Dreams.

In the ether-world between dreaming and waking we are particularly susceptible to suggestion.

Neuroscientists tell us that in this liminal state the brain’s analytical networks are still quiet.

Emotional filters are lowered while memory networks are unusually connected.

Are you like me, wishing dreams, and even life, were a little more scientific?

That your mind were more like a clear beaker through which events could be easily analyzed?

We could make a hypothesis and perform an experiment with each element isolated and studied in a controlled environment with careful observation of cause and effect.

I could prove or disprove my theory about the meaning of my circumstances!

Yet perhaps the goal is not to become a clear beaker but to yield all we are to God.

There is far more mystery to this business of living.

It is not possible to rid ourselves of every paradigm, emotion, or personal lens through which we experience life. The question is not whether we have filters, but whether we recognize them.

Can we hold them loosely enough for God to challenge them, refine them, and sometimes transform them?

I appreciate this quote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

We humans are a beautiful mixture of mystical and material, soul and spirit, divinity and dust. Our DNA, heredity, experience, and environment combine into a unique personality.

But God.

God must also be considered in the equation.

I do not believe any of this is possible without a Creator and giver of life.

Deuteronomy 29:29 came to mind this morning.

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, so that we may follow all the words of this Law.”

There is a beautiful tension between knowledge and mystery.

Most of us give our entire lives to the attempt to understand the mystery of living.

We were given both minds to understand and senses so that we can experience.

You can understand the science of petrichor. And you can smell its aroma and feel soft rain-soaked grass beneath your feet.

The world of intellect and experience can overlap in the mysterious realm of dreams.

On a recent morning, in that space between sleeping and waking, a distinct thought broke through the fog.

“Find the fathers.”

I turned the thought over in my mind, as I turned over in my bed.

And a memory resonated.

A vivid dream from years ago that completely changed my paradigm of church leadership.

I had titled it, ‘Where Have All the Fathers Gone.’”

In my dream, I approached a large house full of noisy children. Some gathered around games like duck-duck-goose. Others played on their own. Professional social workers sat in various places, taking notes and making recommendations, but they did not intervene. The children ran the house. Older ones bossed the younger ones around. The little ones had no responsibilities at all. As you can imagine, it was chaotic.

As I walked around, I noticed something striking: there was no bathroom.

A bathroom is where we go about morning ablutions of washing up, brushing our teeth. We wash away dirt and release what is toxic. To put it in spiritual terms, it represents confession and repentance.

But there was to be no disciplined routine for getting cleaned up in that house of ‘orphans in my dream.

When I woke, my chest felt heavy. I prayed, and grief washed over me. I knew the house represented the Church.

A church of children telling each other what to do. Staff who observe but do not correct or provide for the children or meaningfully intervene in any way.

Where are the parents?

Where are the fathers, like Paul in his letters to the Corinthians?

1 Corinthians 4:14, I do not write these things to shame you but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15 If you were to have countless teachers in Christ, you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus, I became your Father through the gospel. 16 Therefore, I exhort you to be imitators of me. 17 For this reason, I have sent Timothy to you, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways, which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every Church.

I hear the ache and self sacrifice of a true father in Paul’s writings.

By fathers, I do not merely mean men with authority or titles in the church.

I mean those willing to bear the responsibility for protecting others. Teaching sound doctrine and causing them to learn, grow and flourish.

We need to teach this model of leadership rather than the pursuit of power and platform.

Because living examples of this in the church today are, in my experience, few and far between.

Many want the authority to dictate behavior, bossing our siblings around.

Some genuinely want to care for the troubled. But few are willing to live with the sacrificial commitment of parents.

The day-in, day-out drudgery where we often put ourselves last.

If the Church behaved like family, that house would look different from the chaotic one in my dream.

This dream is not an indictment of social workers.

Many serve with remarkable compassion and courage.

It just highlights a distinction between professional care and parental responsibility.

People who take on the almost anonymous thankless parental role in the church are difficult to find.

And children can boss each other around, and may even enjoy doing so, but they don’t have the time, patience, or incentive to care about the often-difficult task of correction.

They don’t have the time and energy required to train their brothers and sisters to change their behaviour.

It is easier to judge and retreat.

A story of a certain father in the Bible comes to mind. Hezekiah is being reproved by Isaiah for showing his enemies all the treasures of his palace and displaying all his resources. Isaiah tells Hezekiah that all of his riches will be carried off into Babylon and his sons will go with them.

2 Kings 20: 18 Some of your very own sons will be away into exile. They will become eunuchs who will serve in the palace of Babylon’s king. 19 Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “This message you have given is from the Lord and it is good. For the king was thinking “at least there will be peace and security in my lifetime.”

What stood out to me is the father’s comment that he was only thinking of peace during his own lifetime.

He was uninterested in the future of his children or that some of his sons would not even be able to have any children and live in exile.

His mind is not on legacy but on his present comfort and peace and popularity during his reign. He only cared what his reign be known for.

This dream was pointing out the difference in the outlook of a staff person or ‘hired hand’ as opposed to the heart of a father.

Let us return to Paul’s example.

Romans 9: 1 I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my countrymen, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Though many years old, this dream still causes my heart to ache and cry out for the appearance of more fathers and mothers in the body of Christ.

In my mind I hear the old song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone? “

But instead of ‘flowers’ I hear ‘fathers.’

For those who are unfamiliar, written by Pete Seeger in 1955 was covered by many bands. It rose to popularity again when it became associated with the futility and loss of the Vietnam war.

Today the world seems increasingly troubled. Wars and rumors of wars. Rising depression, anxiety, and hopelessness.

We need another song of lament.

Where have all the fathers gone, long time ago…?

I see them.

Those calling for accountability in leadership who are not “accusers of the brethren” as described by some. They are protectors of the sheep; they are acting like protective fathers.

Have you ever seen a father whose daughter has been assaulted?

He is on a warpath and will stop at nothing to protect her.

Anger at the injustice and victimization would be appropriate.

Yet in the Church, leaders often fear confronting bullies and predators.

Leaders are to be protective, nurturing fathers, not kings demanding fealty no matter what they do.

Fathers who spend themselves in prayer, hearts breaking for their spiritual children. Mothers and fathers who will fight off anything that tries to harm them.

And who will discipline when needed, even when it makes them unpopular.

Because let’s face it, the current view of “Daddy God loves me no matter what I do” is destroying us.

In many places, though certainly not all, the Church is being run by unruly siblings, and it will not be saved by studies of behavior and teachers.

We need mature men and women willing to get dirty and insist on true discipleship.

Parenthood.

This goes against the grain of our selfie society, which has seeped into church culture. “My truth, my calling, my destiny.”

But has all this self fulfillment made us feel loved or connected?

We are lonelier than ever.

I believe nothing we seek as individuals compares to fulfillment found in family.

Yet in my experience that has proven elusive.

I go back to that whisper.

Find the fathers.

Or be a father. Or a mother.

You do not have to be a pastor or priest.

Parent, grandparent, single, career minded or bi-vocational or retired.

Empty your time and energy and very life for the benefit of those unable to repay you.

Be more concerned about their protection and future.

Let us be the opposite of the king who only cared about peace during his own reign.

It can be both meaningful and freeing to discover you are not the center of the universe.

You belong. And you belong in an even larger family than some acknowledge.

You are a part of something even older than Christianity.

Jews and Gentiles are brothers and sisters of One Heavenly Father.

Your truth, your calling, your destiny is to find the place you belong as a piece of a much larger

puzzle than you could dream of!

And it is found when we open God’s word like a treasure map.

When we search it in earnest with a magnifying glass in hand, searching for the gold that can stand a

trial by fire.

This is where our filter, our world view really matters.

You cannot discard anti-biblical thoughts and practices without an immovable standard to judge by.

And a major part of what enables us to become fathers and mothers to others is to learn what we

need to leave behind.

But in many circles, rigorous study of the Word is eschewed in favor of the pursuit of a more

‘spiritual’ encounter. Yet it is the only way to wipe the fog away from the lens of our personal filters.

You can embrace careful study and still live in the mystery and awe of an amazing God.

Perhaps then we will become more like those around His throne who cannot help but fall down in worship.

All the love, my friends.