Love in Context

The bible provides us stories of God calling his people to do extraordinary things.  Who doesn’t want to be extraordinary? I do! I want to be courageous and a full on follower of God.  Because these stories (which we emphasize and challenge ourselves to live up to) feed our own egos and desires for significance, I think it has caused us to miss the obvious.

It is true that some people are called to do extraordinary things as an expression of their faith.  But those are actually the exceptions. Mostly, I believe, we are provided a vision for living an ordinary day-to-day life with extraordinary vision for its sacredness. The longest book in the bible is the book of Jeremiah.  In it we find an unflinching portrayal of a people who have forgotten who they are because they have lost touch with what they once knew of God and his relationship to them. This is our eternal dilemma it appears. Maintaining conscious contact with God and his inspired way of seeing is for whatever reason, I do not know it, a constant challenge.  

Jeremiah is tasked with trying to wake up his sleepy tribe and help them remember in a vain attempt to avoid the 70 year banishment.  He’s a gloomy guy and not very popular (the truth rarely is well-received). But he combines his doom and gloom prophesy with the promise of restoration - if his people would just wake up and return to God.  There are three things that plagued the Israelites and I suspect continue to plague us - all of which distort our capacity to give and receive love:

1. False strategies for abundant living

2. Self-deception

3. Straight up confusion

I hope to break these down and explain them further in the next blog post but just to be clear - these three problems impact our capacity to give and receive love.  And love, in the kingdom of God is a big freaking deal.

Today, take some time to assess your own love potential and practices.  Do you ever get confused about how to express love in a challenging relationship?

Love Misunderstood

11-15 “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.

~ John 15:11-15 The Message

If I have a very fuzzy idea about how God loves, it makes sense that I would have trouble figuring out how to love the way he loves me.  I had no frame of reference for a gentle, unconditional, joyful loving relationship. My relationships mostly seemed conditional, hinging on my capacity to please the person whose love I desperately desired.  I often felt like there was some love system that I was trying to game in order to trick someone into caring about me.

When I read the Old Testament I was confused by this God who scorched cities wiping dens of inequity.  Don’t misunderstand, these folks seemed to deserve what they got - but where did that leave me on the spectrum of God smiting?  God gave David power to slay Goliath but couldn’t seem to keep David from committing adultery and shockingly killing his faithful servant Uriah (his paramour’s husband) to hide his affair.  God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden (I failed to notice that he went with them). Joseph, a godly guy if a bit naive when he tells his brothers that he learned in a dream that he would one day rule them seems to suffer all sorts of unfair treatment.  Is this how God loves? Does God really protect his beloved? Or are we all unworthy of being loved unless someone does something radical - like maybe dying on a cross - to save our sorry asses? Are we really so intrinsically broken? Are we all bad to the bone?  I only had to read the book of Job to fuel my doubts about whether even God could love me without me ending up battered and bruised. After all, look what happened to Job, a righteous man. Even he got kicked in the gut. And I was no Job.

There was this sentence in John, I learned it in the King James translation, “Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.”  Ok, so I am supposed to love large, I thought. I am supposed to be willing to die for my friends.

This put me in codependent territory - a land where we pay more attention to the needs of others than we do to our own needs.  This intuitively felt “off” to me. I struggled with the concept. It turns out this struggle was valuable.

Do you ever feel confused by God’s love commands?  What trips you up?

To be continued…

Love Confusion

When I was a baby believer in a power greater than myself I asked my mentor, “I just do not understand why you keep talking about love.  I think it is more important that I learn more about God.”

Feel free to roll your eyes.

As a baby believer, I had a LOT to learn.  I was confused about the things I needed to know.  I was growing up in an age where emphasis was placed on the study of the scriptures - nothing wrong with that!!  I was given the impression that I would do well to learn Greek, Hebrew, and how to pull apart God’s “inerrant” word phrase by phrase. There is value in this type of study.  But as a newbie, I thought the highest priority was what I KNEW (and I didn’t know much) not how I LIVED. (After all, Jesus died for my sins so far better for me to spend my time learning about God than spending time in rigorous self-examination.) My mentors had no idea that this is how I was misinterpreting their teaching!!!

But they had been believers for a long time.  I am not sure they understood the heart of a young woman who easily felt guilty and ashamed kneeling before a BIG GOD.  This was complicated by a complete lack of understanding on my part about my responsibility for dealing with the wreckage of my past.  I was too new at this spirituality stuff to NOT make confusing leaps of logic. The Jesus story through my eyes sounded like (and to be fair we sang a hymn every now and again that said this) Jesus “paid it all”.  This left me convinced that there was nothing left for me to “do”.

This is a far different perspective than the 12-steps, a process where we learn how to take responsibility for our side of the street; make amends; serve others.  Lest we forget, the first three steps set the stage for this later work. We have stuff we have to acknowledge, we are encouraged to have hope in our higher power, we are told that if we surrender, God does the heavy lifting in the healing department AND then, we begin to do our work.

It took decades for me to begin to see the vision of God’s kingdom come together in a more coherent fashion.  Yes it is important to know this God, to understand him. Yes it is important to know how to take responsibility for ourselves.  Yes we have wounds from our past, many of which are not our fault. Yes we have responsibility for participating in the healing work - which is often long, winding and more process-driven than miracle-receiving.  And yes, yes, 1,000 times yes - it ALL has to do with this love that God has and gives to us. It all matters. Clearly, I was confused. And of all the confusing things I was learning, how to love was the most confusing of all.  To be frank, I believe that some of the things I was taught now feel more like codependency run amok than what the bible actually teaches about love of God, self and others. But let’s be honest - some of the verses in the bible can easily be applied in a confusing manner no matter our best intentions.  I want to unpack love for a few days!

To be continued…

Grounded

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion.  

Braving The Wilderness, p. 45

One day recently someone asked me to meet them for coffee to talk about how they didn’t think they could keep going to their church (not ours, another large church in the area) because the church was in the middle of a building campaign and they were unable to give at the percentage that the church was asking each of their members to consider.  It turns out this person had lost his job when his company went belly up and he was too embarrassed to share that information.

His deacon had come to visit as part of the churchwide building campaign. My friend assumed that the deacon was accusing him of being unfaithful; it didn’t occur to him that deacons were visiting all the members of the church. I do not know this church well and acknowledged that I did not understand what the situation was from the deacon’s perspective.  But I encouraged my friend to ask himself this question: do you think you go to a good church? Yes, unequivocably yes, was his reply. Then why assume that they would judge you? Why not at least go to someone and tell them the truth of your situation. See what happens. You can always leave, I pointed out, but try not to disappear without clarity.

He did what I suggested; within four days he had a new job (that he loves) working for one of the members of his church.  His pastor suggested that he suspend all tithes and offerings for the rest of the year until the family could get back on more solid footing and suggested other ways he could contribute to the building campaign that did not involve financial promises he may not be in a position to honor.  That’s a good church.

This church gave evidence of being grounded in love and compassion in real time.  I predict that this gentleman, by nature generous, will become in years to come even more generous in his support of his church and maybe especially for those who lose their jobs.  He beams when he speaks of his church and instead of disappearing, he is more involved than ever before. All win.

How can we start thinking more about the “all win” love perspective?  If we can do that, we won’t need to obsess about succeeding; we will be too busy successfully living.

A Power Greater than All of Us

Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. 

Braving The Wilderness, p. 45

In a recent sermon Scott talked about how he heard a lecture by John Goldingay.  Dr. Goldingay was responding to a question asking him about what he would say to the American church as parting wisdom (he is leaving his position in the U.S. and returning to England, so it was within the context of honoring his tenure and marking a life transition for him).

One of the things he said went something like this:  We need to get back to understanding that doing God’s work (some say "building the Kingdom" or "Kingdom Work") is really God’s work to do, and we have accidentally gotten in the habit of thinking that he is counting on us to do it all.  His challenge is so refreshing. Instead of whipping his listeners up into a frenzy of renewed effort to evangelize the lost and save the world, he is saying - hey, God has got this. Calm yourselves.  Do your small part and that is good enough.

It is a lovely sentiment and Brene gives it a nod when she says “we are...connected to each other by a power greater than all of us”.  

A power greater than us is at work.  If we believe that than I suspect we can accept our limitations, our opportunities to sacrifice, our moments of doing one small next right thing with more peace and joy.  We can celebrate, maybe a small yippee, even when we are suffering because we can remember that we are in good hands.