Author Archive
Matthew 1:2
“To Abraham was born Isaac.”
Those five words are packed with dramatic history. The first seed in the family tree of salvation was barren. I think I would have written it, “To Abraham…. was……. born…………….Isaac. Abram had reached the end of a century with no son by his wife. He is known as the Father of faith, the Father of the nation of Israel. His very name meant father, from the Hebrew Ab, and if this were not enough, God renamed him Abraham, father of a multitude! No wonder he and Sarah laughed, though it was a bitter chuckle I’m sure.
God does not set his watch by the earth’s revolutions. He is unhurried, sometimes maddeningly slow. “Patience” is one of the major Old Testament virtues, and it is not primarily an exhortation to longsuffering with our fellow men, but with our God! That is why it is often used as a synonym for faith. We usually think of faith as the courage 
to confront great odds, when in fact, it refers more often to doing nothing at all, to simply waiting on God to act. For most of us the second takes far more faith than the first, and far longer faith. It is not God who is impatient with our progress, but we who are impatient with His. We cry, “How long, O Lord?!” and he says, “Trust Me. Wait.” Especially in our hurried day, slow is a 4-letter word. I wonder if we have lost our peace because it couldn’t keep up with our quick pace.
This is a wonderful word of grace to those of us who fear that God is disappointed, tapping his foot in impatience till we get it right. It is the direction we are going rather than the length of our stride which keeps us in step with God. He is not waiting for us to catch up, running after him with our little legs. He is here for the relationship, not for the performance. He wants the journey to be full rather than the destination to be reached quickly. Slow is a word rich with peace, wisdom, and power.
I can’t do another thing!
The Lenten season is past, but not my Lenten blessing. I committed to fasting from haste and hurry, and this became a remarkable source of peace for me, as I eased back on my sense of should. I started this process over the last decade as I gradually realized that most of the duties to which I felt driven were not from God, and that I could choose grace over obligation. As I ignored these duties, I felt the sting of shame and clung to grace rather than works as a remedy.
But my Lenten exercise did something very unexpected for me. Since I committed to the spiritual exercise of slowing down (and therefore accomplishing less), I was struck by the conclusion that God wanted me to rest. It was not only that I could choose to ignore the pressure of obligation, that God would be patient with me in doing less, but that God wanted me to do less, he willed for me to offload these unnecessary burdens. Grace demanded that I stop forcing my soul and start listening to it and choosing for its needs. God was not impatiently waiting for me to “hurry up and get with it,” but he was calling me to be as patient with myself as he was with me. For some time my mind has been convinced theologically that God is more patient with my rate of growth than I am, but after focusing 40 days on rest as a direction from God rather than a concession to my weakness, my emotions were also convinced. God has designed growth as a life principle to go at a slow pace, and if I try to push harder and faster, I will make things worse instead of better, like too much water and fertilizer on my squash. I have always been an overzealous fellow.
No doubt many folks go too easy, and would help themselves by picking up the pace, not on the trail of duty, but of grace, stirred by the anticipation and joy and wonder of being transformed, of discovering how rich and full life can be. Grace removes the drive of obligation not to make us spiritually comotose, but to set us free to find and embrace the richness of grace, its inspiration and glory and power and freedom and joy. I still have a long way to go, but I am laying one more foundation stone of grace in making this my Year of Rest.
The law is good, as Paul says, and it has several beneficial uses. One use is to teach us what God is like, and provide insight on how we might be like him. Of course, all of Scripture (not just the commands) is designed to help us in this way whether history, teaching, prophecy, or the like. For those who want to be intimate with God and be shaped into his beautiful likeness, it doesn’t really matter whether a biblical teaching is grammatically in the command form. The only question is whether it will help me grow personally and relationally.
The word “should” has close links with law, and it carries several connotations. First, it suggests an evaluative role. It is telling us what would be a good or better course of action. This may have no moral connotations, such as: “You should try Ben and Jerry’s New York Fudge Chunk.” Second, and closely connected to the first, is an implication of pressure to act in a certain way. We could place it on a continuum to demonstrate this: Can—–Should—-Must. Again, this need not be concerned with morality: “You must try this app!” The third connotation of should, like the word law, is one of potential personal judgment. Even if this regards simply a choice of wrenches, the
person who fails to do what he should is faulted. Something is wrong with him. He is defective or weak or stupid or belligerant. Finally, because it is poised to judge, should appeals to a particular motivation. It is not a positive motivation (as the first two connotations might be); it does not attract by the beauty or benefit or health of the choice. It rather motivates by the fear and shame of being bad, unacceptable, dis-graced.
I do not want to live my life being motivated by fear and shame. I want to be motivated by God’s love for me and my echo of love for him and others, in other words, grace. Sometimes the should of law is necessary to shape external behavior to curb the harm a person may do to herself or others, but as long as the individual is acting from fear or shame, it is only her behavior which is affected. Her heart is not growing in grace. It may even be shrinking. I think the primary judgment role of law and should is to help us recognize our real inadequacies and faults, not in order to shape our behavior but to awaken us to the gospel. Some folks think grace has no power to motivate, but I have found it incredibly powerful… that must wait for another post.
Given a couple of negative responses to my recent posts, I apparently need to explain what I mean by grace. I think there are some common interpretations of grace that can really take us down the wrong path. One of the most common misunderstandings of grace is to equate it with freedom of action while equating law with restriction of action. freedom and restriction of action are about method and context, while grace and law are about motivation and direction. Grace does not play the high notes or the low notes on this freedom/restriction continuum, but plays the whole keyboard. That is to say, it confines or releases as directed by love.
EVERY NOTE IS A GRACE NOTE
Law motivates by fear, shame, and guilt. These are very legitimate motivations, because they point out how screwed up we really are, but if we try to remedy our fear and guilt by making better choices, we are doomed by our imperfections. The fear and shame are not intended to drive us to work harder at being good, but to awaken us to our need of the grace of God (forgiveness, love, acceptance, strength, hope, blessing, in short, the gospel).
THE FACE OF THE LAW
Here is where confusion and misgivings easily catch us. We know that fear and shame are powerful motivators, they have profoundly molded our behavior and the behavior of others towards us. If you remove law, what will keep me in check? We think fear and guilt make us good, when they really only change our actions, not our hearts. Still, if this motivation is removed, what will inspire us to go in the right direction. If there is therefore now no condemnation, won’t I just act like a spoiled brat, won’t others “take advantage” of grace? No. It is impossible to “take advantage” of grace. If you try, if you decide to fulfill every “forbidden pleasure,” it will leave you more empty, lost, broken, and even farther from the blessings of grace–not because grace resists you, for it always has open arms, but because you resist grace, which is the way of true peace, fulfillment, joy, love. The only way to take advantage, full advantage, of God’s grace is to throw yourself whole-heartedly into his embrace.
Let me quote a reply I gave a questioning friend: In my mind “doing as I please” is a serious misunderstanding of grace, and is profoundly different from doing what my soul needs. The differentiation in my mind is not that the first matches my desires and feelings and the second matches my duty, but that the first matches superficial desires and feelings often at odds with my deeper feelings (e.g. choosing sex as a replacement for love), while the second is discovering my true feelings and true needs and seeking to meet those. At this point in my understanding of God’s grace, I believe that my soul’s truest needs are never in conflict with God’s will, and if they appear to be, I misunderstand one or the other.
SAFE HANDS
I did not mean to suggest in my last post that our long, long lists of good behaviors are not in fact good. I simply want to point out that they are not paramount. Brushing our teeth, paying our bills on time, making soup for our sick neighbor are all good things, but the phrase, “the good is (sometimes) the enemy of the best,” comes to mind. This aphorism is usually used to promote even higher, more taxing behavioral standards for ourselves, but I would use it to change the value scale altogether, to set a higher value on heart issues than behavior.
When I stop to compare how I treat friends with how I treat myself, I am often dumfounded at how disrespectful, rough, and unsympathetic I am to myself. I would never tell a friend what I tell myself. If a friend called me and said, “I’m really hurting right now, do you have time to talk?” I can’t imagine responding, “I’m not free right now, I have to cut the grass,” or “Really the only time I have to talk is Thursday 6-7.” But that is exactly what I used to tell my own soul many times every day. By the way I treated it, I was basically saying, “Shut up! I don’t have time for you! The dishes are more important.”
Over the last several years, I have worked hard at sloughing off responsibilities that made my soul feel it was of less value than some task. Of course, this list is unique to each person. For instance, skipping a meal in order to finish a project was never a sacrifice for me–but I did often suffer by driving myself to grind through a project when my soul was weary of it. To each his own.
Many of you would be surprised at the things that distress me, and perhaps shocked at some of the things I have chosen to offload from my list of duties for the sake of my spirit. Filing my annual taxes is always troublesome, and while I was still single, sometimes distressing. As April 15 drew closer, my distress increased, but I had no emotional energy to force myself to complete them. So in an effort to give my soul breathing room, I chose several times to file my taxes late and pay the resulting penalty. Poor stewardship? Of my money, yes, but not of my soul, and my soul is more important than money. In fact, what more valuable investment than supporting my soul…so I guess it was financially good stewardship as well. Thankfully, that spring dyspepsia is now eased with the presence of a life partner.
God gives us the strength to fulfill his call, but does he give us the strength to fulfill the calls of social norms or family expectations or friends’ needs? I have too often assumed that my soul’s cries for help were the voice of temptation rather than the voice of truth, the voice of God calling me to rest. Pain is the body’s signal that we should stop. If we listen to it as a practice, then sometimes choosing wisely to override it can actually benefit the body, but if we typically ignore the pain signal, we will tear down our bodies. I believe the same for our souls. It knows better than our brain when something is amiss and needs addressing, and if our inclination is to ignore it, we tear it down.
BE AS GENTLE TO YOUR SOUL AS YOU ARE TO YOUR FRIEND'S
Continued from “Addicted to Effort”
As a boy I believed my worth depended on being good, on meeting expectations, especially God’s expectations. So when my worth seems challenged, I try to rescue it with redoubled effort driven by a sense of should. As long as I keep feeling this weight of duty, I know that below the level of conscious thought, my heart is entangled in fear, and by acting from fear, I strengthen its power over me. It is no use to tell myself, “Okay, regardless of how I feel, I am now going to act out of a security in God’s grace instead of from obligation.” Motivations are deeper and more complex than that, often tied to subconscious beliefs, and so they can’t be controlled directly by an act of the will.
Every time I “do right” from obligation, I feel better about myself and more secure in God’s love, but it is a false security based on my good behavior. Each “good” choice then strengthens my belief that God’s love depends on what I do. As long as law and grace agree on what is best to do, and I conform (successfully meet the expectations), I assume my trust in God’s grace. Just as a rich man can trust God’s provision easily, so I can trust God’s love when my cache of good behavior is full. But an empty account reveals the source of my trust, and failure forces me to face my fears. If failing is my door into self-knowledge and grace, should I aim for it, shirk my duties in order to grow in grace?
Too Much of a Good Thing Is a Bad Thing
That sounded wrong. So I kept meeting all the demands of duty while constantly identifying and challenging my underlying legalism. It was a long, slow process in which my choices to satisfy the should seemed to continually pull me back from grace. Then I started realizing that my perceptions of responsibility were largely shaped by my insecurities and the expectations of others, present or absent. Those who promoted these duties tried to anchor them in Scripture as divine law, but the great majority came rather from culture, family, tradition, personality, and the like—a prescription of what good people do.
Good people get up early, make their beds, take a shower, eat a healthy breakfast. They mow their lawns, wash the dishes, exercise, change the oil in their car every 3,000 miles. They limit their TV viewing, work hard at school and office, live within their means, answer emails and phone calls in good time. They don’t cut folks off in traffic or spend too much on luxury items or make others wait for them. I could go on for 1,000 pages. If I don’t conform, my sense of worth languishes. I spot it in my tendency to deny my own needs in order to meet these obligations, in my embarrassment (i.e. shame) if others find out what I have or have not done, or in my need to find an excuse for my behavior—I didn’t have the time, money, strength, opportunity, support. I could never appeal to my own needs, desires, or feelings as a legitimate reason to ignore these expectations, for that was simply selfishness. Perhaps no confusion has done more damage to us all than equating self-care with selfishness.
Since my (faulty) conscience cried out against me if I chose my needs and desires over these duties, I found a huge opportunity to face my own shame. I really could “shirk my duties” as a means of spiritual growth! I could choose for myself against these demands, feel the sting of shame, and then apply grace to this fear. The question stopped being “What would people think?” or “What should I do?” and became “What does my soul need.” Unfortunately my soul was so long ignored, that it had no voice. I often did not know what it needed. But I knew one thing for sure–it needed fewer demands placed on it.
The strange path to freedom.
I have many coping mechanisms to protect me from the prickly world, a combination of defenses unique to myself. I was a compliant child, a trait sometimes mistakenly referred to as “good” or “obedient,” so I responded to my insecurites by trying to make the grade (measured by my approval ratings). This was my basis for self-worth: scoring a 10 on my performance. When I was judged as inadequate, my deeply ingrained, almost instinctive reaction was to rachet up the effort. I proved my value as a person by doing more, better, faster, by never repeating failures or mistakes, by meeting or exceeding every expectation that appeared worthy.
CHASING SUCCESS
Perhaps the hardest coping mechanisms to overcome are those which are inescapably tied to the necessities of living. Every addiction has its unique power of control. Bulimics, unlike alcoholics, literally cannot live without the substance to which they are addicted, and that significantly complicates their deliverance. In the same way, I cannot live without doing. I cannot abandon all tasks in order to break free from my addiction to effort–I am forced to keep succeeding at a job, at finances, at relationships, and all the other tasks essential to life. They say success breeds success, but in my case, success breeds bondage (and unfortunately so does failure).
For me, at a subconscious level, every task accomplished inevitably feeds my sense of worth and every task unfinished feeds my shame. I don’t knowingly tell myself, “See what I have done. I am a good person after all.” The telltale sign of this malady may only be a sense of satisfaction, which is natural enough, but the reason for my satisfaction is largely a sense of worth based on my work.
In short: I have an addiction to effort as a means to gain worth, I cannot live without doing, but each time I do something and feel better as a person, I subconsciously strengthen my addiction.
Let me give an example. I have said something that has hurt my colleague Mike. I am afraid of what he now thinks of me, especially because his evaluation of me feeds my doubts of my own worth. Since love is the best motivation, I tell myself to reach out to him in love and concern for his well-being. These are my conscious thoughts, but underneath, my very value as a person depends on his renewed approval of me. My fear escalates as I ask for a minute of his time. Why fear? Because my worth is at stake. If he is reconciled by my apology, my fear turns to pleasure. “See,” I tell myself, “love works!” when in fact I have just succeeded in strengthening a false basis for my worth as a person–I am worthy because of what I do, in this case reconciliation.
The motivation for what I do is the key. I can act out of a place of grace or a place of should and shame, though that makes it sound dichotomous when really my motives are always mixed to some degree. If I complete a chore more out of fear than of grace, I strengthen my doubt in God’s love. If I act more from grace, I strengthen my faith in God’s love. But if I am pressured by ‘should,’ how can I respond out of grace? For me at least, operating out of a sense of should is really responding from a doubt of God’s acceptance, from a sense that his love depends on my behavior, from a fear of being unworthy. I find that if I do not first challenge the should, face it down, call out its lies of conditional love, then I feed my doubt and insecurity with each task I complete. I feel better, but am worse for it.
Back to Mike. If he is unwelcoming, I become defensive–I try to “explain” more clearly, I express my hurt at his response, I point out his matching faults. Unlike my successful attempt, my failure to win him over suddenly reveals my real motivation. It was not love, but insecurity. Insecurity will always be present, but if it predominates as my motivation, it will harm me and my relationships. It may feel better to both of us if it “works,” but it is a sugar high that eventually leads to diabetes. I am most aware of my insecurities when my coping mechanism fails, when my “right” actions for self-redemption flounder. If at first I don’t go to Mike, but sit with my insecurity long enough to find saving grace, to believe my worth has no basis in what I do, then I can go to Mike in a way that leads to wholeness for us both.
In certain situations, this time of processing is effective, but often, the longer I delay acting, the more anxious I become. I am constantly being pressured by a “should,” and this crowds out the emotional space I need to find grace. In the past I often had to go ahead and complete the task (and so remove the pressure), and then try to deal with the shame-based motivation. My grasp of grace was not firm enough to escape self-condemnation if I failed to act, but at least being aware of my true motivations was a fundamental step to addressing them.
To be continued…
Matthew 1:1 The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Both Abraham and David understood God’s plan as universal rather than solely Jewish (as the calling of each clearly states). Therefore, this is the history, salvation history, of the world, not just of one small nation. Both men are seen here primarily as avenues of salvation rather than centers of political control. Jesus, being the denouement, becomes the lens of interpretation for all of history. He gives to both Abraham and David their historical and spiritual meaning, so, as the first verse states, this family tree is about Jesus, not just (for example) a rehearsing of Jewish history. The history of the world (and of Israel) can only be understood by seeing all through the person and work of Jesus. He is the defining point of history.
Even though the focus is entirely on Jesus, it is not “the record of Jesus,” unconnected to history, as though God let the world wander on its own and then finally sent a Savior. The whole history is part of a closely laid plan from the beginning of time, the beginning of man and his fall, the beginning of Israel. It is the record of the genealogy of Jesus. History—factual events that really occurred—is fundamental to the Christian faith. Existentialism, much as I like it, tries to de-contextualize Jesus and personal faith, but faith must always be firmly rooted in our reality and past. Theology, as much as each individual life, cannot begin in the middle in dismissal of the past.
IF ONLY
We are not controlled by our past, but we are at every point a direct outgrowth of our past (though every present moment is an opportunity for re-directing our future history). Every step of a journey takes you to a very specific location. You can change direction at any point, even radically, but you cannot change the previous steps taken which have brought you to this place. If you have walked to Central Park, you cannot take your next step from Times Square, you can only take your next step in that direction. Even the greatest redirection in life, spiritual regeneration, does not suddenly change your personality, biology, total sum of a lifetime of thoughts, family and friends, skills and talents, likes and dislikes, or even your character. It gives the power to change in ways never before possible, and it begins to change everything, but we all start that journey with the first step.
It is because every present moment is so weighted by our past that it takes a lifetime and more to be restored to the persons we are meant to be. You cannot wake up tomorrow and live as though you had no past or precedent… even if you had amnesia. Who you are is a continuous flow, not disconnected states of being. Some truths can have profound impact on the flow of our lives, but being transformed by a given truth is a process. This is very frustrating
for many of us. It all seems to take so long, especially when the embedded lies are still wounding us and our relationships. But this forces us to fall back on grace for ourselves as well as for one another. The quality of our relationships is not determined by our goodness (thankfully), or even our maturity, but by grace to us, in us, through us. And the source of this grace is Jesus who is just as much a part of our life’s history as he was of Jewish history.
I wanted to thank you who read my blog. There are only about 30 or 40 of you out there, but it makes all the difference to have readers. I wanted to say thanks because the writing of these posts are a big blessing to me… It requires me to process and I re-read them more than anyone because I am helped by what I share, but I would not take the time to write without folks like yourselves who read (and occasionally comment) on the posts. So I am doubly encouraged, by the blessing I get and the blessing I sometimes hear that others get. I just feel grateful and wanted to share that.
For the last few days things have been looking up, I have felt more positive than negative, more times of calm than of anxiety. I would even say I have been happy. But I have been reluctant to share for fear that folks will suppose me “back on my feet.” We all give a break to those who are going through a hard time–we give them more patience, gentleness and concern, and a lighter load. But once they have “recovered,” we suppose their strength has returned and put them back in the harness. My personal experience is very different from this picture of energy simply lost and regained.
I once had armor so thick nothing could touch my soul, including real and deep love. Those defenses by which I kept the world at bay I laid aside to seek my true self and connect vulnerably with others. And once I stepped into the wind of my fears, the wounds that had been festering for decades were exposed. I have been attending to them now for ten years, but they are forty years deep and my soul is still quiveringly sensitive to any scrape against them.
Kimberly and I talk about our personal and marital “bubble.” When I am in my own bubble, untouched by the storms of life, I can eventually come to a place of peace as I have in the last few days. When Berly and I are on the same page, which is most of the time, we share a bubble and reinforce that sense of security. I can nestle into God’s love. But the bubble is easily burst as the wind and sleet dash against our nest–a phone call or email, a memory, a bill, a frown… even a sunny day (like yesterday) can depress me, reminding me how dependent we are on lawn mowing jobs that I have no energy to hunt down.
FROM THE NEST LOOKING OUT
I can be content and even happy inside our bubble, but it is a very fragile peace, constantly threatened and often breached. Without some refuge from the world’s criticisms, disparagements, impatience, and harshness, I am simply battered relentlessly. And my spirit can find no air to breathe, no space to move, no pause to rest. I am reduced to emotional survival. So I withdraw to my nest to build up strength to face the next nor’easter. This, to my mind, is the biblical “fight of faith.” Unfortunately, the storm can reach inside my little knothole, and often does. Sometimes all my energy is used to keep it out. It is always threatening to strike, and the closer it gets, the more difficult it is to find a place of peace, a gentle space in which to rest and heal.
But in the last few days, I sense a change. an ability to keep the storm outside and God and me inside the bubble of faith that keeps the shame and doubts at bay, a potential to respond in healthy ways to shame-driven tasks of the past. I am able to see God as on my side regardless of my weaknesses, blunders, myopia, and erratic progress. Perhaps I am finding a new way through the hurricane, though it is a strange direction to take as I will soon share.
Those five words are packed with dramatic history. The first seed in the family tree of salvation was barren. I think I would have written it, “To Abraham…. was……. born…………….Isaac. Abram had reached the end of a century with no son by his wife. He is known as the Father of faith, the Father of the nation of Israel. His very name meant father, from the Hebrew Ab, and if this were not enough, God renamed him Abraham, father of a multitude! No wonder he and Sarah laughed, though it was a bitter chuckle I’m sure.
to confront great odds, when in fact, it refers more often to doing nothing at all, to simply waiting on God to act. For most of us the second takes far more faith than the first, and far longer faith. It is not God who is impatient with our progress, but we who are impatient with His. We cry, “How long, O Lord?!” and he says, “Trust Me. Wait.” Especially in our hurried day, slow is a 4-letter word. I wonder if we have lost our peace because it couldn’t keep up with our quick pace.
Janathan Grace Reflections 