the Ancient Near East, there was a ritual that was performed when two people made a covenant with each other.  The Hebrew word “covenant,” by the way, means “to cut.”  Two people would “cut” a relationship with each other—and understanding this prepares us for the ritual.

We see an instance of this in Genesis 15, where God makes a covenant with Abraham, promising an abundance of descendants, land, and blessing.  When Abraham asks God for some assurance on his promises, here’s what God says to him:

He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other.”[i]

God initiates the ritual of the blood path, to show Abraham how serious he is about keeping his covenant promise.  What is the blood path?  The blood path was created by cutting in half some animals, and dividing the halves apart from each other.  Multiple animals were cut in half and divided, so that the parts formed a path, like the sides of a ladder.  The blood from the divided animals would run toward the center, creating a warm, wet, sticky path of blood, on which the covenant-makers would walk.

Yes, this is gruesome, but it is very powerful.  In performing this ritual, here’s what both parties were saying, “I promise to keep my end of the covenant, and if I don’t, may this be done to me!”  Those who walked down the blood path were committing their lives to each other; and if either broke his end of the deal, he promised to tear his life in half, just as was done to the animals.

When you make a covenant with someone, do you know how serious this is?

But in God’s covenant with Abraham, something went wrong.  Or maybe something went right.  When it came time for both parties to walk down the blood path, one stayed back.  Here’s what it says:

“When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram.”[ii]

In a shocking display of grace, only one person walked down the blood path.  While you think it should have been Abraham (here called Abram), since he was the weak creature, it was not.  The “smoking fire pot” and “flaming torch” represented God, the Creator of the creature.  Only God walked down the blood path.  Only God vowed to tear his life in half if the covenant were broken.  God’s promise was given to Abraham by grace.

In other words, for our purposes, God’s promises to us are made and achieved by divine grace, not by human work.  Though it is not possible for God to break his covenant with us, he will be the one to pay the penalty of a broken covenant.  When we break the covenant, when we are unfaithful to God, when we disobey and rebel against him, he does not demand that we walk down the blood path.  He walks alone.

This account of God’s promise in Genesis 15 points ahead to God’s promise in Jesus.  When God gives us Jesus, he is giving us a new covenant and a new blood path.  Jesus is his Lamb (John 1:29, 1 Corinthians 5:7), which will be torn apart, and used to uphold the covenant where we fell short.  Jesus is the Lamb who will be divided, in our place.  Jesus is the one whose blood soaks the ground, turning to seed, so that we might be reborn.

When Christians keep another ritual, called Communion, here’s what is often said of the cup, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”[iii]

The cup is a covenant, a blood path, which proclaims our Lord’s death.  The Lord Jesus died on the cross; that is where his life was stretched out and torn apart for covenant breakers like us.

Here’s what God is saying to you in Jesus, “I would rather my life be torn apart than yours.  I would rather be divided and trampled on than lose my covenant relationship with you.  I know that you’ve broken your end of the deal, but I will keep it.  I will take responsibility for this covenant.  I will be divided.  My blood will be spilled, not yours.”

Friend, God loves you more than you can imagine.

© Samuel Kee, 2013


[i] Genesis 15:9-10.

[ii] Genesis 15:17-18.

[iii] 1 Corinthians 11:25-26.

How God Rolls

samuel kee —  March 3, 2013 — Leave a comment

Ash WednesdayHere’s a life-changing verse from the Bible: “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4).  First, repentance is turning to God and living how he would want you to live.

Second, look at the order of ideas within the verse.  It does not say, “Your repentance is meant to lead to God’s kindness,” though most of us indulge that thought.  We think that if we’re good enough, then God will be kind to us.  That twisted thought infects our minds, paralyzing both our hope and our repentance.  We need to unmoor ourselves from it.

God’s kindness leads to our repentance, not the reverse—that’s how he rolls.  God is not withholding from you, until you get your act together.  We mostly believe that the better we are, the kinder that God will be to us, as if our actions merit his favor.  But that’s wrong; it is his kindness and grace toward us that draw us to good behavior.  God extends his hand to us, first.  God shows us exactly how he is going to love us, first.  God does everything he needs to in order to convince us of his love, first.

Invitations sent out, he waits for us.

God did us the kindness of creating us.  He did us the kindness of giving us a livable and likable world.   He did us the kindness of pouring into our lives pleasures and beauty.  Most of all, God showed us his kindness by becoming one of us, in order to rescue us from the mess we got ourselves in, showing up at a criminal’s execution, in our place.  All of his cards are on the table; he’s got nothing up his sleeve.  His daily and eternal kindness to you is meant to lead you to repentance.

Are you moved by his show of affection?  Are you wooed by his love?  As a bride before her groom, are we supposed to be in response to our Poet-Warrior, Jesus Christ.  He fought for our freedom to the point of blood and signed our Bill of Debt, “Paid in full.”  There is no outstanding debt that you owe to God because of your sins; the only debt we owe to him is love.  But love cannot be forced, so that is why he does not force.  Love must be a response to the actions of another.  In all love, there is repentance and in all repentance there is love.

© Samuel Kee, 2013

black-dog-uuuSome people think you have to be “good enough” before God will love you.  But God’s love is less like a scale and more like a water slide.  In today’s podcast, you’ll learn a better way to think about God’s amazing love.  Thanks for listening and be sure to share this link!  Fight the Black Dog | Episode 11 | God’s Love

5235I read this annoying Facebook post recently—I’m sure you’ve heard something like it before.  I can’t find the exact quote right now, but it went something like this:

“There’s a spark of goodness in each one of us, you’ve just got to dig deep enough in your heart to find it…There’s a place in your heart where you can find God, that’s pure and unstained by the world, etc.” 

No matter how encouraging this type of sentiment might seem on the surface, it really is not!  The thought behind these statements is to help people be more spiritual.  –Put them in touch with God, get over their guilt, help them to get their eyes off the cares of this world, and so forth.  These sorts of statements do not help us become more spiritual, but less.  To be more spiritual, by definition, we need to focus less on ourselves and more on God.

Any honest person will admit that the deeper you look inside yourself, the worse you feel, not better.  If we look for the spark of goodness inside of us, we’ll only find fumes.  The deeper we look inside ourselves, the dirtier it gets, not purer.  Our dreams betray us.  How often we have dreams at night, when upon waking up we shudder, for the kinds of thoughts that were in our brain—the kinds of desires that we were capable of.

This also comes out in stress and trials.   The more pressure that we’re in, the more our true nature erupts out of us.  Under stress and suffering, we’re like pots of water set to boil; when put to the heat, all of our scum rises to the surface.  Then we realize that humans do not have any goodness or purity within themselves.  It’s all dark and disgusting in there.

If we look inside of ourselves to find God, we’ll strain our eyes until we go blind, or until we get sick to our stomachs because of the evil we find within our own hearts.  Nobody can remain healthy so long as they focus on themselves.  There is no good inside any person, not me, not you.

Have the guts to admit that it’s true.  Our fantasies are sickening; our desires are wacked; our intentions are foul.  You’ve got secrets inside you that would cause anyone to draw back.  There is no goodness inside of you—and there’s no goodness inside of me.

We need help.

The starting point for all spiritual journeys is to admit that you’re lost.  Your relationship with God must start there.  Before you can have hope, you must first realize that you have no hope.  In order to come alive, you must see that you are dead.  There is no resurrection for the living.  Until we get in touch with our inner darkness, we’ll never find God.  Our souls are all like a dark valley, against which the brightness of God is most obviously illumined.

This might really resonate with you; maybe you’re like me and you can’t stand those funky new-aged quotes about our inner goodness.  You’ve been around the block and know that it’s a hoax.  If you’re at least that savvy, then you might like this quote, which is not from some fruity sage with his head in the clouds, but from guy who knew he was absolutely destitute apart from God’s intervening grace:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.  Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.  The venom of asps is under their lips.  Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.[i]

Now, be honest, which describes reality better?  The first quote or this last one?  When you’re done watching the evening news or taking inventory of your own heart, which quote makes better sense of it all?

Which thought helps you to see and which keeps you blind?

© Samuel Kee, 2013


[i] Romans 3:10-18.

i am alone

samuel kee —  February 11, 2013 — 1 Comment

aloneHave you ever felt like you were all alone?  Sometimes, it feels like we’re all alone, sitting in a hallway, surrounded by locked doors.  We can hear everyone else talking on the other side of the doors, but we are cut off from them, just sitting there.  They don’t know we’re there, listening to their words and longing to be a part.

How does God feel about our loneliness?  I encourage you to read Psalm 88, which is absolutely stunning.  The writer is brutally honest, describing his feelings of being all alone, trying to make sense of God’s plan.  He cries out to God, but God does not answer (verses 1 and 13).  He says that it feels like God has cast his soul away and hidden his face (verse 14).  He even goes so far as to say that God has sent his “terrors” to afflict him (verses 15-17).

Perhaps you can relate to the ending of Psalm 88, when the writer says, “Darkness is my closest friend” (verse 18). 

There is a world to discover in that little sentiment.  Being alone is one thing, but being a companion of darkness is another.  It’s not just that the writer is by himself, but that he has been abandoned by his friends and the only thing to come to his side is darkness.  His friends left him, he feels.  God has left him, he feels.  But Darkness has come to hold his hand.

This presents us with a new strategy for being alone.  When you’re alone, seek the companionship of Darkness. 

Why?  Because you will find a Friend there. 

When Jesus was on the cross, he was all alone.  His friends left him, God left him, and he groaned beneath deadly terrors.  He cried out, but no one answered him.  Then the sky turned black and Darkness became his closest friend (Matthew 27:45). 

He did not seek the light, he did not try to break down the locked doors, he simply hung there in the crushing silence.  That moment was a portal through which he entered fully into our world—your world.  This means that you can still find him there. 

You have a Friend waiting for you in the Darkness.        

© Samuel Kee, 2013 

Shocking Love

samuel kee —  February 8, 2013 — 1 Comment

20130208-124151.jpgThe first mark of God’s love, which is a special kind of love, is that it’s shocking. Over and over in Scripture, we’re presented with displays of God’s love that an honest reading finds scandalous. And that’s no overstatement. God’s love is compared to someone who loves a bold whore; someone who risks life and limb to go after a lost sheep; someone who weeps over the very ones who will torture and kill him; someone who forgives his executioners; someone who will show up in a blazing furnace; someone who communes with the untouchables; and someone who will dare to die for sinners.

Remember, the One who does all of these things is no mere mortal, either. He is God. God has no right, if he wants to remain respectable, to go on behaving like this. God does not condemn sinners, nor does he merely put up with them—he actually loves them to death. Rather than they die, he chose to die; rather than they carry their shame, he was put to shame; rather than they be cursed, he was cursed. He caused himself to be deformed, for our sakes, so that we could be perfectly formed, at last. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

 

black-dog-uuuThe sooner that we can admit that things aren’t right in this world, the better.  Most of us will recognize our struggle for acceptance, our struggle with experiences we’ve gone through, and our struggle with failure.  Those who don’t recognize the problems, will not look for the solution, and will remain in denial.  Our help does not come from this world, but from another world.  Thanks for listening and be sure to tell a friend! Fight the Black Dog // Episode 8 // Help from Another World