ACCOUNTABILITY IN HEAVEN

I get together weekly with two good Christian friends to confess sin and pray for one another. To help us get specific, we have a list of fifteen sins that we grill one another on: “Have you struggled with sexual immorality this week?” “Have you engaged in covetousness?” And so forth and so on.

We often joke about doing accountability in heaven. In heaven, of course, our bodies and our conduct will be perfect. Accountability in heaven will mean that after every sin category is listed, we will answer in the negative: “Any anxiety?” “No.” “Any deceitfulness?” “No.”

What a day that’ll be. But what if we longed to have the perfect week on this side of glory? Every so often, one of us will say they’ve had a pretty good week, in that they only have to confess something in four or five sin categories. But what about wanting – not in a driven, self-reliant way, but in a “I want to please God” way – to go oh fer fifteen?

What would it be like to, by God’s grace, go an entire week without feeling any regret or impatience or despondency? How freeing would it be to go an entire week without self-adulation or gossip or poor self-image? I tell you what it would be like: it would be like a slice of heaven here on earth.

Alas, I can’t even go an afternoon without clogging up my sin spreadsheet. But still I strive for that perfect week. And still I await a time and place when all who believe in Jesus will go oh fer fifteen.

PAY TO PLAY

Philly is notorious for having a political climate that is all about "pay to play." If you kowtow to the powers that be, you get what you want; and if you refuse to play that game, you get mysteriously ostracized. I can't share too many details, but I recently had a conversation with a colleague of mine who I respect and admire a great deal. He has lived in Philadelphia all his life, and has served the city in many ways: as a Christian, a professional, and a political activist.

It is all the more discouraging to me, then, to see him burned out on Philly politics. I know he is the kind of person who does what is right, no matter what the personal consequences. And those consequences, lately, have been steep: for refusing to kowtow, he has been systematically and decisively excluded from business opportunities he rightly deserves. And while he maintains he prefers to be a person of integrity even though it costs him financially and professionally, still I can hear the weariness in his voice.

I despair sometimes, for if the entrenched injustice has exasperated someone like my friend who is far more righteous and intelligent than I, what hope do I have that my labors will make a difference? When I grow weary like this, I call to mind Paul's exhortation to the Romans: "Don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Today, I pray this for myself and for my friend; and I pray a prayer for Philadelphia, and all cities, that they would not be overcome by evil but by good.

SIGNS OF A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD

Gentrification is a nebulous urban concept. Even if you could control all the variables that influence neighborhood dynamics – and who even knows all the variables, let alone has sway over them – would you even know what to do that would be most fair, most reasonable, most Kingdom-like? The concept itself is hard to define. In fact, I have yet to hear a good hard definition; the closest I’ve gotten is symptoms and characteristics.

And yet while it may be cloudy in the textbooks, it is clear as day here in my neighborhood. Four years and three weeks after buying our house, it is likely we could sell it for three times what we paid for it. A PENN alum friend of mine who started renting in the area and who is now looking to buy has completely ruled out this neighborhood, saying prices are way too high to even consider. Two students in my youth program, both of whom come from low-income families, are in the process of moving, forced out by high rents and in search of more affordable neighborhoods nearby.

The block still has some flavor – a homeless guy staggered up to our front porch to converse with my friend who rents our third floor, two Ethiopian establishments on our corner continue to draw hordes of visitors, and the neighborhood remains an eclectic mix of immigrants, grad students, and bohemians. But I see the signs and wonder if in five to ten years I’ll recognize the neighborhood my wife and I decided to live in when we first moved here four years and three weeks ago.

THE BLESSING OF UNANSWERED PRAYER

Answered prayer is the stuff of soul-winning testimonies, monthly prayer letters, and shout-outs to God. Happy Christians tell of God?s miraculous answers to desperate prayers for cancer to be beaten back, cold-hearted parents to warm to Christ, and financial troubles to disappear. These all are witnesses of God?s goodness to His children, witnesses for those who do not yet know Him to consider following Him.

And yet I wonder if we are neglecting the importance and blessing of unanswered prayer. The subject is called to mind by a book I am reading about the amazing life stories of twelve indigenous missionaries in Third World countries. Chapter after chapter is full of awesome experiences of God?s deliverance, provision, and victory amidst hardship, poverty, and opposition. Certainly, when God?s people take steps of faith to be sold out for Him and for the work of spreading His gospel, He hooks them up.

But amidst these victories are also stories of defeat. Missionary couples lose their infant children. Some are falsely accused of fraud. Others are banned from the villages they had enjoyed ministry success by defensive religious groups. I am sure that these people prayed ? for their child not to die of malaria, for their names to be cleared of wrongdoing, for the opportunity to share the gospel in the village they feel they have been called to. And yet God chose not to answer those prayers. Still, His work continued through their lives.

It is a witness of God?s goodness for Him to answer our prayers. But it is also a witness of God?s goodness for His people to follow Him even when He doesn?t answer our prayers. It speaks highly of God to nonbelievers when He heals and provides and blesses. But it also speaks highly of God to nonbelievers when His people continue to raise their hands in worship when He doesn?t heal or provide or bless, indeed when He takes away and decimates and withholds.

I think of the ?hall of faith? in Hebrews 11. Here was a group who merited God?s every favor. These were men and women who lived by faith, whose lives of faith honored God. And yet in the things that mattered most to these people, the things I imagine they prayed for the most frequently and fervently, God did not answer any of those prayers. He chose not to answer their prayers.

Like for the folks in Hebrews 11, I imagine God still is in the business of not answering our prayers. It is not out of ignorance, or malice, or apathy. Like in Hebrews 11, He has greater plans for our lives, plans that are greater than our lives themselves. May we pray passionately and consistently for the things on our hearts. And may we praise God when He answers those prayers. And may we praise Him when He doesn?t.

HOW SERIOUS IS SIN

Every week for the past several years, I have met with one or two close Christian guy friends to confess sin and to pray. We have a list of about fifteen sin categories that we grill one another in: lust, anxiety, and deceitfulness, just to name a few. It is an excellent and important spiritual discipline that I am happy I got into the habit of, and I have seen God use those times in dramatic ways, whether it be prayers answered, habitual sins battled against, or just the rarity of people truly being honest about themselves before others.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if my approach to the whole thing is off. There are days I feel so dirty at the end of reciting a whole week’s worth of sins in ten minutes, when I wonder what God could possibly do with me. And there are days I tick off sins as though I were sharing a grocery list or a top ten favorite songs countdown, recounting them in an efficient, organized, and dispassionate manner.

How serious is sin? Should we not confess it with the gravity it deserves, each act a defiant betrayal of the lordship of God over our lives? And should we not emerge from such confessions, and the ensuing prayers for mercy and forgiveness and strength, with a sense of a heavy burden removed, a deep stain cleansed, a cherished bond once broken and now restored?

I must say I do not often approach our accountability times with this kind of emotion and life. I usually do not take my sin as seriously as it ought to be taken, nor God’s grace. And even as I seek to take this all more seriously, may I do it not out of a spirit of perfectionism, out of a need to “do it right,” but for what it is: grieving where I’ve displeased my Master, delighting that in Jesus there is forgiveness of sin. May I learn to take sin seriously, but not too seriously (so as to negate grace); to take grace seriously, but not too seriously (so as to negate sin).

MLB 2004 PREDICTIONS

Haven’t had nearly enough time to do my usual “research”; it’s hard to surf on ESPN.com during lunch breaks at work when 1) Internet connection is down and 2) I haven’t had time to eat lunch. But my “research” in the past hasn’t yielded sterling results (I had Burrell winning MVP last year), so maybe this is my year I nail it.

AL
West: A’s
Central: Royals
East: Red Sox
Wild card: Angels
MVP: Gary Sheffield
CY: Curt Schilling
ROY: Bobby Crosby

NL
West: Giants
Central: Astros
East: Phillies
Wild card: Cubs
MVP: Sammy Sosa
CY: Roy Oswalt
ROY: Kaz Matsui

PLAYOFFS
ALDS: Red Sox over Angels, A’s over Royals
NLDS: Phillies over Cubs, Astros over Giants
LCS: Red Sox over A’s, Phillies over Astros
World Series: Red Sox over Phillies (MVP: Schilling)