Christian Living – Page 18 – Ed Cyzewski: Author // Contemplative

Why Christians Should Not Make Safe Art

Posted on June 30, 2014June 30, 2016 by Ed Cyzewski

Last week I learned about a former Christian hard rock musician who became an atheist at the height of his career, but he kept making music for the Christian market since the money was good. Presumably Christian parents encouraged their children to buy this band’s albums because they were expecting a particular message that would be safe and positive. Perhaps Christian youth believed they were protecting their faith.

They didn’t suspect that this band’s message was simply a sham for making money. According to this band’s front man, the majority of Christian musicians he knows are quiet atheists, cashing in on the demand for Christian music. That matches what I’ve heard from other friends.

How did we end up with a huge community of “Christian” music “artists” who aren’t really Christian and who, according to most experts I know, don’t usually make good art?

The problem from my perspective is that artists face ostracizing if they don’t arrive at a set list of answers at the end of the creative process. The subtext is clear: don’t wrestle with big questions in your art unless you’re ready to follow the evangelical script.

This represents the problem when faith becomes a barrier to art. Faith determines the answers and the final product without allowing time and space to ask the questions. The final product is vapid, unhelpful, and can hardly distinguish itself from art by a sell out.

In our quest to create safe art without swear words, sex, or violence (unless you count Christians who bow down to Brave Heart and MMA), we’ve stunted out ability to create honest art that fully engages our faith. The answer HAS to be Jesus died on the cross for your sins. That’s why the cross is all over Christian art, so many of our songs mention the cross, and so many books proclaim they’re offering a fresh take on the cross/Gospel—provided the Gospel is defined as Jesus dying on the cross for your sins.

While musicians who have left the faith can mimic what a good Christian “should” say, Christian artists have to play games to make their work marketable. Writers have to clean up their novels, artists have to insert “Jesus saves” into their lyrics, and artists have to paint subtle (or not so subtle) salvation messages. Meanwhile, our world has big tough questions that our artists aren’t allowed to ask.

Christians should be the ones diving into the jaws of the beast, confronting the worst of this world’s demons, and making ourselves as “unsafe” as possible as we face the worst the world has to offer. Either Jesus is Lord or he’s just a clever fabrication of his followers who needs to be protected from our big bad world.

Are we doing anyone any favors when the most influential art made by Christians is coming from people who don’t have any faith that can guide them?

Rather than encouraging Christian artists to speak to today’s issues, we’ve created a sub-genre that isn’t compelling to anyone other than Christians who want to play it safe and fear the loss of their faith. This is catastrophic. When the artists within that subgenre start asking questions they aren’t prepared to answer, they just keep plugging in the answers that they know activates record sales while their faith quietly dies.

This is how we ended up with the religious broadcasting group ostracizing Waterbrook Multnomah publishing because it published a book in its progressive imprint by a Christian man who believes the Bible supports same sex relationships. The message is clear: feel free to wrestle with the Bible, provided you arrive at our conclusions.

Honest reflection on difficult topics always brings up anxiety among Christian artists because we know that we could lose friends, struggle to make a living, and experience alienation from family and friends. As I started working on my Christian Survival Guide project, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure to settle for the answers I’d been given, even if I didn’t find them satisfying.

I had to force myself to look at scripture without the evangelical community looking over my shoulder with heresy stamps at the ready. I had to dig into my tough questions about the violence of God, the place of God in a world with evil, and the ways we interpret the Bible 2,000 years removed from the New Testament writers.

I didn’t always arrive at the answers I expected. I found that hell isn’t what I thought it was, the end times described in Revelation were actually good news to their original readers, and that the Bible can be easily abused. As I considered God’s place in a world that has evil, I arrived at a conclusion that I didn’t see coming.

I didn’t reinforce everything I beleived, but I also found that facing the tough and mysterious questions of today isn’t the end of my faith, especially if I arrived at a different conclusion than expected. I found that my faith is far more sturdy and capable than I expected.

Perhaps that is our problem in the Christian subculture. We’re so afraid of our faith cracking if we place too many burdens on it. On the contrary, I found that my faith can handle far more than I would have expected. If anything, I had been placing my faith in the wrong things.

When I started asking the questions I wasn’t supposed to ask and opened myself up to conclusions I wasn’t supposed to arrive at, I found that Jesus didn’t need me to protect him. Scripture is far more reliable than we realize. The Holy Spirit settles among us to give us wisdom.

Creating art as a Christian isn’t safe or simple. The way of Jesus requires taking up one’s cross. The presence of the Spirit brings tongues of fire. We may have to endure death and fire, but the art that comes out of the process has been pruned and refined. We will find that our best work comes out of the times we face what we’ve feared the most.

Learn more about my Christian Survival Guide project.

Mercy for Our Brokenness-A Guest Post by Melinda Viergever Inman

Posted on June 23, 2014June 20, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

Today’s guest blogger, Melinda Viergever Inman is the author of the new novel Refuge. She serves in a prison ministry, and today she’s sharing how her own story of brokenness intersects with the women she meets in prison.

The morning sun gleams on the razor wire. As we exit our cars near the prison yard, we hear the fourteen- to twenty-year-old inmates talking smack to a guard. Disciplinary action is brewing. They haven’t learned yet.

Inside we navigate the weekly routine of paperwork, newly changed rules, manifests, searches, pat-downs, safety devices, and cataloging of our personal effects. This process transports us through three locked-down security doors and multiple armed guards. And then we’re in, one with the prison population.

Every week our team enters the state penitentiary to shepherd imprisoned women through a Christian twelve-step program. We bring the best news in human history to women who long for good news: “No matter what you’ve done, Jesus wants you. His arms are open wide. Though everyone else forgets you, Jesus sees you in this place, and he loves you with a love that cost him his life.”

The harvest is plentiful.

We come to the prison because Jesus has a heart for broken people, and we have his heart beating in us. God forgives us, picks us up, and puts us back together over and over again. We know it, and we want them to know it, too.

Most of our team has traveled a road of tragedies and life experiences that we never would have chosen. Each endured unique circumstances that broke her heart and gave her compassion for other hurting people. For me, the path included sexual assault at age thirteen, the brokenness of handling it in silence, teen pregnancy, early marriage, a temper, parenting mistakes, and a bout of hardcore legalism as I tried to clean myself up.

Because God is merciful, he patiently and relentlessly works on my character, causing me to love him and to grow to be more like Jesus. Ridding me of my rigid and hypocritical religion has been his most persistent cleansing. I can’t live a godly life in my own strength by following bullet points and rules. No one can.

I am a redeemed prodigal, a lost girl who has been found. I still run from God in large and in subtle ways. I’m often angry at what he allows to touch my life. Of course, he always comes after me and woos me back. And I return. I yield. He’s irresistible.

God has planted within me a deep realization of my need for Christ alone. He continues to help me discover just how broken I am. If I weren’t so arrogant and hard-hearted, it wouldn’t take me so long to learn these lessons!

I am exactly like the women in prison. So are you.

We remind them of this every week. Everyone struggles. We have the same temptations. We could be the ones sitting in prison.

In prison, the facade has been stripped away. Incarcerated women have done something that has brought them to the end of themselves. And if the first time wasn’t enough, they’re back again. They’ve hit the bottom, and they know everything has to change.

When a woman voluntarily signs up for a Christian 12-step program in prison, she is wise enough to understand that she is powerless and her life is out of control (Step 1). She lays it all out there openly, and she means business.

In our program around 85% of the women have been sexually assaulted, usually as children or pre-teens. Most have difficult family histories. There’s a reason they ended up in prison. There are causative realities over which they had no control that we are prepared to walk through with them. They come with messy and wounded sexuality.

And where was God, they wonder? Can they trust him? And how can he possibly fix their mess? We comfort them with the same comfort God has given us in our messes.

All are welcome. All. No one is turned away. We tell them about Jesus. He finally has their attention. Over and over again, we hear the same story: God has brought them to prison to find him. They know it. It took this final breaking to see their need.

As we go through the 26-week program, the women bless us with their transparency, and we share our failings with them. I wish every believer in Christ could honestly address his or her broken places. The church would be more beautiful and less off-putting.

My brokenness, these women, and their prison experiences shaped my first novel.

Refuge is the story of Cain, his sister-wife Lilith (yes, that Lilith), and their brother Abel. Cain commits a crime. From firsthand experience I know what the tangled relationships and the remorse of a murderer look like.

How would Cain feel about killing his own brother? What would this look like? What would it do to his family? I’ve witnessed this as women share their stories.

Often the most heinous tragedy of our lives is the turning point, the breakthrough, the crux of God turning us toward himself. Just like our broken lives, because of God’s compassion, my novel doesn’t go the way you expect.

This is a story birthed from heartache, brokenness, and a deep personal awareness of God’s mercy and unmerited grace. His mercy in the prison, in my family, and to me—a seriously flawed sinner, was the catalyst.

Just how far does God’s mercy go in my tale? You’ll have to read Refuge to find out. What will our merciful God forgive? It’s always abundantly far above and beyond our expectations.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Melinda Viergever Inman is a prodigal with a passion to write. She authors fiction illustrating God’s love for wounded people, including her new novel Refuge. She shepherds women in church and in prison ministry. She writes inspirational material and bible studies. With her family, she is involved in an Indian-founded church-planting ministry in Asia: RIMI at www.rimi.org

We Pray for Resurrection in Times of Darkness

Posted on June 16, 2014June 16, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

When church leaders ignore the victims of abuse, it is a time of darkness.

When church leaders choose to defend one another rather than those who are most vulnerable, it is a time of darkness.

When the church rushes to defend an abusive leader before asking what has become of the victim, it is a time of darkness.

When an abusive church leader is given a forum recount all that he has lost without a moment’s reflection on what he took from everyone around him, it is a time of darkness.

When respectfully dissenting comments are removed from a leading evangelical Christian website, it is a time of darkness.

Last week I joined the many voices online who spoke out against the great darkness of sexual abuse in the church. In case you missed it, a former youth pastor, now sentenced sex offender, wrote a lengthy moralistic post essentially recounting his errors and pleading with readers that it could happen to them. However, the article misconstrued his relationship with an underage student as “an affair,” and the article failed to take into account the grave damage caused to the student, his family, and his church.

When dissenting voices spoke up early in the week, Leadership Journal failed to remove the post. All dissenting comments were deleted—even the respectful comments from former victims of sex abuse who had to suffer the indignity of knowing their voices were not welcome in yet another corner of the church. An editorial comment added later in the week acknowledged the strong push back to the post, but noted that the article was important because sex abuse was the primary cause of lawsuits in the church.

You know… because money and institutional preservation outweighs the value of people.

While the post was taken down either late Friday night or early Sunday morning, Leadership Journal did immense harm to the church, showed a significant lapse in awareness about sexual abuse victims, and handled a matter involving sexual abuse in the precisely wrong way.

Although I personally have no interest in reading a journal dedicated to leadership, I don’t want to see Leadership Journal go under. It’s my hope and prayer that this dramatic failure becomes an opportunity for renewal and resurrection in the church.

Whether they want to know about it or not, this situation has once again put pastoral sex abuse on the radar for evangelicals. We can’t really avoid it when the number publication for pastors dramatically fails to write about it. Here, then, is our moment to properly engage this topic.

Leadership Journal has an opportunity to lead the way.

Whereas a convicted felon was given a forum to speak about sex abuse, Leadership Journal can invite credentialed experts, victim advocacy leaders, and pastors who have led congregations through a sex abuse scandal without taking part in a cover up.

Whereas the comments of former sex abuse victims were silenced on the Leadership Journal website, their voices can be honored and protected by enforcing a strong comment policy that deletes any comments that question the integrity of victims or attempt to silence or shame them.

Whereas Leadership Journal’s editors passed the buck and offered vague contact information when confronted on Twitter, they can provide a simple, clear point person who is empowered to handle any immediate concerns with the content of their website.

Whereas Leadership Journal emphasized the legal implications of sex abuse, its leaders can develop books, articles, and white papers on the human cost of sex abuse. Leadership has a chance to become the leading advocate for victims, for healing congregations, for guiding pastors through this difficult season, and for restoring fallen pastors.

Churches are all over the map with how they handle the prevention of sex abuse and its aftermath. Leadership Journal can become the new standard bearer.

Leadership Journal can become part of the solution to the evangelical culture of sex abuse—providing an unequaled forum for healing, restoration, and wholeness in the church.

My prayer throughout Leadership Journal’s time of darkness has been for resurrection.

When church leaders drop everything to help the victims of abuse, it is a time of resurrection.

When church leaders choose to defend the vulnerable rather than one another, it is a time of resurrection.

When the church rushes to defend victims when a leader steps out of line, it is a time of resurrection.

When an abusive church leader submits to counseling so that he can understand the gravity of his failures and the path to healing, it is a time of resurrection.

When the church, despite our failings, disagreements, and frustrations, can come together to support victims, pastors, and congregations, we have a chance to become resurrection people.

We can mourn with those who mourn, pray for those who are discouraged, and provide safety for those who don’t know how to trust again. We can practice resurrection because resurrection will always beat darkness.

NOTE: There were many excellent responses, but I suggest beginning with Mary Demuth’s Dear Man in Prison. Check the Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost for more perspectives.

I Thought That Receiving Communion Was All About Me

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

There are moments during communion when I’m overcome with the enormity of the Christian faith. Followers of Jesus span back through centuries and circle around the world. We have been practicing this sacrament for the history of our faith, and it will continue for years to come.

Sitting in the time between worship and communion yesterday, I thought of the many other churches around our country gathered for worship at that time. In particular, I thought of the few pastors who have abused their authority, people in their congregations, and sometimes even people beyond their congregations.

There are pastors and teachers who have helped cover up child abuse scandals in some congregations.

There are pastors and leaders who have threatened fellow Christians with lawsuits.

There are pastors and leaders who throw around heavy words of condemnation at those who disagree with them.

It was all too much to bear. I wanted to take scissors to Jesus’ prayer in John 17. United with them? The only thing I’d like to unite with them is my fist—this from a guy who hasn’t thrown a punch since the age of 13.

How did these divisions happen? Where did we go so far off track? While a divided church is as old as Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the divisions among us felt particularly acute even as I prepared to take communion.

Searching for answers, I revisited the scars left by more conservative critics who have called the integrity of my faith into question because my God wasn’t as dominant and powerful as their own or because I saw culture, gray areas, and complexity in the pages of scripture where they only saw black and white.

It is a deep hurt to have sought out answers with integrity, to arrive at different answers than your original tribe, and to then be cast out as a threat, false teacher, and enemy.

That isn’t to say I was innocent and pure all along as my faith ventured into new territory. I was quite angry for a season. I felt like I’d been tricked—as if someone had set up a curtain to hide the true nature of things.

I don’t think you can stop the anger and resentment from taking hold when your long-held beliefs crumble. At least I don’t know how I could have stopped it, and as I see other Christians pulling back the curtain of their conservative faith, I don’t have anything better to offer them.

Our personal histories lead us in different directions. Sometimes there is grace for these differences. Sometimes there are divisions over the abuse of power that cannot be overlooked.

Both my past hurts and the folly of abusive leaders today left me despairing as I prepared to partake in one bread and one cup on Sunday morning.

Perhaps I despair so easily because I fail to grasp the lesson of communion each Sunday. I’ve been too focused on myself.

I approach communion completely absorbed in my own spiritual health, fearful that I will take the body of Christ in an unworthy manner. I want to have a clean slate between myself and God. Communion has been about healing my own soul.

Even our divided churches could teach us about the dangers of seeking our own salvation at the expense of everyone around us. There is a tendency to pursue salvation by remaining pure, cutting ourselves off from others.

Isn’t this act of taking the body of Christ an act of unity, a mystical binding together of Christ’s body in this one simple act?

Do I believe that Christ can not only heal me but also heal his church, even the parts I find reprehensible?

What if my part right now is to keep receiving communion, to keep praying for a healed church that can minister to a hurting world? Some Sundays, like last Sunday, that feels like an enormous leap of faith.

Communion reminds me that God endures even as denominations and leaders rise and fall. The Kingdom continues to advance, and Christ’s body still offers us healing, even if we aren’t looking for it.

If You Want to Stop Sinning, Stop Trying to Stop Sinning

Posted on June 2, 2014May 31, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

I used to plant the lettuce in my garden in long rows, thinning the sprouts according to the seed package’s specifications. Then I spent the rest of the summer pulling all of the weeds around my lettuce.

It’s likely that I pulled more weeds than harvested lettuce.

I liken weeding to mowing the lawn one blade of grass at a time. It’s my least favorite part of gardening, and since we garden organically, I had to come up with a better weed prevention strategy.

I thought I found my solution with a bale of straw. I could fill all of the gaps in our garden with straw and keep the weeds to a minimum. We saw a drop in weeds, but I still had to keep up with them. At the very least, I cut our weeding in half.

However, once we moved to Ohio where I built two raised beds in our small backyard, I discovered that straw wasn’t going to work. An army of slugs took refuge in our straw and used it as a highway to eat everything in our garden. We needed to find a way to prevent weeds without using chemicals and without covering the ground with fabric that would deplete the soil or straw that gave safe haven to slugs.

I found the solution in my in-law’s garden.

My in-laws have been gardening for as long as my wife can remember, and their lettuce patch replaces my orderly rows with a sprawling patch thick with lettuce. They spread their seeds in an area, thin the sprouts a bit, and let the heads of lettuce grow up right next to each other.

This was a huge “Aha!” moment for me.

We now grow a lot more lettuce and spend virtually no time weeding. As of this summer, I have yet to pull a single weed by our lettuce because our seeds were so evenly scattered.

Mind you, this is a bit of work at first. I had to spend a lot of time thinning the seeds I’d scattered. However, in the long run, I don’t have to do a thing most days. There are no weeds competing for garden space because I’ve invested time in creating so much life in our garden.

The key to defeating weeds is to invest in growing healthy plants that will take their space.

I was doomed to keep fighting weeds as long as I was focused on weed prevention rather than plant cultivation.

I have seen the same principle play out in my life when it comes to Christian living. If I want to leave sin behind, I have to stop fighting against sin. We can only leave sin behind when we pursue something (or someone) else in its stead.

When we talk about repentance, we often speak of an abrupt “about-face” or turning away from our plans to God’s plans. If you think about it, fighting sin or sin-prevention strategies prevent us from actually turning away from our sinful ways in order to pursue God.

We’re so busy looking at what we can’t have that we’re unable to see what God offers instead.

Fighting sin does nothing to cultivate the health of God in our lives. We’ll just keep moving from one “weed” to another, waiting for another weed to sprout in our lives since nothing else has been sown in its place.

While we can always take commonsense steps to avoid sin, the real victory over sin is won when we give God space in our lives and actively pursue God. Whether serving others or devoting time for prayer, these steps toward God keep us turned away from sin. Repentance is turning away from sin, but holiness happens in our daily interactions with God.

There is freedom in the pursuit of God that conquers sin. While there are moral standards of a sort for Christians, we leave certain paths behind because of Christ’s “yes” rather than our own “no” that strives for holiness.

We have been called. Christ has said, “Come!” to you and to me because we surely thirst for the redemption he offers.

He has better things for us, but we’ll never leave our own plans behind if we refuse to believe it.

Franklin Graham Does Not Understand Holiness

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

Franklin Graham and his holiness fail. — Image of Franklin Graham from The Christian Post.

In a recent speech, Franklin Graham demanded that pastors in his audience speak out boldly on several moral issues, lest they fall under God’s wrath for being cowards. He said:

“The definition of a coward: a coward will not confront an issue that needs to be confronted due to fear. That is a coward,” said Graham.

“God hates cowards. And the cowards that the Lord is referring to are the men and women who know the truth but refuse to speak it.”

Graham essentially used the fear of God to prompt his audience to overcome their fears of speaking out.

There are many different aspects of Graham’s talk we could challenge, but I’d like to call into question the role of a wrathful God who hates people in prompting people to change their behavior, such as speaking out on specific moral issues. Graham’s right wing agenda aside, is God really in heaven with his finger on the “hell” button, waiting for us to screw up? I know that I’ve lived this way, fearing that one day’s failure had finally cut me off from God.

Most importantly, how does this approach to God’s wrath and holiness compare to the message of Jesus and the New Testament writers about holiness?

A misconception of holiness is at the heart of Graham’s statement. According to Graham, God demands a particular lifestyle, one of moral crusading in American culture, and those unwilling to conform to God’s program receive God’s hatred and an eternity of suffering.

I’ve stated that crassly, but I believe it’s accurate because I also thought that way for most of my life. It’s pretty much what you’ll hear today if you listen to most Christian radio shows.

The only way to avoid God’s wrath in Graham’s system is to change your actions out of fear for self-preservation.

Did Jesus relate to people through fear and the threat of his hatred?

How Did Jesus Interact with Sinners?

Jesus said he didn’t come to judge the world. Isn’t that nice to know? Perhaps he knew that his followers would do enough of that in the future.

In fact, Jesus adopted the role of doctor, comparing the “notorious sinners” of his day with the sick. They were still told to leave their lives of sin, but he didn’t walk around telling people to clean up their acts or God would hate them.

In fact, Jesus sat down to share meals with tax collectors and women with unsavory reputations. When Jesus saw someone living in sin, whether that was cowardice, sexual immorality, cheating, or violence, he had… wait for it… compassion.

Rather than Jesus pounding his fist on the table and shouting that his followers needed to shape up, he slapped his palm to his head when they failed to understand the gift of the Spirit that would empower them to serve others rather than rule as kings.

Far from sitting with his finger on the hell button, Jesus rolled up his sleeves and entered into real life with people. He humbled himself, even taking the form of a servant to help us find the way of redemption.

He called his disciples “friends” rather than threatening them with an eternity of suffering.

Before facing the cross, he promised that the Spirit would come to empower us, fill us wisdom, and guide us into all truth. Yes, there are consequences for rejecting the message of Christ. But he related to others through mercy and grace, imparting his Spirit to imperfect people who desperately needed God’s presence in order to pursue holiness.

How Do We Live Holy Lives?

Whatever you’re trying to do for the sake of Christ, the most important lesson from the Gospels and epistles is the centrality of the Holy Spirit. You won’t last long by simply trying harder.

Living in fear of an angry God will grow old.

When fear of God gives way to loving God as a father, holiness becomes a natural response.

Graham wants the pastors in his audience to fear God, and he’s hoping that this fear of God will trickle down into their congregations. He wants them to try harder as culture warriors in order to win God’s favor.

Sadly, Graham has adopted a kind of works-based righteousness for the sake of a political agenda.

Graham doesn’t realize that God’s favor already belongs to us. All who are thirsty are called to come and drink. God so loved the world after all…

Before the cross, God had an intense, undying love for us.

In the epistle to the Romans, Paul had God’s mercy rather than his wrath in mind. He also called his readers to be renewed in their minds rather than trying harder:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2, NIV via BibleGateway)

I rarely call out specific Christians in my writing, but Franklin Graham’s approach to holiness is contrary to the message of Jesus. It grieves me to think that pastors who look up to him are receiving a message that fails to consider the mercy of God, the healing Jesus brings, and the power we receive from the Spirit to live in holiness.

Paul wrote that the Spirit of God does not give us a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7, BibleGateway). We have been adopted as God’s sons and daughters. God demands holiness. It’s not a free for all, but God’s ways under the Spirit are not rooted in fear and wrath.

God relates to us as a caring and compassionate parent who desires to restore us—end of story.

The Inconvenient Interruptions of Toddler Spirituality

Posted on May 28, 2014May 27, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

Ethan and I had just barely made the double decker London bus. Standing in a crowd of commuters, I wasn’t able to climb to the second level where Ethan loved to watch passing buses. I balanced myself with him and his folded up stroller, biding my time until we reached the Underground stop where seats would open up.

We had big plans to visit St. James Park with its fearless ducks, delightful sand area, and sprawling lawns. I had a ball, snacks, and several diapers in my backpack. Out of all our days in London, I had prepared the best for this one.

While waiting through the first few stops, I started to smell something that was a little bit… off. In a crowded bus with all sorts of people, you expect to smell all kinds of things. Besides, Ethan’s “epic” diapers had been primarily confined to the evening. I just needed to get to the second floor so he could have a better view of the passing buses and trucks.

A few stops later we ventured upstairs and a kind man moved so we could sit together by a window. The smell got stronger. I feared the worst.

A quick peak confirmed it, and I needed to take immediate action with a diaper wipe. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack the diaper wipes. I didn’t even have any napkins or tissues on hand.

I needed to get off this bus immediately.

But if I got off in the wrong neighborhood, I wouldn’t be able to find a store to buy wipes. I couldn’t put him in his stroller because that would be an even bigger mess. I couldn’t hold him the usual way because that would just make the leak worse. I couldn’t count on Ethan walking for more than a block. I had to play this just right to avoid an even more epic disaster.

Using Google Maps on my phone, I found a store near a stop that was five minutes away. We made it off the bus at that stop while I held Ethan up by the legs—a bit like a toddler torch. It looked ridiculous. The folded up stroller didn’t help.

However, when I consulted my map, I realized that I’d gotten off one stop too late. I ran four blocks instead of one with my toddler torch. Ethan can hardly walk a block in a straight line. He has to stop and point at water and gas caps in the sidewalk. He has to point at buses, trees, and traffic lights. He may sit down and resist walking. He may wander toward the road and cry if I try to stop him.

I had to keep moving. I had a diaper to change.

Sweating and dreading the state of Ethan’s diaper and clothing, I bought wipes and slipped into a nearby Pret a Manger to make the diaper change. Thankfully his outfit was untouched.

My sudden influx of urgency paid off.

Later that day Ethan and I took a walk around a park. There weren’t many people around. He pushed his stroller by my side, often turning around, going in circles, or venturing onto the grass.

I kept prodding him to walk forward, to keep moving, to “come on.”

As I entered my tenth minute of prodding, I finally asked myself, “Why am I doing this?”

It made sense earlier in the day that I needed to rush with a messy diaper on the line. A ruined outfit meant we would have to go home and lose our day at the park.

Without a diaper to worry about, I was simply coaxing Ethan along for the sake of efficiency. We had to get somewhere, I wasn’t sure where, but we had to do it fast. We were in a rush to walk from one end of the park to the other I suppose. I was rushing just for the sake of rushing.

Rushing is a lifestyle.

I had turned an occasional fast pace into a way of living where I frantically run from one thing to another.

On the following day we visited another park. Ethan wanted to walk across the grass with the stroller. It’s the most excruciatingly slow way to travel anywhere. I walked ahead and settled on a bench.

He eventually made it across the grass and started to cross a courtyard. However, something about the straps on his stroller caught his attention. He had to stop and snap them together.

It took a long time to get them snapped just right.

By the time he finished snapping them together, he wanted them unsnapped and began calling out to me for help. I told him to bring the stroller to me. Rather than pushing the stroller by its handles, he pushed it from the seat straps. It took an eternity to cross the courtyard, but Ethan wasn’t in a hurry.

Wandering London with a toddler was inconvenient and exhausting at times. I’d never sweated so much in all my life as I did during our three weeks in London. Every single thing required so much energy.

However, there were moments when Ethan forced me to slow, to adapt my pace to his own. He have been pointing at the 115^th bus or the 32^nd duck of the day, but that was fine. I didn’t need to rush him along while walking through the park.

The interruptions of a toddler can create their own sacred space. They put the brakes on our constant rushing from one thing to another.

They say that you can make God laugh if you tell him your plans.

God may laugh at our plans, but I say that God laughs even harder when we tell our toddlers our plans.

My Post for a Deeper Story: If Jesus Demands Excellence, I’m Out

Posted on May 5, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

I’m posting over at the Church Channel for A Deeper Story about the tension of churches in America pursuing excellence when everyone attending them feels like a failure:

I say the words, “Wait,” “Not now,” and “Later” for about an hour straight to my son, the eager toddler who can’t stop offering games and toys to me. He doesn’t understand that I’m trying to get us out the door for church.

Sometimes there are tears. Sometimes there’s whining. Sometimes he simply persists: “This. This. This. This. This. This.” He waves his finger at a stuffed animal, a drum set, a train, or a play table.

Up and down the steps we go as I hunt for wipes, food cups, and diapers. He doesn’t want to leave my side. This is typical for the morning. We usually play together most mornings. We usually have all of the time in the world. I let him scamper up and down the steps as we sing, “Up-stairs” or “Down-stairs” together. But it’s Sunday, so I’m hauling him around and he wiggles and squirms in my arms, eager to charge around with me.

He doesn’t understand what the rush is. He doesn’t like being pulled away from one toy after another as I put my shoes on, fill up his juice, and track down the right jacket for him.

By the time I’m working on his diaper bag and still looking for wipes, he’s had enough. He’s standing on the couch because he knows that standing on the couch is off limits. He knows I’ll come rushing over to pull him down.

We had entered the no-win vortex where I either can’t get out the door because my child wants me to pay attention to him or I can’t stop my child from standing on the perilous edge of the couch as I pack a bag for church. I pulled him down and went back to the bag, but he scampered right back up and looked right at me.

I pulled him down again, and he repeated his actions. I tried to redirect him to another toy. I just needed 60 SECONDS TO FINISH. JUST. 60. SECONDS. But when children reach their limit, they don’t want to hear “wait” or “get down” one more time. He doesn’t understand what 60 seconds are. They may as well be a million.

Read the rest at A Deeper Story.

Win a Copy of A Christian Survival Guide

Posted on December 31, 1969June 30, 2014 by Ed Cyzewski

Paying for books is soooooooo last century. In fact, this week you have a chance to get three of my books totally for free.

Two books, The Coffeehouse Theology Bible Study Guide and A Path to Publishing are free eBooks on NoiseTrade Books. Just enter your email address and you can download them without paying a penny—although I wouldn’t stop you from tipping me a few bucks.

My publisher is also offering 15 free copies of A Christian Survival Guide in a giveaway at Goodreads.

Enter the Christian Survival Guide giveaway today.

Why would you want to win a copy of the Christian Survival Guide?

Well, for starters, I ask a lot of tough questions about the Christian faith for you—the questions that often lurk in the backs of our minds. These are the questions we hesitate to ask because we fear there won’t be an answer that will enable our faith to survive.

In A Christian Survival Guide I dig into all of the questions and issues that have threatened my faith over the years and have given trouble to friends and colleagues. It’s not a book with simple answers or doctrinal statements. It’s a book that will help readers think about their faith and take a next step with the most difficult topics.

Bible scholar and author Pete Enns wrote:

“How should Christians handle their doubts, discomfort over violence in the Bible, fears about the future, or a number of other troubling issues that just never seem to go away? A Christian Survival Guide takes by the throat many challenging topics for Christians today and provides encouraging and thought-provoking glimpses into a Biblical responses. Cyzewski doesn’t spell out all of the answers. Rather, in an easy-reading style, he helps fellow pilgrims ask better questions and take the next steps on their journey of faith.”

Enter the giveaway on Goodreads.

You can also pre-order your copy today from Amazon or the publisher.