The Content of the Retreat

The actual retreat: of course we spent time playing paintball, and Frisbee golf, and skeet shooting, and board games, and eating, and snacking, and football, and ping pong, and basketball, but the content of the retreat is probably of most interest. I don’t know to whom, but at least there’s more to say about the topics of the weekend’s discussions than a recounting of my strategy in the numerous board games. (My gaming strategy by the way is “play offense, be aggressive.”)

The weekend’s topic: in a word—love. Of course promoting the weekend as a love-fest or love-in or love-study would probably not sell as well as the official title for the weekend, which was “Born to Be Wild: Unleashing the Warrior Within.” How’s that for something that guys can get excited about?

Friday night’s session started with a look at God, explaining how the “wildness” within us is a reflection of the wildness of a creator who made billions upon billions of stars, and countless species of animals and plants and mineral formations. His creativity is boundless, but so is His love in that we’re showered with it daily. The evening’s call was to live passionately (with wildness) because of how we were created and who created us. Don’t allow the prevailing culture to lull us into a boring mediocrity. As a benediction for the evening, the speaker Greg Boyd walked up to the drum set and closed the evening with a five minute drum solo. There’s nothing like pounding on a set of drums to rile up a bunch of guys.

Saturday morning Boyd woke us up to fact that there’s a war going on. Thus the need for warriors. But he spent most of his time developing a proper picture of what a Christian warrior should look like and what should be the proper role or plan of attack. He blasted at the common notion of the Christian warrior as seen in, say the Crusades or other manifestations of a civil religion. And he countered a mentality which puts Christians on the defensive. In his look at Matthew 16 where the apostle Peter makes his confession of faith, he asked us how we viewed Christ’s charge to Peter. So often we picture this text (I know I’ve viewed it this way) as one where we are challenged to stand firm in our faith and as a result the church will not be overtaken by the all the evils of hell in this world. His question: are gates offensive or defensive weapons? Of course gates are meant to protect from others, not to go on the offensive. The conclusion he drew: as a result of the cross, Satan has been defeated; and we are to be on the attack against evil wherever we find it. It is "hell" that should be on the defensive.

The one and only weapon we should use or need use is the same one that Jesus used on the cross: love. Self-sacrificing love is the most effective weapon against the evil one. That was Boyd’s challenge as we gathered up for the afternoon activity of shooting each other.

Saturday evening we were challenged to look at our identity. We read from Genesis 3 and discussed the Fall (not the autumn kind.) We are complete in God and need not chase after idols, temptations in this world. They only serve to tame us. Drawing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer he presented the case that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the temptation to put ourselves in the seat of judgment, deciding what is right and wrong, good and bad. Acting in judgmentalism needs to be replaced by acting in love. Instead of trying to determine another person’s degree of goodness or rightness (badness or wrongness), we need to approach them with love. In the same way that we have received love from above, we need to respond to others in like manner. Love those who love us, but also love those who are enemies.

Boyd’s actual words are better than my attempt to summarize: “We [in the church] have failed to understand and internalize the biblical teaching that our fundamental sin is not our evil—as though the solution for sin was to become good—but our getting life from what we believe is our knowledge of good and evil. Our fundamental sin is that we place ourselves in the position of God and divide the world between what we judge to be good and what we judge to be evil. And this judgment is the primary thing that keeps us from doing the central thing God created and saved us to do, namely, love like he loves.”

The final session Sunday morning asked the practical questions of how this gets implemented. What is real and true and honest and how do we achieve them? The answer is not in a trying harder solution. Our minds needs to be transformed to seeing things the way God does, rather than trying to “will things” with our own might.

He gave the example of how he had easy access to pornography as a kid and never questioned its evil until he came to Christ. Then through a relationship with Jesus he was confronted by its harmful effects on him. He tried for years to resist through sheer will power, but continued to fail. It was only through seeing porn as Christ sees it that the desire began to fade. He had a dream in which one of the glossy pictures was covered from head to toe in vomit and feces and phlegm and insects and rodents. That new picture in his mind made it so repulsive that resisting became easier. As we abide or walk with Christ he will change how we see evil.

I hope that’s a fair assessment of what Boyd taught. If and when time allows, I’ll try to provide some commentary and reflection. But for now my fingers have gotten enough exercise. It’s time for my legs to get their share. Hey Raven, want to go for a walk?