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Watching both political conventions over the last two weeks, it finally dawned on me why I have come to find this entire election season so empty and soul-numbing.

Each side, using all the tools of public relations, exaggerates its claims to greatness far beyond any sense of reality, and at the same time exaggerates its opponent’s weaknesses, even making up lies where it serves them. In the end we don’t get an honest discussion of the issues, or even an honest appraisal of the men running to be our next President. We get a constant barrage of deceitful self-boasting and scurrilous accusations at the other.

False caricatures are all were left with. One person deserves our trust and the other is an evil man running for his own self-interest. The process is not designed to inform the electorate, but to manipulate their vote for that which does not even exist. If you talk to supporters of either man, they see it exactly the way the politicians want them to. One candidate is the only hope for America, and the other will totally destroy it. I don’t know what’s sadder, that politicians think we’ll fall for the charade, or that so many Americans actually do.

I would hope that when President Obama and Governor Romney go to bed at night, they see through the false caricatures that mar their own campaigns. But I’m not so sure they do. I remember when President George W. Bush was asked at the end of his first term if there was anything he regretted, or decisions he made that wish he’d done differently. He couldn’t think of any. Really? Can anyone be so self-deceived that they can’t look back over any four-year period and not see the failures that any moderately intelligent person could see? Who doesn’t gain better wisdom with the passing of time or in the consequences of their actions, not wish they had treated someone differently?

And now the media is in on the game as well. They join one side and manipulate their listeners to see their one-dimensional view of the world. Seemingly the only way to get a job in news these days is to be an arrogant, obnoxious advocate for liberal or conservative causes. Who is taking a hard look at what’s true and able to analyze the nuances of the major crises that confront our nation?

False caricatures are not only a stupid way to choose a President they also destroy human relationships at every level. And yet shame drags us into our own internal conversations that are very much like this political campaign. Viewing yourself or anyone else in such one-dimensional terms is a recipe for disaster. It is the language of shame throbbing like a drum beat in our heads as much as in our culture.

There are those who find it easy to exaggerate their own sense of goodness or gifts, while also exaggerating the weaknesses of others. They end up thinking more highly of themselves than they ought to think and will live arrogantly in the world, demanding their own way, betraying their own word when it suits them, and making accusations against others to deflect people from seeing them as they really are. Wherever they tread, relationships are destroyed.

While I’ve known a few people like that, there are probably more who tend to focus on all their faults and failures, while exaggerating the gifts and insights of others. They are so crushed by their own perception of inadequacy that they exaggerate their own weakness or brokenness, while at the same time exaggerating the gifts and goodness of others around them. Unable to accept themselves as they really are, with a full complement of attributes, some positive and some negative, they define themselves as unlovely and unworthy.

As long as we are dominated by shame we’ll live in a world of false caricatures of ourselves and other people around us. In the end we don’t get to see people as they really are, a mix of some talents, wisdom, and gifts, but also of weaknesses, inadequacies, and blind spots.

I remember one of the last conversations I had with three other elders at the place I last pastored. They had been some of my close friends for almost fifteen years. They were trying to get me to embrace changes they wanted to make in the congregation that I thought would take us away from the road Jesus was inviting us to follow. The pressure they exerted was oppressive, offering me the place of “wise apostle” if I bought into it, and threatening me with being outed as a rebellious person if I didn’t. I was neither of the two things I was being offered and yet those were the only choices I was being given. In the end, I decided that wasn’t a game I’d play anymore.

I’m so glad I didn’t. That game leads only to a false world of extremes where reality is celebrated and true life can unfold. While I crave the day when a politician will forge an honest campaign and make the other look foolish for not doing so, I have little hope that our political climate will change. But each of us has the freedom each day to walk away from a world of false caricatures and see ourselves and others as they really are. Let God show you how he views you, both the places that reflect his glory, and those places that he still yearns to transform. Don’t be afraid to admit either and have the freedom to be who you really are in the world. It will help set others free.

And then learn to see others as they really are, celebrating their gifts and strengths, while pouring out compassion and patience on the broken places they endure. Life is so much better when we live in reality and not the false caricatures that our society seems to crave.

We arrived home yesterday after two and a half weeks enjoying some wonderful time together in the beauty of the Sierras. Sara and I got lots of time in with family and friends as well as some long walks in the woods with our two dogs. And I got a chance to water ski–something I enjoyed as a young man, but have not had much opportunity to do for the past few decades. I got to ski more in the past two weeks than in my previous 30 years. And it was fun. There’s something about cutting through glassy water on a slalom ski that I find exhilarating to my mind and heart. Especially at my age! And there was something about tubing behind a boat with my granddaughters through rough water that was hilarious funny and quite renewing. I am so grateful for the vacation God gave us this year. So good!

Now we’re home to a very busy schedule. Over the next few weeks we will have a number of guests coming to stay with us. Next week the producer and screenwriter for the movie adaptation of So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore are coming to spend two days working on the script. After that our board will be gathering here for the weekend to sort out what God has in mind through Lifestream. They are followed by a songwriter/author friend of mine who wanted my input on some of his projects, and then I’ll spend another day with someone helping us reformat our website to add some new features that will help us do what we do.

All that aside, there’s a deeper undercurrent to our lives right now. Starting next week, I am also taking a hiatus from The God Journey Podcast for an indefinite period of time. I have no idea if it will be short or long, but don’t worry, there’s no crisis here. I explain all of that on tomorrow’s episode. Given the project I’ve been working on for the last eight months and the new work God is doing in Sara, we both sense that the wind of the Spirit is blowing across our lives inviting us to a different direction. We’re not at all sure what that might mean for us, but we think it will send us on a new tack. We are simply creating some space in our lives to let God speak to us clearly about that, and didn’t want to just plunge ahead doing what we’ve always done.

Honestly, I’m excited even in the uncertainty of what’s ahead. God has heard my prayer. In this season of life, I want to give myself to those things that will most bear the fruit of God’s purpose in the world through his gifts in me. There may be better ways to do that, than simply maintaining the course we’ve been on for many years.

Time will tell.

I am finishing up today in the south of France. Tomorrow I’m taking a train from Narbonne to Paris, to meet Sara who will be arriving from the States. We will be catching another train to go out and spend some time in Angers with some brothers and sisters who invited us to come. After four days in Angers, we will return to Paris for some private holiday time before we head over to Ireland and gather with some dear friends there.

Yesterday, Joni posted a comment on my previous blog that posed a question I thought many others would like to hear an answer to. So, Joni, I’ve taken the liberty of reposting our comment here, and adding my response at the end.

Love your transparency as always. Are you guys working on a marriage book together? Thought I heard that somewhere sometime in the past. Must be sweet to be so loved by Papa. This is what pastoring looks like, sharing the struggle of the journey is so helpful. I know in my own marriage as we age I am really seeing with more clarity why the marriage metaphor is the one He chose to reflect our relationship with Him. Between my marriage and parenting He really teaches me well and loves me beyond my wildest imagination. I hope you get hit with a little Cupid in Paris Wayne and find a little romance with Sara in the city. Thank you so much for keeping it real with us.

I don’t know that I believe in this Cupid guy, but we are looking for a whole lot more than a little romance in Paris. It is Sara’s favorite city and this time is God’s gift to her.

To answer your question, however, we’re still working on the MARRIAGE together! Once we get that sorted out, we’ll think about a book. 😉

Seriously, though, we’ve talked about doing a book for some time on this topic, and have begun to collect and organize what God has shown us over the years. But then we go through a yet another season of God peeling off a layer of the onion, and our relationship shifts yet again to a much deeper reality. So, we’re never sure when we’re actually going to be able to write it—that we’re deep enough into this journey, especially when we’re writing on the joys of life-long loving. Ideally, I guess we would finish the book the day before one of us passes away! That would take an immense sense of timing, and by then the end of the age may be upon us and the book would be irrelevant anyway.

So, yes, we are working on a book, but I have no idea when we’ll be able to release it. We wouldn’t have wanted to have finished it last year, with what’s going on now. This is the BEST part of our journey together and we are learning the best lessons that in many ways are the culmination of so many things we have only seen in part before. I am so excited about what he is doing in us at the moment and know it will be an important part of the story for others in time.

So, we will have to see when and if we actually get the book done! As with most things I want to write about these days, the living of the reality in his work is so much more profound, then trying to describe it for others. I trust the Spirit will nudge us on the day he wants us to actually finish writing this book if it is on his heart.

I just found out my book, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, is about to release in Italian. Imagine that! Maybe it will find its way into the Vatican! Wouldn’t that be fun. Maybe it should be called So You Don’t Want to Go to the Cathedral Anymore! That’s the book cover at left.

I’m at LAX headed for France today and a weekend with people in the southern end of the country. As excited as I am about spending some time with some good friends of mine and meeting some new people, it was tougher leaving home today than any other trip has been. Sara and I have just had two of the most glorious two weeks together sorting out this new stage in our journey. Fortunately she joins me in a few days and as part of this trip we’ll be taking some time away just for us. I’m really looking forward to that, as is she.

We may talk in more detail about what’s going on in us up the road. I’m sorry to have frustrated some of you by being so nonspecific and I know more than a few of you have jumped to conclusions that were not accurate. What we are discovering are not the obvious things people worry about from childhood traumas, but it is allowing a new part of Sara to emerge and we are already enjoying the firstfruits of what this means in our love for each other. While we still have some miles to go together in letting Father shape all that he wants to in this season, it would be an understatement to say we are both excited about the Father’s work here. We thought we had an amazing relationship before, and in many ways we did. But now we’re finding some new places in each other’s hearts to explore together and I find myself both overjoyed and shocked that after 37 years of marriage there are still new places to discover. Who would have thought?

I’m so glad our marriage has never been static. We’ve never just settled in to a pattern of living that just allows us to coexist together. We’ve managed to stay on a journey with God that helps us keep expanding as individuals, and which has, in turn, meant we’ve had to keep expanding in our hearts to make room for the other. I’m blessed Sara keeps doing that for me, and I keep wanting to for her.

All told, this has truly been a joy. Yes it was birthed in some pain and confusion, since it caught us both off-guard. But as Sara said the other day, it feels like everything is new. And it does, which is hard to explain after all the time we’ve been together and all the joys we’ve already shared. We’re both glad the journey continues, that God’s grace is limitless, and that love can keep growing with each passing day.

So I’ll count the days until she joins me… Thanks for all the love and prayers so many of you expressed for us. Please know that we are at rest in the Lord’s working and grateful for all that has unfolded in recent weeks.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been with a number of people who have told me that they were taught by members of “the clergy” that they had no right to listen to God for themselves. Some said that God no longer speaks to the believer, since we now have the Scriptures. Others were told that God gave pastors to the church because they are trained to attend to our spiritual needs in the same way doctors care for our physical needs. Others have even taught that God only passes his will down through pastors and elders.

I’ve even heard people teach that elders and pastors will know your heart better than you know it, and even when you disagree with them, you should do what they say.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: Any man or woman who tells you they know God’s will for you better than you do yourself, proves by doing so that they are a false teacher. Flee from him or her!

At the heart of the New Covenant lies this reality: All of us get to know him and listen to him. He didn’t invite us to follow his book, follow his rules, or follow one of his designated representatives. He invited us to, “Come, follow me.” Anyone who gets in the way of that relationship hasn’t a clue who Jesus is or how he works in the world.

Yes, there are lots of examples of crazy people who claim God told them to do the most destructive and bizzare things. But some of those have even been members of the clergy. But even if others fraudulently and maliciously claim that God told them to do what he has clearly not told them to do, does not negate his desire to speak to you and lead you by his Spirit.

I was with a man last month in New Zealand who listens to God as well as any man I know. He has pastored churches and traveled the world for decades encouraging others to live deeply in Jesus. He told me, “I have never believed, even for a moment, that I can hear God for someone else more clearly than they can hear themselves.” He never presumed to tell someone what God wanted them to do.

That’s the kind of person I recognize as a true elder among the body of Christ. They don’t hear God for you; they help you learn how to listen to for yourself because they wouldn’t think of robbing you of the most precious gift God has to give–an intimate friendship with him!

I’m off to New Zealand and excited about so many of the conversations I’ll have there with some friends from my previous trip and a whole lot of new folks. I love that at this point in my life I get to be in conversations that matter, with people who care. There is nothing more fun and more productive. I’m excited about this trip for another reason. This begins a task that I sense Father has put before me for the next couple of years.

I have felt for some time he has been encouraging me to spend more time equipping those who want to help others live loved, especially those who feel they have a calling to help equip others on this journey. I will still spend time helping people learn to live and connect relationally, but know it is time to equip others to do what I do, consistent with what God is doing in them. I see the tendency such people have to create systems, garner an audience, or push themselves using the conventions of men to hopefully end up helping others. But often, it is more about THEIR ministry, than it is about genuinely helping people. And I think that often happens because they don’t see how else they can truly equip others in this journey.

Before I do that with what I see, I sense God wanting me to facilitate a larger conversation with those who’ve lived such lives over decades. I want to see what they see and learn from what they’ve learned as we sort out the best way to pass on this life to subsequent generations without burdening them with new structures, curricula, or methodologies. Relationship with Jesus runs so much deeper than that and the tools of human effort never reach to the heart. What do we say and do that genuinely encourage people into a meaningful relationship with him, and in doing so connect in meaningful ways with other believers that truly allows the kingdom of God to grow in the world?

One of the great treasures I have received in the past 20 years are the relationships I have with older brothers and sisters around the globe who are on their own relational journeys and many of them far longer than me. I have gained greatly from their wisdom and passion. Over the past few months I’ve sensed that God wants me to have some conversations with these dear people aimed at what they would pass on to a new generation of brothers and sisters on this journey. What do they wish they’d known sooner? What has helped them continually to grow over a life time in their own knowing of God?

Two of those brothers are in New Zealand and I’m going to get some time with both of them. And then there are many others I want to bring into that conversation over the next two years looking to answer a set of questions that will hopefully provide some wisdom as to how we encourage a new generation of pioneers to learn how to live loved and equip others to live loved, too, without being tricked into creating schemes and programs that cannot bear the glory of a real, growing relationship with Jesus.
You can help me in this if you want. If you had the opportunity, what would YOU ask these brothers and sisters about their journeys? What do you think would help others find their way into a meaningful relationship with Jesus and encourage them in discovering how to embrace the church Jesus is building in the world. If you want, you can leave your thoughts in the comments below. I will incorporate those I can. I’m not looking here for the questions about your own desire to live loved, but how we might be able to encourage people who want to help others live loved. It should be an interesting conversation that I will give regular updates on here and at The God Journey, even if we find out there’s nothing we can pass on. Perhaps this is only a work Jesus can do.

Finally, I did a podcast with the Family Room Media guys a few weeks ago, and they just posted it today. It takes a look back at some of my journey in recent months and the inklings I have on my heart about what God has put before me. You can listen to the podcast here. They are involved now in a new project called Jeff’s World, a theatrical movie about a disillusioned evangelical pastor sorting through the difference between following his heart and fulfilling the obligations that have controlled his life. It’s a light-hearted comedy with the subtitle, “Caught between the flock and a heart place.” Cute. Very cute! You can find out more here, and you can be involved if you want.

In the aftermath of of watching THE SHACK project blow-up into a costly legal battle, lots of people have asked me why I continue to collaborate with others. I get asked that a lot as people look through A Man Like No Other, where three people came together to put words to art that would celebrate a life of Jesus that is not always unveiled in our religious interpretations of him. The fact is, I love relationships and the synergy of producing something together. When people truly bring their gifts to the table and with humility seek to bring their best ideas together, there is nothing more powerful or energizing. I understand why Jesus sent the disciples out in twos and why God himself embraces his own community with such love and joy.

I realize that some people will abandon a collaboration as soon as they get their benefit out of it. When anyone needs to control the fruits of the collaboration and ceases to continue celebrating it as a gift among friends, it will turn incredibly painful. It has often been said that so much much more would get done if people were not concerned with who gets the credit. Unfortunately, there will always be those who will consider the credit more valuable than the friendship.

While that’s tragic it doesn’t sour me on the joys of collaboration. The truth is most of the people I’ve collaborated with on various projects stay true to their word and continue to share the fruits as they did the labor. Simply, I believe the things we talked about in our podcast on The Collaborative Life, namely that God exists in a community and he is all about bringing selfish, independent humans into that community and then teaching them how to share it with others. When humble hearts work together a greater wisdom shows through than anyone can produce working alone.

But that doesn’t mean I would say the pain of it going bad is worth it. It never is. It is always devastating when people betray others in their own quest for independence. But isn’t that the reality of the broken creation? Many have endured the betrayal of a spouse, the dishonesty of a business partner, or the manipulation of a colleague at work or “in ministry”. I hear those stories all the time and hurt for the victims. And I shake my head at the excuses some use to justify their agenda.

The truth is, promises are cheap. They are only valuable when they are fulfilled, especially when it isn’t easy and when others say they aren’t really that important. Character is demonstrated when people actually honor them. Fortunately I know lots of people like that too. Just because some might cheat on their spouses or dishonor their own word doesn’t mean I still can’t feast on the joy and faithfulness of my marriage, and the tastes of community and collaboration that God might still want to give me in this life. It’s also why I continue to encourage others to embrace the reality of community even if it painful at times.

If the abuse of something makes you discount it, then you’ve lost something beautiful. Just because someone uses a hammer to hit me over the head, doesn’t mean I can’t use that same hammer to build a bridge.

One of the things I enjoy about having a new book out there is that it shifts the conversation a bit. I love talking about living loved and why there might be better ways to do church than to fit it into one of the models so prevalent today. But now I’m finding through A MAN LIKE NO OTHER I’m getting to talk more about the life and person of Jesus—the most compelling person to ever traverse this planet. And because of IN SEASON, I’m seeing people think a bit differently about their spiritual journey. Finally many are beginning to understand that you can’t find life in him by applying a set of guidelines, no matter how good the guidelines.

He invited us to follow him, not follow a set of rules or rituals. We can only do that where a growing relationship with him is helping us begin to sense his whispers in our hearts and his nudges toward the people or things he wants us to engage, and those we can pass by without obligation. The longer I walk this journey the more clearly I see that daily following him defies any set of guidelines we try to force on any particular situation.

I know some will take that too far and toss out any principles of righteous behavior that will help us see and test what he is saying to us. I wouldn’t go that far. Principles of love, kindness, justice, and grace give us a moral compass in which we can recognize his impulses in our lives. Having a righteous heart will mean we won’t cheat on someone we love, we won’t gossip to tear down another person, we won’t lie just to get something we want, and we won’t betray close friends in our own self-interest. We are willing to do the difficult thing, rather than the easy thing. We’d rather give up our lives that manipulate someone away from there. Morality matters. Those who live without a moral compass easily justify the most obscene behaviors for their own personal gain and leave in their wake a host of broken hearts. What’s more, they won’t even care about those people so sold are they on their own personal happiness or survival.

But those principles alone will not tell us what to do today. The problem with trying to live a life by Godly principles alone is that you arbitrarily try to implement something that is true into a situation where it does not fit.

Many does not live by bread alone, but by every word that God breathes. Don’t look for another program to tell you how to live. Stop trying to find the principle to apply in your situation today that will turn the tide on your relationship with your spouse or kids, or bring you the life you hope to have. Instead, find those things that stir your heart to know him and in knowing him to recognize the smallest breath of a whisper he puts in your heart. Follow him today, as best you sense him and that will be enough.