When the Truth is a Lie

I had a great conversation yesterday with a pastor friend who is trying to more deeply embody a Jesus-style discipleship in his church. I asked, “when you do discipleship, how do you practice accountability in a group without creating a controlling or toxic atmosphere?” I thought his response was pretty Jesus-like: hold people accountable by being honest about what you see in their lives while always communicating that you love them and that they have a choice in how to respond. And their choices don’t impact your care for them or their intrinsic worth.

Jesus wielded authority without a “position” and without apology. People just “sensed” that there was authority to his words. He could speak very strongly to his disciples, but continued to serve and relate to them in a way that communicated their value and loved-ness. He gave them multiple opportunities to “opt out”. But he never tried to convince, control, or manipulate them. He always pushed them, always spoke the truth to them, but never withdrew his love, or confused their actions/attitudes/beliefs with their identity or their human dignity.

There’s a growing sickness in America and most of us feel it. It’s not just in the church. It’s everywhere. We don’t really know people anymore. We have thousands of acquaintances but very few friends. In the age of social media, loneliness is pandemic and we have forgotten how to see the humanity of others. We are all emotionally malnourished and underdeveloped. Our disconnection from others makes it easy for us form caricatured opinions about who they are as people from the wounded silos of our private minds. So when we speak of our politics, our faith, our opinions, or our lifestyles, we feel it deeply—we can taste it in the air—that our right to be human is on the line. So we hide away or scream our heads off, building thick walls to demonize anyone who would oppose us.

Here’s where it plays out in the American church and in discipleship: It’s very difficult for most Americans to “speak the truth” to each other without also speaking a lie: that if you are defensive or disagree with me, I can and will simply “unfriend” you. Or I will bully you into submission. The lie is “you’re not worth my energy, my care, my respect.” Disengagement is dehumanizing. Shame-based control is dehumanizing. But hard truth spoken in genuine love can be the most honoring gift we can give. It says, “I trust you to hear me. I think you’re worth the effort. I believe in you enough to risk you rejecting me for what I’m saying.”

Sadly, most of us forgot how to love. We THINK we love someone when in fact the thing we love most is our relationship with that person, and how that relationship benefits US. (Trust me, I speak from experience.) Object relations theorists posit that the infant mind can only identify something by its function. So for many of us, our underdeveloped social selves draw cartoonish caricatures of people, mistaking them for “things” identifiable only by their function.

So when someone “speaks the truth” to me or holds me accountable for something, I’m not listening for “is this person right?” But rather I’m listening for “does this person care?” And if they don’t care, then their choice to “speak the truth” will always come with a lie: that if I don’t shape up, I can never have value, can never belong, can never be loved. In that way many of the zealous “advocates for truth” coming from churches, political causes, and activist groups are in fact propagating a more insidious lie than any truth they hope to offer: it’s the lie of shame.

So here’s a few tips for that “difficult conversation” you simply must have with a friend or family member or that incendiary comment you’re dying to make on your friend’s Facebook post:

1. Ask yourself: do I REALLY care about this person? Do I care enough that I’m willing to feel the pain of losing them? Or do I just love the function they have in my life? Will I stick with them if they push back?

2. It’s okay to be wrong, to realize you’ve misread someone. We’ve all done it. Know when to apologize.

3. Don’t say things just to ease your mind. Believe it or not, your job isn’t to “clarify your position” or make sure people know what you think about a given topic. If your motivation is to feel better rather than to show love, then your “truth-telling” is intrinsically self-centered.

4. Conversation, not prosecution. Try giving them the benefit of the doubt, believing them to be reasonable people who want to hear you out (even if they’re not). Don’t prepare lengthy arguments, lists of offenses, or ultimatums against them. That stuff comes MUCH later.

5. Love is not an esoteric concept or philosophy. It’s a real feeling and involves real choices. If you can’t FEEL yourself in someone else’s shoes and deeply long for their wellbeing, don’t say you love them just before you slap them. That’s two-faced.

I tend to never ask for feedback (good or bad) because I’m afraid of the feedback I might get! But when someone lovingly speaks truth to me, I breathe a huge sigh of relief. It’s healing to hear painful truth from people who love me no matter what. It makes me feel seen. It makes me feel invested-in. It makes me feel human.

Verbs, Nouns, and Spiritual Pedagogy

A new study shows that infants use action verbs to understand new nouns. In other words, “hearing what an object does is how they learn what an object is.” It makes me think about the way we think and teach about God. We want to use adjectives and nouns to understand God: “he’s the loving, omnipotent, supreme being, etc...”

But the writers of the bible thought about God differently. To the Hebrews, God wasn’t a bundle of propositions, but a personal being best understood by his actions: He’s the God that made promises to Abraham, freed the Israelites from slavery, parted the Red Sea. He’s the God that clothed himself in skin and walked among us, who died, and was resurrected.

This narrative approach to understanding God (with all its rich action verbs) is a humbler, but more effective way to teach and facilitate spiritual “bonding” or “attachment” to God. It seems that as infants, we forge attachments to our parents because long before we understand what they are, we understand what they do. Why should spiritual attachment to a heavenly Father look any different?

So if we can loosen up on our rigid nounish doctrinal statements, we might find a greater voice and resonance in our culture by talking less about the stuff that God is and more about the stuff that God does.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/infants-use-verbs-they-know-to-learn-new-nouns/

Nate & Debra Live in Concert... whicky WHAAA?!

Toby Mac stood in front of thousands of people at the main stage one night and opened his bible to Psalm 40. He read, “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.” And in that moment, a whisper came into my head with an electric warmth, which has become a familiar friend over the years. The whisper pointed toward that big bright stage and said, “This is your new song. This is your stage.”

I was 17. I had come to the end of myself the summer before in teenage angst and rebellion and finally concluded that only Jesus could help me. That year in school I grew in leaps and bounds even while I battled depression, arrogance, and relapses into narcissism.

In the spring I read Psalm 40 and it leapt off the page. It seemed to want to say something important to me. So I carried it around for months, asking God to show me what it meant. He seemed to reply, “I have a new song for you and you don’t know what it is yet.”

When Toby Mac (of ALL people) read my verse and I looked up at the glitz and glamour of that stage like someone looking into his own future, my response wasn’t excitement or pride. It was confusion, mixed with a little fear, but also the peaceful resignation that if God wanted me singing songs about him on some main stage in some future life... he would work out the details. That night, I just worshipped.

Over the next 13 years, I wrote music... LOTS of music. I wrote good music, bad music, authentic, angsty, and idealistic music. I wrote prolifically and passionately. I recorded an album (just me and my guitar) at my Dad’s radio station, another one in college, and 2 more in my friend’s basement... always just me and my guitar, adding harmonies, cello parts, piano. But never daring to bring in other musicians. And outside of the occasional open mic night, I rarely played my songs in public.

2 years ago I was living in Chicago and I had a long conversation with God about this. At that time, he asked me what I wanted out of my music. I told him I wanted to pursue it, to work hard and become a “real” singer-songwriter, to have a stage to sing songs about Him. That same whisper replied, “Okay. You can have it.” Well... I turned 30 this year and guess what? I’m having my first ever concert next week.

I worked through last fall (with varying success) to gather a band. I had to drag my music out of my brain and onto paper. I felt I was dissecting and sometimes prostituting a part of me, which up until now had mainly been a private soul-language. I had to ask people to believe in me. It was (and is) terrifying and triggering. But I booked the venue, set the date, and ready or not here we go!

Debra reminds me that this is just a first step. But for me, a debut performance after 13 years of fits and starts is a big deal. God also keeps encouraging me to keep it simple, to be pastoral, and not to worry about numbers or making the music perfect. Ultimately, the stage is His. It’s not a tool to promote my ideas or myself. It’s a venue to share through art, what I know about Him... to talk about my journey with Him and invite people into their own journeys with Him.

So I’m doing my best to be faithful, to be myself, to work hard, and to fight perfectionism. Over the weekend I felt like I was getting ulcers, but today I’m peaceful and focused.

Next Saturday at 7pm at Grace Evangelical Church in Fayetteville... I’ll get up with my guitar, Debra singing harmonies, Michael playing cello and accordion, and Michael #2 drumming away. I’ll sing these songs I’ve written in my soul-language, “a hymn of praise to our God.” And I hope that people can step into my journey and feel a little bit of God’s heart for them.

Throughout the room, there will be artwork from people at the church. There will also be people I’ve asked to tell stories about THEIR encounters with the goodness of God. This is my best attempt at talking about spiritual formation through art instead of books, blogs, sermons, and bible studies. It’s less about delivering the right content and more about creating the right atmosphere. Well.... here goes nothing!

For more about the concert: https://www.facebook.com/events/466282540140026/466282546806692/?comment_id=466546993446914&notif_t=event_mall_comment

For more about my music (and to listen free online): nathanharkness.bandcamp.com

Discipling our Dark Places

Through the process of Restoring Your Heart, I’m coming to the conclusion that I am NOT a whole person. Meaning, there are large chunks of my identity, my history, who I am that I have quietly tucked away, protected in the sickly warm incubator of shame. So while I learn and grow and receive love as a friend, a husband, a leader, and a church-goer, that darker part of me goes on unloved, unknown, and undiscipled. This may be heresy, but it feels as though a part of me has not yet met Jesus or been pinned down by His grace.

The other day, I decided to be extremely honest with a group of men about my unlovable dark parts... maybe more honest than I’ve ever been. I shared that stuff not with a flood of cathartic weeping but with a cold, cringing decisiveness and vulnerability... Like grinding, oil-less gears, I lurched into the process of exposing myself, eyes fixed on the floor. If anyone knew what lurked within, who could love me? Could God even love me?

When people experience God’s heart, his love is overwhelming, embarrassing, and aggressive. We let it penetrate beneath our skin and heal the loop-tape lies that plague us.

Or not.

At every new level, God’s love stands toe-to-toe against our shame and offers us a choice: will I let Him win? Will I dare to embrace the terrifying hope He offers? Or will I tuck away the unsavory bits (or acres) of my being believing that God could never love me if I were that thing. That’s called shame: that resilient belief that something about me (my thoughts, my history, my wiring, my darker parts) disqualifies me as a human being worthy of love and acceptance. I understand why people, why I use shame to defend myself against God’s love in one area, even while embracing it on another. Love comes with an enormous cost: I have to dismantle my defenses. I have to be... defenseless.

When I looked up from my unflattering confession, I saw in the faces of those men affirmation and pride, not rejection. They were proud of my truth-telling and exuded grace in the face of my shame. They accepted me: my dark and my redeemed parts together. One man wrapped his arms around me and said, “I just love you for being honest.”

The next morning I took a long walk, feeling sick about the night before. As I processed it with God, I felt from Him a quiet, steady acceptance. And though I knew I wasn’t quite ready to fully throw my open the gates to his love, I also knew that transparency with him and with others was weakening my defenses. Hope is beginning to seep in, slowly, painfully.

If you’re in this boat with me, I’d say exposure (confession)—both with God and with emotionally safe and mature people—has been the most useful tool against shame so far. Vulnerability (not just honesty, but the kind of real vulnerability that hurts when you open your mouth) opens the door to experience the truth of love: the love of God and the love of others experientially heals the wounds dealt through our experiences. Then we begin to grow as whole, integrated people. Jesus makes disciples even of our dark places.

Here’s what Brene Brown has to say about shame in her book, Daring Greatly:

“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That’s why it loves perfectionists—it’s so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we’ve basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.”