Better than Jesus?

I set up a time to chat with my pastor friend and quickly learned the following:  his daughter was not in treatment, he had sent her out of state to “visit” her grandparents and she was terrorizing them with her out-of-control behavior.  He was still deeply concerned about losing his job.

“So what part of this do you want feedback on?”  I asked.

“What should I do about my job?”  he countered.

“You know, I have more resources that might be helpful to your daughter than I have experience about your job security,” I replied.

“I cannot think about that until I stop obsessing about this job thing,” he confessed.

“Ok,” I said.  I decided to start where he was, not where I wished him to be.

And this is a principle that my family crackup is teaching me.  We have to be realistic about where each of us is in life; it is a waste of time to think otherwise.  I wanted this dad to be strong and brave and loving and willing to go to any lengths to help his kid. He wanted that as well, but in the moment, he was distracted with his crisis of conscious about how he had handled previous situations as a leader and the implications of applying those same principles to himself.  I can judge him for this (my perceived lack of proper priorities) or I can try to be helpful. Helpful is in my core value wheelhouse; judging is not.

My teammate and son, Scott, has a philosophy of ministry he refers to as “assessing tolerance.”  What Scott means, I think, is that Scott wants us to consciously exercise both discernment and wisdom when listening to grieving, traumatized people who need to make hard calls.  Before a meeting with a suffering family, he often reminds me that part of our work is to assess how much “truth” a family can tolerate before we bring out the howitzer of information we have acquired and shoot them with it.  I wish I understood this perspective decades ago. I wish I had paid more attention when people I love taught me that we were on vastly different pages as it related to our core values. I wish I had acquired more acceptance AND more detachment - it would have saved us all a lot of trauma.  I have a principle for days when I wish I had known stuff that I did not - I remind myself: when we know better, we do better. Look, here is the skinny on this: I really did want to judge this dad for his priorities. I thought he should get his kid to rehab first and manage the fallout second.  But if I push my agenda, then I won’t be available to maybe have a chance with helping with rehab. Instead, I took a deep cleansing breath and tried to help him with the issue that holds his attention. This is what it looks like to assess tolerance, put your big girl pants on, lay down your weapons and try to serve.

Keeping it Real

One of the principles of scripture study that I try to practice is avoiding cherry picking verses and using them out of context.  Having recently preached a sermon while cherry picking a verse out of context myself, I am feeling a bit bruised as I write this devotional.  Nevertheless, the principle is important, even if I carelessly violated it. Fortunately, I did remember this principle and practiced it as I tried to respond to this broken-hearted pastor/dad’s call.

I grabbed my bible and began to look at the entire book of 1 Timothy.  It wasn’t long before I was challenged by 1 Timothy 1. In the first chapter, Paul is setting the stage for writing Timothy, his young disciple, a letter filled with practical advice to help Timothy create a faithful congregation.  It was of particular interest to me that Paul took the time to remind Timothy (surely this is a rehash of old news for Tim) that he, Paul, was only faithful because Jesus gave him the strength to be faithful. He reminded Timothy of his (Paul’s) wayward youth of persecuting Christians; and then he set forth a doctrinal truth:  This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’ - and I’m the biggest sinner of all.  But this is why I was shown mercy, so that Christ Jesus could show his endless patience to me first of all. So I’m an example for those who are going to believe in him for eternal life.”  

1 Timothy 1:15-16 CEB

Does this mean that Paul is disqualified from being a supervisor (CEB language) in the church?  Or does this mean that it is ok to have once been naughty, but make sure to take care of those issues in order to move into a leadership position in the church?  And while we’re at it, let’s consider that lengthy list of qualifications:

So the church’s supervisor must be without fault.  They should be faithful to their spouse, sober, modest and honest.  They should show hospitality and be skilled at teaching. They shouldn’t be addicted to alcohol or a bully.  Instead, they should be gentle, peaceable, and not greedy. They should manage their own household well - they should see that their children are obedient with complete respect, because if they don’t know how to manage their own household, how can they take care of God’s church?”

 1 Timothy 3:2-5 CEB

Must. Be. Without. Fault.  This caught my eye and I began flipping through the gospels, garnering a bit bigger scriptural context.  I began listing all the faults that people found with Jesus while he was in the midst of his three years of public ministry.  Jesus taught with authority, exorcised demons, raised the dead, healed the sick, and recruited a core team for building his church.  He turned water into wine, he attended dinner parties, and he fed 1,000’s out of a kid’s lunchbox. But he was accused of working on the Sabbath, colluding with the devil, hanging out with bad company, yet he had his authority questioned at every turn and was eventually found guilty despite no evidence of wrongdoing and hung.  I was ready to call my friend back. Tomorrow we will talk about all this and more.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Years ago a pastor in a large church called me to discuss his daughter’s substance use disorder.  He was very concerned that if his congregation found out about his kid’s “issues” it would negatively impact his ability to lead.  He quoted a passage of scripture that spoke to the requirements of a church leader,

“So the church’s supervisor must be without fault.  They should be faithful to their spouse, sober, modest and honest.  They should show hospitality and be skilled at teaching. They shouldn’t be addicted to alcohol or be a bully.  Instead, they should be gentle, peaceable, and not greedy. They should manage their own household well - they should see that their children are obedient with complete respect, because if they don’t know how to manage their own household, how can they take care of God’s church?”  

1 Timothy 3:2-5 CEB

His concerns were warranted.  It turns out that during his brief tenure at this church he had himself used this same passage to dismiss several deacons who served on the church’s deacon board.  He had been quite proud of his integrity on these situations. He had even spoken about his leadership style and these particularly tough calls at a pastor’s conference.  

Now he was having a crisis of faith.  Did he need to resign his position? Was his daughter’s substance use issue a reflection on his ability to manage his home?  He was also eaten up with guilt. One of the deacons dismissed from service was a guy whose own son had committed suicide related to his struggle with opiate addiction.  Why in the world, he mused, had he thought it was a good idea to kick a father when he was already down for the count? All good questions.

I didn’t know what to say to him so I asked for some time to pray and process.  Something was bugging me about the application of that scripture and I needed to consider the matter at length.  I also questioned whether I was his best source for information; my interest lay primarily with his daughter and family.  But the challenge of trying to figure out how that scripture might fit into this situation intrigued me and we both decided that I could at least take some time to see what I came up with for feedback.

My experience with faith is that when I am confused it is often the result of not understanding a spiritual principle (or three) that would help me sort out a confusing text.  I can only speak for myself, but as a general rule, God makes sense; he is not chaotic. He is also mysterious and let’s be fair - the scriptures are not the easiest of reads.

Have you ever found yourself in a position of having a personal crisis disrupt your own strongly held theological beliefs?  What did you do?

Can this marriage be saved?

When I was a little girl my grandmother had a monthly subscription to a magazine called “Ladies Home Journal”.  It had a monthly feature entitled, ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’. I read it with rapt fascination. The format was always the same - first one spouse, then the other would share their perspective. Next, the therapist would “weigh in” and finally the conclusion would be sort of a “what happened afterwards” wrap up.   I tried to predict what “the expert” would advise this couple in advance. I noticed a pattern that “the first person seems right until the second person speaks” - and was thrilled when I found a proverb that spoke to my experience. Although many of these marriages were “saved,” some were not. I understood that not all relationships are salvageable.  Sometimes the marriage is the mistake.

But this is not what I learned at my grandparent’s church.  Divorce was a sin, not an admission of human fallibility. Divorce split up your family AND required that you change churches.  Or, stop going to church at all. I thought the “Ladies Home Journal” was making more sense than the pastor on this one but my grandmother assured me I was wrong.  (She could not explain to me how her pastors kept running off with women who were not their wives.)

My grandmother taught me that love is unconditional and so are relationships.  A “good” Christian girl didn’t get divorced. I assume this is the same message she gave my mother.  But in point of fact, “good” Christians do get divorced - at about the same rate that everyone else who gets divorced and doesn’t go to church.  My grandmother, who I love with all my heart, gave me bad intel. I understand that she was doing her best, teaching what she had been taught, but she got this one wrong.  I just didn’t understand how she could get it so very wrong when she was serving on her fourth pastor search committee because of the infidelity and eventual DIVORCE of the three previous Senior Pastors!!!  This made me feel like I was on crazy pills.

It is also spiritual malpractice.  What I have learned is that when what I am being told is a spiritual truth adds chaos and confusion rather than clarity to a situation, I need to step back, take a breath and seek additional (wise) counsel.  Choosing counsel is a big deal; I need to seek counsel with a broad range of understanding and one that isn’t operating within the same “system” that I am living in. Spiritual truths can withstand scrutiny.

Tomorrow we are going to unpack that concept a bit.  In the meantime, can you think of times when you have been confused about what you were taught or read in scriptures that did not jive with your reality?  How do you work through that?

Honesty

Honesty may be the best policy but it sure is hard to practice it in real time.  In my family of origin we have historically embraced conflict as a form of intimacy - in the worst of ways.  This has been our family legacy - one I had hoped to avoid. Over the decades I worked pretty hard to try to stay connected with my family.  I was bossy and codependent and tried to smooth over conflicts which were not mine to manage. Other times I was passive-aggressive, trying to sneak in suggestions for change in the hopes that we could establish relational equilibrium and avoid conflict.  I cajoled. I bargained. I even tried to change the system. My greatest disappointment in myself are those times when I did not trust my own instincts, choosing instead to try to mitigate harm rather than addressing it openly. Innocent people were hurt in the process of me trying to avoid the breakup of a family system.  None of it worked long term. My family of origin is all busted up. We sit in opposing camps and even on my best days I doubt reconciliation will occur.

Oftentimes I reflect back on my efforts to maintain relationship and wonder if those efforts were a waste of time.  What seemed like a sacrifice for love now feels more like being played for a patsy. But here’s the thing - I bet if you talk to the “other side”, they feel pretty hurt too.  And therein lies the problem with honesty. We are all spin doctors in our own personal soap operas. We misunderstand ourselves and one another.

In the next few days I’m going to try to unpack a few principles that I am learning as I try to lean into this difficult disappointment. I am going to share a couple stories, poke around in some passages of scripture, and maybe make a few seemingly random points. But my end game will be to bring this all together in a way that I hope challenges the way we think about our faith in light of our daily experiences. I fear that some of what we believe is wrong and it actually tempts us to be less honest with God, ourselves and others. It also makes it less likely that we will be able to utilize our faith as a guiding light.  I hope to address these issues and help sort through some of the confusion of believing things that the scriptures do not actually teach and then trying to live THAT gospel.

Do you struggle with telling yourself the truth about what you believe and how you live?  Why or why not? Do you have any concerns about your own ways of relating to others and to God?  How does this affect you personally? Professionally? Within your community?