Dealing with Disappointment

I grew up in a house where my father expected my brother and I to behave like little adults all the time. I am not saying that it was a bad childhood but I am saying that there were a lot of expectations and when they were not met, disappointment and punishments was the response. I have come to realize that I have this same attitude about all the people in my life. If I am disappointed in someone who I have invested time, energy, and effort into the relationship, I have a hard time not showing that disappointment. I have come to recognize that at some point these people will disappoint me. I teach many different people each week. At some point I know that they will do something I do not agree with or is in direct opposition to what I have taught them or know is right for them. In the past I have taken it personal. YOU are disappointing ME. Because of this disappointment, the human response is to withdrawal or react negatively. I understand this. Recently, when I was venting to a confidant of mine, I said something about what my reaction should be, what the appropriate response should be. I was told by my confidant that disappointment is something that can’t be helped. It is then that I realized that it is my reaction that matters. These people are human just as I am. I do not do everything right either. Showing love in disappointing situations to these people might be the best way for them to grasp God’s love of them. We sin. When we sin we disappoint God, yet his love remains. His heart doesn’t ignore us and he still shows us the attention we deserve. The disappointment is still there but his response is to still love us. I have come to realize that as minister, I am to be the ambassador of God to the people under my care: middle school, high school, and college students alike. I am to show them God in my actions and the way to do that is to recognize disappointment but not take it personally. Even when they make a mistake or commit a sin that is exactly what I have been teaching against, the response is to show even more love than normal. I keep messing up, I keep sinning and I expect God to continue showing me love. Why should I not show others exactly how I want God to treat me? I am not saying this is easy, but the first step in fixing something is identifying how it is supposed to be. The difficult task is acting this out. Easy part - done. Hard part – working on it. “Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:32 (MSG)

College Graduate Epidemic

I have noticed an epidemic of students coming out of Bible colleges and seminaries who think they have ministry all figured out. They know everything. There is nothing left to learn. Sadly, I also find that there are ministers who have been doing ministry for a while that think they know everything. There is nothing left to learn. I am sure there are things in my life that I feel like I know everything about as well…or did at one point or another. When I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, however, I thought to myself, “Any church that is willing to put ME in charge of their kids is not a church I am willing to work for. They'd be crazy.” I recognized that I was not ready. Some people come out of college emotionally ready but I did not. So, grad school it was. Later I realized it is not about how much I know but the willingness of my spirit. My willingness to be open to ideas I had not thought of and be willing to say I don’t know when the occasion warrants it. Sadly this epidemic has infected more than just recent graduates with a look towards Christian fields. It is many people who graduate and decide they know more than anyone else in their chosen field especially those who have been out of college for more than 3 years. Is this "better-than-you" & "make way for the revolution" attitude what is being taught or just coincidentally fostered? Eight years ago (that was hard to type), I went to a good college and learned plenty, yet I have found that the people who I have learned the most from in my field of study are those who have been doing it for a while. I don’t copy them but I evaluate their good and bad decisions and respond appropriately. I believe this is called humility. A willingness to evaluate and set aside preconceived notions for the better of the kingdom and not for the raising of my own self-worth. I don’t do this necessarily well, but I try. Word of advice to all ministers, no matter the age or experience level, listening is the first step in knowing what to do. . . and how to do it. Listening to God and to your fellow kingdom workers goes farther than any book you read in college (minus the Bible).

Sartre

Ok, so I have been reading some old philosophy and I have just finished much of the early work of Jean-Paul Sartre. By early work I mean before he became a political activist and protester. Anyway, I was reading about his existential theories on freedom and it occurred to me how wild it is for a person to believe in an individual’s freedom so much that they denounce the fact that the person in question may have chosen religion freely rather than by obligation. Basically Sartre has decided unilaterally that religion (particularly Christianity) is not a decision one makes freely. Also, wouldn’t the decision that God does not exist constitute denying of one’s freedom to believe?
And lastly, his views on nothingness seem to me to be his way of filling the place where religion generally fits into a person’s life. I know it seems odd to think of nothingness as a filler, but he makes reference to ideas like: “nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being --- like a worm.” To me, this nothingness has substance and it fills the void where religion generally resides.
To be considered a great philosopher and to have this as one of your main points with regard to freedom, I am sorely disappointed. One last thought, I could write contradictory statements and paradoxes and give them meaning but that doesn’t mean that in reality they actually hold up. Example: referring to the idea of God as “objective existence of a non-being.” I rest my case.
Conclusion: Monsieur Sartre, I am disappointed.

Cheeks

I was listening to the radio today and it jokingly mentioned something about getting hit in the head. I don’t know why, but it made me think about a chapter in a book I read about a year ago. Unfortunately I cannot remember what book it was. However, I do remember that it had an interesting take on the “turn the other cheek” concept by Jesus. Instead of the “allow them to hit you in the face again” imagery that we were all taught as a child, it hypothesized that it is more of a “stand your ground” concept that we have misinterpreted. The way this concept was explained was that when you get hit, it is for the hitter to show dominance over you. This would be physical but it would also be transferable to their ideas versus your ideas. In standing your ground, it shows that the hitter cannot “break” your resolve and willpower. This in turn demonstrates the power and calm quality of your position. This idea was reinforced by the example that Jesus stood his ground and always did what he knew was right in the face if whatever danger might have been there. Every time Jesus was confronted he stood there and said what he needed to say. He confronted his enemies. The book stated he never ran or appeared weak. I had a two part problem with this theory at the time. While I like the idea that we are to stand firm and not use violence but not cower in a corner either, I believe that those two specific issues must be addressed.
One was, I thought that Jesus being hung on a cross and beaten showed submissiveness that flew in the face of this theory. However, now I do not believe Jesus appeared weak or submissive when he was beaten and dying on the cross. If anything I believe it takes some sort of amazing strength to voluntarily go through that.
Two, Jesus did actually run away one time. When he was preaching in his own village, the locals were surrounding Jesus and trying to throw him down a cliff (bible uses “down” not “off”) and he was able to just walk right through them and leave with no harm to himself. One could interpret this as running away but I guess, now that I think about it, it is more of a sign by Jesus to say, “Okay, you guys are not listening. I am out of here.”
I believe I am going to start teaching this story this way, both the “turn the other cheek” quote and the story of Jesus walking right through the crowd. If Jesus only wanted us to represent him with a strong resolve not a shrinking away and take the beating ideal, does this change the position of Christian stubbornness? If anything we should be as stubborn as humanly possible without being overbearing or offensive. I know that is a thin line, but it is one of the many lines I believe Christ called us to walk. Anyway, thoughts?

laughing

So my last post was a little heavy and I want something a little light. So I decided to share a little bit of what funny things have happened lately in my life and see how it flows from there.
So every morning I try to eat breakfast. I actually go somewhere and grab breakfast. I always get a meat because I feel I have to make up for my friend Brian who is a vegetarian. Anyway, so I go to Chick-fil-a this morning for breakfast and I will admit the perky nature of the people on the other end of the drive thru thing has been known to aggravate me but I suck it up and order my food and pull around to the window. As a side note, my total at this restaurant that promotes themselves as a Christian organization was $6.66 but that is a blog for another day. I pull up and the lady is starting the order of the guy after me. Now I know they are required to be all nice and whatever in their greeting and order taking but this guy right off the bat asks her if they serve chicken. That’s right in the Chick-fil-a drive-thru, the man asked if they serve chicken. She was nice and “yes we do” and all that but who doesn’t know if Chick-fil-a serves chicken and even if he didn’t, could he not decide by the name of the restaurant? I laughed a lot at this guys question.
Now I was all about this guy’s stupidity until I got to thinking of the stupid things I have done. I am not just talking about the stuff you do as a kid. Tuesday night I went to our local library. I asked the older lady behind the reference computer where a certain book was. She looked it up and said I will show you. So I start walking and I look and she is nowhere in sight. Then she comes zooming by me in a wheelchair. Not a motorized one, mind you, but a normal wheelchair. And this lady is zooming. I almost have to get into a jog to keep up. When I was going her pace I felt like one of those old people in the mall you see who are power-walking. So I say the only thing I know to say……“WOW, you are fast in that thing.” Now I have known few people in wheelchairs and have spoken socially to almost none, but apparently that is the wrong thing to say. She turned glared at me angrily, said “There is your book”, and raced off back to her spot.
Who is the idiot now? All I know is I laughed at my own circumstance (when I was out of the library) and I laughed at the chicken guy too, so I guess I laugh at stupidity across the board regardless of who commits the act. What is the point in saying all this you ask? Don’t take yourself or other people all that seriously. You get to laugh a lot more. Trust me.

--Jesus and Christ

I believe in Christian Telemarketing. I believe in it in the sense that I unfortunately believe it exists. Conceptually this is what most Christians do when trying to convert non-Christians to Christianity. They give them just enough information to “reel them in” and then once they are “in” they pass them along to another person to mop up the mess. I imagine the pitch goes something like this: “Hey, do you want to burn in hell? No? Well good because Jesus died so you wouldn’t have to. But you have to be a Christian to not burn so, why don’t you become a Christian?” There are two different responses to this sales pitch. They are: “Of course I don’t want to burn. Sign me up” or “You are creepy leave me alone.” Both have detrimental effects. The former respondent is now a Christian with no clue as to what it means to actually be a Christian. They only know what it means to be a Christian after their death. They have no idea what it means to actually live as a Christian. The latter respondent is put off by judgmental language that is condemning from the start. As a minister to new converts, I would like to address the issues with the former respondent and leave the latter respondent for another venue. I would like to point out that it is the fault of Christians that we have this problem of clueless new converts. I believe it is because of the poor teachings when these telemarketing Christians were themselves young Christians. So, I would like to set the record straight. This is my answer to the problem and how we can fix it. Before we can get to that, however, I must give you some background information to make sure we are all up to speed.

As Christians we associate Jesus with being the Messiah, hence the compound name of Jesus Christ. Christ meaning Messiah. There is not a thing wrong with that since Jesus is the Messiah. However, the world has been forced to see Jesus differently. Without acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ you are forced to deal with Historical Jesus. This teaching has forced the world to deal with Jesus as a teacher and as a man. Now Christians acknowledge Jesus as being both fully human and fully divine. The fully divine aspect deals with his validity as the messiah. As Christians we are only willing to see the fully human aspect with regards to his ability to sin. Now, I know that most Christians draw back when confronted with the idea that Jesus could sin. But for a man to be tempted one must have the capacity to do the sin or the temptation is not a temptation. It is merely an option. It is the want to do the sin that causes it to be classified a temptation. As Christians this is as far as we are willing to go in viewing Jesus as a human. I believe we do not take it far enough. I don’t mean to reference whether Jesus struggled with certain sins or his personal life, but I would like to see Christians separate from Jesus his role as Christ.

This idea started with the question of whether Jesus would be the Messiah if he had only come to this world, lived a full non-sinning life and then died. No teaching and no explanations beforehand, just lived his life without sinning and then died. Since Jesus taught after his resurrection, that teaching is considered messianic and is separate from his teachings prior to death. The death of a perfect life then explanations afterward would suffice as the full duty of a Messiah and therefore my answer was yes, Jesus would still be the Messiah if there had been just teachings after the death. Upon making this statement I began postulating what the teachings prior to death were classified as if death and post-resurrection teachings were all it took to be our Messiah. This is where I decided that as Christians we need to be able to separate Jesus from his role as Christ.

Academics are forced to teach about Jesus or at least Christianity because of the influence on history. Other religions including Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism among others, acknowledge Jesus as a great teacher and a good person with wonderful ideals. They accept most of his teachings not dealing with the messiah ideals. Why is this? Because they are able to separate the teachings of a person as sound and good without a permeating urge to classify him wholly as the Messiah as well. We have already established that Jesus would be the Messiah without the teachings prior to his death so why do we classify his pre-death teachings as nothing but messianic precursors. I believe that his teachings pre-death are on the way we should live our lives and his teachings post-resurrection are messianic in nature. I know this is potentially difficult to swallow because we have been taught from an early age to associate Jesus with nothing but messianic ideas. But I feel that if we start viewing Jesus as a teacher and focus on his ministry, we will understand the problems new Christians are facing.

When a person becomes a Christian we tell them all about Jesus’ death and resurrection and what it means for their life. We make them aware of his unique place in history as the sinless man and then we give them a specific set of instructions that we have all heard more than once at some time in our lives. Such as: “We need to lives as Jesus did.” Or better yet, “We need to strive to be more like Jesus.” So based on the basics we tell new Christians about Jesus to draw them in, and the simple instructions we give them, or the telemarketing, they can rightly assume that we are asking them to be long-haired, homeless people who do nothing note-worthy for the first thirty years of their life and then do ministry for potentially three years, all the while doing nothing wrong and then dying for the sins of all mankind. Do you see the dilemma?

What Jesus did as the messiah is life-changing and important for our salvation. No one is arguing that. I am arguing, however, that the teachings of Jesus are what we need to focus on. We can learn very few things from Jesus the Messiah. We can potentially grasp God’s love, we can recognize and understand salvation, and we can receive hope for the afterlife. But all those things are ideas that are fundamentally able to be ascertained by anyone. It is Jesus’ teachings that show us a way of life and a guide to our journey here on earth. I believe instead of flippant telemarketer lessons like “live like Jesus lived” or “be more like Jesus” or even the ever popular “Christ-like” comparison, we should use “live as Jesus taught” jargon to emphasize the difference between Jesus’ teachings about Christians and Jesus’ life as our Messiah. So as Christians teach about Jesus, it would be best for the future of the church if we emphasize that the messianic nature of Jesus is life changing, but the teachings of Jesus are what shape your life to be Christian in nature.