Coffee Stained Salvation

by Parke Ladd

From three years of caffeinated mornings spent on the run–chased by time, a lingering boss and bills still unpaid–dark, circular stains from overflowing clay coffee cups placed atop the metal, blue roof of his 4-door sedan, wipe away in the wind as he drives this morning to work.

He cracks his window open to the kind of temperature and olfactory sensations reminiscent of spring break 2005. No booze, bikinis, bonfires or Bible-beating religious folk reminding everyone of their wayward ways, today, however. But still, something about the weather takes him back to a simpler time.

He used to drive forever, just him and his beat-up, blue sedan, into the great unknown with nothing to do but experience something–anything–and nothing at all. How sweet to behold life and breath, hope and joy, struggle and sorrow; to feel beyond the doldrums of this current life, this facade of security lurking behind ritual and tradition. Instead, he follows rules. Rules designed for the suppression of the religious masses that chose to exchange their freedom for dollar bills and their pursuit of love for a cursed, comfortable existence, long ago.

His thick, black coffee tears through the epidermal layers of his hypersensitive pink palate, his right foot presses the accelerator closer to the floor, and he ponders how he traded the tension of faith for a far more streamlined version of salvation. A salvation derived from measurements, comparisons of the so-called good people and their deeds to the so-called bad and theirs; a safer, more personally beneficial, road to follow through the mystery and messiness of life. How pompous he’s become, six years removed from the beaches of spring, now lifting cup to mouth, a fresh, dark circle forming on his center console, fluid staining his white enamel, brown.

Summer, 2008, that was a good drive; no caffeine required to shake his limp nerve endings back to life. That was when he first felt the breath of God upon his weary soul, the breeze of inner transformation rappelling the precipitous, stone faces of Yosemite like a stream of glory coming from heaven to earth to his lungs as he stood in the valley, wading in cold streams of water, round pebbles stuck between his toes, alive and fully awake in the moment he was currently living. This dingy, blue car, parked in the grass as he walked into the wild, mysterious unknown, filled with discovery and a spirit of belief. Breathing deeper than ever before, scared out of his mind yet unable to stand still, he left his earned accolades in the dirt beside the road and began a new path paved with grace, stones and danger.

But now, three years later, after many days of trading rhythm for routine, the dark circles on the roof of his car and the even darker circles embedded in the pale, gray flesh beneath his eyes, serve as stark reminders of a highly caffeinated, individualistic life spent striving and working in vain for redemption and love. He measures justification by the sweat on his brow and the checklist of rules in the back pocket of a fitted, silk suit he calls religion.

It was my joy to present Coffee Stained Salvation this past Sunday, in response to Galatians 3:1-14 as part of Indy Metro Church’s study through the book.

Clenching fingers ’round thinning neck, diminishing circulation to brain, slowing inhale and exhalations, bursting blood vessels in bulging eyes, the world covertly entices and persuades us into a lethargic state of obedience while seamlessly fading into a background of gray nothingness. The world doesn’t want to kill us but to put us to sleep. Like heroine thirsty for a ripe, blue vein, the world’s wish is that we assume a comatose state. Alive yet not living. Functionally capable, but only to a point. Dependent on a machine, some outside maintenance for our internal sustenance, the world desires not to see us die but to make us dependent, fueling itself on our apathy infused, glazed-over semi-alertness.

The world a pimp, society its prostitute, clinging to the tattered, neon pink fray forming the hem of its muddy overcoat, walking away, our heart in one hand, control in the other. Crawling in chase from street corner to corner, we grasp for the hustler’s love, receiving instead slaps to the skull and soiled dollar bills to pay the rent and next months cable bill. The world whispering portentously, “It’s okay to trade your dreams for comfort, your passions for security, your body for a feeling. There’s no need to do anything but listen to me.” The world–attempting to convince us that our ambitions don’t matter, our hearts useless in making decisions, the stock market the lone dictator and indicator of our every move–is nothing more than a marketing machine, a ravager of minds and destroyer of hearts. Passing through one social medium to the next, painting over the art of life by syncing our very characters, once unique and thriving, with those of others. Singeing any hint of personality, creativity or individualism from the context of humanity, the world lulls us to sleep with evil intent. Like a lion prowling about looking for someone to devour, so the world hopes to devour us.

We live in a world infatuated with sameness, obsessed with making sure that everyone looks and feels the same. We live in a world obsessed with obsessing over things that don’t actually matter. We live in a world consumed with its ability, or lack there of, to consume.

We are engrossed, captivated, devastated and constantly disappointed by the world. The cultural path to normality is an ever perverse and contemporaneously pervasive medium through which we willing trudge if our comfort be maintained. Unaware of its hands wrapped ’round our necks, indefatigably squeezing the life from the veins and arteries of our souls as it gains strength from our slow death; the world seeps in.

Our love either is or is not enough depending on who our love points to and guides others toward.

There are a few options

1. Our love can point those receiving it back toward their own selves.
2. Our love can point those receiving it toward us.
3. Our love can point those receiving it toward Love.

In regards to the first two options, our love is not enough. Options 1 & 2 will always, eventually fail. Guiding people back to themselves with our love only provides them with a false relief composed of temporary facades of undulating self-esteem. Likewise, pointing others to ourselves with our love eventually fails. Let’s be honest, we can provide only so deep a love. Our manufactured depths of care are limited to certain levels and degrees. Pointing others to our own selves with our fabricated love is a selfish act filled with underlying greed and egotistical longings for self-relevancy.

The third option is where our love truly is enough. I John 4:7-8 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Christ followers, if our love points other people–friends, family, co-workers, enemies–toward anyone or anything other than Christ, then we are failing them in our love. We show true love by showing Christ to others, pointing and directing them to him and him alone. If your love–no matter how great, magnificent, worthy, or action packed–does not point others to Christ, than it is a failing love, and it is not enough.

Another follower of Jesus said it this way:

Does being loved mean being made much of? For many people, this is not obviously an act of love. They do not feel loved when they are told that God created them for his glory. They feel used. This is understandable given the way love has been almost completely distorted in our world. For most people, to be loved is to be made much of. Almost everything in our Western culture serves this distortion of love. We are taught in a thousand ways that love means increasing someone’s self-esteem. Love is helping someone feel good about themselves. Love is giving someone a mirror and helping him like whet he sees.

This is not what the Bible means by the love of God. Love is doing what is best for someone. But making self the object of our highest affections is not best for us. It is, in fact, a lethal distraction. We were made to see and savor God–and savoring him, to be supremely satisfied, and thus spread in all the world the worth of his presence. Not to show people the all-satisfying God is not to love them. To make them feel good about themselves when they were made to feel good about seeing God is like taking someone to the Alps and locking them in a room full of mirrors.

Quote from Don’t Waste Your Life by John Piper, page 33, paragraphs 2 & 3. Copyright 2003 by Desiring God Foundation, Published by Crossway books, Wheaton Illinois

I John 4:7-8 as taken from New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. As found on Bible Gateway.

Thoughts On Communication From Flickering Pixels

Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith by Shane Hipps makes a compelling case for stepping back and taking a thorough look at the mediums we use to communicate and how those mediums shape our messages, lives, and beliefs. Pixels is based off of Marshall McLuhan’s research regarding mediums of communication, and, in particular, McLuhan’s famous statement, “The medium is the message.”

Widely accepted for some time now, most communicators believe that the way in which we correspond must adapt to ever evolving circumstances and environments but our message, if we value its content, cannot. In other words, maintain the message at all costs but revamp the method of delivery in order to stay relevant. Responding to this notion Hipps claims, “If the first truth is that our methods necessarily change, the second truth is that whenever our methods change, the message automatically changes along with them. You can’t change methods without changing your message–they’re inseperable.”

Hipps exams the history of communication from verbal to print to Morse code to T.V. to Google, seeking to prove that every new media is simply a modification of the one before it. Hipps’ theory is quietly founded upon the notion that all forms of media are simply extensions of our own selves, yet he believes that communication mediums can quickly turn against us, consume us, and irrevocably damage our message if we don’t see them for what they truly are.

Flickering Pixels is full of in-depth content, wrapped in a neat, easy to consume format. The medium with which Hipps uses to communicate must be examined as well, and he acknowledges this, subliminally inviting the reader to do so. In other words, don’t just devour what media communicators, medium builders or Hipps himself feeds you. Chew, grind and taste what’s in your mouth before you swallow it. And, just as importantly, comprehend how they deliver their messages in the first place. The medium is the message.

Oh, and by the way, you too are a medium for communication. What are your actions saying about your message?

Here’s a passage regarding the differences between information, understanding and wisdom in the Information Age from Pixels.

Information alone is strength without coordination. We become a danger mostly to ourselves when we have it. Understanding is the ability to coordinate that raw information in meaningful ways. Understanding creates a certain enthusiasm. We can direct our knowledge toward potentially useful ends–but we may also be a danger to others. Wisdom, however, is knowing how, when, and why we use our understanding; wisdom is settling into our understanding without being too enamored by it.

The Internet encourages only the knowledge-gathering stage without considering coordination or meaningful connections. Despite Google and Wikipedia’s best efforts, understanding is not born of the answers algorithms provide–answers and understanding are not the same thing. Some will sift through the answers and information, seek to coordinate it, and emerge with understanding–but this is still not the same as understanding.

Unfortunately, the Information Age does little to encourage the development of wisdom. This requires time, experience, contemplation, patience, suffering, and even stillness to obtain. But the churning sea of information never settles long enough to allow for the emergence of wisdom. We are left instead with “the conceit of wisdom rather than real wisdom” and become a burden to society rather than a boon.

If we are not alert, the Information Age may stunt our growth and create a permanent puberty of the mind.

Flickering Pixels, Shane Hipps, pg 71-72

The Land of Java

Procedural elimination and implementation, like an undefiled, virgin coffee drinker attempting interpretation of cafe lingo in order to decide upon something actually worth consuming within the confines of airy Americanos, frothy lattes, and tempting double shot, caramel macchiatos. Words here, words there–colorful, chalk hieroglyphics strewn about on an archaic yet serene and sufficiently large enough blackboard. Never mind the noise, the roller coaster grinding of fresh beans being dropped into machines, blended, and rendered granulated, ready for brewing, and customer satisfaction. Decision making made drastically more difficult in lieu of smudged chalk, false ambiance, tired baristas, sharp grinding, and an impatient line of people anxiously awaiting their turn to get out of the coffee-line-tributary and back into the real world river of folks all dressed in suits and shiny shoes with clean hair cuts and well manicured cell phone covers in attempt to find some sort of individualism in the midst of thousands of smart-phone replicas, mass-produced by the same Chinese company on the other side of the world. Different is in the cell phone protector. Different is where you buy your coffee, and what you choose to hold it in. Streams of coffee drinkers–some with mugs, some with disposable cups, some with thermostats–all drifting into the current that is the work day, the business of making money and helping everyone get exactly what they want. The busy coffee consumers are beautiful people. They move so adeptly, with such purpose and precision. They handle so many different things at once as though they were designed to communicate with ten people at the same time and do it in such a manner in which everyone is satisfied. Watching people who are good at what they do, all while actually enjoying their $5 lattes, is equal part fascinating and entrancing like a good movie, impossible to know exactly what’s going to happen next or who’s going to enter the stream during the next frame.

Authentically You

Insert exclamation marks where needed, adjust spacing properly, correct spelling accordingly, and bend sentence structure artistically because authenticity is what we want–it’s what we’re all we’re searching for. To be genuine disgraces the discriminator, humbles the haughty, and baffles the star struck. We see reality, untarnished by airbrushed sands of time or rocky layers of small talk, politics, and deeply embedded coffee stains. You stand in front of me, and I recognize you with your heart wide open–stereotypical, designer, hyper-secure identity unraveled–your mask, long ago left behind in a closet you don’t remember owning. You’re passions quickly balding for all to see, your flesh showing through more and more as the strands of hair wilt and fall away. No wigs or toupees–you’re unconcealed. There’s nothing to hide, so I can’t care what you look like. I can’t judge what you’ve done. I can’t hate you for what you’re doing. I can’t be fearful, because you are exactly who you claim to be. You are who I see in front of me. You are what you say you are, and you do what you say you’re going to do. You’ve been stripped naked, torn apart from fashion and hipster lingo, ripped from the top down, the veil no longer hides you. You are set apart, yet intertwined. You are in, yet not of. You long for nothing other than for others to see you for who you are and empower them to go and do likewise. You are not a liar. You know the truth. You know the way. You know the path to real life.

Faith Like A Child

Longing for humility–like a little child innocent of the struggle for self–yet hiding behind my computer screen, blending in with cheap, trendy shoes, making the grit of swampy coffee easy to digest for this addict who needs only to satisfy his next fix and think only of his own self. The childlike dream falls apart in the midst of busy work, burning joe, and the noise of beans screaming down the grinder shoot, not yet having accepted their fate. Dark coffee made palatable by chemical inductions, creams made in factories, and sugars derived in a laboratory. There’s no taste left here, only fixes. Only fatuous needs fulfilled, addictions satisfied, and painful headaches erased by the soothing flow of dark, seedy, roasted beans, cascading down my throat, curing my morning hangover otherwise known as “the real world” where it doesn’t matter what my coffee tastes like or who I drink it with, only that it wakes me up, opens my eyes for a few hours, and wears off so I can eventually go back to bed. Caffeinated nation. Caffeinated world. Wake up with a sip, ignore the sunrise. Wake up with a $5 mocha, ignore the beggar on the street. Wake up with green aprons, ignore those around us. Wake up with corporate America, ignore our neighbors. Pour the cream–the textured, hydrogenated fat–into my coffee and head off into the world. Grab my liquid energy, get on my treadmill, and run from the raging bulls chasing me between cubicles for the next 8-10 hours of my life. Toro. Toro. Cafe is a constant. It’s always there for me, always working, always opening my eyes for just long enough, in just the nick of time. It’s a temporary fix used to wash away our sleepiness for a set period of time, never genuinely relieving us of our zombie-like trek about this place as we sleep walk from one stage of life to the next. Sleep walking from one corner of our lives to the next, never really experiencing anything, never really doing anything besides drinking the coffee and catching a few energy jolted moments along the way. Wake up O you sleeper for a new day is dawning; arise from your underlying slumber and move with freedom for what this day holds!

Settling For Bread

I ride the streams and tributaries of crowds into the river full of suits, but I prefer a boat, handling and stabilizing my coffee as the waves ebb and flow, guarding it from salt water spray as we cut through the morning fog with simultaneous fervor and reluctance. I got on the boat but somehow forgot the bread. I’ll be hungry in a few hours and so will the others with me. You say something about yeast, and I know you’re angry that I forgot the food. It was my responsibility, and I forgot the sustenance. You whisper something about bread, and I know, once again, I am the mistake, the forgetful reason for why we will go without today. Things easily slip through my mind. My head is focused on food, your heart is focused on loving people. Yesterday I saw you feed five thousands with five loaves, and the day before that, four thousand with seven, but today I’m convinced we’ll starve because I forgot the bread. One day to the next I suppose. This transition is easy to forget, easy to push to the side, easy to ignore, easy to fall asleep on. My focus is easily deterred. Onto the next miracle, onto the next creative task, onto the next sentence. Paragraph break, insert period, wrap it up, press enter. Next. Procedural elimination and implementation. O you of little faith how quickly you  forget the power of the One you’re with, the abilities of the One you follow. O you of little faith, you left the bread behind and dared to think I wouldn’t provide. Put down your coffee, forget your longing to sleep, arise from your slumber, trust me to provide your bread, and follow me to freedom against the flow of the river’s current you float down. Arise.

The Map

I find a certain level of nostalgic comfort and satisfaction in defining my self-calculated limitations–in placing brackets, spaces and dashes around and between everything I’ve done and have yet to do.  I enjoy pinpointing highlights and accomplishments with multi-colored nails, sealing and solidifying my well pruned resume of a life into its appropriate place.  Miniature trophies of red, green, yellow and blue, distributed evenly over time, accurately recording my special impact on the world.  This is when I was born.  This is when I graduated.  This is when I got married.  This is when my career began.  This is when I retired.  Pin.  Pin.  Pin.  Pin.  I find semi-sweet solace in pseudo beginnings and faux endings–in having the in-between gaps planned and filled accordingly.  I take comfort in organizing my life into perfectly aligned yet adjustable spreadsheets filled with data from the past, present, and future.

I tend to organize and plan my faith in the same way.  I have a faith time line, vertical hash marks and all.  I want to remember the exact moment it started, trace the mega-conferences I attend, record the people saved in my presence, anticipate future mansion size in heaven, and hand select my neighbors before I get there.  The beginning and the end.  Christianization is typically commenced by saying a one-time, forever cleansing, hope revealing, life fulfilling, prayer.  Want to go to heaven?  Repeat after me.  That’s it.  Say the prayer, get saved, become a Christian, see you in heaven some day.  Happy trails.

Hell Is For Democrats

I once had a good friend who loved Jesus.  She would say beautiful things such as, “Jesus knew how to take care of people,” and, “He knew how to love the outcasts–the scorned, disabled, and diseased.  He was compassionate, loved His enemies, and fed the hungry.  He loved the loveless, and we could definitely use some more lovers around here.”  I didn’t know much about Christianity back then.  I’m not sure much has changed.  The more I learn about Jesus the more I realize I cannot fathom His love, cannot describe His grace.  Even in the midst of my friend’s obvious love for Christ, I managed to convince myself that she was not a real Christian.  After all, becoming a Christian doesn’t start with an inner willingness to love and follow Christ, it begins with a ritual, with a well known prayer in the presence of another Christian.  Just repeat after me.  I watched as my legalistic efforts to force my friend to say a prayer and subconsciously add another colored pin to my life achievements map slowly pushed her away from the church.  She developed a certain distrust for so called Christians, and Sunday mornings left a bitter taste in her mouth.  She finally quit going after being confronted in the church parking lot by a middle aged woman with short, brown hair and a thick, black Bible.  The woman pulled my friend aside, set her heavy Bible down, and confidently said, “Hell is made for Democrats.  People who support John Kerry will wind up in Hell.”

My friend had a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on her car.  She passionately talked about peace and voted for candidates who said they would attempt to keep it .  She ran away from that church weeping, and she never went back.  She encountered people there bent on endorsing war and voting for candidates who were willing to use bombs and bullets to get what they wanted.  None of that sounded like Jesus to her.  None of that looked like love.  None of that seemed like something she wanted to be a part of.

My friend knew more about love than I did despite the fact that she had never consistently gone to church, been a part of a Bible study, or gone to a big Christian conference.  She spent her days studying the Old Testament, reading Gandhi and Thoreau, and admiring the art of Salvador Dali.  She smoked pot occasionally, drank beer often, studied hard always, and dreamed of saving African children dying of AIDS, daily.  And she loved Jesus.  She loved Jesus so much, but I couldn’t see it.  I was blinded by her ignorance of the law.  She had, I believed, rejected God by her unwillingness to verbally commit to what I couldn’t truly comprehend myself.   In reality, she understood what embracing the love of Christ was genuinely all about.  For my friend, it wasn’t about saying a prayer.  It was about committing too and attempting courageous relationship with Jesus and growing in love along the way.  Her decision to follow Christ and love people was made before I enlightened her with “The Prayer.”  Beginning a lifestyle of love, taking on a Christian worldview, and following Christ wherever He leads requires a bewildered heart looking for hope and a belief that there must be something more to life than this messed up world.  It’s not easy.  It’s not comfortable.  The path is narrow, and few will find it.

The Journey.

Faith is in the journey, not just “The Prayer.”  It takes a lot of faith to walk with others as they travel over and through life’s ups and downs, but it takes only a little pressure accompanying a decent pitch to convince people to quote a tract.  Begin with ritual or don’t, but understand that the narrow path doesn’t end there.  Planted in the trenches of made-up church rules, I came to realize the hard-hearted legalism of my ways.  I long for the strength to take the colorful pins out of my brain, to wipe the prefabricated ideas of successful evangelism off of my time-line-faith, and to progress forward in love and compassion–supporting–not looking down upon anyone regardless of anything.  Let him with no sin cast the first stone.  Our calling as Christ followers is to love all people, uninfluenced by skin color, sexual preference, education, age, citizenship, weight, family background, or political allegiance.  It doesn’t matter what time of day your neighbor draws water from the well.  Cast no stones.  Have no outcasts.  Love.  All.  People.