Castles and Christ

Growing up as a kid, then as a teen, then as a young adult in a strong catholic household I had a very strict image of what I thought my future would be like. All of you conservatively raised young men know what I’m talking about, a vision in which you are married to a beautiful, young, pure woman, have a job that, while it doesn’t make you a filthy rich king, makes you enough money to support an abundant family of at least five happy, carefree, Christian children. It was an ideal that was discussed among my friends and alone in my own thoughts; a standard of living that could be achieved by faith, hard work, and loving care. I felt very deep down growing up that my home would be a castle with walls high enough to protect myself and my family from the world around us and all it’s evils; a castle for them, but especially a castle for me.


The world is so full of subtle, twisted wrongs. Some evils stare at you with menacing eyes challenging you to overcome them. Some evils glace at you with indifferent eyes, wondering if you’ll become as benign as they appear. And most evils gaze on you with inviting, tender eyes, asking you to lose yourself in them. It’s overwhelming how evil can be so different, yet so the same and it forces you to either make allowances or just reject it all outright.

It’s a very inviting thought to just build a home to be secure against all evil, to limit outside exposure so that you and your loving spouse can raise little Billy and Sally without any threat of them veering from the straight and narrow path. But all castles have their weaknesses. Catapults first smashed walls of ancient castles. Then cannons obliterated the peace of the mighty medieval fortresses. Once airplanes ruled the skies it made every base without a roof a duck hunt. And now ballistic weaponry makes it so that all you have to do is push a button and witness the devastation of whole nations. Destruction is always threatening to tear down the walls of peace.

I have been drawn into and instigated a number of very deep spiritual discussions over the last few months. I’ve met new friends and had new experiences with old ones. I’ve read articles on the internet and other periodicals about life and the world around us and it has lead me to a great deal of thinking. A lot of my original conceptions of my future are being radically challenged. My castle is built on the rock of Christ and the foundations have been poured by the church, but I am wondering if the walls are being made of a different material than I first intended.

We all are damaged and imperfect. We all fall, many of us are wounded by others, and still others find themselves lost and afraid without any idea of how they got there. And Jesus Christ in His great benevolence reached His hands from the cross and pulls us up again. But do we pull others up enough?

When I first realized that I was a growing man and therefore attracted to women I gave some serious thought and prayer to what my future spouse was to look like. She would have to be a holy woman, giving herself over to God. She would have to be an intelligent, understanding woman, somebody willing to see where our lives are going and able to give insight into all the big and small situations in life. She would have to be able to put up with me and all my crazy emotions. And she would have to be a pure, wise and (as Mary Poppins put it) practically perfect in every way.

Recently, however, I have found God challenging me on this concept, especially on the last line. I know what I want, but is that what He wants? He gathers all His children to the cross and shows them unimaginable forgiveness. He takes their imperfects upon Himself to make all things new. I cannot even imagine what that love is like. But from that cross I am finding Jesus asking me a very specific question: If God wants me to marry a person who does not fit this ideal, will I stick to the ideal and keep looking or will I follow His plan?

I have no doubt that the woman God has for me is a going to fit most of these characteristics, the question He gives to me focuses on one area in particular: forgiveness. We have all done dumb things, some more dumb than others. He forgives these dumb things, but do I? If I found myself in love with a girl whom I know has lost her purity in the past, but has returned to the church and to God and had all those things forgiven; if God tells me that this is the girl for me, would I be able to put aside my desires for a flawless woman and instead take the right woman? I heard somebody say once that they would be unwilling to date somebody if that person had given up their body to somebody else. But is it as simple as that? Jesus forgives all sins that are brought to His feet by a willing and repentant heart; if that willing and repentant heart is the heart that God wants to join with mine should I say no because of some past mistakes? Or should I look to the cross for inspiration?

Jesus calls us to be like Him. To find the courage to forgive, to put ourselves in His place as best we can. Sometime we have to put our dreams on the cross in order to do what God needs for us to do. Sometimes we need to feel the pain of the cross in order to realize the bliss of eternal life and joy.

I would love to have kids one day, I do not know if this is what God has planned for me but it is a desire of mine. I would love to do my best to love and train them in whatever circumstances my future family finds itself. I picture a peaceful family that plays together, prays together and learns together. I have fantasies of being able to play football with my sons, take my daughters to their dance lessons, teach my sons about life, or walk my daughters down the aisle. Again a very ideal Christian vision of what a family should look like. But that has lead to another set of deep questions posed by the Lord.

I read all the time about parents being shocked to discover what their kids say and do online, at school, or alone. Parents suddenly coming to grips with suicidal teens, rebellious children who won’t be told what to do, kids learning from their parents that Jesus is their personal Lord and Savior, but leaning from their school teachers that Jesus was nothing more than a lying “drunk” and a “radical socialist” as one school textbook claims. How can I face the reality that no matter what I do to protect them and show them the truth of life and how to love there will always be very powerful and influential forces attempting to shove all my work to the side?

How would I respond if my future fifteen year old daughter tells me she’s pregnant when I thought I was raising her to be the next Mother Theresa? How can I coach a son who tells me that the world is nothing more than a random set of circumstances controlled by physical forces and that it doesn’t matter what we do or say, nothing truly matters? How can I face the principal of the school where my daughter has just been suspended for trying a substance that I told her over a million times to never go near? What can I tell the young boy I raised who broke into the neighbor’s house on a dare and stole their TV? All these questions are raised whenever I think about fatherhood and I know there is no way to fully protect my family by myself.

I want to be the best man, father and husband I can potentially be. It can be harder than rock sometimes but I still want to try. And the more I find these questions being addressed to me the more I find that my answers come from one place: the cross. I am not going to have a perfect family whatever I do. There is no wall I can build on my own to protect against all harm. There is only one way to go, the way of the cross. Jesus wants us to embrace His suffering, to show the world what He did for us. I am reminded of a beautiful song from my childhood seventeen years ago:

Oh, Lord fill my heart that I might be
A vessel fit for you
To share with the world what you did for me
And that you did it for them too.

Jesus walks this road for us, to show us the depth of forgiveness. To show us the fullness of life, for in His horrible death we find glorious life. He invites us to follow in His footsteps, to put aside our pride, our shortcomings, and our fantasies (no matter how noble they are) and take up the wood of the cross, to show our spouse, our kids, our families, our world what true noble sacrifice looks like, to put everything on the line to forgive. Forgiveness involves pain. Jesus died the worst death ever to save us; He knows that forgiveness involves pain. It involves opening up yourself to the deepest darkest parts to allow Him to bring light to them and cleanse them. There is no way to take away the sting of being wronged, there is no magic balm to sooth the feeling of being ignored or taken for granted, there is no healing in repressing the pain and hurt, except where there is forgiveness. Forgiveness offers a bandage to a bleeding cut, a way to find peace against wrongdoing, and a home for a wayward heart. We are human and cannot let go easily but once we do we can learn from the past and heal the hurt. I am forgiven every single day. I know that when Jesus hangs on that wood that my life is made whole again and he hangs on that wood every single moment of every single day, for His redemption is eternal. How can I reject a repentant loved one in pride? Would Jesus reject them?

As I prepare for mission the thoughts of forgiveness become clearer all the time. I am not worthy to go to Brazil and show anybody the life of Christ. I am not a pure holy man floating above the grass for fear of damaging God’s creation. I am a man, broken and reassembled more times than I can even remember. The lessons of forgiveness are starting to shine. I am not worthy, unless by the grace of God. God called me to do something important for Him. I am not important by any means and I cannot fathom why he chose me. I never even considered mission work as an option for my life before He commanded me to do it. I always lived under a very businesslike version of compassion; compassion was part of the job for being a Christian. If I saw a guy in the gutter I took pity on him, I first assumed he was a total stoner and that he was in the gutter because it was his own fault, but I took pity on him and made sure God knew that I had given a five second prayer to that man. But now I am beginning to see a deeper reality to what God has called me to. Namely: Take compassion outside the work office of Christianity and give it a home in my real Christian life. I still have no idea how to help the guy in the gutter, but I hope that my prayers are becoming more genuine as I start to see that maybe it isn’t his fault and maybe God has a plan for him too. I hope that one day I actually can help the guy in the gutter, whether he’s a stoner or not, and realize that even if it is his own fault for being a tramp God still forgives a repentant heart. If we don’t forgive a repentant heart then that man is still just a stoner in the gutter to us.

I suppose I didn’t intend for this to be this long. As it happens so much when I start talking God takes what I say and turns it in a whole new direction. But in summary I hope that I am now beginning to build a castle for myself on new materials. Not with the old mortar of resilient stubbornness to the world, but with the new mortar of forgiveness, love, faith, hope, and strength.

I don’t know what the future will look like and what God has planned for me, but I am beginning to see a different me and I hope that me will be able to fall more deeply into the arms of Christ and be guided by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to the throne of God the Father.

Tchau meu amigos,

Merry Christmas,

Joe Cz…