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Years ago I briefly served as a pastor in a small town setting. Wanting to get to know some of the other pastors I called one them and we agreed we'd meet in his study at his church. All I knew about him was he was a Methodist pastor and that he had what I believe was a ""glass eye."I walked in to his office and, being a lover of books, I perused his shelves while striking up conversation. At one point, early in the visit, I saw two copies of the same book, and, without thinking, blurted, "Oh, one for each eye." He looked at me with his one good eye and smiled uncomfortably. I inwardly groaned upon realizing my faux pas and silently begged God to vaporize me in a flash of spontaneous combustion.
We all say and do things we regret, don't we.
I watched a wedding where the groom was obviously very nervous and worried about memorizing his vows and when he was to say what. The minister introduces the service and in formal fashion declares to all in attendance, " These two people come now to be joined in holy matrimony. If any one has a just cause or reason why they may not be lawfully joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace." The nervous groom recites, "I do." Oops.
We all say and do things we wish we could retract.
Some of those are light-hearted and the source of laughter at reunion reminiscings. But some we regard as unspeakable and we are determined to take them to our grave. We fear judgment if we were to give voice to that which is so shameful. "What would someone think of me if the secret ever got out?" "I would die if someone knew!" The problem is, it might kill me if I don't tell someone.
That stuff we stuff, whether sin or dysfunction, is toxic. There are two sins that buy our silence--grave indiscretions done by us and horrible things done to us. Either can be lethal if swallowed. It's poison.
This past week I had a number of suspicious-looking spots on my skin biopsied. Having a history of basal cell carcinoma--skin cancer-- I know how cancer can silently extend its tentacles under the surface. If cancer, regardless of its form, is present it must be excised. Denial only postpones the inevitable. There are some "cancers" you can't biopsy--cancer of the soul, cancer of the spirit. You can't biopsy it and send it to a lab. These cancers are no less lethal. These cancers are removed, not by scalpel or chemo, but by speaking them. My silence merely gives them more poswer. And the more power they exert the more fearful I become and entrench myself more deeply in my shameful silence. It's a cruel cycle---but a curse that can be broken.
I must and can give voice to it. I need to give voice to my sins of commission--unloving acts, words and thoughts I've exercised against another. I need to confess my sins of omission--my neglect that evokes regret, those loving actions I have withheld. To do either is certainly not without risk. We need to have a safe person to whom we confess. This may take months if not years to cultivate, but the freedom and buoyancy of spirit that comes from a heavy heart finding acceptance and forgiveness is immeasurable.
There is this pearl of wisdom tucked in the Scriptures: "Confess your sins to each other. . . so that you may be healed." (James 5:16) When rightly done, there is healing in giving voice to our silenced sins--whether sins done by us or to us. There is healing when the person to whom I confess responds not with the rejection I fear, but the acceptance and understanding I long for.
How long has the shame bought your own silence? How long have you lived with that cancer that erodes your hope and with its tentacles chokes the life out of your joy?
There can be healing. We all need someone who is trustworthy and compassionate to whom we can confess the cancer. The light of confession can cast out the darkness of the cancer.
Peace
Last Christmas our church hosted an elaborate banquet for the homeless. Catered, decked out and decorated. A friend created a video of the church's outreach to the homeless and showed clips of our serving weekly breakfasts and then the banquet. There is a scene where the homeless are standing outside the church office, from which we serve them breakfast each Sunday. It's cold, and early in the morning. Men and women huddled in their sweatshirts, winter coats, whatever they can wrap around themselves. The Apollo Theater is next door, and their large marquee hangs above the sidewalk. This video shot shows a bunch of homeless people standing under the theater marquee which was promoting the currently showing movie--It's A Wonderful Life. Go figure.
What a sad irony. Nothing wonderful about life for them. For many of us middle and middle/upper class life, for the most part, is wonderful. Yes, we have our mortgage payments, and worries and health concerns, but, typically, life is good--really good.
I met a man this morning, maybe in his fifties. Told me this is his second day being homeless. He's staying at a rescue mission. Ii asked him how he ended up here. He was a cabbie, and for reasons undisclosed he lost his driver's license, which, in turn, caused him to lose his job, which resulted in him losing his apartment and "everything I had." And there he sat, eating some eggs and hash browns we'd fixed him.
How will he ever rebound? Will someone ever take a chance with the guy? Will he have the determination to look at his current predicament as a brutal means, rather than a terrible end? Will this cause him to do some introspection and make some possibly need adjustments in his life, or will this massive disappointment hurl him into self-sabotaging ways of numbing himself against the pain?
It remains to be seen. Hopefully through our meager efforts we can assure him once a week that he hasn't been discarded or forgotten. If you see a homeless person this week, please don't dismiss him. Don't flip her off without knowing her story.
I hope that someday my new friend can again echo Jimmy Stewart's sentiments.
It would be foolish--and I aint no foo'--to think a person can either prove or disprove anything of essential importance in several paragraphs. My aim here is not to present an iron-clad case for what I believe about Jesus Christ. I'm briefly offering this for your consideration.
Jesus made many statements about himself that are ultimate deal-makers or breakers. For example, he made these exclusive claims:
". . . I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
"I am the light of the world. . ." (John 8:12)
"I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." (John 6:35)
"I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." (John 11:25-6)
Even in my most glorious grandiose moments--even when my narcissism evokes a wave of grief when I have to pull myself away from the mirror--I have never made those kind of statements about myself. "Oh, by the way, did I mention that I am. . . "
What do I do with what appear to be absolute truth claims Jesus makes in regard to himself? How am I to regard him? C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia and many others) doesn't mince words regarding this issue. ( Overlook his tone; maybe he missed his morning tea. Think about what he says.)
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
I, too, believe we are not left with numerous options or responses to the claims Jesus made. Someone making those claims is either:
--delusional and needs to be admitted to the psychiatric ward and injected with gallons of Thorazine.
--a charlatan, someone who possesses knowledge or expertise that he does not have, a flamboyant deceiver, one who attracts customers with tricks, a quack.
--who he claims to be.
I have come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was and is who he claimed to be. Do I wrestle with doubt? Do I struggle with my "why" questions? You bet. But I simply cannot discard his claims and the options of response at my disposal.
I submit this for your own consideration.
Grace and Peace
(p.s. Thanks for all the comments to my previous blog. I appreciated the various perspectives and responses. Keep on keepin' on.)
Being the keenly insightful man that I am--and possessing two eyes--I have noted the scarcity of comments in response to most of my blogs. I like to think--am I delusional?-- that what I write is often evocative, if not provocative. I hope I evoke, at times, within you encouragement or a new insight. Maybe gratitude or reflection, depending on the nature of the post. I hope I evoke laughter or buoyancy of spirit on occasion. There are other times when I likely provoke, rather than evoke. My intent is not to agitate or anger any one, but I would imagine that is the outcome at times.
I really appreciate and desire your feedback as you follow my posts. I'm not merely looking for "attaboys" and requesting your validation. I would like to know your genuine reaction or response to a post, whether positive or negative, whether you agree or disagree. How were you impacted? Obviously, space is very limited but I would enjoy more a sense of give-and-take.
Bottom-line: I am perplexed by the lack of comments and if you could enlighten me as to why you don't that would be helpful to know. Secondly, whether I agree with you or not, I value your opinion.
I look at it like this. I'm the aimlessly wandering village idiot and we all know it takes a village.
Comprende? Commente?
A daughter of ours was talking to a grandson of ours who just returned from visiting his biological father. The aforementioned grandson told her that one of his dad's friends, who is around a lot, "is weird." Concerned about potential risk to her son, she asked him, "She's weird? What do you mean, 'she's weird?'" He became very serious and said, ""She has to put her glasses on every time she reads something." Wow! That's way too weird; is she a circus freak?
If that is weird to my grandson, I am wondering just how bizarre his picture of me must be? The next time I see him and run to him will he, in turn, run to his mom, yelling, "Stranger danger!!!"? Thank God he doesn't (I pray he doesn't) have a 24/7 web cam videoing my every move. What would he think if he were to see me, my face an inch from the bathroom mirror because my vision won't focus--with or without glasses--and scissors in hand, I'm looking up my nose in an effort to trim my nasal hairs? "And why is Papa growing them out his ears, too?" he must surely ask himself. The next logical question would be, "And why isn't he growing any on his head?" Surely, the kid is totally confused and probably expects that any day now--it's only a matter of time--I will sprout a third foot protruding from my rear-end.
I'm hopelessly and irrevocably weird. I should quietly leave the respectability of my career and run off with the circus. "Ladies and gentlemen!! Step right up and see Nature's Nasty Joke--a man with nose hair grown and curled into a handlebar mustache. See him do what only he can do--the butt walk."
Yep. My grandson's right. I'm weird and beyond repair. I'm giving two weeks notice and sending photos to Barnum and Bailey. If I could just find my glasses. . .
(If you haven't read my 6-13 -2010 blog, The Freedom of Forgiveness, please read it and then proceed with this.)
Having read that blog, a friend asked me, "In light of what he did to your daughter, why didn't you follow through with your wishes--and kill him?" It wasn't because I didn't want to. It wasn't because of a lack of love for my daughter. It wasn't because he was remorseful and begged our forgiveness (actually,he never even acknowledged that it happened; he denied everything.)
So, why didn't I, at the very least, take batting practice with his head, if not kill him?
There are layers of answers to that question. I believe it was Carl Sandburg who likened life to an onion in that "you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep." There has certainly been weeping in the process of peeling.
I didn't brutalize or kill him because I was chicken. Big thoughts, little action. Loud bark, no bite. I was afraid that regardless of how elaborately I schemed the perfect revenge, I would, nonetheless, be apprehended. I would end up spending years--decades?-- in prison while he would never see the inside of a cell. And I'm also a chicken when it comes to hangin' out with the inmates; boys will be boys and boys will do boys. So there--I was afraid of getting caught. And, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I would have had the courage to whack him off even if I were handed the opportunity.
I didn't kill him, even if I could have gotten away with it, because my "high"view of him would not allow me to do so. Don't get me wrong: there were many days when I held a very "low" view of him and on those days if I had let myself see him only as a scumbag, I could have squashed him like a fly. But, as sick and cruel as he was, and likely is, he still bears the imago dei--the image of God. He is still person, not puss. He is still a father himself. He is still a human being who did inhumane things to my daughter. Yes, that imago dei is tarnished, warped and skewed, but he is still an image-bearer. Who am I to extinguish the life of another human being? There is something of incalculable value, something of priceless intrinsic worth in another human being, whether that person is diabolical or divine. Seeing him in that manner did not allow me to do harm.
I didn't harm or kill him because as a Christ follower I believe that to have done so would be a contradiction of essence, a violation of the essence of what it means to follow Christ. It is beyond me, i.e. I have not become this yet, but we are called to be people who "love your enemy," people who "bless those who persecute you," people who "do not take revenge. . . but leave room for God's wrath," people who are not "overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Matt. 5:44; Rom. 12:14-21.) That is not yet who I am; it is who I aspire to be. That disposition is, in fact, the opposite of my natural inclinations. That disparity between who I am and who, as a Christ follower, I desire to be is one of the things that has made these years so difficult. My natural inclination says, "Destroy the !!#*?^!!!!" Jesus Christ, on the other hand, beckons if not directs me to somehow, in spite of my rage and tears, to love and forgive the !!#?^!!!! (Notice how I still place myself above this man and speak of him in disparaging terms?) Like I said, I'm not there yet. But it is a loving and forgiving person that I aspire to be.
I didn't harm or kill him because I am not totally convinced that he is fundamentally all that different from me. No, I didn't do what he did. On a behavioral level, he and I are not the same. I am superior, thank you. But on a level of the soul and psyche I have had thoughts, I have entertained desires that are as dark as the coffin in which they and my body will be contained, never to see the light of day. There have been times when I have been in the throes of either fiery rage or excruciating hurt and my mind has entertained thoughts that have spun my head in disbelief. "Where did that come from?!?" Thoughts or desires that feel as though they were not only hell-bent but hell-sent. You will be relieved, as am I, that those moments are aberrations, not the norm. However, the fact they even exist and careen around the some days hallowed-- other days hellish-- halls of my psyche is terribly sobering and disconcerting. The reality of those thoughts and desires that still clamor for attention begets a humility and serves to prevent me from seizing my deceptive and grandiose moral superiority and destroying all others whom I would regard as less and lower than me, which would comprise the entire rest of the human population.
And so I let him live while I learn to forgive.
Sometimes life is too serious. On the lighter side here is some stuff from Demetri
Martin. I hope you enjoy.
"Sort of" is such a harmless thing to say. Sort of. It’s just a filler. "Sort of" - it doesn’t really mean anything. But after certain things, "sort" of means everything. Like after "I love you" or "You’re going to live" or "‘It’s a boy."
When you have a fat friend there are no see-saws. Only catapults.
Swimming is a confusing sport, because sometimes you do it for fun, and other times you do it to not die. And when I’m swimming, sometimes I’m not sure which one it is. I gotta go by the outfit. Pants - uh oh. Bathing suit - okay. Naked - we’ll see.
The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.
About a month ago I got a cactus. A week later, it died. I was really depressed because I was like "Damn! I am less nurturing than a desert."
I like video games, but they’re really violent. I’d like to play a video game where you help the people who were shot in all the other games. It’d be called "Really Busy Hospital."
I noticed that there are no B batteries. I think that’s to avoid confusion, cause if there were, you wouldn't know if someone was stuttering. ‘Yes, hello I’d like some b-batteries.’ ‘What kind?’ ‘B-batteries.’ ‘What kind?!?’ ‘B-batteries!!!’ And D-batteries that’s hard for foreigners. ‘Yes, I would like de batteries.’
A drunk driver is very dangerous. So is a drunk backseat driver if he’s persuasive. "Dude, make a left. Those are trees…trust me."
I used to play sports. Then I realized you can buy trophies. Now I’m good at everything.
I wrapped my Christmas presents early this year, but I used the wrong paper. See, the paper I used said "Happy Birthday’" on it. I didn’t want to waste it so I just wrote "Jesus" on it.
My favorite fruit is grapes. Because with grapes, you always get another chance. ‘Cause, you know, if you have a crappy apple or a peach, you’re stuck with that crappy piece of fruit. But if you have a crappy grape, no problem - just move on to the next. ‘Grapes: The Fruit of Hope.’
I went into a clothes store and a lady came up to me and said “if you need anything, I’m Jill”. I’ve never met anyone with a conditional identity before.
I love women, but I feel like you can’t trust some of them. Some of them are liars, you know? Like I was in the park and I met this girl, she was cute and she had a dog. And I went up to her, we started talking. She told me her dog’s name. Then Í said, “Does he bite?”. She said “No.” And I said, “Oh yeah? Then how does he eat? … Liar.”
I wonder what the word for "dots" looks like in braille.
I don’t like when I go in a store and they call me “Boss.” “Hey boss, can I help you, boss?” When they call me boss, I go, “I got some bad news… I’m gonna have to let you go, but first bring me the earnings from the register for today. I’ll give you severance, and give me the rest.”
If you can't tell the difference between a spoon and a ladle, then you're fat.
Whenever I'm on my computer, I don't type "lol". I type "lqtm": "laugh quietly to myself". It's more honest.
Employee of the month is a good example of how somebody can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.
I got some new pajamas with pockets in 'em. Which is great, because before that, I used to have to hold stuff when I slept. But now I'm like, 'Where's my planner? There it is. "Keep sleeping." All right, perfect.
I was stuck in traffic and I looked in the mirror and in the car behind me there was a couple having a horrible argument and right below their image it said "Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear." I just thought, man, I hope so because she was pretty mad.
I think it's interesting that 'cologne' rhymes with 'alone.'
If I have to move up in a building, I choose the elevator over the escalator. Because one time I was riding the escalator and I tripped. I fell down the stairs for an hour and a half.
I hate seeing people that look like you. Especially if God's living by the motto "If at first you don't succeed. . . "
I bought a dictionary. First thing I did was, I looked up the word "dictionary", and it said "you're an *#!!??!!".
When someone asks you the question "Are you ticklish" it doesn't matter if you say yes or no, cause they're going to touch you. If someone asks if you're ticklish and you don't want to be touched you should something like"'I have diarrhea, now don't touch me cause you'll make it come out...and yes I'm very ticklish".
The thing about glitter is if you get it on you, be prepared to have it on you forever. Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies.
When they were naming vitamins they must have thought there were going to be way more vitamins than there ended up being. "OK let's name these: Vitamin A, Vitamin B...ok, man, slow down; we've got a lot to cover here. B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, B12." Then they got to E and they were like "We're pretty much done. We've got all those damn B's. This is embarrassing. Let's just skip to K and get the hell out of here."
Whenever I see an autobiography for sale in the book store i just flip to the "about the author" section. I'm like, "Done; next!"
I saw a door that said Exit Only. So I entered through it and went up to the guy working there and said "I have good news. You have severely underestimated that door over there. By like a hundred percent."
