My raison d'etre

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
Have you ever felt like you could disappear?
Like you could fall, and no one would hear?

I occasionally worry about projection. 

Simon and I have often talked about the need for authenticity in ministry. People don't respond to "Thou shalt" as much as they do to "I feel like". Facts and data can be disputed, and these days you can cherry pick data from the Internet to prove any point that you would like to make. But in our culture it is a sin to invalidate someone's personal experience. And so I frequently tell personal stories in my preaching and candidly share about how the passage applies in my own life. And people usually respond pretty positively to this; they often tell me how much they appreciate a preacher who is "real" or "open about his own weaknesses" or (ironically) "not too preachy". 

But sometimes, oftentimes, I wonder if maybe this modus operandus makes me a one-dimensional pastor who is ineffective at ministering to people who are different to me. Specifically I worry that maybe what I say from the pulpit isn't relevant to people who are well-adjusted, well-put together, and not "broken". 

In 2008 Tim Keller introduced a paradigm that forever changed how evangelicals think of sin when he wrote his book The Prodigal God. He said that there were two kinds of sinners: There was the "younger brother", who rejects God through classically self-seeking behavior such as self-discovery and indulgence. And then there was the self-righteous, pharisaical "older brother", who follows the rules and lives obediently, but in his heart he actually serves himself through his pride over his own achievements and his resentment towards his father's extravagant love. 

The basic idea is that one is an outright bad person while the other is also a bad person but hides it behind a veneer of piousness. 

One is a winner and the other is a loser.

One is privileged and the other is an outcast.

One is, by society's standards, decent and the other is not.

One is well adjusted and well heeled and the other is not welcome in polite company.

One outperforms expectations and the other is constantly berated for not performing up to his potential. 

One is self-reliant and the other is a burden to others.

One knows that he is a sinner and the other thanks God that he is "not like those other people—robbers, evildoers, and adulterers"

We start with stars in our eyes
We start believing that we belong
But every sun doesn't rise
And no one tells you where you went wrong

I've always been the younger brother.

My entire life can be summarized as an anxious striving to be good enough. What does it mean to be good enough? It means running just fast enough to not be caught by the failure truck. It means never allowing myself to rest or to sit and just exist. It means earning the right to breathe every second of every day. It means I'm always tired. It means I'm eternally oscillating between frenetic action or defeated depression. It means burning the candle at both ends night after night in order to stay ahead of my oppressive, self-imposed to-do list and to keep up with my oppressive, imaginary, self-imposed timeline of what I should have achieved in what area of life and work by what day so that I can momentarily not feel like a total f***-up. 

Teacher, don't you care if we drown?

Earlier this year, on 5th April 2023 to be exact, I prayed a prayer that I had never, ever uttered in my life and I wrote it down in my journal: "Dear God, I like who I am. I like how you made me." It took a lifetime of therapy, sanctification, and Spirit work for me to make this single statement in rejection of self-loathing. I had wondered for so many years what the point of all this inner turmoil was. Why did I have to suffer like this? Like I'm not in control of my own thoughts or impulses, or that I never really fit in or that I had to work so damn hard every second of my life in order to stave off for a little longer the ultimate condemnation, that I'm not good enough. 

And this year I realized what it was all for. I was lost so that in 2024 God could find me again. I had to learn all the lessons he had for me first. The point of the pain before was to mold me into the messenger that he wanted me to be. 

Because I'm not the only younger brother. 

And this is what I meant when I said at the beginning that I sometimes worry about projection. Projection is a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously attributes their own feelings, desires, or traits onto other people. What if I am preaching in a way that only younger brothers respond to? What if in the name of authenticity I reveal too much of my own vulnerability and insecurity on the pulpit in a manner that is actually detrimental to the congregation? What if someone in my church says, "maybe someone as broken as Dan shouldn't be preaching the Word to us until he can get himself figured out."

But these concerns are mostly only passing in nature. Because the whole point of the "younger brother, older brother paradigm" is actually the point out that fundamentally they are both the same. They are both sinners who are in need of grace. Sin manifests differently in each of us, but the medicine is the same no matter who we are: The affirmation, "You are my child, with you I am well-pleased, on the basis of my Son Jesus who made atonement for you through his blood."

I am a sinner in need of grace. But in Christ, God is pleased with me. He delights in me. And he approves of me. 

Out of the shadows
The morning is breaking
And all is new, all is new
It's filling up the empty
And suddenly I see that
All is new, all is new

Jo and I like to joke about that stereotype about psychology majors. That the real reason so many people choose to study psychology or therapy or counselling in Uni is because they perceive something broken about themselves and they subconsciously want to figure themselves out. Well the honest truth is that I'm no better. The real reason that I ever got into ministry is that I perceive something fundamentally broken about my psyche and I've found that the gospel is the only thing that has ever effected real healing for me. And all I ever want to do is share that healing. It's my true raison d'etre. My calling is to the lost, lonely, little brothers and outcasts like me to let them know about Jesus' special, particular compassion for them. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

And the absolute honest truth is that when I am meeting with the disaffected and disenfranchised and holding out the gospel to them, those are the only times when I feel like I am fulfilling my true calling. Everything else, the ministry and the Bible studies and the Sunday sermons and the church planting committees and the leadership training and the Sunday school and the young families and all the other stuff that I do in my work... they're adjacent to my passion but in a real sense I only do them to pay the bills. 

Meeting up with the F*** ups to tell them that Jesus came specifically for them. That's my real calling. And God spent 37 years shaping me, painfully, into the person I need to be in order to keep on doing that. 

I named my son after Evan Hansen because he was born from this lost, lonely, little misfit who felt invisible. Because his father was created and commissioned specifically to minister to lost, lonely, invisible misfits, and so now my boy will hopefully always remember what his dad was all about and maybe one day we can have a Lebron-and-Bronny type situation going. 

All we see is sky for forever
We let the world pass by for forever
Feels like we could go on for forever this way
Two friends on a perfect day