Singer/songwriter John Hyatt said once that if he had a nickel for every time someone played his song, "Have a Little Faith in Me" at a wedding, he'd stop working. Even though he doesn't get a $.05 royalty for wedding performance, I'll still bet he's doing OK.
We can have faith in all kinds of people and things. We have faith in loved ones, team mates, people at work and/or their performance and in the 21st century we are encouraged to even have faith in products and brand names. Faith seems to be crawling around everywhere.
A lot of what we call faith if held up to the light is really hope. We hope our iWhatever does what it's supposed to, looks really cool and is universally loved and revered, perhaps in the hope that we will participate in the love and reverence a bit ourselves.
Hope is good. However, hope is not the same thing as faith.
There's a place in the bible that describes faith as "the substance of things hoped for." Many many books, chapters and sermons have been written about this passage. Putting all that aside for the moment, one thing that is incontrovertible from this construct is that "faith" is considered to be somewhat more substantial than hope. As an example, we might hope for Christmas presents but we have faith that Christ is the reason we celebrate Christmas.
Faith and hope can get real confused. We usually hope for good outcomes in situations we face, particularly challenging situations. That's natural and fine. Sometimes people tell us to have "faith" that everything will come out OK. That's fine too but it does raise the question as to what "OK" means, or maybe what it actually is. The potential confusion here is pretty easy to see if you imagine a child being told that the way to get good things is to "have faith" that he'll receive them. Back when I was a kid, that would likely result in me having faith that I'd get my 2nd hot fudge sundae. Apparently my mom had more sense than I had faith because I never got sundae number two.
We Christians use the word faith about every which way it can be used and then throw in a few just to make sure everything is covered. That's generally fine but it can result in some disappointment or confusion when events don't unfold in a way that's consistent with our hope. And that's usually because we have confused faith with hope.
Sometimes faith gets confused with expectation. Faith and expectation are pretty easy to differentiate as well. We have the expectation that the sun will come up tomorrow. We don't exercise faith for that.
There's a good example of faith at work in the concept of marriage. When we marry, we assume that our spouses will be faithful. In effect, we have faith in their faithfulness. That points to another word though that is more closely aligned with faith than the alternatives we've looked at so far. That word is confidence.
Confidence in the good of people (i.e. the faithfulness of a spouse) is akin to faith. Having confidence that someone will "do the right thing" is parallel to having faith in them. Confidence and faith both represent investments of heart.
When we talk about having faith in God, it's not so much that we have "faith" that he'll do this or that. Maybe we expect him to do a particular thing but maybe he has something else in mind. Maybe we'd like him to do something now but later seems better to him.
That's actually when we have to have faith. The title here is ironic because in all the universe there's really only one kind of faith, at least as it applies to God. Faith is this: Knowing, expecting, hoping, committing and living life in a way that's consistent with the idea that God is who he says he is. In addition, there is exactly one commentary on this doctrine that's appropriate. Namely, God is good. (The idea that God is good is really contained in the idea that God is who he says he is but sometimes it helps to throw in that second bit.)
Most of our pain that's of the self-inflicted kind, most of our railing at situations or other people derive from the idea that God isn't really and completely who he says he is. I talked briefly to a woman the other night who thought that bankers were evil and should be punished. I saw kind of problem with this, not because it's impossible that bankers could ever do anything wrong, but rather because this woman apparently felt a lot of angst about the "unfairness" of the things "they" had done. What was hidden just below the surface of her anger was, "How can this be? This will not stand! This is not fair AND everyone should think so." That's fine but God says that redressing such wrongs is his job.
Laws are there to prevent systematic victimization and certainly they must be followed and upheld but self-righteous vengeance is a poor substitute for justice. When we indulge in that kind of thinking (as I too often do), we de facto deny the idea that God is who he says he is and all the cascading truths like, he'll take care of the spiritual injustice of it. In the moment we take up the cudgel, we deny that God really is our champion.
I'm gradually getting better with the idea that God is who he says he is. It takes a long time and we have to learn to except a fact about ourselves someplace in this process. Namely, we are who he spoke us to be. The truth of that is a story that each of us shares with God...because he is who he says he is.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Sunday, September 9, 2012
This 'n That
Some of this (and that) are things I've written about before. Some of (this and) that are new things. Don't look for relatedness or coherence. I seldom do.
Forgiveness
The fake forgiveness ceremony:
"HEY! You stepped on my foot!"
"Oh! I'm sorry."
"That's all right. I forgive you."
Fake forgiveness is like a dance with 2 to n people. All the dancers have to agree to move in time to the same music and then actually take the energy to move. If any of the dancers happen to step on any feet during the forgiveness ceremony, everyone has to start over.
Real forgiveness:
Jesus, while hanging on the cross allowing himself to be the victim of all mankind said, "Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." He not only forgave us himself, he even argued a bit on our behalf. No one danced.
Real forgiveness is unilateral and exists without a response from anyone else. Real forgiveness is born in love (see below).
Anger
Being angry isn't a sin. It's what you do when your angry that potentially turns it into sin. In any case though, I don't think anger is ever fun or even pleasant. As someone once said, "Anger is like a headache. It's not wrong to have one but why would you want one?"
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is nearly always confusing for nearly everyone. Sacrifice gets confused with giving up food, sex, smoking, time, health, vigor, money, someone you love and almost anything you can think of. All it ever really is, is "giving up," as in surrendering. You can't surrender without actually surrendering something but the nature of the something usually matters little. Here are some phrases that indicate the initiation of surrender:
"I don't need this anymore."
"I still REALLY feel like I need this but I'll just leave it here."
"I REALLY like doing but I think I'll just sacrifice it."
Sacrifice is an act of will, often ongoing. Sometimes circumstances almost force it (i.e. having kids). However, sacrifice can never be forced. It is always a matter of will, a matter of choice.
Sometimes, maybe even often, depending on the nature of the sacrifice the sacrifice winds up not really feeling like sacrifice at all.
Having an opinion
Morality is important. Living according to it is important. Having an opinion is not.
Expressing an opinion
Much less important than actually having an opinion. Standing for morality though is important. That's not because it's my opinion though.
Life and Death
Both are very real and exist for everyone reading this. Those of us who believe in Christ believe there's a reason and reality associated with both. Most of us aren't quite clear on the reason though because we haven't read or maybe yet understood the book of Job. Many of us who follow Christ seem to get confused about death too.
My wife likens the death of a loved one who dies in Christ to them being given a ticket to Hawaii with unlimited food, snorkeling and other fun things and even some serious lanai lounging. The only kickers are that there isn't any cell service there and since they're going be very busy lanai lounging and doing fun things, you won't be able to talk to them until you get your ticket and can go there too. Yes, it's sad missing someone you still love. But they're OK. In fact, they're a lot better than just OK. They're getting really tan with no possibility of skin cancer, eating everything they want without getting fat and having great fun. How sad can you really be for either them or you?
Fear
Fear usually starts out as being very helpful. It can even help us to not go to Hawaii too soon. However, over time things fear turns into things we try to avoid because they're unpleasant and even painful. It can get so bad that we avoid everything, even parts of ourselves. Fear is fine for hot stoves, the bulls in Pamplona, the face of Half Dome, race car driving and any numbers of other activities. It's not so good for relationships and it has no place in the context of love. If you have fear in a relationship, it should probably be sacrificed. After the sacrifice, you might want to think about taking up something in it's place...maybe intention and purpose.
If you have fear about life and death, you should know that if you follow Christ you're going to Hawaii. In fact, you're on your way right now.
Love
Love goes on forever. It's the reason those who follow Christ don't die (sacrifice is in there too but it all starts with love - true sacrifice is always a kind of love). Since we weren't designed for the brokenness in the place we live, our love often gets disappointed. That can turn into fear if we're not careful. If we let it though, the perfect love of Christ will pretty much toss our fear under the nearest bus.
Sometimes we have to sacrifice something in the name of love. That's OK though because the love we get in return for the sacrifice completes life and transcends death. It's hard to imagine how you can accept that much love though if you're not able to sacrifice all of the hurts that have been done to you and give up your right (well - your right in your opinion anyway) to get even. Well in point of fact, it's not just hard to imagine, it's impossible.
I hope none of this makes you angry but if it does I hope you forgive me. I won't ask for forgiveness because you owe it to yourself and nothing to me and that's not just my opinion. That's forgiveness...and love. Most of all it's love.
Forgiveness
The fake forgiveness ceremony:
"HEY! You stepped on my foot!"
"Oh! I'm sorry."
"That's all right. I forgive you."
Fake forgiveness is like a dance with 2 to n people. All the dancers have to agree to move in time to the same music and then actually take the energy to move. If any of the dancers happen to step on any feet during the forgiveness ceremony, everyone has to start over.
Real forgiveness:
Jesus, while hanging on the cross allowing himself to be the victim of all mankind said, "Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." He not only forgave us himself, he even argued a bit on our behalf. No one danced.
Real forgiveness is unilateral and exists without a response from anyone else. Real forgiveness is born in love (see below).
Anger
Being angry isn't a sin. It's what you do when your angry that potentially turns it into sin. In any case though, I don't think anger is ever fun or even pleasant. As someone once said, "Anger is like a headache. It's not wrong to have one but why would you want one?"
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is nearly always confusing for nearly everyone. Sacrifice gets confused with giving up food, sex, smoking, time, health, vigor, money, someone you love and almost anything you can think of. All it ever really is, is "giving up," as in surrendering. You can't surrender without actually surrendering something but the nature of the something usually matters little. Here are some phrases that indicate the initiation of surrender:
"I don't need this anymore."
"I still REALLY feel like I need this but I'll just leave it here."
"I REALLY like doing but I think I'll just sacrifice it."
Sacrifice is an act of will, often ongoing. Sometimes circumstances almost force it (i.e. having kids). However, sacrifice can never be forced. It is always a matter of will, a matter of choice.
Sometimes, maybe even often, depending on the nature of the sacrifice the sacrifice winds up not really feeling like sacrifice at all.
Having an opinion
Morality is important. Living according to it is important. Having an opinion is not.
Expressing an opinion
Much less important than actually having an opinion. Standing for morality though is important. That's not because it's my opinion though.
Life and Death
Both are very real and exist for everyone reading this. Those of us who believe in Christ believe there's a reason and reality associated with both. Most of us aren't quite clear on the reason though because we haven't read or maybe yet understood the book of Job. Many of us who follow Christ seem to get confused about death too.
My wife likens the death of a loved one who dies in Christ to them being given a ticket to Hawaii with unlimited food, snorkeling and other fun things and even some serious lanai lounging. The only kickers are that there isn't any cell service there and since they're going be very busy lanai lounging and doing fun things, you won't be able to talk to them until you get your ticket and can go there too. Yes, it's sad missing someone you still love. But they're OK. In fact, they're a lot better than just OK. They're getting really tan with no possibility of skin cancer, eating everything they want without getting fat and having great fun. How sad can you really be for either them or you?
Fear
Fear usually starts out as being very helpful. It can even help us to not go to Hawaii too soon. However, over time things fear turns into things we try to avoid because they're unpleasant and even painful. It can get so bad that we avoid everything, even parts of ourselves. Fear is fine for hot stoves, the bulls in Pamplona, the face of Half Dome, race car driving and any numbers of other activities. It's not so good for relationships and it has no place in the context of love. If you have fear in a relationship, it should probably be sacrificed. After the sacrifice, you might want to think about taking up something in it's place...maybe intention and purpose.
If you have fear about life and death, you should know that if you follow Christ you're going to Hawaii. In fact, you're on your way right now.
Love
Love goes on forever. It's the reason those who follow Christ don't die (sacrifice is in there too but it all starts with love - true sacrifice is always a kind of love). Since we weren't designed for the brokenness in the place we live, our love often gets disappointed. That can turn into fear if we're not careful. If we let it though, the perfect love of Christ will pretty much toss our fear under the nearest bus.
Sometimes we have to sacrifice something in the name of love. That's OK though because the love we get in return for the sacrifice completes life and transcends death. It's hard to imagine how you can accept that much love though if you're not able to sacrifice all of the hurts that have been done to you and give up your right (well - your right in your opinion anyway) to get even. Well in point of fact, it's not just hard to imagine, it's impossible.
I hope none of this makes you angry but if it does I hope you forgive me. I won't ask for forgiveness because you owe it to yourself and nothing to me and that's not just my opinion. That's forgiveness...and love. Most of all it's love.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Letting Go
There are a lot of contradictory messages in life and there seems to be someone to carry the water for each of them. For example, some espouse pursuing greatness while others think that one should pursue passion and that greatness will follow. As with all such apparent contradictions, there will be those who have read both sets of books on the subject. To explain or to try to integrate the two camps, they'll simply put "sometimes..." in front of both constructs and call it a day. As in sometimes you have to pursue greatness and sometimes you have to pursue passion.
All these types of arguments tend to be about doing something or maybe hanging on through tough circumstances. I don't think they're bad (mostly), but there's a greater truth. The real chore is always binary. The real choice is whether to hang on or whether to let go.
And in that context it's almost always time to be letting go of something. Letting go is not about sometimes. Letting go is very important as is in fact one of the things that makes us human and gives us life.
Even hanging on is wrapped in a big package of letting go. If you're hanging on to something, presumably you're either trying to go wherever it goes or keep it from leaving. Inside that reality, choices exist. Do I hang on and leave everything behind? Do I choose to stop hanging on and let the person or opportunity go?
It's true that there are things pertaining to identity that represent the DNA of who you are that are important to hang on to. Faith and morality are examples of these as are family (where you came from) and even friends (at lest the close ones who you allow to participate in the unfolding definition of your identity). However the list is remarkably short.
Most things come and stay awhile and then must be released. That includes virtually all the stuff in your closet and garage and even includes your closet and garage. More distant friends will also be let go as they move away or move on. There just isn't enough of whatever to support all the stuff or enough time to support everyone. Some, must be let go.
It's counter intuitive, but we seem to hang on to pain with a grip that borders and occasionally transgresses into the desperate. Whether it's continuing to hate someone who wronged us years ago (hate's essentially the same thing as not forgiving) or our own feelings of inadequacy or even nursing a physical wound long since healed, we hang on to our catalog of things and crutches like grim death. Exactly like grim death as a matter of fact.
Our place here is not forever. That is what learning to let go teaches us.
All these types of arguments tend to be about doing something or maybe hanging on through tough circumstances. I don't think they're bad (mostly), but there's a greater truth. The real chore is always binary. The real choice is whether to hang on or whether to let go.
And in that context it's almost always time to be letting go of something. Letting go is not about sometimes. Letting go is very important as is in fact one of the things that makes us human and gives us life.
Even hanging on is wrapped in a big package of letting go. If you're hanging on to something, presumably you're either trying to go wherever it goes or keep it from leaving. Inside that reality, choices exist. Do I hang on and leave everything behind? Do I choose to stop hanging on and let the person or opportunity go?
It's true that there are things pertaining to identity that represent the DNA of who you are that are important to hang on to. Faith and morality are examples of these as are family (where you came from) and even friends (at lest the close ones who you allow to participate in the unfolding definition of your identity). However the list is remarkably short.
Most things come and stay awhile and then must be released. That includes virtually all the stuff in your closet and garage and even includes your closet and garage. More distant friends will also be let go as they move away or move on. There just isn't enough of whatever to support all the stuff or enough time to support everyone. Some, must be let go.
It's counter intuitive, but we seem to hang on to pain with a grip that borders and occasionally transgresses into the desperate. Whether it's continuing to hate someone who wronged us years ago (hate's essentially the same thing as not forgiving) or our own feelings of inadequacy or even nursing a physical wound long since healed, we hang on to our catalog of things and crutches like grim death. Exactly like grim death as a matter of fact.
Our place here is not forever. That is what learning to let go teaches us.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Esther
My theory is that there is a fairly finite catalog of sermons or homilies or whatever you choose to call the Sunday morning time where someone stands up and front and speaks while everyone else listens.
There are a lot of reasons this subject list tends to be closed ended. One reason is that while there's an infinite scope and variety of the experiences of people interacting with God, there's a finite number of stories in the bible. Another reason is that the theology that's popular at any given moment in time limits the perspective we have of God. Put that second one another way, it's probably not a good idea to assume that the Catholics of the late Middle Ages were all wrong and that the emerging Protestants were all right...You can reverse that if you're Catholic and the meaning will be virtually the same.
I think the biggest reason for a finite catalog of weekly inspiration though, is that those who have gotten comfortable with where they are with Christ tend to get a bit bored of the whole thing. Bored might be too strong but we could certainly say that most people don't wake up in the morning and feel challenged and inspired to ferret out a new revelation from old King James. Usually we're just happy to wake up again and have the hope that someone got up before us and made the coffee.
Thus, the Finite Sermon Catalog Syndrome usually leads to the Boring Bible Reading Corollary. That's the part where we imagine that the bible can no longer surprise us...And who wants to get up to read something that we "know" front to back? I think the truth is that the bible contains the capacity to give us slap across the mouth revelation, persistently and consistently if we'll just abandon our preconceived, boring preconceptions and accept the bible at it's word.
The book of Esther is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Somewhere down in the fourth chapter of Esther, her cousin Mordecai (who was her surrogate father) says: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, "... I think when we read this our sense of justice, our modern sensibilities and our "all's well that ends well" reflexes (albeit in this case, "all then ends badly") want to fill in something like, ..."you and all your house will be destroyed." Here's how Mordecai finishes that sentence: ..."relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Mordecai appeals to one thing in Esther and it's something we in modern times have insulated ourselves from using every artifice of thought and theology we can muster. Mordecai appeals to who Esther was spoken by God to be.
I paid someone a compliment today. He's 60 something. I don't know him well but I do know that he has walked with God nearly all his life and unless all men and books do lie, he is a habitually nice guy. He thanked me for my compliment and said he was trying to do a better job of accepting compliments but that it was still hard. After a half century of knowing Christ, he still found it hard to accept that he's a beautiful creation, well worth compliment.
Mordecai is telling Esther that God's purpose will ultimately be fulfilled regardless of her choice. However, by choosing to align her life with what God spoke her to be, done at great personal risk, she fulfilled herself and saved her nation. But something else happens too. She created a story.
The story she created is the story of a partnership with God. The partnership made her a queen talked about throughout time. One day in heaven, I'll walk up to a campfire where a woman will be sitting, staring into the flames. I'll ask her name. She'll say, "Esther." In that moment I will know the story that she co-wrote with God, in the form of the person who risked everything to complete it. She will carry that story with her throughout eternity. Out of the story's overflow, a nation was saved.
I will also walk up to other campfires and learn other names. Likely, most of them will have echoes of Esther's story. They will be equal parts choosing away from fear and pain, offered and accepted grace and love. They will all be testimony to the God who like Esther, risked everything to partner with each story, with each soul.
And when they look at me and hear my name, they will know the same of me...and of you too if you so choose.
There are a lot of reasons this subject list tends to be closed ended. One reason is that while there's an infinite scope and variety of the experiences of people interacting with God, there's a finite number of stories in the bible. Another reason is that the theology that's popular at any given moment in time limits the perspective we have of God. Put that second one another way, it's probably not a good idea to assume that the Catholics of the late Middle Ages were all wrong and that the emerging Protestants were all right...You can reverse that if you're Catholic and the meaning will be virtually the same.
I think the biggest reason for a finite catalog of weekly inspiration though, is that those who have gotten comfortable with where they are with Christ tend to get a bit bored of the whole thing. Bored might be too strong but we could certainly say that most people don't wake up in the morning and feel challenged and inspired to ferret out a new revelation from old King James. Usually we're just happy to wake up again and have the hope that someone got up before us and made the coffee.
Thus, the Finite Sermon Catalog Syndrome usually leads to the Boring Bible Reading Corollary. That's the part where we imagine that the bible can no longer surprise us...And who wants to get up to read something that we "know" front to back? I think the truth is that the bible contains the capacity to give us slap across the mouth revelation, persistently and consistently if we'll just abandon our preconceived, boring preconceptions and accept the bible at it's word.
The book of Esther is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about. Somewhere down in the fourth chapter of Esther, her cousin Mordecai (who was her surrogate father) says: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, "... I think when we read this our sense of justice, our modern sensibilities and our "all's well that ends well" reflexes (albeit in this case, "all then ends badly") want to fill in something like, ..."you and all your house will be destroyed." Here's how Mordecai finishes that sentence: ..."relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Mordecai appeals to one thing in Esther and it's something we in modern times have insulated ourselves from using every artifice of thought and theology we can muster. Mordecai appeals to who Esther was spoken by God to be.
I paid someone a compliment today. He's 60 something. I don't know him well but I do know that he has walked with God nearly all his life and unless all men and books do lie, he is a habitually nice guy. He thanked me for my compliment and said he was trying to do a better job of accepting compliments but that it was still hard. After a half century of knowing Christ, he still found it hard to accept that he's a beautiful creation, well worth compliment.
Mordecai is telling Esther that God's purpose will ultimately be fulfilled regardless of her choice. However, by choosing to align her life with what God spoke her to be, done at great personal risk, she fulfilled herself and saved her nation. But something else happens too. She created a story.
The story she created is the story of a partnership with God. The partnership made her a queen talked about throughout time. One day in heaven, I'll walk up to a campfire where a woman will be sitting, staring into the flames. I'll ask her name. She'll say, "Esther." In that moment I will know the story that she co-wrote with God, in the form of the person who risked everything to complete it. She will carry that story with her throughout eternity. Out of the story's overflow, a nation was saved.
I will also walk up to other campfires and learn other names. Likely, most of them will have echoes of Esther's story. They will be equal parts choosing away from fear and pain, offered and accepted grace and love. They will all be testimony to the God who like Esther, risked everything to partner with each story, with each soul.
And when they look at me and hear my name, they will know the same of me...and of you too if you so choose.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Immoral Equivalence
Now that I'm in my second half century of life, I freely admit that there aren't a lot of interpersonal disagreements, misunderstandings and hurt feelings that can actually be solved by the correct application of logic. Heaven knows, I've tried. I could make myself dizzy and old(er) counting the number of arguments, disagreements and debates that I've won hands down on point of logic, only to be dismissed on grounds that they're uncaring, irrelevant or don't take into account the feelings of...everyone, everywhere that ever lived. There might have even been a little upset here and there as a result of my being right on point of logic.
It's useful to have guidelines for disagreeing and for stating and rebutting a point. In real life though, rules for this kind of encounter vanish around the time that shoulders, eyebrows and voices raise. That's unfortunate because I think if we could follow the rules just a bit, we could have more hope of finding the ground that's common rather than the ground that's higher. However, reality is pretty real and we have to negotiate the distance between respective positions and perspectives, yielding enough to let someone else pick their way around our tender places as well.
The normal flow of the disagreement is to either withdraw or to establish some form of moral equivalence. Moral equivalence is the form of argument that says something that sounds like, "Oh sure, my t-shirt might be out but YOUR socks don't match!" Of course, there's even the more basic form learned originally on the playground, "You're a bigger one!"
Of course, none of that has anything to do with the point at hand and only serves to reinforce the presumably broken status quo. It's not so much agreeing to disagree as it is being disagreeable about disagreeing on the matter of your disagreement.
This leads to a very knotty question: How do you fight a war with virtually no agreed upon rules of engagement, act equitably and bring the matter to not just truce but finally peace? There's really only one way out of this feedback loop of infinite angst and sadly it's the most difficult behavior found in modern discourse in 21st century culture. You have to listen.
Listening is not achieved by sitting still with your mouth mostly closed while you hear someone talk. Neither is it achieved by simply taking turns in a conversation. You actually have to entertain the possibility that the person on the other side of the argument might be at least partially right...or even completely right.
To achieve listening you have to let yourself be a bit vulnerable. You have to start out by surrendering, even if just a little bit. You don't necessarily surrender completely, unless maybe you've been obviously and egregiously wrong.
The idea has been found on the battlefield for at least 2000 years, in the form of the white flag. I think it's fascinating that the white flag is used as both a sign of surrender as well as a sign of temporary truce. Even though the nature of the exchange may range anywhere from negotiating mutual interest to dictating terms to abject surrender, it's accomplished under a flag of peace. The greater issues of the war might still remain but for the moment at least we can stand on our common ground.
Sadly, passing with the idea of structured and perhaps civilized disagreement are other good things. These include mutual respect, shared value and even grace. Wars, battles and arguments are now unconditional. Treaties are ignored when it is convenient to do so and outrage at "the other side's" treaty transgression is genuine and deep seated. Abandoning civility in the name of "winning" has become both a social and personal norm. "Feelings" at both the societal and personal levels have been elevated to the level of deity. How we feel now trumps how we think, objective reality and even the rule of law.
I don't have a great solution to this societal avalanche of self-righteous feeling. I have only one suggestion. Make your next step to be in the direction of reconciliation. It might leave you vulnerable or even hurt straight off but sometimes surrender is a step in the right direction. And maybe while you're making that next step, just listen a little.
It's useful to have guidelines for disagreeing and for stating and rebutting a point. In real life though, rules for this kind of encounter vanish around the time that shoulders, eyebrows and voices raise. That's unfortunate because I think if we could follow the rules just a bit, we could have more hope of finding the ground that's common rather than the ground that's higher. However, reality is pretty real and we have to negotiate the distance between respective positions and perspectives, yielding enough to let someone else pick their way around our tender places as well.
The normal flow of the disagreement is to either withdraw or to establish some form of moral equivalence. Moral equivalence is the form of argument that says something that sounds like, "Oh sure, my t-shirt might be out but YOUR socks don't match!" Of course, there's even the more basic form learned originally on the playground, "You're a bigger one!"
Of course, none of that has anything to do with the point at hand and only serves to reinforce the presumably broken status quo. It's not so much agreeing to disagree as it is being disagreeable about disagreeing on the matter of your disagreement.
This leads to a very knotty question: How do you fight a war with virtually no agreed upon rules of engagement, act equitably and bring the matter to not just truce but finally peace? There's really only one way out of this feedback loop of infinite angst and sadly it's the most difficult behavior found in modern discourse in 21st century culture. You have to listen.
Listening is not achieved by sitting still with your mouth mostly closed while you hear someone talk. Neither is it achieved by simply taking turns in a conversation. You actually have to entertain the possibility that the person on the other side of the argument might be at least partially right...or even completely right.
To achieve listening you have to let yourself be a bit vulnerable. You have to start out by surrendering, even if just a little bit. You don't necessarily surrender completely, unless maybe you've been obviously and egregiously wrong.
The idea has been found on the battlefield for at least 2000 years, in the form of the white flag. I think it's fascinating that the white flag is used as both a sign of surrender as well as a sign of temporary truce. Even though the nature of the exchange may range anywhere from negotiating mutual interest to dictating terms to abject surrender, it's accomplished under a flag of peace. The greater issues of the war might still remain but for the moment at least we can stand on our common ground.
Sadly, passing with the idea of structured and perhaps civilized disagreement are other good things. These include mutual respect, shared value and even grace. Wars, battles and arguments are now unconditional. Treaties are ignored when it is convenient to do so and outrage at "the other side's" treaty transgression is genuine and deep seated. Abandoning civility in the name of "winning" has become both a social and personal norm. "Feelings" at both the societal and personal levels have been elevated to the level of deity. How we feel now trumps how we think, objective reality and even the rule of law.
I don't have a great solution to this societal avalanche of self-righteous feeling. I have only one suggestion. Make your next step to be in the direction of reconciliation. It might leave you vulnerable or even hurt straight off but sometimes surrender is a step in the right direction. And maybe while you're making that next step, just listen a little.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The Promise of Something Old and Something New
Our daughter Sarah was married to our new son Brandon about a week ago. From the guests to the community that helped pull it off to the weather to the bride and groom, it was a story book day. It will take me a long time to process the beauty of it.
As father of the bride preparing for the wedding, I found I had duties. I knew I had to give our daughter away of course. (Mostly I knew that factoid from movies and T.V.) I also was encouraged to prepare a toast.
From the way this was presented to me it seemed like I could probably wiggle out of this without too much fuss. I decided that if I had something to say I'd say it. Otherwise, I planned to just stand around and stare at the tops of my new, black, pretty awesome DC basketball shoes.
As happens occasionally, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had something to say. I knew this because I was so overcome with the beauty of what I'd heard and seen in moments between sleeping and waking that I was sobbing uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Over the last several years I've found that there are things that are so beautiful that no measured human response is possible. When you encounter such things, they are so unique and outside the boundaries of daily activity you may not see them for what they are. However, when you start to recognize them and what lies behind them, you tend to explode emotionally.
I was struck by the fact that Sarah and Brandon were going to make promises to each other in the presence of God and community. The great good intention of those promises can only be fulfilled by the passing of time and circumstance. And of course this place we live in is pretty broken and time and circumstance can be rough. From their wedding vows it was clear that the intent was that the joy of the moment of promise would be fulfilled over time, in love.
This is pretty consistent with most weddings I've been to. In the middle of the night though, just before I went over my emotional cliff a question hit me: That's where the promise is going but where did it come from? The first thing that occurred to me was that it descended in part from a nearly identical promise that Christy and I had made to each other and work to fulfill every day. Obviously though, that was just a link in a chain of promises that stretches back before time and will exist until there are no longer people on earth. And that I think was the point at which I started to lose it.
The marriage promises we make to each other are links forged into a chain of time created in time before time and redeemed two thousand years ago. This I think is the greatest point made by the inclusion of Christ's genealogy in the Bible. The chain described there of the gracious and the loving, the rapists and the whores, the kings and barbarians are all given to us as a family portrait of the King and Redeemer of man. It is a portrait that stretches across millennia back to the origin of man in time. It teaches us that even in the most broken of families the potential for redemption and love is staggering beyond imagination.
There's a scene in Genesis (3:21) that describes God making Adam and Eve's first clothes. I've heard a couple people over the years comment on this. One imagined God sitting on rock. As he drew the needle and cut the skin He saw the future as a great now. In that now, he saw the love of creation, mercy and redemption but he also saw the monstrous cost to both himself and to his children. He saw a road of infinite promise, faith, persistence and love set against constant struggle, betrayal and lies. I imagine a sigh escaping as thread joins skin to skin.
He would remind generation after generation of this great reality through stories in the form of lives and parables lived out and retold over thousands of years.
And he'd give us a vignette that would be our entry point into time, our desperate pursuit and our life's mission. It would be the thing through which he would deliver generation after generation of souls already spoken. That vignette is marriage, both it's promise and it's realization. It is marriage in it's love and passion but also marriage in it's struggle, effort and even betrayal. It is the journey of becoming and redemption. It is the journey to becoming one.
After the promises, the road stretches out before us. Each step offers a choice of promise or betrayal; each step is a choice. Persistence on that road offers one certain promise that supports all other possibility. It offers the hope of ever deepening and expanding love that extends to the point of two becoming one.
As father of the bride preparing for the wedding, I found I had duties. I knew I had to give our daughter away of course. (Mostly I knew that factoid from movies and T.V.) I also was encouraged to prepare a toast.
From the way this was presented to me it seemed like I could probably wiggle out of this without too much fuss. I decided that if I had something to say I'd say it. Otherwise, I planned to just stand around and stare at the tops of my new, black, pretty awesome DC basketball shoes.
As happens occasionally, I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had something to say. I knew this because I was so overcome with the beauty of what I'd heard and seen in moments between sleeping and waking that I was sobbing uncontrollably, almost convulsing. Over the last several years I've found that there are things that are so beautiful that no measured human response is possible. When you encounter such things, they are so unique and outside the boundaries of daily activity you may not see them for what they are. However, when you start to recognize them and what lies behind them, you tend to explode emotionally.
I was struck by the fact that Sarah and Brandon were going to make promises to each other in the presence of God and community. The great good intention of those promises can only be fulfilled by the passing of time and circumstance. And of course this place we live in is pretty broken and time and circumstance can be rough. From their wedding vows it was clear that the intent was that the joy of the moment of promise would be fulfilled over time, in love.
This is pretty consistent with most weddings I've been to. In the middle of the night though, just before I went over my emotional cliff a question hit me: That's where the promise is going but where did it come from? The first thing that occurred to me was that it descended in part from a nearly identical promise that Christy and I had made to each other and work to fulfill every day. Obviously though, that was just a link in a chain of promises that stretches back before time and will exist until there are no longer people on earth. And that I think was the point at which I started to lose it.
The marriage promises we make to each other are links forged into a chain of time created in time before time and redeemed two thousand years ago. This I think is the greatest point made by the inclusion of Christ's genealogy in the Bible. The chain described there of the gracious and the loving, the rapists and the whores, the kings and barbarians are all given to us as a family portrait of the King and Redeemer of man. It is a portrait that stretches across millennia back to the origin of man in time. It teaches us that even in the most broken of families the potential for redemption and love is staggering beyond imagination.
There's a scene in Genesis (3:21) that describes God making Adam and Eve's first clothes. I've heard a couple people over the years comment on this. One imagined God sitting on rock. As he drew the needle and cut the skin He saw the future as a great now. In that now, he saw the love of creation, mercy and redemption but he also saw the monstrous cost to both himself and to his children. He saw a road of infinite promise, faith, persistence and love set against constant struggle, betrayal and lies. I imagine a sigh escaping as thread joins skin to skin.
He would remind generation after generation of this great reality through stories in the form of lives and parables lived out and retold over thousands of years.
And he'd give us a vignette that would be our entry point into time, our desperate pursuit and our life's mission. It would be the thing through which he would deliver generation after generation of souls already spoken. That vignette is marriage, both it's promise and it's realization. It is marriage in it's love and passion but also marriage in it's struggle, effort and even betrayal. It is the journey of becoming and redemption. It is the journey to becoming one.
After the promises, the road stretches out before us. Each step offers a choice of promise or betrayal; each step is a choice. Persistence on that road offers one certain promise that supports all other possibility. It offers the hope of ever deepening and expanding love that extends to the point of two becoming one.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
The Incredible Vanishing Log
Forgiveness is difficult, complicated, time consuming and at least at some level painful. That's probably why we're so awful at it. There is virtually no chance that anyone reading this (and certainly the writer) has mastered forgiveness. At least I've never met anyone who has.
Interestingly, I've never met anyone who actually acknowledged having a problem with forgiveness. I've met people who have been betrayed by family, spouses, and business associates not to mention Republicans, Democrats and the Illuminati. Point being that feelings of betrayal and other general forms of hurt span time and distance and even transcend reality. Still, try as I might I can find no human being that struggles with forgiveness.
I met a guy once who had found a theologian he really liked. The guy liked the theologian because the theologian had "discovered" that when Christ gave his sermons, he was only speaking to Jews. That meant that according to the theologian (and by extension the guy), the things that Christ said about forgiveness only applied to Jews. Paul was "the one" who was "anointed" to speak to gentiles. Therefore, we as gentiles only had to do things that Paul said. Apparently, Paul didn't say as much about forgiveness as Jesus did. I ignored that last bit (which is pretty wrong and wildly irrelevant) and asked him, "How does that help you?" He said, "That means I don't have to forgive Adolph Hitler who killed members of my family." His wife whisked him off at this point. This vaguely reminded me of my wife operating in similar context. My next question to him would have been, "How does hating Adolph Hitler help you?"
There are a lot of other examples of failed forgiveness. I've got some for almost everyone I know. If I don't have an example for someone, it's probably because I haven't learned it yet. Not because it isn't there.
All this raises the question, "Why can't we see our own problems with forgiveness?" I think the answer to this is pretty simple. The answer is this: Unforgiveness is invisible. Well technically, it's not invisible. Rather, the thing that unforgiveness is attached to is invisible, namely, the Incredible Vanishing log.
Jesus taught all manner of things about forgiveness...to everyone. One thing he taught on this subject was a comparison about an individual's issues vs. his neighbor's issues. This all is found in his question about a beam (or log) and a speck. To paraphrase, "Why do you fret and accuse your brother of having an itsy bitsy speck in his eye when there's a giant Redwood log in your eye?"
I think we have a perspective extending from a churchianity culture of convenience that renders our respective Redwoods invisible. We don't see them because individually we don't want to acknowledge them and socially we don't bear each other's issues well. It's better if we just shut our eyes...which is hard of course when you've got a huge thing in it. What's fascinating is that we can still see everyone else's issues while remaining oblivious to our own.
This particular question Jesus asked grabbed me a long time ago. Over the years, I've noticed a couple things about it. One is that this is in part a matter of perspective. The thing in your own eye is a lot bigger, in part at least, because it's a lot closer. You can't run away from it because wherever you go you take it with you. The other is that any foreign object in your own eye is bound to distort what you see. Something in someone else's eye distorts nothing in yours. Distortion leads to all kinds of other things...bad theology is one example of "other things."
I confess that I don't see my own log well at all. I've gotten better over the years but it still needs considerable pruning...chainsawing actually. I tell people about it from time to time. The response is usually either a bit of pique that I could be so fallen and barbaric as to harbor unforgiveness, or a look that I have come to refer to as "the look of the stunned Mullet." That's OK though. Those are responses I've learned to forgive.
I have some areas I've managed to look at and recognize for the mammoth growth they represent. Even so, a number of these have gotten much smaller over time and now only crop up occasionally if at all. There are almost certainly some I still don't see. I'm looking forward to discovering them. Seems like where I live there are always tress to cut.
Interestingly, I've never met anyone who actually acknowledged having a problem with forgiveness. I've met people who have been betrayed by family, spouses, and business associates not to mention Republicans, Democrats and the Illuminati. Point being that feelings of betrayal and other general forms of hurt span time and distance and even transcend reality. Still, try as I might I can find no human being that struggles with forgiveness.
I met a guy once who had found a theologian he really liked. The guy liked the theologian because the theologian had "discovered" that when Christ gave his sermons, he was only speaking to Jews. That meant that according to the theologian (and by extension the guy), the things that Christ said about forgiveness only applied to Jews. Paul was "the one" who was "anointed" to speak to gentiles. Therefore, we as gentiles only had to do things that Paul said. Apparently, Paul didn't say as much about forgiveness as Jesus did. I ignored that last bit (which is pretty wrong and wildly irrelevant) and asked him, "How does that help you?" He said, "That means I don't have to forgive Adolph Hitler who killed members of my family." His wife whisked him off at this point. This vaguely reminded me of my wife operating in similar context. My next question to him would have been, "How does hating Adolph Hitler help you?"
There are a lot of other examples of failed forgiveness. I've got some for almost everyone I know. If I don't have an example for someone, it's probably because I haven't learned it yet. Not because it isn't there.
All this raises the question, "Why can't we see our own problems with forgiveness?" I think the answer to this is pretty simple. The answer is this: Unforgiveness is invisible. Well technically, it's not invisible. Rather, the thing that unforgiveness is attached to is invisible, namely, the Incredible Vanishing log.
Jesus taught all manner of things about forgiveness...to everyone. One thing he taught on this subject was a comparison about an individual's issues vs. his neighbor's issues. This all is found in his question about a beam (or log) and a speck. To paraphrase, "Why do you fret and accuse your brother of having an itsy bitsy speck in his eye when there's a giant Redwood log in your eye?"
I think we have a perspective extending from a churchianity culture of convenience that renders our respective Redwoods invisible. We don't see them because individually we don't want to acknowledge them and socially we don't bear each other's issues well. It's better if we just shut our eyes...which is hard of course when you've got a huge thing in it. What's fascinating is that we can still see everyone else's issues while remaining oblivious to our own.
This particular question Jesus asked grabbed me a long time ago. Over the years, I've noticed a couple things about it. One is that this is in part a matter of perspective. The thing in your own eye is a lot bigger, in part at least, because it's a lot closer. You can't run away from it because wherever you go you take it with you. The other is that any foreign object in your own eye is bound to distort what you see. Something in someone else's eye distorts nothing in yours. Distortion leads to all kinds of other things...bad theology is one example of "other things."
I confess that I don't see my own log well at all. I've gotten better over the years but it still needs considerable pruning...chainsawing actually. I tell people about it from time to time. The response is usually either a bit of pique that I could be so fallen and barbaric as to harbor unforgiveness, or a look that I have come to refer to as "the look of the stunned Mullet." That's OK though. Those are responses I've learned to forgive.
I have some areas I've managed to look at and recognize for the mammoth growth they represent. Even so, a number of these have gotten much smaller over time and now only crop up occasionally if at all. There are almost certainly some I still don't see. I'm looking forward to discovering them. Seems like where I live there are always tress to cut.
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