Listening (to Taylor Swift)

Taylor Swift, if you don’t know, is a billionaire singer/songwriter. She has a boyfriend who plays football or something. She also released a new album last week, and it’s already smashing records.

Since her album hit, there’s a viral post on social media warning Christians about her songs that I’ve seen on Facebook a few times. It sounds the alarm that many of these new songs “make fun of Christians and straight up blaspheme God.” Here are some of the lyrics that are specifically mentioned, from a song called “But Daddy I Love Him”:

I just learned these people only raise you

To cage you

Sarahs an Hannahs in their Sunday best

Clutchin’ their pearls, sighing, “What a mess”

I just learned these people try and save you

‘Cause they hate you

“Is this the music you want your kids listening to?” the post asks.

This kind of reaction to Taylor’s album seems pretty ironic to me, for two reasons. One, because I imagine this sort of post is exactly the kind of behavior that led her to write those lyrics in the first place. A young woman says she feels hated by pearl-clutching Christians, and a Christian with a large public platform immediately responds by accusing her of making fun of believers and of blasphemy. Case in point?

But it's also ironic, to me, when Christians will talk so much about someone while discouraging other believers from listening to that person. That’s the exact opposite of the posture James challenges us to take: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” (1:19)

(We usually do this backwards in America today, don’t we? We’re slow to listen, quick to speak, and very quick to get angry.)

But why would I want to listen to this woman bashing Christians?

Well, because Proverbs says that “An understanding heart seeks knowledge” (15:14), and “the ears of the wise seek it out.” (18:15) Taylor Swift is sharing about her experiences with Christians in our society. Our ears ought to be seeking out that kind of knowledge. Only a fool takes no pleasure in understanding (Prov 18:2)—a wise Christian should be glad for the chance to understand this young American’s perception of the Church.

Especially since, as one reviewer puts it, in this album Taylor has “captured the mood of a generation”—a generation churches have been so keen on reaching: Millennials. This album, Teresa Mull writes, sounds

a whole lot like the generation that has a higher rate of anxiety and depression than any other, a generation that’s extremely lonely and avoiding the traditions of marriage, family and church.

Sure, you could write off this music in the name of “guarding your heart” (Prov 4:23) from profanity or irreverence. (And, parents, certainly don’t let your children consume content that you believe is negatively affecting their hearts or minds.) But I think the American church would do well to hear out people like Taylor Swift. When someone wants to open up to you about their experiences and disappointments with Christianity, your job is not to criticize. It’s to be slow to speak and quick to listen. Check your annoyance and defensiveness at the door, and bring your curiosity and empathy instead. You just might hear something that the church needs to know.

Impact > Intentions

If you read Paul’s letters in the New Testament, you’ll notice that a lot of ink is spilled over whether or not Christians ought to eat meat that was involved in ceremonies in pagan temples. (That was a major source of meat in their society. You couldn’t just pick up a couple pounds of ground beef at Walmart, but the temples where all of these animals were slaughtered always had plenty.) Followers of Jesus weren’t sure if they ought to eat food that came from those religious rituals, so Paul addresses the topic at length in Romans and in 1 Corinthians.

You probably don’t wrestle with this question the way Paul’s audience did. I actually have been offered food that was involved in a religious ritual like that once (on a visit to a Hindu temple), but I bet that’s one more time than you have. If these passages have ever seemed odd to you, it’s probably because we just aren’t faced with the same dilemmas that the original readers were.

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from these passages, though.

In fact, in these discussions that are so foreign to our experiences, Paul illustrates a critical and universal principle for Christian living.

Look at Romans. The apostle believed that these foods were, in fact, clean and permissible for Christians to eat (14:14, 20). The problem was, some believers held a different conviction and were confused and unsettled by the sight of their fellow Christians eating this meat. This led Paul to write,

“If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died… Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” (14:15, 19)

Their actions weren’t wrong. Their intentions were good. Yet, Paul warned them, “you are no longer walking in love” if your behavior harms someone else’s faith.

In situations like that, many of us would probably write Paul back and say, But I wasn’t trying to cause any harm! I can’t control how someone else reacts to what I do! And that’s all true. Yet, Paul still warns them and instructs them to make a change.

Why? Why should the believers eating this meat—which is totally permissible!—why should they have to change anything?

Here’s the critical and universal principle that I hear in these verses: you need to be more concerned with the impact of your words and actions than with the intentions behind them.

In the words of Andy Stanley, “Intent is mostly irrelevant, because there’s no correlation between intention and outcome.” It’s very easy to do damage unintentionally. There’s a story about an unintended accident behind every dent in my car—but the dents are still there. The damage was still done, intentionally or not. Good intentions can still lead to negative outcomes.

And the Christians in Rome were unintentionally doing damage to their brothers’ and sisters’ faith. There were negative outcomes, despite their good intentions. So, though their actions weren’t wrong, Paul tells them to change.

Because Christians need to be more concerned with the impact of our words and actions than with the intentions behind them. 

More concerned, in other words, with our neighbors than with ourselves.

Don't Be Like Samson

There’s a famous scene in Judges chapter 16 where a prisoner who’s lost both of his eyes is standing between two pillars. 

The prisoner’s name is Samson. 

Samson calls out to the Lord, saying, “Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.” (16:28) Then he reaches a hand out to each of those pillars, strains with all of his might, topples them, and brings down the building they supported. Three thousand Philistines died in all the destruction, as well as Samson.

Some people see this moment as Samson’s great act of deliverance for Israel from their Philistine oppressors. Yet, unlike with judges like Deborah, Gideon, and Jephthah, there’s no mention here that the land was at peace or that their enemies were subdued after Samson’s time. I don’t think of this as a great victory for Israel and the Lord. I tend to take the blind judge at his word here. Read his prayer again—this was purely an act of revenge, bloody payback for the people who gouged out his eyes.

There’s another scene, set over 1,000 years later, in Acts chapter 7, that maybe you’ve heard or read about before. A Christian man has been brought to his knees as rocks rain down on him, thrown by a frenzied mob. 

This Christian’s name is Stephen. 

And Stephen calls out to the Lord with one final prayer, too. He cries: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (7:60) Then Stephen, like Samson, dies under a pile of stone.

Because other people exist, you probably find yourself in situations everyday where you can either respond to someone Samson-style, or with the grace of a Stephen. It may be in a fleeting spat, or it could be weeks, months, or years of conflict finally coming to a head. I think we all know that the goal is to be Stephen. But, in the heat of the moment, how are you supposed to overcome the big feelings and impulses inside that are ready to bring the building down on everyone’s heads?

I’m not so sure that Samson’s and Stephen’s last prayers were determined by the heat of the moment. I suspect that Samson’s and Stephen’s last prayers were really determined by the kinds of lives they lived up to that point.

Judges 16:28 was preceded by three chapters of self-indulgence, indifference to others, and casual violence. Samson burns down fields, beats people to death, abandons his wife, eats unclean honey, sleeps around, and does whatever else he wants. It’s no wonder he dies ruthlessly avenging himself.

Acts 7:60, on the other hand, was preceded by two chapters of feeding the hungry, caring for the overlooked, and pointing people to Jesus. Stephen’s life was centered on others, and so I’m not too surprised that his death was, as well. Who we strive to be, day-in, day-out, shapes who we’ll be in the heat of the moment. Stephen lived a life that was forming him into the kind of person who uses his last breath to pray for his murderers.

What kind of person are your routines, schedule, priorities, and lifestyle forming you into?

Do your everyday activities fuel your faith, hope, and love? Do your habits invite the Holy Spirit into your day? Do your goals treat others as more important than yourself?

Or do they reinforce attitudes and inclinations that, in the moment, can hinder your love for God and for your neighbors?

Don't just assume that you can live like Samson and turn out like Stephen. Most of following Jesus happens in the small moments and choices that make up a day. So take a closer look at those moments and choices. Be more deliberate with them. Because they'll decide what kind of person you're becoming.

You can listen to this devotional here:

His Resurrection, and Yours

Over the years, a lot of people have asked me about what eternity will be like. They want to know what their spouse, parent, or child is experiencing, now that they’re gone. They want to know if we’ll really see the people we loved in this life, if we’ll really recognize each other.

I don't know the first thing about life after death, but I do know some things about the Bible.

In some ways, scripture paints a really vivid, detailed picture of eternal life with God—golden streets, gates of pearl, jasper, emerald, amethyst! But, in other ways, the picture in the Bible is vague and incomplete. If you want to know what your relationships with others will be like after this life is over, there isn’t a lot to go on: people are no longer married (Mark 12:25); we’ll be together, and with Jesus (1 Thess 4:17); no one will need weapons anymore (Isa 2:4). Beyond that, you have to start speculating.

And not much is said about what we will be like then. In 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts “heavenly bodies” and “earthly bodies” (15:40) before going on to say that, when Jesus comes again, “we shall be changed… this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” (15:52-53) I think I get his point, but, again, this is pretty fuzzy on the details.

But Paul does say one other thing that, I think, unlocks this mystery for us, at least a bit. It’s in Romans 6:5. Talking about baptism, he writes: “if we have been united with him [Christ] in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

Followers of Jesus can expect a resurrection like his one day.

That’s all Paul gives us there, but that’s alright, because the gospels give us a lot more. What does a “resurrection like his” look like? Well, think about the Easter stories:

• Mary Magdalene doesn't recognize Jesus when she first meets him, but when he says her name, she knows his voice. (John 20:14-16)
• Jesus is somehow no longer impeded by locked doors. (20:26)
• But Jesus has a body that's physical enough to show Thomas the scars on his hands and his side. (20:27)
• He can have a long conversation with two disciples without them ever recognizing him, but at dinner they immediately know who he is again. (Luke 24:15-31)
• Jesus can vanish. (24:31)
• Jesus can also eat a piece of fish, which he does to prove he has "flesh and bones" and isn't a ghost. (24:38-43)

In these scenes, Jesus is different and strange, and yet he’s also the same man they’ve always known. He has a body, but it’s not quite like the bodies we have now. These descriptions don’t always mesh neatly—I guess meeting a resurrected person is a tricky thing to describe—but they still give us the fullest picture we have of the kind of life in store for God’s children. 

It will be different. So different that you may be unrecognizable at first. But that never lasts. The reunion might be a little clumsy, but the resurrection promise that Easter holds out to us is the promise of a new life with Jesus and with all of his people, together, forever. 

What we celebrate this holiday isn’t just Jesus’s empty tomb. It’s the hope of empty tombs and open graves for all of Christ’s people one day. It’s his resurrection, and yours. 

A resurrection like his.

Happy Easter! You can listen to this week's devotional right here: