Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Week 2

This last week, I commented on how Yeshua/Jesus transformed Paul from a merciless zealot to a merciful servant, and how Messiah shocked the Jewish world by showing them that external commandment keeping wasn’t enough. For sabbath discussions, I explored how some of the Pharisees were prone to argue and nitpick on the Sabbath, and how we should be a Sabbath for the people of the world. I also shared my recent experiences on having a breakthrough with someone I love who has anger issues who is very frequently in need of instant forgiveness.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 8–Acts 16:25-28

Merciless to Merciful. The Power to Transform.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” (Acts 16:25-28)

The other day I was writing about the merciless nature of the zeal of Saul (Paul), James, and John. Paul was going from house to house actually going inside, dragging out men and women, and putting them in prison for the crime of preaching and following a Messiah that was not to his liking. That was zealous for certain, but certainly a rash and merciless zeal that punished people for, frankly, not being enough like him and the high priest and counsil of elders who gave him the authority.

But read the passage above again, carefully. Paul was no longer imprisoning people, but imprisoned himself for the sake of Yeshua/Jesus. He wasn’t terrorizing, he was praising God so movingly that when the chains came off everyone and the prison doors opened, that not one man rushed for his freedom. As for himself, he could have run (he and Silas) for the hills, but a man’s life was at stake and this same Paul who once watched the clothing of those who killed Stephen, a fellow Jew, was not willing to escape at the cost of a heathen’s life.

The Savior, of course, was the difference. Paul became a cherisher of life, all lives–both Jew and Gentile. The Paul of years past–well, I doubt he would have given that poor man a second thought. He who was willing to persecute his own people over a difference in opinion that was later tolerated (even when not entirely welcomed) in the synagogues came to care about his own jailer.

We know from Paul’s own words that he kept Torah (the commandments of God) flawlessly, even according to the rulings of the Pharisees–but it didn’t stop him from being merciless. Talmud Bavli Yoma 9b describes the first century as a time of gratuitous hatred:

However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, and that they did not perform the sinful acts that were performed in the First Temple, why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to the fact that there was wanton hatred during that period. This comes to teach you that the sin of wanton hatred is equivalent to the three severe transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed.

You can hate within your heart and keep the commandments on the outside, towards those you love and in the sight of others for the sake of being seen or even out of guilt, and still be merciless in your thoughts. Acts of kindness are not the same as merciful thoughts towards others. Bible study is not the same as becoming an image-bearer inside and out. Keeping the commandments as external rules (no matter how diligently) is not automatically the same thing as loving God–it can simply boil down to a cultural way of living if done for the wrong reasons.

Paul was very much a man of his times, a time when there was a great hatred of Jewish sects for one another (this would not include the people of the land, who had no time for such elitist nonsense), and certainly between Jews and Romans (pagans). That a first-century, Torah observant Jew would stay where he was when an obvious act of God was freeing him (a natural disaster could shake open the doors but not everyone’s chains), it is stunning, It wasn’t how anyone thought in those days–neither Jew nor pagan.

Messiah changed that. He transformed people into souls who care not only in their external acts, but within their heart so that they really did care for, love, one another. Religion can’t do that. Only the power of God can change someone in this way.

Twenty-two years ago yesterday I had the bad stroke that profoundly changed my life for the worse and sent me into a two-year cycle of depravity that God eventually used to draw me to Himself. Twenty years ago, I gave my life to Jesus Christ after a four-day struggle to shut His voice out of my mind. He just wouldn’t give up on me. I was an angry, wounded, careless, sinner–and He was insisting that I acknowledge Him as Lord and Master. I never prayed any sinner’s prayer because we both knew what a sinner I was.

“Okay, okay, I give up. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I give up. You’re the boss. Not me. Not anymore.”

And that’s the day everything started to change. Merciless to merciful–I am walking that same path as Paul. I pray we all are, because if we are not becoming more merciful then who exactly are we following? Certainly not the Divine Savior who died for a world that didn’t even want Him.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 9–no verse

I am too mean to live right now. Just am.

When God is doing something new with us, some of the old has to go. This is part of a normal Christian life in that, when God grows us in a new area, certain pockets of resistance need to be boiled away and generally ones we aren’t even aware of having.

This started yesterday late in the morning. I started getting really super hostile. From experience, I know the hostility will remain until God raises the temperature in my life to the point where I will become aware of the specific impurity being targeted, because it will become quite obvious, and I start fighting against it as His ally. Right now, in some way, I am not His ally. It isn’t on purpose–probably some grudge or defense mechanism, some wall I have up that I have lived with so long that it seems good and normal–but all the same, on some level I am harboring something unfruitful that needs to be boiled off and pruned away.

This happens every once in a while and when it does, I have to avoid people and especially social media. I have to bite my tongue and not tell people what I am thinking because my thoughts are tainted with hostility. In essence, I am not thinking clearly enough to be trusted to talk to anyone right now without maybe taking some of that aggression out on them. We have to come to a point of maturity where we realize that not every thought needs to be spoken, and most irritations should not be voiced.

Read the book of Romans yesterday and hopefully I will talk about it tomorrow. Romans is one of those “list” books where Paul reminds us of the kinds of thought sins that we are susceptible to and are the antithesis of God’s character. I like those lists, and I hate them. They make me confront my flesh. You just can’t hide from Paul, he nails us when we stop thinking about how difficult he is to understand. He (like Yeshua/Jesus) tells us that we aren’t really as awesome about keeping the commandments as we think we are by reminding us that our innermost thoughts can transgress the Law just as much as our flesh can–and far worse, because we all think things that we would never do.

Today I will just hunker down and read I Corinthians and continue with my studies in Matthew 12.

Hostility happens. The important thing is to recognize it for what it is and not use it as an excuse to do harm.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 10–Romans 10:4

For Messiah is the goal of the Torah as a means to righteousness for everyone who keeps trusting. (Ro 10:4, TLV)

How ironic that when the whole point of the Torah came down among men, it would be to tell us all that we weren’t really keeping it perfectly, and no amount of fences and legalities could ever change that. You can imagine what a relief it would have been to those who were looked down on by the Judean elites, who didn’t even trust simple, faithful farmers to properly tithe their own produce, and what an offense it was to the aforementioned elites who felt that they could keep the law perfectly–if only.

If only they built enough fences around God’s laws.

If only they explored and debated every possible situation so they would always have the right answers.

If only they brought Temple standards of purity into the homes.

But here comes this young upstart (young by my standards, thirty was pretty old in first-century Israel), telling them that unless they had their thoughts in order and unless their motives were purely driven by love and not just obedience, that they were missing the goal of Torah entirely–radically set-apart lives inside and out, which necessitated an honesty between thoughts and actions.

It wasn’t enough not to ravish or seduce a woman–you couldn’t even think about it. (Matt 5:27-28)

It wasn’t enough not to murder your brother–you couldn’t hate him, be angry at him, or slander him either. (Matt 5:21-22)

It wasn’t enough to say you are sorry to God unless you also made things right with the people you have hurt. (Matt 5:23-24 and the heart of the “twelve-step” programs)

And He went on and on telling people that they weren’t really as law-abiding as they thought they were, yet encouraging them all the same. And He knew, because He was the goal of the Torah–He was the perfection that went above and beyond words on paper into perfection of motive and perfect love. He kept the Laws of God inside and out, as they were meant to be kept, and He wasn’t just fooling Himself that He was Torah observant, as the rest of us are prone to do–He actually was the living embodiment of Torah observance in both Spirit and Truth. We can try to be blameless on the outside, but on the inside we are transgressors.

Paul is hard to read because he makes a point of reminding us of that over and over and over and over again in all his letters. He tells us to be like Messiah, like Christ. But our flesh wants to tell us that we are indeed like Christ when we do the outer things that He said weren’t enough. The most we can do is to become more and more like Christ, fighting for that goal–fighting like crazy against our flesh until the day we die. The fight never ends, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Anyone who tells you that they don’t struggle with anything is either not being honest or has just stopped trying to be more like Messiah because the closer we get, the farther away His character seems to be from ours. The more we mature in goodness, the better we see Him and the further away that goal appears. Good fruit breeds humility in just that manner. We really and truly have no idea how inaccessible the goal truly is, and if we think that we are close enough to it to be a perfect example, then we are very poor examples indeed.

Yeshua/Jesus is the WAY. He is the TRUTH. He is the LIFE. He is the LIGHT OF THE WORLD. He is the divine Messiah, and not just some super good dude because no human could ever live perfectly, inside and out, while subject to our same temptations.

He is the LOVE that came to earth to do what we could not. Blessed be His holy Name. This is why He deserves our worship.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 11–I Cor 3:2-3

Who was jealous? Who argued? Messiah? Or His detractors?

“So I had to treat you like babies and feed you milk. You could not take solid food, and you still cannot, because you are not yet spiritual. You are jealous and argue with each other. This proves you are not spiritual and you are acting like the people of this world.” (CEV)

I like the way this verse is rendered in this version because it really describes how we are, as opposed to how we need to behave. I think of those among the Pharisees who were nitpicking at Yeshua, and trying to shame him with their arguments (as opposed to those Pharisees who did not, like Nicodemus). Whenever Paul calls out a certain behavior as carnal, bad fruit, a work of the flesh, worldly, etc. you can bet that it is the antithesis of how Messiah acted while He walked the earth.

In fact, the more I study the Gospels, the more I see that He didn’t pick fights (and especially not in the Galilee), he ended them with very short and clever answers. They were picking fights. They were jealous. They were arguing with Him, and one answer from Him generally shut their mouths quick. They were concerned with non-spiritual issues while talking about what ought to be spiritual. They were posturing for position, trying to shore up their reputations and standing among the people, trying to best the newcomer on the scene–but we aren’t to be concerned with such things. Yeshua/Jesus on the other hand–He kept telling people, over and over again, not to spread the word about the miracles. Yeshua was not greedy for a larger audience–He had a job to do and He did it. It was everyone around him who was concerned with worldly matters–including His own disciples who were repeatedly concerned with who among them was going to be the greatest!

But we have been warned against jealousy, and against fighting with one another. And yet, that is the reality of social media religion–where we reach no one and argue with everyone. We do it in order to be right, to make the other guy look wrong, to appear to be the greatest (or appear as though we are following the greatest teacher)–we are still worldly and ought to be drinking milk and yet how we long for the solid food that we publicly prove ourselves to be unready for. We desperately need to shore up our foundations so that we can represent our King without shaming Him.

Jealousy. Arguing with one another. These things prove that we are not spiritual. Let that sink in really deep and don’t just think of how it applies to someone else.

And we do it on the Sabbath out of one side of our mouths while saying “Shabbat Shalom” out of the other side.

No jealousy. No fighting amongst one another. Remember what Yeshua said:

The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matt 23:11-12, ESV)

Shabbat Shalom means Sabbath Peace–please don’t use that word like the Shiite Muslims do, as in a world conquered by force and bloodshed, and dare to call it peace. We ought to never make a mockery of God’s day of rest by making it a day of strife.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 12–Lord of the Sabbath

 

Sabbath is a safe haven for the believer, just as we should be a safe haven for our brothers and sisters–as well as for the lost.

“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Heb 12:14, ESV

It is when we live at peace with others that the way we live will cause others to truly see the Lord.

It is when we refuse to be at peace, then that is all they will see–us, and they will tragically blame it on the Lord.

Yeshua/Jesus said that He brought the sword, but He never gave us permission to use it. He divides, not us–we lack the discernment to even begin to know how. That is why we have to learn how to love as He loves. He showed us to way, by giving His own life for those who hate Him, those who had never even heard of Him and frankly didn’t even care to.

We are not to be divisive, but we are instructed on how to treat those who are perennially and unrepentantly divisive within the Body, mistaking it for holiness:

“As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” Titus 3:10

What makes a person divisive? Demanding that everyone see what we see right now. Creating insider and outsider groups based on side beliefs that are pushed to the forefront while the Cross languishes somewhere unseen in the background.

“But what about…?”

Well, what about it? Did Messiah die so that we could cut people off over that? Really? Are we so enamored by what we see (or what we think we see) that we can really judge a person over this or that side issue for which Yeshua did not die? More importantly, do we really know what we think we know? Oftentimes we presume to be knowledgable where we are actually fools–lacking both information and wisdom yet assuming that we are guides to the blind! We assume this despite the great and overwhelming evidence that this is a universal brand of deception from which no one on this earth is immune. We are all blind. We are all fools. We are all unlearned. We allow the blind to guide us along. We listen to fools. We learn from the unlearned–and we don’t even know it because we were counting on them to teach us! We just assumed they had knowledge because they claimed to have it.

Humility is key. Perspective walks hand in hand with humility.

How glorious it would be if we all kept our mouths shut until mature enough in love that we could be trusted to speak with wisdom and discernment. It would also be wonderful if no one could speak on a subject about which they are actually unlearned. But each of us having mouths and keyboards is a severe test, one that we generally take great delight in failing–until the day that God opens our eyes and we would give our tongues and hands to take it all back. Then we call out to those who have not seen yet, but they don’t listen any more than we did–because their ears are not open and they do not have eyes to see that they do not love their neighbors, and especially those neighbors whom they cannot see at the other end of cyberspace.

We are no different than the Judean elites to whom Yeshua preached. And this is not me angry, this is me very sad.

Do we love Yeshua enough to pull back and consider whether we are the problem? And not the world around us? Not other believers? But us? Those of us who consider ourselves guides to the blind–do we hate, do we pass around gossip under the guise of news, do people hear endlessly about what we despise and nothing purely about what we love? When they hear us, do they hear about the Divine Messiah who came to save, or do they hear about someone being so angry with them that salvation seems to be entirely off the table? That the minimum requirements for salvation are for others who have their act together already, or who are more inherently worthy? Do those who listen to us feel too disgusting to lift their heads to heaven and cry out for forgiveness? Are we pushing people so far into despair that we have forgotten that the message of the Gospel is hope?

If I know about the love of God, and I personally shrink back at the posts I see that are purportedly reaching out but instead are creating a larger divide, then what about the lost? What do they see?

Probably just an elitist club that would never want them as a member until after they were perfect–and that’s exactly what I saw from certain individuals before I was saved. That it was hopeless, and that I was hopeless. Thank God for Ruthie Rayburn and for John Walton–staunch Christians who knew how to love and extend invitations that looked like a lifejacket when I was drowning. They knew how to stand against sin without ever standing against the sinner. They knew how to love me and allow the Holy Spirit to be the Holy Spirit.

Twenty years ago, God used them. He didn’t use the people I knew over the years who were stumbling blocks, even though they were zealous in their own way but also mean and contemptuous. They spoke hatefully and mockingly about people steeped in sins that many of them were born into accepting as absolutely normal. There is enough cruelty in the world, and when people are finally longing to escape, they will run towards love–if they can find it. And that’s why we need to be mature in love–for the sake of those who are on the brink, as well as for the sake of those who are still not even interested in God, but will be someday. They will need someone to run to, to tell them about the Gospel. We need to make the investment in order to be those people, and not the stumbling blocks they undoubtedly already know too many of.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 13–Matt 18:21

When someone in your life has anger issues.

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Matt 18:21)

In 2017, I taught a lot about radical forgiveness and one of the most challenging and basic forms of it is what I call “immediate forgiveness.” This is required when dealing with people who have anger issues, and especially with people who suffer from any form of brain damage. Not all of us naturally deal with outbursts of anger well, even when we know the other person can’t fully control himself, and that has been a problem of mine in particular–when someone gets in my face and yells at me, I haven’t ever been able to take it for very long before yelling back. That being said, I have been able to endure it for longer and longer periods of time over the years. Being 5’1″, I learned very early on the “need” to stand my ground and fight back in the workplace. Honestly, it worked out well in some circumstances, but it really isn’t godly behavior, losing control like that, and it turned me into a mercilessly defensive person when riled up–especially by really tall men.

So, in 2017, after reading Embodying Forgiveness by Miroslav Volf, and No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu, I came to the understanding that this immediate forgiveness, manifested in a lack of retaliation, would make it easier for the offender to repent later when they cooled down. Think about it, if someone yells at us and we yell something nasty right back, they are going to probably feel justified instead of guilty. It’s a simple truth–their response to our retaliation is to believe we had it coming in the first place. Very few people are able to see themselves as oppressors and instigators, but that is the vital purpose of producing good fruit in the face of conflict–it removes our sin from the equation and when the aggressor looks back, they are more likely to feel the kind of shame that leads to repentance. By not returning sin for sin, we enable not their sin, but their restoration to God. What they did was still wrong, and we can tell them that, but that doesn’t require tit for tat and fighting. They can throw mud, but we don’t have to get in the mud with them.

Now, before anyone says anything, forgiveness in the face of actual violence doesn’t mean there are no consequences (some of which might require a physical separation), it just means no retaliation in kind, of the same kind. I am talking instead about the more common outbursts of anger in the form of words, tantrums, acting out and such. Although, with a special needs child, physical violence might happen as well, and in that case we really can’t afford to retaliate in kind.

I can’t go into details, but last night this finally bore some really beautiful fruit in my life, when someone who has really done this to me a lot, A LOT, came to me and needed to talk and really opened up about how unjustified they are, and how they realize now that their anger spewed out at me over all these years is not deserved and how they know that the way they have perceived me has been wrong. It’s been more than a decade of me dealing with this anger and it has been very difficult, but when I held this person in my arms and they cried it out and poured out their heart towards me, it was a healing balm for us both.

God touched this person’s heart, but I removed potential stumbling blocks by (usually) dealing with them in a calm and loving manner. This person has some brain damage, totally not their fault, and yet everyone needs to learn as much self-control as they possibly can and this person has yet to reach their full potential. The last year and a half of strokes and TIA’s has made me very appreciative of how incredibly easy it is to get frustrated and lose it when the brain isn’t operating on all cylinders. I have had to learn an exponentially greater level of self-control than was ever necessary before.

In every relationship in our lives, we can make it easier or harder for people to do the right thing. If we make it harder, then we are stumbling blocks in the Kingdom, if we make it easier, then we are more like guides to the blind. Think of the kindness of God in Messiah/Christ which leads us to repentance. Think of how He enables us to come to Him and doesn’t throw up impenetrable barriers. Yeshua/Jesus did all the work that we couldn’t do ourselves, and what He can do with a genuine grief over our sins is remarkable.

Ro 2:4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Titus 3:4-6 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior

All I could think of last night, as I held this person was how I wished I had been even more kind,more merciful, and how badly I felt for every time I allowed their behavior to push me over the edge into snapping back and/or yelling myself.

Living without regrets in personal relationships is about love, patience, peace, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in the face of people who lack those things. Who knows whether or not your good behavior might serve as the midwife for a great harvest on their part? Today’s easily triggered individual might be the great saint of tomorrow–as long as we don’t get in their way with our own bad behavior. We all need to learn how to be firm and respond in love without making bad situations worse.




Social Media Musings Dec 1-6, 2017 – Forgiveness and the Fruit of Peace

People have been asking me for a weekly digest of my social media writings – for like a few years now – not everyone wants to be on Facebook, understandably. If you subscribe to the blog, you can get these in your email. I never send out anything except blogs, so don’t worry about being spammed incessantly. These writings will be largely about my studies into being an image-bearer and the growing of radical fruit. I will occasionally still post my ancient Near Eastern and First Century studies, but I am still recovering from my November 10 stroke and that’s harder to remember and organize than writing about our character as image-bearers, which is easier for me.

Dec 1 – The Peacefulness Project Week #2 – Commitment to Community.

I am a big offender here, just FYI, although I have been committed to the idea of community, am I as committed to the reality? – Not so much. People scare the pee out of me, and throughout the overwhelming majority of my life, I have easily been overtaken by fight/flight responses when a more mature/healthy person would step back and take stock of the situation. It’s something I am working on right now – and of course, the way I started was by changing the language I use to talk about others, especially anonymous, hypothetical others who just represent ideas and not actual people.

Like how I would talk about people who do certain things that I don’t like, while maybe not even having anyone in particular in mind, but mocking the idea of them. Right there, when I do that, I destroy the potential for future community for all who see it, to whom it applies, and encourage others in their use of the language as well. I have to learn to talk about certain issues without the scorn, mocking and cheap shots. I have to remember that you can be a worthwhile, valued member of the Body, and disagree, or even be misinformed, without being deficient or unfit to be my brother or sister. I don’t have to call a meeting with my snide comments so that we can all point and laugh, instead of trying to build, encourage, and understand. People are never wrong on purpose – sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong, sometimes they believed the wrong people who seemed to be right, etc. Didn’t we all?

We dehumanize because we do not want community with anyone who makes us feel uncomfortable – that’s why a lot of us are out here on social media, screaming and wanting to be heard, but only by people who already agree with us. Our words are meant to recruit likeminded folks. The rest we push away with angry-sounding and judgment-laden rhetoric. We welcome those who are like us, while pretending to teach those who aren’t, yet actually doing our best to inform them that they are not welcome until they are already like us. We don’t watch our words, or the way we say them – we want to think of ourselves as the welcome wagon, when we really look a lot more like the glue wagon waiting to take poor Boxer out of the way. People don’t want to get in if they can smell death on our breath.

We don’t preach to include but to exclude – to make sure that the only people who will come near us are the people who prop us up, who give us the illusion that “we” are right and “they” are wrong. This is a recipe for contempt, dehumanization, and war – not for peace. Like it or not, we are called to be peacemakers. We are called to be a light for the lost, not an interrogation lamp in the eyes of those who dare diverge from the path we are on now – who actually may be ahead of us in many ways but we can’t see anything but what we are proud of believing. Our pride of observance in this blinds us to their observance in that.

Yes, pride. We are very proud of those issues that are important to us, the things that we do – it is a common trick of the heart and mind, to elevate our level of observance to become the plumb line for everyone else, while calling anything less “backsliding disobedience” and anything more “legalism.” We don’t seek to include, but to exclude. Less observance offends us and more observance is an uncomfortable challenge. We seek to maintain our status quo.

If that exclusion was only based upon matters of willful sin, I could see the point of it, but we are rarely talking about that. No, this is flat out about excluding differences, and the reason is because we are not committed to community, but diametrically opposed to it. If we were committed to community, we would talk with, and not at, each other. We would seek out radical repentance, radical forgiveness, and the reconciliation that our Messiah spoke of. These things cost, they require little deaths. Looking at situations from the perspective of another requires a death. learning about where a person is at in their walk instead of assuming requires a death. Relationship requires a death – we have to give up a bit of ourselves and accept a bit of someone else. To do that, we have to love them and be committed to peacefulness – especially over the small stuff that too often rattles us, and certainly myself. We need to learn why we over-react, but first we have to accept that we do, in fact, often react in inappropriate ways.

In order to have community, we have to abandon the thought of always being correct, the illusion that we are always reasonable, that we aren’t deceived; we have to understand that people who are immature in one area can be lightyears ahead of ourselves in another. I am and you are not individually the bright center of God’s universe, but all of us together are.

We have to want to accept true repentance. We have to want to forgo our desire for revenge. We have to see things from someone else’s point of view. We have to learn to let the side issues be side issues. We have to be willing to accept that things which are very important to us will not be of tantamount importance to others. We have to want reconciliation and relationship when safe to have it.

We have to want, as a brother or sister, everyone whom our Messiah wants us to have as a brother or sister. That’s a big part of carrying our crosses – that’s dying to self and what we want. All of the fruit of the Spirit leads to community, and all the works of the flesh lead to lonely individuality. The social media age has made lonely individuality into a virtue – and we have very much gone along for the ride, like the citizens of Hell in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.

Dec 1 – Forgiveness Costs Everything

Reading the third book on forgiveness (NT Wright recommended three as being fairly earthshattering from different vantage points) – L. Gregory Jones’s Embodying Forgiveness. When it started off, right out of the gate, with Deitrich Bonhoeffer’s struggle for forgiveness and repentance in the midst of Nazi Germany, I knew it would pull no punches.

Anyway, the second section of the book is about the evils of “therapeutic” forgiveness – where the hard work of forgiveness and repentance and reconciliation have been replaced by a process through which we slowly work ourselves into feeling good about ourselves, about others, and about being together. Instead of dying to self and doing what Christ did, we want to feel comfortable with the idea of doing what He did, and only then do we do it. But forgiveness is rarely something we are going to feel good about doing, especially when repentance is lacking and justice is absent or far off. Withholding forgiveness might be the closest we are ever going to get to any sort of condemnation of the person who hurt us, and we don’t want to let that power go.

The Cross is a challenge, a painful challenge, to that way of thinking – the way that comes most naturally to us. Yeshua/Jesus suffered the death of a rebel, a traitor, a criminal – a death that has been sanitized in art and movies and books and, most notably, in our minds. His vindication in that will not occur at the end of the age when He judges the “quick and the dead” – His vindication took place when He was resurrected. As He was innocent, it was not right that He should wait any longer than three days. None of us are truly innocent and so we wait until the end of the age and will rise again, and every tear will be wiped away and we will no longer care about the crimes and slights against us in this world. The new world will be more real than this one – I imagine this one will seem to be less than a memory, yet more than a fiction.

Anyway, we tend to not want to forgive, because our hurts are so close to the surface, and we have made them an integral part of our identity, more so than who we are in Messiah. In CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce, time and time again we come across people who shun eternity with God because they can’t bear the thought of a life without their right to hurt, bear grudges, and seek out revenge. I see it all the time in the here and now, and I have certainly been guilty myself.

Anyway, all that is to say – the Sabbath is a taste of the world to come – and dare I add that until we learn to forgive truly, for the right reasons, and not as an act that will simply serve our own needs to feel good – well, there is no Sabbath rest. We don’t forgive so that we will feel good – we forgive because we were forgiven. It is the service we owe to our Master. It is not, no matter our suspicions, a service that will go unrewarded. Releasing bitterness, grudges, and a desire for harm and revenge against those who have wronged us – they are the price we pay for developing better fruit, and good fruit, although painfully produced, is a very great reward indeed. There is nothing more satisfying than better representing our Master, leaving our own flawed, self-righteous character behind and becoming conformed to His. Only when we truly walk in His loving, kind, gentle, merciful and compassionate ways, will we know Sabbath peace. Until then, we are just taking a day off from work.

Dec 2 – The Violence We Do in the Name of Being Right

Just woke up from the strangest dream. In it, I walked up to a young man, covered in blood from some kind of violence, he was sitting down, his body leaning against a wall – he was sobbing, inconsolable. I held him and comforted him a long time, despite the blood, before he finally was able to tell me what was wrong and why he was grieving. His father (or some other male relative) was dead, and in hell, because they had done such and such a terrible sin. I was appalled – because the young man had been burdened with a false belief that such and such was a terrible sin that would bring damnation. I was so happy to be able to relieve him of his burden by explaining the truth to him – his response was to turn on me violently, flip me off, and leave me.

(and no, the damning sin wasn’t keeping more of Torah, FYI, in the dream, the man covered in blood would be more likely one who felt he was keeping Torah)

I woke up just kinda shaking my head, it was all part of a very intense dream. I know what it was about, considering the season we are in. This young person was broken hearted for his loved ones, but he was covered in blood – and not his own. He believed that a certain thing was so sinful that his loved one/ones were damned – but the crazy thing was that he loved his belief so thoroughly that he was so cruel to the one person who was spending the time to love him and he refused to be comforted as soon as that comfort threatened a belief. He wanted to be right so badly, even though his belief was based on lies, that he would rather think his loved one/ones damned than reconsider it, or to look at the way the person who told him the truth, treated him.

We would often rather be angry, and do violence, and be “right” than to be at peace, and respond to kindness, and find out we were wrong – especially when we have been wrong before and would rather die with the illusion of being a martyr in the right than another flawed human, doomed to being wrong in both small and large ways, for the rest of our lives.

If the cost of being right is to do violence to others, verbally or physically, – we need to seriously re-evaluate whether or not we are just wrong in a different way than we used to be. Verbal blood on our hands is only moderately less offensive than physical blood on our hands – and if Yeshua/Jesus says the lust of the eyes is adultery the same as physical, which He does, then we cannot afford to be a verbally violent people on social media any more than we would consent to be physically violent people in person.

Dec 2 – “Invisible Cats” and C. S. Lewis

CS Lewis, in writing back in 1960 about The Four Loves – one of which is friendship – he was talking about the assault on male friendship at the time, when it was becoming more and more uncommon for two men to be friends in the mad rush of society and the inherent distrust of two men being “that close” without it really being homosexual in nature.

The argument was that, even the complete lack of proof of homosexual interest was, in fact, proof of homosexual interest. Lewis speaks of the infuriating nature of trying to prove that something that isn’t true, actually isn’t true. In other words, disproving a negative. It is easy to prove a positive. Here is the proof, here is the paper trail, voila! It is proved. But what about things with no proof, and which only appear to be true, yet lack any concrete evidence? Here is Lewis’s description of the problem:

“This very lack of evidence is thus treated as evidence; the absence of smoke proves that fire is very carefully hidden. Yes – if it exists at all. But we must first prove its existence. Otherwise, we are arguing like a man who should say, “If there was an invisible cat in that chair, the chair would look empty; but the chair does look empty; therefore there is an invisible cat in it.” … A belief in invisible cats cannot perhaps be logically disproved, but it tells us a good deal about those who hold it.”

We need to search our own beliefs for signs of invisible cats, and ask ourselves whether we have the right to judge others simply because they have an empty chair in their possession.

In other words, just because something seems obvious to us, does not make it true. We’re really not that smart or discerning.

Dec 3 – Frustration and the Sin of Mocking

So, been having insomnia ever since the day God told me to give up mocking people. I mean, I had probably already eliminated 95% of it from my life, but for the last 12 days, the mocking has been desperately seeking out new ways to happen. Weird stuff, I tell ya, things no one would consider to be mocking, but are. It’s been case after case of, “No, we aren’t going to do that!”

CS Lewis, in The Four Loves, which I talked about yesterday – he was being brutally honest about how much pleasure it brings people – me, him, everyone, to retaliate and be nasty, to be filled with resentment, to be the long-suffering and sainted martyr – and I was thinking about how sneaky our (my) brains are. So, I stopped the mocking on paper in public, but then in private it is harder, and then you give it up in private but then the mind is like a playground – and so self-righteously well hidden. You have to keep learning its tricks and adapting. And then you force yourself to stop thinking mocking thoughts and they come up with other creative ways of emerging – hence my insomnia.

So, last night I was thinking about a situation that should have been over years ago, but rears its head every once in a while – nope, not even going to say more than that – okay anyway. So I was thinking, and my thoughts would go along this path, leading me to a snarky comment and had to cut it off, and then along they come from another angle, had to cut them off that way too. After about five long go-arounds with this, I just stopped and had it out with myself. “Oh my gosh, will you just stop?” And it was like, “I can’t, I am SO frustrated!” Bingo.

I can’t think of a single time where I have ever mocked anyone where it wasn’t actually grounded in frustration. Frustration, of course, easily morphs into the works of the flesh of Galatians 5, and can only be overcome by the Fruit of the Spirit – especially my weakest one – patience. Joy used to be my weakest, but miraculously is now one of the stronger ones. PATIENCE, Ugh.

But I want them to agree with me and if they don’t… MOCK.

But I am right and I need them to know it… MOCK.

But other people might listen to them and not me… MOCK.

I have to discredit them… MOCK.

They aren’t listening to/believing me… MOCK.

They aren’t taking my word for this… MOCK.

WHOA they are on my territory and I feel threatened… MOCK.

My personal favorite:

They are mocking me and so they have it coming.. MOCKx10.

Basic self-control means I don’t do it on the outside, but if I don’t stop doing it on the inside as well – I am just like one of those blind Pharisees that Yeshua/Jesus and the Talmud speaks of, who would cover their eyes and run into a wall or fall into a ditch to avoid lusting over a beautiful woman. Well, self-control also means I don’t do it on the inside – but for that to happen, it has to be paired with a love, kindness, and gentleness that are genuine enough that I don’t want to do it either. Loving our neighbor as ourselves – are many things more hateful to us than being mocked publicly, or privately, or even in someone else’s thoughts, being made a public spectacle of, a figure of contempt and ridicule? Has anyone ever won you over to their side by mocking you, even subtly? Or if you saw it in their eyes or body language? Or even suspected it over the internet? No, as I realized last week – we only mock the people we have written off for exclusion, the ones we are so frustrated with that we don’t want them unless they come groveling on bloodstained hands and knees in worshipful adoration that we were, after all, correct. Mocking is a violent thing, really, we just don’t have to carry around any weapon but the tongue.

Giving up mocking has revealed deep recesses of contempt and hatred in me – I was venting off steam by letting off a little here and there, especially when no one could hear. Now that the vent has been plugged up, it’s a choice between facing the bad fruit or exploding and doing great damage to the Kingdom.

It isn’t about me. On the Cross, I was forgiven so much more than mocking, by the One who was mocked, beaten, falsely accused, and executed in perfect innocence. Do I have frustrations? Yeah, more than some but not as much as a multitude. What I don’t have, is a greater cause for offense against anyone than my King has – and He has been patient with me. After 19 years as a believer, He should not still be dealing with these things in me so graciously, but he does. I guess I can pull up my big girl panties and follow His example of patient, kind, forgiveness, and non-retaliation. And if I can’t, then I need to be willing to be able to.

Oh yeah – anyone ever notice the one thing Yeshua didn’t do after the resurrection? He didn’t go around Jerusalem killing and mocking the people who did Him wrong. Just wow. You don’t want to know what shameful things I would have done in His place…

December 4 – Musing on L. Gregory Jones’s Embodying Forgiveness

Until we recognize that sin is enmeshed in the very fabric of our lives, that it is not only external but internal, not simply what is done but what is imagined, we will forever be caught up in the illusion that sin is simply something that is done to us, and not an active force in the world that we all, as a community, have to learn to deal with. Only when that is accomplished, will we be able to forgive for the witness of the Cross, repent for the furtherance of the Kingdom, and reconcile with our neighbors for the sake of healing a sadly neglected Body – one suffering from all too many self-inflicted wounds.

If, however, our end goal is not a reconciled Body, but instead justice for ourselves, and healing for only ourselves, then we will forever be at odds with a Kingdom inaugurated at the foot of the Cross. The One who died on it did not do so in order to nurse His own wounds, get Himself justice, or to be healed – He did it for us, not one or a few, but all of us together.

December 5 – Hostage Takers – Those Who Rule Through Unforgiveness

Hostage Takers

Far too often, what stands in the way of forgiveness is the unreasonable demand that the sin should never have happened in the first place (as if to say – unless you go back in time and keep it from happening, there can be no forgiveness!). Even in the case of misunderstandings and perceived slights, or accidents, a person becomes so incensed that they were put upon (even if only in their minds) that they gleefully hold the other person hostage for life. They set unreasonable standards, and force everyone to live in perpetual slavery to their unforgiveness – but after every reasonable attempt has been made to communicate and mediate, and, in the case of real guilt, when true regret, repentance, and restitution are in effect, a person must come to realize that they are forgiven by God, that undoing their sin (or misunderstanding, perceived slight or accident) is impossible, and that they can and must move on and continue to grow in grace – regardless of whether their victim (real or imagined) desires to set them free or not. There has to be life after sin (and so there definitely must be life after misunderstandings and accidents) whether all parties involved like it or not. If not, then we proclaim ourselves dead in our own sins and the death, burial, and resurrection of Messiah – well, we proclaim it to be of no real effect.

So there’s the intro.

I think everyone has one or more hostage-takers in their life – I will discuss three kinds. I have a few of them and ran into two of them again this week. One has imagined slights against me that he has been nursing for years on other people’s social media walls. Despite engaging with him in conversation on a few cases to try and resolve it, he is ear-deep in bitterness because – well, because I refused to do what he told me to. A complete stranger told me to do something that was unreasonable, and I ignored the advice. For the past couple of years he has held me hostage – kinda, I mean, he goes around accusing me and I, having done everything I can to resolve the issue, just ignore him. The point is that he thinks I sinned against him, and he can’t/won’t let it go and spends his time telling everyone who will listen and allow it, that he has the goods on me, that I am an unrepentant sinner! It is sad, but people do this and others enable it by listening, What it is, is outside of my control – I can either engage him and agree to negotiate endlessly with a hostage-taker, or just let him be – I choose the latter as I cannot control him, cannot reason with him, and even mediation proved meaningless. The mediator, a mutual friend, rebuked him very hard and that quieted him for a while but he is at it again – attempting to hold me hostage but, in truth, he is the hostage. His accusations are without merit, and so I am only his hostage if I chose to live in the shadow of those accusations, which I don’t. I imagine he spends a lot of time thinking about me, whereas – well, unless he has just pulled one of his stunts again – I don’t think of him at all, and when I do, my only recourse is to pray for him. This kind of hostage taker can influence others with their accusations, but they can only influence us if we allow it. We cannot take on the burden of feeling like we can alter people who don’t want to be altered. Period.

The other kind of hostage taker is an oddball – not the person, I don’t know them personally, but the way they seek to hold hostage is rather odd. You see, this is someone who accuses me of anonymous crimes, but when approached will give me no details of who I have committed said crimes against, or when, or exactly what happened. They just make accusations to those who will listen. I knew someone like this in High School – best friend one day and then hating me enough to wage a four-year bullying war the next – literally overnight. I still, to this day, have no idea what happened. But she held me hostage to her suspicions, whatever they were. She was able to make my life very miserable, she was holding me hostage for sins that I may or may not have committed – but she held the power to keep me from clearing up any misunderstanding, or from repenting, by not telling me what I had done. This is very much a power-play. This sort of hostage taker wants to hate forever and wants there to be no resolution, so they arrest without charges. This is actually the sort of situation that the Magna Carta was written to avoid – a person must be told why they have been arrested and what they are under suspicion for. A person cannot be imprisoned without knowing why. But keeping someone imprisoned without having to charge them is a very useful thing – no one can prove they are innocent or prove that the accuser is mistaken. Again, once all efforts to communicate have been exhausted, we have to wash our hands of the affair. We cannot control people like this, and cannot burden ourselves with thoughts like, “If only I had done something different.” We can’t play their game by spending fruitless hours wondering what we have done – if it were really that bad, we would have figured it out already. If folks want to be wronged and the object of persecution, there is nothing we can do to change that desire.

The third kind. Oh boy, I am going to tell you a heartbreaking story. I was at a wedding once, by accident. I used to go around ministering with a team of people, about 15 years ago. We showed up at a home church group to find a wedding happening, and one of the people with me was expected to officiate because he was legally able to. After the wedding, we had Bible study. It couldn’t have been more awkward. The maid of honor was the most beaten down woman you could imagine, but she had found God and was desperately trying to change her life – imagine the shock of everyone when the Bride talked about her hopes for her new marriage, only to call her maid of honor a “four-time loser.” Yes, she had been divorced four times – it obviously was nothing she was proud of, but this dear saint was trying. She was trying with all her heart to turn her life around – only to have a best friend who was a hostage taker. The bride was keeping her maid of honor captive to past sins – always reminding, dragging her back to the scene of the crime, showing her the evidence, and never letting her forget about it. The bride wasn’t even the victim of the sins of her friend, she was just disgusted by them and elevating herself above such things. The maid of honor had repented of her past life, was struggling to find a new one, but she was not able to move forward because she allowed people to drag her back.

Anyway, hostage takers make me ill. Hostage takers are about one thing – the power over life and death of those around them. Hostage takers are accusers of the brethren. Hostage takers can’t stand repentance, restoration, or reconciliation. Hostage takers love the thought (even secretly) that those who offend them will burn in hell. No amount of change is enough, no amount of repentance, no reconciliation possible. It becomes such an addictive thrill, the ability to ruthlessly condemn, that they themselves become prisoners to it. They, who hold everyone else captive to their bitterness and offense, become powerless against it. They are offended because they live in a prison of offense, they are bitter because that is the existence they fashioned for others. They poison everything, and they are anti-Kingdom. They want the anti-fruits of enmity, dissensions, divisions, strife, outbursts of anger, jealousy, envy – they want to ruin all who offend them. They become blinded by the works of the flesh – they may not be out doing drugs and going to orgies, but they are murders in their hearts, and carry those murders out with their tongues slowly, over time, like a cat toying with a half-dead mouse. They desire the condemnation of those around them – they won’t believe that the person who has offended them (whether real or imagined offenses) can suffer enough.

It is a horrible prison that they dwell in, with the torturer, and that they keep (or attempt to keep) others in. If you are at the mercy of a hostage taker in your everyday life, there is a book I want to recommend, because living with a hostage taker actually warps our ability to see clearly. Henry S Cloud’s Changes that Heal – I read it years ago and it is a wonderful book. Just remember that abusers, like hostage-takers, abuse by setting the rules for everyone else to live by – but it is a violation of their role as image-bearer because they do not rule and reign mercifully and forgivingly as Messiah shows us, but according to the works of the evil one that we see in Galatians 5:19-21.

Dec 6 – A Dream about those Drive-by Critics

That pernicious Iv

I thought I would be writing about the opposite of what I wrote about yesterday – those people in our lives who continually transgress and feel as though forgiveness and automatic reconciliation is something they are entitled to – but that will have to wait as I had an interesting dream about someone called Iv. No, I don’t know anyone by that name lol.

It’s the only dream I have ever had about a social media thread. Someone, no idea who – could have been me for all I know, posted something and then people commented. I remember my friend Ken was one of them. After a bunch of comments, I was getting ready to respond when Iv’s comment comes up. It has nothing to do with the original post, at all, it is actually a point by point critique of all the comments that came before it! Her critique of me was actually something about my being barren, hardly pertinent to the discussion. I think it might have been some sort of totally inappropriate and ridiculous medical advice or some condescending reason for my barrenness that had no footing in reality. Unlike Lady Gaga, I actually was born this way lol.

Anyway, whatever comment was forthcoming, I was about to let Iv have it. Her response to the post was completely inappropriate – she was only there as a drive-by corrector, to show off her superior knowledge, to be everyone’s teacher, everyone’s personal unholy spirit. I would formulate comment after comment, only to erase them. There was no right way to respond to her, only more and less bad ones. People like this tend to think that the world NEEDS their input, that their cleverness and knowledge (which are generally pretty shallow) are a gift to the world that MUST be shared.They see everything that needs to be corrected, and they must correct. They may not know much, but what they know (or think they know), they seek out ways to disseminate as widely as possible. Problem is, these people are often martyrs in their own minds – they fervently believe that their going around correcting everyone and sticking their nose into everything is an act of love when really, it’s just an act of needing to insert oneself into the lives of others.

I used to do it, take my word for it. If something was “wrong” it was my duty as a superior being to deal with it. The more I grew, however, and the more knowledge I gained – well, in the first case I came to understand how badly I was damaging people with my constant nitpicking over things they were not yet able to change or overcome; the log in my own eye was so bad that I couldn’t see that truth clearly. In the second case, I was really only interested in correcting everyone when I knew very little – as long as I only knew topics A, B, and C at a shallow level, I could zoom in on those and look for people to correct. Once I knew things at a level that couldn’t be corrected in a comment, I increasingly had to give it up; good thing too – I didn’t really know enough to correct people correctly anyway on my pet issues.

So – weird dream – no resolution. There was no good response that I ever came up with. No matter my response, the critic would have finagled a way to win, even if it was just through their illusion of martyrdom. Some people we just can’t win with, there are only varying degrees of losing – unless we take advantage of the unfriend option and limit comments to friends. If you have one of these in your family, I recommend the same author as yesterday – Henry S Cloud, who has awesome books on setting boundaries and getting free of toxic influences in our lives.

 




Relational Sanity: Wisdom in Restoration

True restoration in relationships cannot come without an honest appraisal of what that relationship truly is.

.restoration

Oftentimes, when there has been an matter of betrayal or disloyalty, there is a push by people on the outskirts of the issue towards “full reconciliation and restoration” but I believe that something important needs to take place first.

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I believe that before there can be a restoration, before reconciliation (meaning “friendly relations”) is truly possible, one needs to take a good hard look at the relationship and see it for what it is because sometimes we really do not have much of a relationship at all and when we go back in to it, we have to go back in realizing that.

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The restoration of a casual relationship is going to be entirely different than the restoration of a familial or marital relationship. If I am friends with someone who I give my all to, and they repeatedly show me that they have absolutely no regard for me, then I may need to restore the actual, shallow relationship, and not the one I wish existed. And there is nothing wrong with identifying the shallow relationships in our lives — in fact, doing so protects us from bitterness and anger. After all, we cannot force someone to feel more for us than they do, and we don’t really have a right to. We also cannot force them to be loyal, or kind, or to do what is right. We cannot keep them from betraying us, or slandering us, or sinning against us — only love can do that and we have no control over whether or not someone loves us.

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So restore the relationship as it exists, not the fairy-tale one. If a generally wonderful person screws up, and is genuinely repentant, then that is a case for restoring them to where they were. But if we are simply ignoring the fact that we are in a non-existent relationship (meaning no exchange, no mutual give and take), then restoring that relationship to our fairy tale idea is not restoration, but instead elevation. And there is nothing I can think of in scripture telling us to pretend that there is more to a relationship than there is.

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There are people in this world that are impossible to have genuine relationships with — gossips, slanderers, bullies, people who are quick to assume the worst, people who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions, adulterers, etc. And it is okay to recognize that without feeling guilty about it. It’s okay to say, “I forgive you and I see that we really don’t have a relationship here. I thought we did, but looking back I see no evidence of a real relationship and so I am not going to pretend.  I wish you well, but we have no basis for intimacy.”

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We do not owe a relationship to those who do not have a relationship with us. That’s how the Body of Messiah gets into trouble, with dead-end relationships that require not just forgiveness but compromise. And the compromise is always at the expense of the person who is on the giving end. It’s the cheap grace version of restoration — hyper-restoration, if you will. But hyper-restoration is dishonest, and we cannot afford to be dishonest in our relationships, we have to see them for what they are.

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Now, are we to be long-suffering with those who are actively escaping sin and trying and fail and are genuine in their repentance? Of course, that is grace in action, that is true grace. But there can be no true fellowship between two people when one of them has absolutely no desire for relational accountability, no desire to see themselves as wrong, only a desire to justify themselves and take from whoever will give.

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So, when there has been a breach, look at the relationship carefully. Forgive the person. Look at the other person carefully. Ask the Father to show you the reality of the relationship. Then carefully restore the person to THAT relationship, the real one. In this way, you can deal with them as they are and not as you wish they were, with no illusions and no unrealistic expectations.

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Forgiveness means seeing who a person is and not holding it against them. Restoration means recognizing exactly who they are and having the appropriate level of relationship in light of that.

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Look at it this way — you have a piece of solid oak furniture, and even if it gets dented and stripped of its finish in some places, it’s still oak and can be restored. But if it’s just particleboard, you have to recognize that it is particleboard and hope, but not expect, that the particleboard will want to be oak and start doing the work to swap out its own parts. The relationship you can have with a piece of oak furniture is not the same as the relationship you can have with particleboard, and that’s a fact. And it’s okay to recognize it.  It’s not okay to keep depending on the particleboard to respond like oak and then be bitter when it fails.