Rattling Bones and the Logs of Judgement

(Here's a new song. It's the soundtrack for this post...)

Can I just be real with you for a sec? I’m a real judger. Sometimes I think the most awful, condemning thoughts about people. Critical words and labels for people come to mind that I should never repeat out loud. They’re the kind of words that go in like a barb and stick for years. True enough to wound. Not True enough to heal. I hate those words. They feel demonic. But I don’t know how to unthink them, how to unlearn them.

http://cccooperagency.wordpress.com/page/52/

My family and best friends bear the brunt of my judgment and I hate that most of all. On mornings like this, it casts a pall over the house. And my lips are zipped tight to protect everyone from myself.

Groggy and depressed, I breathe a sincere prayer for help. Then I open my bible at random. *Plop* Matthew 7:1 - “Do not judge or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Thanks a lot God. So it’s, “just knock it off” then, right? Ha. Ha... Ha.

I’m on the record saying “acceptance is the most powerful healing force in the universe.” So why is it so hard for me to live it (and give it) in my inner circles? Expectations, choices, pride, and conditioning I suppose.

I’m not sure I totally like what my accepting self would look like. I fear losing my “standards” and ideals. I fear becoming muted, domesticated, wimpy, and resigned. If you’re a judger you know what I mean. If not, you might hate my guts right now.

But I’m not happy as a judger.

One, because it stymies my own spiritual growth. Jesus says I should take the plank out of my own eye before worrying about the speck in my brother’s eye. But I don’t think he means that I’m truly a worse person than my brother. Maybe my brother’s speck is a plank to him and it’s just a matter of perspective. I think it’s also a matter of responsibility. My responsibility to discern and call out the issues in other people is real. But it’s speck-like in comparison to my responsibility to deal with my own junk. And when I DO call people out, it should always be with the intention of being helpful, not just making myself feel better. I should always have the humility—no matter how vindicated I feel—to be speckish in dealing with other people’s issues and plankish in dealing with my own.

And two, because it kills my relationships. It just wreaks havoc on the people I love. I can’t tell you how it works. But somehow, when I express empathetic acceptance, my relationships breathe, flourish and often, people grow. When I express judgment, they grit their teeth, dig a foxhole, and surround it with landmines. Then I hide behind a big rock and shout, “I’m just trying to help you!!”

I’m not sure how to apply this in my day-to-day. I’m sure it has something to do with accepting myself and allowing God to accept me. I’m sure it has something to do with owning my identity as the beloved child of a heavenly Father. That’s the beauty of the Jesus Way: it puts us in a uniquely intimate relationship with God in which we find real familial love and acceptance. But I’d be lying to you if I said I was good at tapping into that love and acceptance on a daily basis.

Maybe if you’re a judger like me, you’ll know just how to fix me. But I’m a bit stymied. Worthless stymied people! So I’ll take my own “medicine” and realize once again just how gross the stuff is.

There’s a little shimmer of hope though; a new vision God gave me last week that I haven’t grown into yet. It’s Ezekiel 37: the dry bones that God raises. The vision is this: I’m not a warm body fighting decay. I’m a helpless pile of bones rattling to life. If I can own that vision, then I’ll be okay with failure, because bones aren’t good for much anyway.

But I’ll also be able to trust God’s power and the slow resurrection in my life. I’ll be able to believe that God is in fact, making me a MORE vibrant, alive, and caring person as I age (not less)... that he doesn’t expect perfection, but that he is slowly performing eye surgery to remove the big logs of judgment from my vision.

I think I DO trust that vision. I’m just feeling pretty boney today.

97 and Living Like Crazy

At 97, great great aunt Charlotte is one of the sharpest and most vibrantly alive human beings I know. Her friend Stevie (who has lived with Charlotte and been adopted into ourfamily for 60 years now) is the same way, but with an extra spark and humor. We arranged by email (yes email) to meet up this week for breakfast. They ambushed me with questions about my family, my life, and my ministry. They were keenly interested in the latest developments and reminded me that they pray often for us, along with all the rest of Char’s family AND Stevie’s, “76 nieces, nephews,grands, and great-grands.”

I finally got a question of my own in and then sat listening to these two young-at-heart women tell me hilarious and heartfelt stories from the last nearly 100 years about how they met, the bible studies they’ve led together, and the times they’ve gotten pulled over for speeding while singing hymns at the top of their lungs. At present, they STILL lead bible studies with 20-somethings AND 90-somethings! They’re also passionately trying to convert their entire apartment complex to their unique brand of lively, surrendered Christianity.

Their secret? They talked about an upbringing under a wise and loving pastor in a church that was passionate about the bible and an intimate daily “walk” with Jesus. “We used to sing hymns like, ‘He walks with me, and He talks with me, and tells me I am his own,’” aunt Char related. The emphasis on intimacy with God was very strong. They also cited a lifelong reading of the bible. Stevie interjected, “I’m absolutely convinced that the only lasting change for good in peoples’ lives comes through God’s Word.”

Everything in me loves who they are. And I love what they teach me about aging.

Arecent Barna study has been rattling around in my brain for weeks now. The study examined “christlikeness” in a representative sample of AmericanChristians. Studying the records of Jesus’ life, they deduced 5 attitudes and 5 behaviors that seemed to characterize Jesus alongside 5 attitudes and 5 behaviors that characterized the Pharisees. They asked people to respond to questions with a 1-4 rating and used the results to determine how many Christiansin fact emulate the attitudes and action of Jesus more than the self-righteous attitudes and actions of the Pharisees.

The result? Right around 14% of Christians across the board could be called “Christ-like”. It was 23% among evangelicals. Ouch.

One of the groups that fared worst was people over the ageof 67 (only 6% were Christ-like). I’ve suspected for a long time that age alone does not produce maturity. In many cases, it seems to harden and embitter rather than soften and improve. I’ve faced that fact with trepidation as I think about my next 10, 20, 70 years. Why does older NOT seem to equate to wiser or better? Will I be a nastier human being at 70 than I was at 20?

Yet there sitting across from me was living proof that lifelong growth and maturing is possible. As I shared my hopes and fears about aging with these beautiful ladies, they were reflective. “I wonder,” mused Stevie, “if people’s focus simply turns inward as they experience more and more loss and physical illness.” But with conviction, she related a lesson from the book of James about rejoicing in the midst of suffering and how God had taught her that lesson over and over again in her life.

It’s hard to be cynical when sitting with such women. As an Evangelical, I’m deeply suspicious of evangelicalism as a cultural institution. But in their story, I heard an evangelical faith deeply rooted deeply in a personal, authentic relationship with Jesus. I could only applaud that.

I also heard the legacy of a faith that is in fact very old. I thought of my own spiritual journey, how my wild and weird encounters with God feel raw and fresh and deep in the context of my personal experience. And I wondered how many people over thousands of years have in fact felt the same intimate relationship to a loving God in pursuit of His creation. How many people across history and cultures have not only believed the story of Jesus, but also sensed that the hero of their faith was alive and present in their daily lives? I’m heartened by the awareness that though I often feel on some wild frontier of faith and relationship with Him, I am in fact in very goodcompany.

Why are evangelicals only slightly more appreciated than prostitutes?

Today, I’m chewing on Hosea, the Old Testament book in which God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. And when she is unfaithful God commands him to literally buy her back at a prostitute’s price... it's supposed to be an allegory for God’s relationship with Israel. People like the book because it graphically demonstrates God’s passionate pursuit of people, even at the cost of his own dignity.

But today I’m drawn in by something else. I’m amazed by the way God talks about righteousness and unrighteousness. Here’s an example from chapter 4:

“There is no faithfulness, no love,
    no acknowledgment of God in the land.
There is only cursing,^[a] lying and murder,
    stealing and adultery;
they break all bounds,
    and bloodshed follows bloodshed.”

Notice anything? Faithfulness, love, and acknowledgment of God (the good stuff)... those are internal realities. Cursing, lying, and murder... that’s all external. So when people are spiraling away from God, the proof here is seen in their actions.

And while we all expect goodness to symmetrically show itself as a behavioral reality, in fact, it’s a heart thing. Paul says it this way in Galatians 5:

¹⁹ The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 

We all know that attitudes and behavior are inextricably linked. Of course they are! But when talking about goodness, the bible (at least from the prophets onward) is careful about NOT talking it as just a behavioral thing. I imagine it’s a built-in safeguard against legalism and self-righteousness.

Shame on the Church for missing this. We’ve gotten good at defining ourselves as a religious community by what we don’t do and don’t approve of. That may be one reason that in 2002, the Barna Group reported,

Surprisingly Few Adults Outside of Christianity Have Positive Views of Christians

Well, in fact, when asked to give their impressions of 11 groups, non-Christians ranked “evangelicals” at number 10... just ahead of prostitutes.

We like being able to judge the behavioral indicators of “moral decay”. But then we define our own goodness in the same behavioral terms. But as much as we stand apart from the herd in our refusal to drink, swear, smoke, or sleep around (calling it our “testimony”), non-Christians can still take one look at our attitude and disposition and say, “Yeah right. I’m not buying what you’re selling.”

So next time you hear a Christian rant about the rotten state of affairs in the world, you can say, “so what makes you any better?” And if they tell you all about their quiet times, or political activism, or church attendance, or lifestyle choices, just say, “alright, but how’s your heart? Because from where I sit, you’re still not looking any better than anyone else.” If you say do that, you may be doing that person a huge favor.

Dealing with the Expectation of Rejection

I’ve moved 12 times in 12 years. I’ve experienced the pain of making and losing friends over and over again. At times I’ve been rejected outright. Other times, people have just faded away. It has made connection and vulnerability a tricky thing when I expect people be gone from my life after a year or two.

Rejection is hard for anyone. But for me it’s become quite the sore spot and a topic of a lot of thought. This year, I’m settling into a place that could be home for the rest of my life. Yet I still see people through the strained eyes of a traveler. In the last month, I’ve gently put my weight down on 2 or 3 relationships here and found safety and acceptance. But it’s strange and uncomfortable and I don’t trust it yet.

There’s something deep and wonderful about the way Jesus deals with the expectation of rejection. I’ve been watching him carefully through the course of Mark 14, his last evening with his disciples. He acknowledges, “You will all fall away.” Yet I hear the tone of that evening (John 13-17), and I don’t think, “this is a conversation between people who are about to be alienated from each other.” The feeling is vulnerable, intimate, and hushed.

Here are a few highlights of Jesus’ reaction that leave me scratching my head:

-He does not deflect his pain, but expresses it. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death”

-He expresses his disappointment in them. “Could you not keep watch for one hour?”

-He expresses a sense of deep personal worthiness. “Woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man.”

-He is earnest, not cynical.

-He chooses to be vulnerable and intimate, washing their feet. He even seems to ramp up the vulnerability at the end.

-Yet he does NOT try to change their minds or win them back.

-He sees PAST the rejection. “I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

-He carries a deep sense of purpose. “The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him.”

What I see in Jesus isn’t masochism. But he allows his friends to be his friends up to the last moment. He doesn’t check out of the relationship prematurely. He gives them a choice even though he knows what they will choose. If it were me... I couldn’t do that.

I’m really trying these days to give people a choice to either accept or reject me, even if past experience tells me it’s a forgone conclusion. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised. Sometimes my fears come true.

But there’s something cathartic even in realizing my worst fears and then waking up the next day. Because in all the worst case scenarios in my head, there IS no “tomorrow". Just... game over. But I’m discovering that win or lose, there IS something cool about showing up to play the game. Somehow it feels that the risk itself makes vulnerability worth my while. Maybe Jesus knew that too.

There’s so much I DON’T grasp about Jesus’ friendship with the 12. But it feels profoundly (big G) Good. One more reason I’m happy to call myself one of His followers.