My friends and I drove through Armarillo, Texas last week on our way to Tulsa. After a heavy breakfast at Cracker Barrel, a concerned woman rapped on our window in the parking lot, just as we were about to drive away. Our driver side, rear tire had lost most of its air during breakfast. My roommate drove us to a Shell gas station. After filling up the tire, he determined we had a leak in the valve stem. Another friend got on his GPS and found a Firestone nearby. We inched over to the shop only to find it unstaffed for the lunch hour. The remaining employee thought about it for a moment, then decided to fix the valve stem on his own time. He did the task in a short 20 minutes and the bill was only $12.50. He would’a been great in a nascar pit stop. Within 30 minutes of the original diagnosis, we were back on the racetrack.... I mean we were on the freeway, and on our way to Tulsa.
The woman who knocked on the door to warn us of our near-flat tire could have chosen to ignore the situation, hoping we’d discover the problem on our own, before it was too late. Likewise, in our day-to-day lives there are times when we can warn someone quickly that what they’re doing might end up hurting them or others in the long run. In return, shouldn’t we desire to be lovingly warned (without condemnation) of our own self-destructive behaviors before it was too late?
Unfortunately, there’s a variety of reasons we don’t warn each other or receive each others’ warnings very well. We’re afraid. We’re embarrassed. We’re defensive. We don’t know what to say. It’s amazing because we can say, “Yes, please tell me that my tire is flat on the highway, but don’t tell me that I’m not being emotionally attentive to you when we’re together. Don’t tell me I’m treating my employees or co-workers unequally. Don’t tell me I often say yes to your requests, but that I don’t follow through on them very often.”
Failure to warn someone about something small, like a broken valve stem on their tire can lead to a quick and disastrous outcome within minutes. Failure to warn someone of their dysfunctional habits can lead to a slow and disastrous outcome that might take place over years or even decades. Let’s remember that love never tries to force anyone to do anything, but that it warns others about the things that are hurting us, those around them, or even themselves.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Healthy Conflict is the Entry Point to New Life
This blog entry is a follow-up to the previous one called Healthy Relationships Kill Us in the End. I recommend you read that one first.
Conflict is often the entry point into healthy relationships. The main thing that prevents positive, healthy relationships is a failure to deal with the conflict. And, I know this might sound way out there, but the only way to get reconnected to the person we love or work with is to enter back into the relationship through the thing we fear most. We’ll have to re-enter the relationship through the very conflict we are avoiding.* In the end, however, if we deal with it, we will often feel like we’ve become more alive and more connected to the other person. In fact, I’ve noticed that some of my most intimate experiences with others has been through confronting one another and conversations about our conflicts.
Let’s remember that by lovingly confronting one another on our sin, we might initially feel like we’re dying, but in the end, we will help each other be raised to new life.
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” ~Jesus in Matthew 9:24
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*For more help with how to confront one another in a healthy way, please read a book called Face to Face by Cloud and Townsend.
Conflict is often the entry point into healthy relationships. The main thing that prevents positive, healthy relationships is a failure to deal with the conflict. And, I know this might sound way out there, but the only way to get reconnected to the person we love or work with is to enter back into the relationship through the thing we fear most. We’ll have to re-enter the relationship through the very conflict we are avoiding.* In the end, however, if we deal with it, we will often feel like we’ve become more alive and more connected to the other person. In fact, I’ve noticed that some of my most intimate experiences with others has been through confronting one another and conversations about our conflicts.
Let’s remember that by lovingly confronting one another on our sin, we might initially feel like we’re dying, but in the end, we will help each other be raised to new life.
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” ~Jesus in Matthew 9:24
______________________________________
*For more help with how to confront one another in a healthy way, please read a book called Face to Face by Cloud and Townsend.
Healthy Relationships Kill Us in the End
Living in grace and truth with one another requires transparency, vulnerability, and loving confrontation. Without them, real sin cannot be truly forgiven, real weaknesses cannot be truly strengthened or supported, and non-moral preferences cannot be recognized for what they are either.
Many of us don’t lovingly confront one another because we incorrectly believe that we fear hurting those around us. The truth is that most of the time, we fear the repercussions that we might face. We fear rejection. We fear ridicule. We fear the other person will ignore us or become defensive. We fear being wrong. These things feel like death to us.
Many of us don’t lovingly confront one another because we incorrectly believe that we fear hurting those around us. The truth is that most of the time, we fear the repercussions that we might face. We fear rejection. We fear ridicule. We fear the other person will ignore us or become defensive. We fear being wrong. These things feel like death to us.
As I have become more relationally healthy over the past couple years, I've tried to practice the act of communicating prior to deciding if I'm right or wrong. I simply put it out on the table. My feelings aren't right or wrong, so I often start there. Just get it out on the table and see what happens. Often it seems more important to be known than to be right.*
Let’s remember that in grace and truth, we do not overlook sin, weaknesses, or non-moral preferences. We deal with it. We deal with it in the most loving way. We die for one another.
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” ~Jesus in Matthew 9:23
Let’s remember that in grace and truth, we do not overlook sin, weaknesses, or non-moral preferences. We deal with it. We deal with it in the most loving way. We die for one another.
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” ~Jesus in Matthew 9:23
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*A good book to help husbands and wives deal with this issue is called "Love and Respect".
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Jesus was Probably a Resentful, Insane, and Blubbering Idiot
Jesus was probably a resentful, insane, and blubbering idiot. The title should scare you, but not for the reason you think. Ironically, it should also bathe you in deep feelings of affirmation and love. Deep love that maybe you’ve never explored before.
Picture the following. I’m sure you’ve seen it before. A homeless drug user, with mental health issues, is walking along the sidewalk talking to himself. No, he’s not talking to himself. He’s talking to someone you can’t see. He’s yelling at him. In fact, he’s fuming and spouting off a bizarre array of cuss words, unintelligible sentences, and repetitive phrases. His skin is red, his hair is uncombed, and his winter jacket contradicts the summer weather.
You might try to talk to him if you were an unusually caring person. It’s of no use. You speak to him, he acknowledges you for a moment, but soon he boomerangs back into his hurricane of resentments and recycled arguments. He’s still arguing with his father who abandoned him 35 years ago.
This picture probably gives us a good glimpse of the rotten, resentful heart and mind of Jesus. It was full of garbage--years of pent up anger and murderous thoughts towards a random variety of family, friends, the government, the system, and many people he didn’t even know. If you’d have met him, you wouldn’t have even sensed he had a soul, but that it had been destroyed, disintegrated, had rotten away, or at least that it was lost somewhere deep down inside of him in a way that no one could ever rejuvinate.
This is my view of what Jesus might have been like during his three days in hell. These are the three days between his death and resurrection when Jesus (God the Son) died on the cross, bore our real sin, and was cast out of his father’s presence (God the Father). God had damned him. Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, why have you deserted me?” (Matthew 27:46)
And that was it. Complete separation from his own father. His own father abandoned him and left him to his own selfish insanity. No, Jesus had done this himself. Actually, I'm not sure how it works, but as Jesus died, he turned his back on God and walked away. After being separated from His dear, loving father he might have begun to grieve. Shortly thereafter, he might have flip-flopped and hurled insults at God and began an incessant series of arguments with all of the people in his life who had wronged him or looked at him strangely.
Then came deep loneliness, fear, anxiety, and all in one moment he’s back into a fury of disillusions and antagonisms towards his father (God the Father) once again. He might have said something like this, “How did I ever let You convince Me to do this? How dare you Father have manipulated Me into carrying their burdens, their sin, their very lives on my back! They’re horrible, disgusting pieces of trash. They’re unworthy of any help whatsoever and deserve this place more than me. How did I ever let You convince Me to do this for them! You dare call yourself God! You’re like the devil himself. You’re manipulative. You’re detestable. You are a coward. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. How could have I been so stupid!? How could you be so evil? How could you betray me like this Father!? Raise me back to life in three days!? Are you kidding me? Oh God, how could I have been so stupid!? You tricked me! You tricked me! You tricked me! You are no longer my father. Never ever ever ever ever again will I ever call You my father. I will never, ever let myself ever trust you again. This relationship is over! I will never ever ever ever talk to you again. Ever.”
In order to get the full grasp of the judgement Jesus endured for us, I’m speculating that Jesus Himself might have literally lost sight of why He had even died for us or even that it was going to work at all. Of course, I’m only speculating and I don’t have a clue as to the real intensity, but I think He may have broken down into a full-blown case of rage towards His Father. He might have even thought God tricked Him into being cast into hell with no hope of ever being restored. He probably had lost all hope. This is the full weight of judgement.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, "No matter how bad a place hell might be, I'd never turn into anything so crazy as this portrait you are making Jesus out to be during His time away from God the Father." The reality is that we've already been there to a certain extent in our limited lifetime today. Think about someone you've had a mental argument with and it has lasted for days. You've been surprised at yourself for having let it go on so long, but you can't seem to get out of it. It could be as simple as someone cutting you off on the freeway or as hurtful as someone cheating on you. Either way, you retaliate, either in real life or in your own mind. You want to isolate rather than resolve the issue or you get offensive and attack the other person. Hell is an eternal extension of this sort of hell we experience here on earth, minus the presence of God, minus the presence of any loving human beings, plus the addition of it going on for thousands, millions, and billions of years into forever. In fact, it could be you're still arguing with the same driver that cut you off and that was a couple million years ago. When Jesus was rejected by God the Father, he might have went off on millions and billions of all of our arguments, resentments, and furies at at one time. Of course, I can only speculate and I'm treading down uncharted waters, but if I'm theologically incorrect, then I bank on the very hope and rescue that I'm proposing.
Here's the silver lining. On the third day, when He might have been least expecting it, when He was at his most destitute and cynical moment, when He had absolutely no hope, the Father did raise Him from the dead! It was glorious! Having been raised from the pit of hell, everything returned. All the reasons He had trusted the Father. All the reasons He wanted to do it for us. All the reasons He and the Father went in on the deal in the first place.
The silver lining is that Jesus rescued us from this pit of hell. This could be us. This should be us. This is naturally what we gravitate towards--resentment, bitterness, isolation, and separation from God. This is what it is like for those who say “I have no need to be rescued.” In the end, He won’t deny our choice and this will be His conscious choice to both condemn and affirm our personhood all at the same time. He’ll simply let us go our own way. We either let Him rescue us, or we resist any notion of rescue forever.
For those who say, “Yes God, please rescue me!” these people will feel bathed in the deep love and affirmation He has for us. He went into this whole thing knowing full well that He’d turn out to be a shriveled up little piece of junk, wound up in a fetal position, uttering hopeless insults towards the Father or anyone who could hear Him. He knew He’d loose all sense of reality, and this is what He wanted to do for us. This is the silver lining. He’s a Romantic at heart. He’s done it willingly.
Now, there’s a tendency for those who follow Him to have a belief like this, “Oh, yes, I understand He died for my sins and that’s why I need to try my best to keep my act together and be a really good kind of Christian now that I know what He’s really done for me. I better straighten things out. I’m gonna start reading my Bible, I’m gonna start praying and doing devotions every day. I’m gonna prove I really love Him. I’m gonna do this thing now!” This is a bunch of hogwash. I’d use worse terms to describe how awful it is to believe in such a way. It’s a horrible way for a follower of Jesus to live--to deny His rescue which had no regrets.
The opposite of this gotta-make-up-for-what-He’s-done mentality is what’s true. He’s the Great Rescuer. He’s done it willingly. He’s done it without any reservation. When we see the way in which He’s rescued us without any reservations for having done so, we can finally begin to rest.
Let’s remember that this whole non-fiction story of love and romance is about His character, about His love, and about the great lengths that He went to in order to enjoy us forever, so that we could enjoy Him forever. He probably turned into a resentful, insane, and blubbering idiot so that we didn't have to become resentful, insane, and blubbering idiots for eternity. For such a love as this, we should never hesitate.
(I want to thank Tim Keller for some of the theological underpinnings to this blog entry. His article called "The Importance of Hell" can be found at http://www.redeemer.com/news_and_events/articles/the_importance_of_hell.html)
Picture the following. I’m sure you’ve seen it before. A homeless drug user, with mental health issues, is walking along the sidewalk talking to himself. No, he’s not talking to himself. He’s talking to someone you can’t see. He’s yelling at him. In fact, he’s fuming and spouting off a bizarre array of cuss words, unintelligible sentences, and repetitive phrases. His skin is red, his hair is uncombed, and his winter jacket contradicts the summer weather.
You might try to talk to him if you were an unusually caring person. It’s of no use. You speak to him, he acknowledges you for a moment, but soon he boomerangs back into his hurricane of resentments and recycled arguments. He’s still arguing with his father who abandoned him 35 years ago.
This picture probably gives us a good glimpse of the rotten, resentful heart and mind of Jesus. It was full of garbage--years of pent up anger and murderous thoughts towards a random variety of family, friends, the government, the system, and many people he didn’t even know. If you’d have met him, you wouldn’t have even sensed he had a soul, but that it had been destroyed, disintegrated, had rotten away, or at least that it was lost somewhere deep down inside of him in a way that no one could ever rejuvinate.
This is my view of what Jesus might have been like during his three days in hell. These are the three days between his death and resurrection when Jesus (God the Son) died on the cross, bore our real sin, and was cast out of his father’s presence (God the Father). God had damned him. Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, why have you deserted me?” (Matthew 27:46)
And that was it. Complete separation from his own father. His own father abandoned him and left him to his own selfish insanity. No, Jesus had done this himself. Actually, I'm not sure how it works, but as Jesus died, he turned his back on God and walked away. After being separated from His dear, loving father he might have begun to grieve. Shortly thereafter, he might have flip-flopped and hurled insults at God and began an incessant series of arguments with all of the people in his life who had wronged him or looked at him strangely.
Then came deep loneliness, fear, anxiety, and all in one moment he’s back into a fury of disillusions and antagonisms towards his father (God the Father) once again. He might have said something like this, “How did I ever let You convince Me to do this? How dare you Father have manipulated Me into carrying their burdens, their sin, their very lives on my back! They’re horrible, disgusting pieces of trash. They’re unworthy of any help whatsoever and deserve this place more than me. How did I ever let You convince Me to do this for them! You dare call yourself God! You’re like the devil himself. You’re manipulative. You’re detestable. You are a coward. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. How could have I been so stupid!? How could you be so evil? How could you betray me like this Father!? Raise me back to life in three days!? Are you kidding me? Oh God, how could I have been so stupid!? You tricked me! You tricked me! You tricked me! You are no longer my father. Never ever ever ever ever again will I ever call You my father. I will never, ever let myself ever trust you again. This relationship is over! I will never ever ever ever talk to you again. Ever.”
In order to get the full grasp of the judgement Jesus endured for us, I’m speculating that Jesus Himself might have literally lost sight of why He had even died for us or even that it was going to work at all. Of course, I’m only speculating and I don’t have a clue as to the real intensity, but I think He may have broken down into a full-blown case of rage towards His Father. He might have even thought God tricked Him into being cast into hell with no hope of ever being restored. He probably had lost all hope. This is the full weight of judgement.
Now you might be thinking to yourself, "No matter how bad a place hell might be, I'd never turn into anything so crazy as this portrait you are making Jesus out to be during His time away from God the Father." The reality is that we've already been there to a certain extent in our limited lifetime today. Think about someone you've had a mental argument with and it has lasted for days. You've been surprised at yourself for having let it go on so long, but you can't seem to get out of it. It could be as simple as someone cutting you off on the freeway or as hurtful as someone cheating on you. Either way, you retaliate, either in real life or in your own mind. You want to isolate rather than resolve the issue or you get offensive and attack the other person. Hell is an eternal extension of this sort of hell we experience here on earth, minus the presence of God, minus the presence of any loving human beings, plus the addition of it going on for thousands, millions, and billions of years into forever. In fact, it could be you're still arguing with the same driver that cut you off and that was a couple million years ago. When Jesus was rejected by God the Father, he might have went off on millions and billions of all of our arguments, resentments, and furies at at one time. Of course, I can only speculate and I'm treading down uncharted waters, but if I'm theologically incorrect, then I bank on the very hope and rescue that I'm proposing.
Here's the silver lining. On the third day, when He might have been least expecting it, when He was at his most destitute and cynical moment, when He had absolutely no hope, the Father did raise Him from the dead! It was glorious! Having been raised from the pit of hell, everything returned. All the reasons He had trusted the Father. All the reasons He wanted to do it for us. All the reasons He and the Father went in on the deal in the first place.
The silver lining is that Jesus rescued us from this pit of hell. This could be us. This should be us. This is naturally what we gravitate towards--resentment, bitterness, isolation, and separation from God. This is what it is like for those who say “I have no need to be rescued.” In the end, He won’t deny our choice and this will be His conscious choice to both condemn and affirm our personhood all at the same time. He’ll simply let us go our own way. We either let Him rescue us, or we resist any notion of rescue forever.
For those who say, “Yes God, please rescue me!” these people will feel bathed in the deep love and affirmation He has for us. He went into this whole thing knowing full well that He’d turn out to be a shriveled up little piece of junk, wound up in a fetal position, uttering hopeless insults towards the Father or anyone who could hear Him. He knew He’d loose all sense of reality, and this is what He wanted to do for us. This is the silver lining. He’s a Romantic at heart. He’s done it willingly.
Now, there’s a tendency for those who follow Him to have a belief like this, “Oh, yes, I understand He died for my sins and that’s why I need to try my best to keep my act together and be a really good kind of Christian now that I know what He’s really done for me. I better straighten things out. I’m gonna start reading my Bible, I’m gonna start praying and doing devotions every day. I’m gonna prove I really love Him. I’m gonna do this thing now!” This is a bunch of hogwash. I’d use worse terms to describe how awful it is to believe in such a way. It’s a horrible way for a follower of Jesus to live--to deny His rescue which had no regrets.
The opposite of this gotta-make-up-for-what-He’s-done mentality is what’s true. He’s the Great Rescuer. He’s done it willingly. He’s done it without any reservation. When we see the way in which He’s rescued us without any reservations for having done so, we can finally begin to rest.
Let’s remember that this whole non-fiction story of love and romance is about His character, about His love, and about the great lengths that He went to in order to enjoy us forever, so that we could enjoy Him forever. He probably turned into a resentful, insane, and blubbering idiot so that we didn't have to become resentful, insane, and blubbering idiots for eternity. For such a love as this, we should never hesitate.
(I want to thank Tim Keller for some of the theological underpinnings to this blog entry. His article called "The Importance of Hell" can be found at http://www.redeemer.com/news_and_events/articles/the_importance_of_hell.html)
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