It was a simple wall, located somewhere in Charlie Brown’s neighborhood. Children gravitated to the wall, including – but by no means limited to – Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt. It was their gathering place. Here they entertained new ideas, contemplated life’s questions, and reflected on the days’ events. One time after an embarrassing Halloween debacle, Charlie Brown lamented the number of rocks he received during “tricks or treating,” while Linus cried out why the Great Pumpkin did a “no-show” in his pumpkin patch. 

Gathering Walls are not only common places, but are needed in society. In many small towns, court house squares often serve as a natural gathering place where people come to jump start their mornings. Sometimes a local diner, serving hot coffee, attracts customers who sip their Joe while exchanging ideas. I have a friend who regularly heads down to his local gun shop, where sometimes “unlike minds” load, unload and reload ideas with each other.  

During the ancient days of the Bible, the local gathering place was the city gates. Here, important business transactions took place, “lower” courts were convened, disputes were heard, and public announcements were posted or proclaimed. The elders of the town, those deemed wise because of age and experience, met to help negotiate conflict with neighbors. News in other towns and regions were learned as travelers entered the city. It’s no wonder that wisdom is personified as sitting at the gates (Prov. 1:21). When the angels of God entered Sodom, they were greeted by Lot at the gates where he offered them a place to eat and sleep for the night (Gen. 19:1-2). When Boaz wanted to secure the “levirate marriage” to Ruth, he conducted his business transaction at the town gate, where he met with elders of the town and the nearest kin to secure his future bride (Ruth 4:1-2). In the Persian city of Susa, men plotted to kill King Xerxes, only to be thwarted by Mordacai’s decisive action against them. They hatched their plan at the city gate (Esther 2:21-23). When Jesus said that “the gates of Hades would not overcome the church” (Mt. 16:18), he may spoke words of encouragement for the church will endure and thrive despite all the forces opposed to Christ, including Satan himself. 

A gathering place. Ideas are exchanged. Business transactions are completed. Politics are ironed out. Struggles are shared. Disputes are heard. Conspiracies are hatched, and more importantly, exposed. 

In our fast paced world, filled with electronic devices, which tends to isolate people from each other, we’re missing places to gather; those places have now been taken over by social media. Twitter, limited to 140 characters, doesn’t lend itself very well to concepts that need exposition. How do you reduce complicated issues to one paragraph? FaceBook, by far the most common social media outlet to share ideas (family pictures, funny memes, prayer concerns), has its weaknesses as well. Memes probably carry far more weight than exposition. Sharing ideas or taking stances on controversial issues tend to alienate, by creating arguments instead of dialogue. The level of distrust and lack of civility quickly elevates “discussions” into full-blown (hateful) arguments. I’ve left a couple of groups because the conversation turned so hateful, and I’ve unfollowed people for similar reasons. 

Maybe the problem with social media is that we’re no longer looking at people face to face?  The words we type are so easy to express when we don’t know the person we’re talking too. It seems that the more anonymity exists, the greater chance for escalating arguments and judgmental accusations. I may know you or value the relationship, but I certainly don’t know the person who’s a friend to you; I’m certainly not invested with any real reason to maintain a relationship. My cause or agenda becomes more of a priority than the person, or the place to express and share ideas. 

Maybe we need a gathering wall, a place to engage with one another. A place to go and discuss what is on our hearts.  A place where we can share our hurts and pains. A place to iron out our differences. A place to express new ideas and insights into difficult issues. A place where we can speak, and a place where we can listen. And maybe on an occasion, a place where we can pray. Maybe it’s a place where hugs are free, handshakes are made, and we can look at each other face-to-face. 

Then again, maybe that Gathering Place is called Church. 

bonum dolar!
(i.e. Good Grief!)

While Lucy was hardly a fan of Snoopy, the beagle only had two enemies; one was real and the other played out in his imagination. The first one was the cat next door. During the fifty years Schulz penned the comic, we never saw this phantom menace. We only saw the results of his aggressive attack on Snoopy – a chunk of his dog house, missing in the final frame with the remaining section in the shape of a cat’s claw. 

The other enemy was the World War I Flying Ace’s nemesis, the Red Baron. Whenever the Ace was sent on patrol, he inevitably crossed paths with the Baron, and the fighting ensued. They both had missions, and they’re both roadblocks to clearing the skies of the enemy. In every meeting, the fighting was intense; machine guns fired at rapid speed. In every meeting, the Ace’s Sopwith Camel was flacked with bullets, and the Ace was usually shot down behind enemy lines. 

I’m not sure what to make of Snoopy’s antagonists. Concerning the cat, Snoopy usually egged on the conflict by making ridiculing remarks to his neighbor. He pays a price for it in the damage to his home. Concerning the Red Baron, while he was historically a real and successful German fighter pilot in WWI, he is only as real as Snoopy’s imagination. If the Ace had actually shot down the Baron, who would he fight the next time he went on patrol? So it’s easier to take a hit, keep the Baron alive, and feed his anger towards him. 

Isn’t that true with anyone you consider your enemy? Let’s keep the fuel of fire against them burning as long as we can, because we’re defining our strengths against their shortcomings. Let’s dehumanize our enemy because it makes it easier to hate them. Like in war, let’s draw clear battle-lines and assume our position is always right and their position is always wrong, and let’s bring God into the arena where we assume he takes our side. 

Maybe that’s what makes Jesus’ words so radical. While the Israelites thought the command from Leviticus 19:18, “Love your neighbor,” justified hating one’s enemy, Jesus clarified the command. Hatred, and the feeding of hate, was never justified. In fact, he sets the bar even higher by commanding us to “love our enemies” (Mt. 5:44a), and if that’s not hard enough, he adds, “pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:44b). Where the world calls for an “eye for eye” mentality (Mt. 5:38 quoting Ex. 21:23 & Lev. 24:20, which was a statement made for judges and courts to rule fairly, not for permission to taken the law into one’s hands), Jesus calls for compassion. In this way we’re facing our enemy. 

Jesus’ call crosses every line we’ve drawn in the sand, or every barrier we’ve erected to keep us divided. Where “facing our enemy” used to mean squaring off to fight, he redefines it through the service of loving and praying for our enemies. How do we defuse the racial tension? By “facing our enemies” with love and prayer. How do we bridge the anger between the social economic chasms? By “facing our enemies” with love and prayer. How do we respond to those who have hurt us with malicious intent? By “facing our enemies” with love and prayer. 

This kind of life demands faith. Faith leading to kindness and gentleness prevails in a world filled with destruction and retaliation. This kind of faith trusts God with the future, and does not make him choose a side. This kind of faith allows us to face our enemy with all courageousness, as God’s Spirit begins to work in us and through us to his glory. 

On the night before Israel was to begin the conquest of Canaan, the purist vision of a Holy War, Joshua encounters a man with a drawn sword. When Joshua confronts the man, asking which side he was on, the angelic being answered, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come” (Josh. 6:13b-14). In a clear moment where God was granting victory to Israel to destroy Jericho, they’re reminded that just because they will win this battle, doesn’t mean God cared nothing for the people of Jericho. A big difference exists between God granting a victory over people, and God’s choosing a side in the battle. 

One of my favorite Christmas songs as a child was by The Royal Guardsmen, and the song arose out of the famous World War I Christmas truce of 1914. In the song, Snoopy faces off with the Red Baron, and in the dog-fight, Snoopy loses. The Red Baron forces him to land behind enemy lines, where, instead of being taken prisoner, or worse, the Baron pops champagne and celebrates Christmas with his enemy. Ironically, it’s not our hero schooling us on how to face our enemies, but it’s the enemy showing us how to love one another. 

bonum dolar!
(i.e., Good Grief!)

Head buried in his hands. Sitting alone on a bench. Paper lunch bag holding an uneaten peanut butter sandwich. School filled with children. Charlie Brown without his dog or a friend. I don’t know the narrative behind the scene. Did Lucy and her friends just call him, “Blockhead,” or did he fail to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl? While I’m inclined to believe the latter, the result is another moment when Charlie Brown was shamed. 

So much of Schulz emerged from Charlie Brown; did you notice they had the same first name? Schulz may well have been the greatest cartoonist to pen a daily strip. He certainly inspired a generation of cartoonists to take up the cause. He also had his own set of insecurity demons, and when reading about his personal story, you find him living between guilt and shame. Not without some irony, the same traits could be found in a boy named Charlie Brown. 

But Schulz and Charlie Brown aren’t far from the only ones who struggle with those demons. From the earliest recorded memories of mankind, guilt and shame have tag-teamed humanity. When Adam and Eve realized they were naked in the garden, and more importantly, before God, they made makeshift clothing out of fig leaves and hid themselves (Gen. 3:7). The text doesn’t say why they chose to make the clothes and go into hiding, but filling in the blanks is easy: they sinned against God and felt bad about the sin they committed. 

Guilt and shame. The two are easily linked. Together they serve a purpose. They cause great spiritual and emotional discomfort in order to draw us back to God. So when we’ve committed sin and feel the guilt and shame, its purpose is to drive us to repentance, refusing to commit that sin again, and to draw us closer to God. Unfortunately, like the fallen world we live in, it doesn’t always work out that way. 

Guilt can have three components to it, and certainly what follows is an over simplification of guilt. First, we experience Real Guilt when we commit a sin or cross a boundary and the sting is felt. You’ve done wrong and you know you’ve done wrong. You lost your temper and unloaded your anger on your child. When the dust settles, you recognize the damage on your child and ask forgiveness from him/her. Secondly, we experience Repressed Guilt when we commit a sin or cross a boundary but instead of feeling the sting of wrong, we’ve compartmentalize our life in such a way as to avoid dealing with the guilt. Unfortunately (or fortunately), eventually what is repressed makes its way to the surface of our lives. What is hidden or buried, like rubber tires in a landfill, cannot stay hidden and buried forever. Once the repressed guilt surfaces, the damage can be felt. Finally, we experienced False Guilt when we do not commit a sin or cross a boundary but feel the sting of wrong as if we did. Usually, False Guilt has an outside element to it by other people’s own insecurities and character flaws projected ourselves. As a minister, I’ve discovered numerous times when people refuse to deal with their own sin, but they’ll project their problems onto the leadership. Sadly, they’ll blame me or someone else for their own guilt. 

Guilt and shame have their place in the redemptive story, but can be abused. Using guilt and shame as a form of motivation may have a desirable short-term result, but its long-term impact is negative. Not only does guilt and shame create an environment of fear, it never moves you out of fear. It burdens you. It weighs you down. (see Em Griffith, The Mind Changers). Guilt and shame, as motivators, trap the victim in a perpetual cycle of fear, making one believe he/she is never “good enough” for God’s grace, or that God’s grace is always out of reach. 

God does not want us to live our lives encumbered by guilt and shame. He wants to relieve the burden (Jn. 3:16-17). He wants to lead his people beyond guilt and shame where hope, love, mercy, and grace are found (Rom. 8:1). God’s desire is for his transforming power to change our lives so that guilt and shame no longer act as the decisive and/or defining factor in our lives. If he can remove the guilt and shame from the worst of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15), what can he do for you? Or, case of Adam and Eve, we find grace as he made garments out of skin to replace their leaves (Gen. 3:21)?

Charlie Brown, sitting alone on the bench with his head in his hands, has an emotive look to it. Not because it’s a two dimensional cartoon character, but because we’ve all been there. Hope does not arrive because of a boy named Charlie Brown, but because of a Savior named Jesus Christ.           

bonum dolar!
(i.e., Good Grief!)