Ethan Renoe's Blog, page 6

to love what death can touch

“Tis a fearful thing, to love what death can touch,” wrote the Jewish poet Yehuda HaLevi.

Shiver-inducing lines like this are what turn me from having a serious relationship and falling in love. Perhaps the only feeling bigger than falling into love is the pain of having it ripped from you. The bigger the love, the bigger the pain.

Today I led a service which commemorated the lives of dozens of people who passed away in the past 6 months. Many of their widows were in the audience, and through the wounds were now months old, likely didn’t feel that way. They wept, and many came to me afterward and told me more about their late spouse. They wanted me to know about his sense of humor, or her adventurous spirit.

“We were together 61 years, but it wasn’t enough.”

It’s a scary thing, to think about falling in love only to have her ripped from me. Or starting a family only to have more members of it to lose.

Or perhaps I’d be the one to go first, leaving my most precious humans behind, grieving in the wake.

One particularly haunting post from Reddit that has always stuck with me said something like, “most humans are born surrounded by family, and die surrounded by family, but these are two totally different groups of people.”

I suppose that for most of us, we have to put work into creating that second group. It’s not going to form itself. It also means sacrifice and love; I can’t take off to Nigeria again on a whim, or drop my job to go teach in Guatemala.

I suppose that today, I’m just reflecting on the deeper things in life. What matters most? What three sentences will describe my existence when I’m gone, and will I have loved the crap out of my family and friends enough?

I hope so.

Despite the pain of future loss, I want to love while I’m alive.

e

Day 38 of 100 Days of Blog

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This is Life: A Funeral Message

I’m giving the speech at a “Celebration of Life” for some people in a community who passed away recently. This is it, slightly tweaked for bloggage.

Hello family & friends. My name is Ethan Renoe, and I am a pastor here.

Today we are here to celebrate the lives of these people whom our community lost this year. We’re going to reflect on their lives, and as we listen to them, we can be reminded about life itself and just how beautiful it is.

David Foster Wallace tells this didactic little tale about two young fish swimming along when they pass an older fish. He says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” They swim on and one of the younger fish says to the other, “What in the world is water?”

We’ve come together to reflect on life, and I can’t help but think that sometimes we take it for granted, just like the young fish in the story. We are all alive, but sometimes we need a reminder of this fact. We’re alive but forget we are. We need to be reminded just what ‘water’ is, and that we need to look around and take it all in, to wake up and become aware of that very important fact.

So what is life? Sure, it’s a beating heart and expanding lungs, but as humans, we know it’s so much more than that.

Life is that spirit that we experience and express in a million forms: Sometimes it comes out in travel, sailing, eating or building a model train. We let a little life out through our creativity: when we paint, draw, sing, pour into a poem, or read someone else’s. Creativity is not optional.

Life is also tasted in raindrops hitting the skin, hugs, rope swings, beauty, sunsets, the smell of bookstores, white mist rising from a forest floor, perfectly brewed cups of coffee, and ESPECIALLY, dancing. Dancing is also not optional. Anything that moves your body reminds you that you’re alive.

You know who is really good at living? Dogs. You could walk them on the same path every day of their lives and they will be equally excited to sniff the same spots with the same vigor and curiosity as the first time. But us humans? We get bored. We lose our excitement and our life — the very thing which animates us — becomes tired and rote; our days rely on muscle memory.

You may be familiar with the Latin maxim, Memento mori — remember that you will die — but I think the inverse is often forgotten but equally important: memento vivire. Remember to live.

David Foster Wallace concludes that speech with this:

This all has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

“This is water. This is water.”

So I urge you, friends, don’t forget: “This is life. This is life.”

Closing after reading of names

Each of these people shared their lives with us. Earlier we reflected on the idea of life and all that it entails. Life is amplified when it is shared, whether it’s lived alongside friends and family, or transmitted through art and writing and music. Or poems like Maggie Smith’s Good Bones:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real dump, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

[Pause]

Art and music and poetry are ways of sharing not just information, but life with one another. We can call each other to life. These words have the power to move and inspire us, if we will let them.

That’s why creativity isn’t optional.
Neither is dancing.

Neither is remembering the lives of our loved ones, and all they shared with us. So I urge you, family and friends, don’t hide the light of all the life inside of you.

May we be people who pop the lid off the life inside of us.

May we spill it recklessly until at last, when the grave swallows us whole and the lights turn out, we can rest giddy, knowing we didn’t let one ounce of our precious, PRECIOUS life go to waste.

May we never forget, as we swim along, “This is life. This is life.”

e

Day 35 of 100 Days of Blog

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Nearer to reality; nearer to God

There are many stories in the Bible that you could call ‘waking up moments.’

Moses meets God at a burning bush in a part of the wilderness where he’d been tending sheep for 40 years.Jacob sees a ladder reaching to heaven and exclaims, God was in this place and I was unaware!Nathanael hears that Jesus had seen him sitting under a tree earlier, and that little fact is enough for him to confess Jesus as the Messiah.Elisha prays that God would open his servant’s eyes and suddenly he can see the spiritual forces all around them.Saul gets blinded on his way to Damascus and hears a voice talking to him.

It’s cool that none of them look alike, but that God reaches into the lives, or you could say, the reality of all these different people in their own unique way. In a way, if you step back from the Sunday School type language of them ‘meeting God,’ or ‘getting saved,’ or ‘becoming Christians,’ but we looked at what is actually happening, you could say that ‘they have just encountered reality in a way that is suddenly more fresh, more accurate, and more real than they previously knew or understood it.’

They got a peek behind the curtain.

That’s the idea behind ‘apocalyptic literature.’ An apocalypse, in Greek, simply means a revealing or unveiling. (Hence, Revelation…)

You catch a glimpse of the bigger picture and suddenly things fit together more cohesively than before. Before, you were looking at a few pieces of the puzzle up close, but all at once you step back and see the entire thing together.

And there are different words for this. ‘Epiphany’ may be a common one. Suddenly, everything makes sense and it clicks.

Take Nathanael for instance. His was relatively simple, but profound: He exclaims because suddenly he realizes that the Messiah his people have been waiting for is HERE! It’s a truth, and he has just reliazed it, and perhaps even realized his own place in this larger picture — what will eventually become the New Testament, and being one of the disciples of the Anointed One.

These people in the Bible see things as they truly are, and it happens all at once. And the thing is, you can’t force yourself to have one of these moments, though I think you can work toward them, and you certainly can’t force other people to have them.

I’ve known people who were staunch atheists and suddenly God opens their eyes — they have a revelation. Their eyes are opened, and it’s unique to them. It wasn’t constructed or forced by human means. You can’t force your agnostic neighbor to have an encounter with the Living God, but you can ask God for it to happen.

And we can work toward it for ourselves.

I can point to a handful of moments in my life where I had a distinct and sudden awareness of God’s presence; things clicked together and I saw that God’s picture, or reality, was bigger than the one I’d been living in before. They typically came in seasons where I was looking for God, when I was seeking Him with intention.

Then there have also been terribly long stretches where I feel like there is no God and everything is awful. And coincidentally, it’s when I’m just fooling around, chasing pleasure and dopamine, stuffing my brain with useless entertainment, and not being intentional about anything.

Can God reach into one of these seasons to wake us up? Of course. Could God not gift us with a moment of waking up, despite great efforts to pursue Him? Of course. Like a lightning strike, you can’t force it to happen on your own schedule.

You don’t pencil God in for a revelation.

But there are ways to make space in your life for words to come, for prayer to be two-ways instead of just one.

Plus, you can always ask. bringing yourself nearer to God, and coming into contact with a bigger picture of reality is never a bad thing. It may sting, and you may leave with an injury, like when Jacob limped away from his wrestling match with God, but you’ll be better.

e

Day 34 of 100 Days of Blog

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How to live a non-boring life

I work a job where I’m surrounded by rich elderly people. For most of them, most things in their life went right. That’s not to say that they never suffered, that their spouses didn’t get cancer or dementia, or that they don’t have the same human capacity to feel pain as the rest of us. 

But largely, the things in their lives went the way they wanted, which is how they ended up at my facility. 

I say this after months of talking to them, being intentional, and listening to their stories. My job is to relate and connect with them. 

But very often, I’m bored to tears listening to them. 

Their stories are largely about living comfortably in various states, vacationing to Italy, and enjoying a steady string of promotions in the corporate world until they retired and came here. It all went right.

Yesterday I was on a run on my normal path. There are often a handful of homeless people along this trail. Probably because it’s minimally patrolled and relatively comfortable in the woods, while not being too far from civilization. 

Often, they’re just asleep in their sleeping bags as I pass by, but last night, I passed a couple who was walking along the path. It looked like they had all of their possessions on their backs or in their hands. Their skin was tanned and their sloppy tattoos were faded by the sun.

And more than any of the people at my work, I wanted to hear their stories. I didn’t talk to them, but I imagined it involved a lot of train hopping and sleeping outdoors and maybe a few fights.

The woman walked with her hand looped through the arm of the man, and it made me curious about how they met. And what is it that makes them so connected that they’d walk like this after so many miles? What traumas have they been through that bonded them?

In the few seconds I saw them, I was more interested in them than any of the people for whom everything went according to plan. Because it looked like many things in their lives went wrong. 

In one of Chris Guillebeau’s recent posts, he said that “The things that go wrong make the best memories.” Think about all the stories you’ve heard where you were dying to hear the end, how it all worked out. Are any of them when everything goes right and there is no peril?

Even the most exciting thing someone could do is somewhat boring when it all goes right. Like, skydiving is a rush for the person doing it, and they may relay their experience of the sensations, but it’s not the same quality of story as something simple that went wrong. “Yah, we went up to 12,000 feet, jumped out, felt the rush, deployed the chute, and made it safely to the ground.” 

It’s the same with travel, if all goes according to plan. You went to Rome, photographed the same historical sites as everyone else, and came home. And you want a Pulitzer?

But think about doing a mundane activity where something went wrong. Immediately there’s a story people want to hear. 

For example, one of my favorite stories is from my uncle, who showed up to clean the grill hood at a Wendy’s, as was his job. But no one had told the two girls closing that they’d be coming at midnight to clean the hoods, so when they used the key to enter, the girls locked themselves in the bathroom and called the cops. 

Within minutes, my uncle and his employee were on their knees with laser sights on their chests. The cops asked my uncle why his zipper was down. Then looked at his employee and asked why his zipper was also down (It was just an unfortunate, hilarious coincidence). Eventually, they contacted the manager and found that they were, indeed, there to clean and not rob the Wendy’s. 

The first time I heard the story I was sucked in and dying laughing. 

Was my uncle doing anything amazing or enthralling like backpacking the Sahara? No, he was cleaning a grill hood at a Wendy’s. But because everything went wrong, the story is the best. 

It makes me wonder about the way we live our lives.

Corporate culture has created a path to cultivate safe comfort so that those in charge can maintain their work force while offering a seamless path from a comfortable hire to a comfortable retirement. You need not take a risk ever again; arriving at the grave will be a simple transition for your soft bones. 

In my life, I’ve made few moves that involved a whole lot of risk and when I look back at the past decade or two, it would be nothing to write a novel about. No film will be made about my 20’s. 

Think about how we’ve been coddled into complacency. 
If you’re entertained, you’re living. 
If you need a boost, treat yourself at the mall.

Really? 

Comfort and entertainment is the highest we can aim for? God gave you this untamed thing called life and the craziest planet in the cosmos and we settle for that?

Of course, I don’t want to end up like the homeless couple — not intentionally, at least — but I also don’t want to make my life decision based on the question, Which option will bring me the most comfort and be easiest?

Would you want to watch that movie? “The story of Stan, the man who chose comfort and most things generally went right until he died.” 

Why not occasionally make decisions where there is a very real possibility that something goes wrong? If it goes wrong, you get a great story. If it goes right, then you advance. Win-win.

There are so many tools that have already been established to sort through these options, like Tim Ferriss’ fear setting, or the Japanese idea of Misogi. 

All of this has been discovered and discussed before, but perhaps it’s time now for us to ask the question, what sort of life do we want? A comfortable one or one worth writing about? The last line of my favorite film is, 

“We’re going to live like we’re telling the greatest story ever told.” 

e

Day 33 of 100 Days of Blog. Don’t miss a post, subscribe!

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the day I almost died in Hawaii

There have been few times in my life I’ve been so acutely aware of my own mortality, of how small I really am.

Most of the time, as a fit, strong, strapping young man, I walk into situations feeling in control. I don’t expect my person to be tossed around or unable to situate myself; if someone pushed me, I could push them back.

My body is autonomous.
When I drive a car, I’m controlling the car.
When I swim, I go where I want in the water.
Et cetera.

But the fourth day my family was in Hawaii two months ago, I experienced what it was like to have absolutely no control over what happens to my body, to where it gets thrown or how.

My brother and I were snorkeling around Blackrock, swimming with some turtles. The depth was sort of 8 feet to the sandy bottom, but rocks shot up all over, to mere inches beneath the surface of the water. The gentle waves glided us back and forth across and between the shallow rocks as we explored the bay with the turtles for half an hour.

My brother went back in to talk to my parents, leaving me alone. And that’s when the ‘sneaker’ set of waves came ripping through. I was watching the turtles when suddenly a massive wave lifted me up and hurled me backwards, toward the beach. It slammed me into a rock and I felt my back get scraped by the rough surface.

I got my head above water, breathed, and tried to find something — anything — to grab onto and be safe and secure, when the second wave lifted me up and carried me backward again into a second rock. I was still hurdling backward in the water, not knowing if my head would crack into one of the hard, black rocks. Fortunately, two waves into the set, my head was ok.

But I still couldn’t get any sort of control. I felt like a beetle who had been set on its back, only I was also being tossed hither and yon by an angry ocean.

A third wave picked me up and slammed me into a different set of rocks, still miraculously avoiding my head. I realized that I could do nothing except hope and pray that the waves would stop soon and that they wouldn’t hit my head against the rocks.

I can’t remember if it was three waves, or four, or five or six. But eventually I was carried to a place where I could put my foot down and pull myself to the side of the channel. Other people were there, watching me get tossed like a caesar salad, but couldn’t do anything to help without endangering themselves.

When I finally got both feet under me and could stand up, holding onto a rock and bracing for another wave (less powerful now that the set had rolled through), I took inventory of my body. No broken legs because I could walk. I looked all over my skin — a few good bruises and scrapes, but no massive wounds with blood gushing out.

I had somehow survived, but it would be hours before I could shake the feeling of powerlessness and the taste of mortality that clung bitter to my tongue. I had been messed up by the ocean. I had seen the raw, brute strength of a billion drops of water which are altogether, incomprehensibly more powerful than me as they slammed me against stones.

My family had seen me from the shore, and my dad later recounted how disturbing it was seeing his son thrown around, completely out of control, like a rag doll.

It was the type of experience that I can be grateful for, now knowing that I survived with very minimal injuries, but don’t want to try again.

I imagine the parts of the world that are even more dangerous than a family beach with the occasional rogue swell. I’ve seen seaside cliffs where the tide slams into even more jagged rocks, and seen storms that raise up monsters out of water.

I’m all set for my reminders of my own frailty for a while.

And I’m glad. It’s a good reminder that you’re not the mightiest being in the universe. You’re not even the most mighty being on a family beach. I’m not the Alpha or Omega, and some poorly timed waves at a Hawaii resort could wipe me from the earth in a matter of seconds.

But it didn’t, and I’m grateful.

e

Day 30 of 100 Days of Blog

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I’ve got this contagious thing in my bones called life

I took this of Dabe in Guate.

I’ve got this contagious thing in my bones called life
I’ve got a girl I can call but I don’t got a wife

I’ve got this cancer in my pocket called a phone
I’ve got this problem where I can’t ever be alone

I’ve got this girl who’s nice to me but not to the barista
I’ve got one thousand in the bank but I owe seven to Visa

I’ve got this contagious thing in my bones I call life
I’ve got these two halves of me but don’t got a knife.

e

Day 29 of 100 Days of Blog

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Why Christians should never be offended

Today I was helping set up for a funeral service.

I walked in and asked how I can help. The grandson of the deceased lady asked what I do here, and I told him I’m a pastor. His immediate reply with a smirk was, “Oh, she hated pastors. I’m talking about that in my speech. How pastors are all a bunch of jackasses.”

No “thanks for helping us set up!”
No sensitivity to the vocation I dedicated my life to.

His cocky attitude really rubbed me the wrong way, and soured my mood the rest of the time I was helping them out. But I tried to remind myself that his grandmother was likely deeply wounded by religious leaders at some point in her life, and I can’t take that personally.

No matter how much I tried to tell myself that his remarks (and the sentiment of his grandma) had nothing to do with me, even if he could have been a bit more sensitive.

Then tonight on a run, I was listening to The Holy Post’s recent interview with David French. They were talking about Christians being offended by everything, most recently, the drag queen rendition of The Last Supper at the Olympic opening ceremony.

French talked about how a better response to something like that — something that attempts to be so jarringly offensive to a group like Christians — would be boredom instead of outrage.

Think about it: Imagine that the artists involved in crafting that ceremony go to all the trouble to mock The Last Supper, and all they get in response is a yawn. How many more times would they keep targeting Christian iconography?

No, they continually do things like that because it gets such a big response form the Christian world (and, because, we won’t bomb them like some other religions…but that’s beside the point). Like how a class clown keeps being obnoxious because the teacher and fellow students keep responding to his jokes with attention.

But more than that, are Christians called to be offended?

Or, are we called to defend Jesus’ honor, as many Christians claimed, especially this time around?

A few thoughts.

God is big enough to defend Himself.

You think the almighty Creator of the universe needs Craig from Baltimore to tweet back @TheOlympics?

Did Jesus defend Himself when they were mocking Him, spitting on Him, whipping Him, and nailing Him to a wooden slab? Seems like God has endured worse things.

If we are one with Christ, we can no longer be offended on His behalf either. I mean, if someone insults me, as the dude did earlier today, is it my right to snap back at him Oh yah? Well I’m different and you just don’t understand!

Christ was offended FOR us.

If I truly believe my identity is united with Jesus’, then I don’t have any reason to be upset. Not if I believe I’m on the team that will truly come out victorious in the end — through love, not through conquest.

Christians should have the attitude of, So what if they spit on us? So what if they hate us?

Isn’t that exactly what Jesus told us would happen??  (c.f. Mark 13)

Remember, there are countless Christians in the world today who are actually being persecuted. They are being arrested, tortured, killed, just for their faith in Jesus. They must look at our outrage over a televised event and think we’re a bunch of weenies.

Oh, how I WISH that’s what our persecution looked like! They’d say to themselves.

Offense is typically more about pride.

Because when someone insults us, as the guy at the funeral did today, our response should look like Jesus’. When people were hammering stakes though His wrists, He prayed for their forgiveness.

If we get offended because of our belief, it reflects more of a heart of pride than of godliness. When I was stung by the blunt remarks of the grandson, it wasn’t because I was trying to defend God, it’s because my ego wanted to show him that I was a different pastor.

I don’t know his story, or his grandmother’s.
I don’t know what the church has done to them in the past.
I don’t even know his name, to be honest.

So what right do I have to be offended before even trying to know and love the person?

The more we are beaten down, the more we are like Christ.

If we are truly Christians, then we believe that we have died to ourselves. The old Ethan has passed away and been resurrected anew in Christ. So what right do I have now to be offended when someone insults me? Like…so what? Or when they mock my culture or even my faith?

Now, people may just lie about us or start rumors about us or attack our individual character. I think these are slightly different, in that they’re simply false. And lies tend to run their own course and bite their own tail. But I would encourage us all to take a step back from outrage and offense and instead ask, why am I so upset? Is this a humble response, or is my pride just wounded?

I guarantee you that when we seek humility, we will be offended a whole lot less.

e

Day 28 of 100 Days of Blog. Subscribe so you never miss one!

The post Why Christians should never be offended appeared first on ethan renoe.

purpose is defined by fullness, not scale

A simpler way to put it is, quality over quantity.

Ever since I went viral 8 years ago, I’ve had this mistaken idea in my head that my purpose, or the value of my life, is defined by the number of people I impact. It’s become a messy issue for me, because if that’s the mindset, then what is the endgame? How many people is enough? 

I’ve been happy to make an impact where I have worked, like the twelve kids in my first youth group, or the 60 in my last one, but there was always an itching inside me to expand, to have my books and blog reach more people, so that I would really be worth it. Or so I’d have arrived and could then really make a difference for the kingdom (so I told myself).

Why doesn’t my podcast have as many fans as hers? Why can’t my books hit #1 on the New York Times? Why do my YouTube videos have so few views? etc.

It’s a self-destructive cycle. And of course, it’s borne out of pride and ego more than any real desire to advance God’s kingdom. 

No, the emphasis is on Ethan’s kingdom. 

And then who suffers when it doesn’t swell to the heights that I dreamt of? Me. 

Whereas, if I had a mindset of humility and a genuine desire to advance the kingdom Jesus talked about, especially in the Sermon on the Mount, then the quantity wouldn’t matter so much. The scale wouldn’t be as relevant. What would matter is, Did I do the very best I could to love these twelve kids as long as they were entrusted to me? And if so, then God will be happy, because I took care of what He gave me to steward. 

Doesn’t sound glamorous, does it? 

But it also doesn’t sound pressurized. The pressure isn’t on me to perform and scale my own platform and ‘make a big impact,’ but to simply obey and live a life of integrity and honesty. It’s like this Bible verse I hate: 

make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. 
-1 Thessalonians 4:11–12

I think there’s always a chance God may give some of us a bigger platform, but I don’t think it’s what we should seek. I think it’s something that should be come by honestly rather than sought. Like, if I’m living right and being responsible with what God has given me, then maybe He will give me more? But I also have to be okay with Him not giving me more as well. Like, I need to have open hands, lol.

I have to convince myself that the scale of my life is not what gives it meaning. If that were the case, we’d necessarily have to say that the less famous someone is, the less their life matters. Fame is not an inherent good — you could even argue it’s an inherent bad. I mean, look how much my little run-in with it screwed up my brain, lol!

Living in anger and envy of people who do have bigger platforms is a toxic death spiral. Because imagine I get as famous as, say, Francis Chan. Then I’d envy Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Then I get that big and envy Taylor Swift, or whoever. It’s a never-ending spiral. 

Jealousy is the slaughterhouse of joy.

What I need to figure out is how to connect this cognitive fact to my heart which is full of desire and discontent. I think that comes from retreating from things that fill my mind with envy (Looking at you, Instagram) and retreating to time alone with God, the biggest audience possible, and the only one that really matters. And with people who know me well and love me well, more than thousands of ‘fans’ would.

What are your thoughts on purpose and meaning in life? What lies do you believe about it all?

e

Day 25 of 100 Days of Blog.

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underrated verses in the Bible, part 1, my favorite verse

A few days ago, I wrote about one of the most misused verses in the Bible. Then while talking to my friend Krista, she suggested I do a series of underrated verses in the Bible which people may not know about, but should. So, I have no idea how many there will be, but I can promise you that they’ll either be theologically rich or poetically brilliant. 

So let’s start with my favorite verse in the Bible, the second one.

I love making that joke with people because it confuses them. My favorite verse is probably Genesis 1:2 (the second verse in the Bible…or maybe the first, because some people believe that the first verse is actually the title of the section). 

If you want to watch/listen to a more in-depth expansion of this verse, watch my sermon on it on YouTube.

Many people are familiar with 1:1 — In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth — but many can’t remember the second one!

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

There is so much happening in this verse I don’t even know where to begin. Better to watch the vide for a full analysis. 

But a few overview things: God comes into the chaos of the world and begins to straighten it out. The dark waters symbolize chaos, and rather than ‘kill chaos’ which is the story told in other Ancient Near Eastern creation stories, God crafts it with His voice and then with His hands. 

We see the Spirit hovering over the waters. The word for ‘hovering’ is the same word used one other place to describe a mother bird hovering over her young, urging them to jump from the nest and fly. We see the heart of God as one of a mother bird, calling the primordial creation to rise and take to life. What a picture.

But what’s cool is, where else do we see God’s voice speaking over water, and a bird hovering over water?

If you said, “At the baptism of Jesus,” you’re correct. (c.f. Mark 1)

Any Jew familiar with the Torah would have immediately recognized this picture and hearkened back to the creation of the world. Except, in addition to God’s voice and the Spirit like a bird, there is now a third party: The Son who enters into the water and get baptized. He enters into the chaos of our world and partakes in it. 

Christ rises from the water, the world rises with him. 
-Gregory of Nazianzus

God is not one who sits on the side, like a bored teenage lifeguard at a pool. He is intimately involved in His creation. The Spirit is hovering, calling us to flight, to life, to rise to more. This is the sort of Spirit that infuses the world, and life, and everything. This is where the Bible starts and it’s beautiful.

It’s poetic and beautiful and even ominous.

There is much more packed into the historical context of Genesis 1:2, but since this is just an introduction, I’ll stop here. Check out my sermon if you’re interested in more, and give me your favorite verses which are underused! 

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Day 24 of 100 Days of Blog. Subscribe so you don’t miss any!

The post underrated verses in the Bible, part 1, my favorite verse appeared first on ethan renoe.

666 doesn’t mean what you think.

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me why I love such ‘dark’ things, whether it’s my spooky books, or Crumb Hill, I would have several nickels.

One of the things I always try to explain is the difference between actual spiritually dark things and, for lack of a better word, symbolism. Today I want to take a quick look at one of these, which is the number 666, which as many people know, originates from the Bible, and might not mean exactly what you think it does.

To many people, the number is superstitiously elevated to something evil or cursed in and of itself. There is even a named fear of the number: hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. But as I have come to understand the original meaning within the book of Revelation, I don’t think it warrants these things, and the original meaning of it, in my opinion, is far more interesting and, perhaps surprisingly, political.

It is from the book of Revelation, chapter 13, which I’ll paste here, with full context, because as we learned in yesterday’s blog, context matters! lol.

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666. [Some translations say 616]

As you can see, it clearly tells us that 666 is the number of a man. Not a beast or demon or witch or spirit, but a man. And the fact that he tells us to calculate it gives a hint that we should decode it…so what is John referring to?

Well, most scholars agree that John is referring to a common practice used by the Jews in the first century called Gematria. It’s like a system of assigning numbers to each Hebrew letter. And quite simply, if you write out “Nero Caesar” in the corresponding numbers, it adds up to, you guessed it, 666. (Technically, it would be NRON QSR. As stated above, some translations say 616 instead. Why? That would be NRO QSR. Simply a different way to write out the emperor’s name.)

So what John is really doing is talking about the emperor in code. Because if he came out and said “Caesar is a bad dude and he really has it out for us Christians….but he’s not really the one who’s in control; Jesus is,” he’d be killed and his letter would be shut down instantly.

So instead, he talks about a beast whose number is 666 (but y’all can figure it out, he says with a wink) and how a slain lamb is really running the universe.

It’s also helpful to know that the Caesars did operate the economy of Rome strictly and controlled trading and selling. You had to use their one universal currency…with Caesar’s head on it (something we just take for granted now, accustomed to that with our currency).

And most people believe the reference to the head and arm is speaking to the Jewish practice of tefillin, in which they would wear verses from the Torah on their head and arm. So, writes John, the empire is opposed to us and is shutting down our religious operation. He is not writing about the devil in relation to this number.

Why does this matter?

Well for one, it means that we don’t have to be spooked because modern people try to mistakenly adapt ancient apocalyptic writings…wrongly. It’s almost funny.

It would be like trying to spook your superstitious friend by misinterpreting the Constitution, and making them think they’ll be cursed by the ghost of George Washington because of some little code you found in the document. Like, that’s not at all what the writers intended or what was happening there.

No, John was making a very political statement here and I’m sure he would laugh if he saw how scared people were of the number 666. If anything, they should be scared of the number 5, which is the actual number of satan, most think (pentagrams have 5 points, he was supposed to be the fifth horseman, etc. 6 is man’s number; made on the sixth day, plus what we just talked about…).

This is one of many symbols which is often adopted for horror and other spooky things, but which has no power. Do people often use this number to try to do nefarious things? Sure. Doesn’t mean they’re the most well-informed folks. Plus, just because something gets misused or misquoted doesn’t mean that it is inherently bad or evil. It’s…a symbol.

And Christians need not fear symbols. We have on our side, and dwelling within us, God Himself who is certainly stronger than any symbol which only impersonates powerful things.

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Day 23 of 100 days of blog.

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