Social Media Musings Vol 2 Dec 7-13, 2017

This entry is going to be much shorter than last week’s because I had another minor stroke over this last week and I am taking a break from writing. I am on a “no teaching allowed” vacation to give my brain cells a chance to get re-oxygenated and recover. But just yesterday I was able to get some double checking done on the next book in the Context for Kids series, which I completed at the beginning of the fall, before all this happened. My designer David Farley from dco branding is doing an amazing job on it, as always – and like a true brother, he has taken on some of the work that is usually mine in order to take pressure off of me.

December 7

Forgiveness isn’t a wiping of the slate clean, or a forgetting of sin – in fact, there can be no forgiveness without an identification of the offense. Forgiveness is instead a personal down payment on the promise of future reconciliation. Forgiveness says, “I just made your path to restoration possible, but only your regret, repentance, and commitment to rehabilitation can make it a reality.”

When have you truly forgiven from the depths of your heart? (And it IS a process, make no mistake) When the day comes when, like the father of the prodigal son, you excitedly start hoping that they will regret, repent, and return, so that they can once again be embraced (even if that embrace cannot be physical, but instead an acceptance into the Body of Messiah).

Note that forgiveness is not the same thing as refusing to press charges in case of a serious crime – we are still a people of justice and not injustice, we can forgive in our hearts and still know that God is not honored when oppressors are not held accountable.

December 8

The Peacefulness Project Week #3

Addiction, Peace, and Forgiveness: Are Addicts Entitled to Forgiveness?

Ever see those three words together in a sentence without a bunch of disclaimers? Me neither.

Speaking from experience as someone who grew up with an addict, and who was an addict, I can tell you quite plainly that addicts are not peaceful people – not on the inside or on the outside. Our existence is largely centered around the gratification of desires, a character flaw which drives us to seek out comfort, pleasure, distraction, stimulation, whatever. It can manifest itself through drugs (any drug), sex (including porn), food, violence (common with people addicted to control), obsessive video game playing, etc.

It can also manifest itself in demands for immediate forgiveness and reconciliation, which is what I want to discuss today.

Above all, addicts resent discomfort – it is offensive and must be remedied, immediately. What’s more, addicts feel entitled to comfort – even at the expense of the comfort of everyone around them. This is what makes them patently NOT peaceful people, not really. I was divested of the illusion that the problem was the drug of choice when the addict in my life gave up his drug yet retained the exact same character. Nothing changed. He came home, dying, had to give up his drug of choice, quit cold turkey and just found another. Every dream I had that the person himself would change were dashed, and every behavior I had blamed on the drugs turned out to just be him. Addicts are at war with discomfort, boredom, and anyone who stands in their way of relieving it.

This leaves the people in their lives with a concrete problem – addicts generally destroy relationships in one way or another. They do so over a long period of time: eroding trust, bank accounts, and their health – as well as the health (mental and physical) of those around them. One day, they may decide to give it all up, and when they do it without the benefit of a twelve-step program or other support group, they often become tyrants.

“I am trying, you need to forgive me!”

That is the cry of an addict who is still seeking comfort above everyone else’s needs.

It is true that, as believers, we are obligated to forgive (see yesterday’s post for an explanation of what that does and does not entail) – but that doesn’t mean we will be able to at the drop of a hat. It doesn’t mean that the addict’s victims are going to stop hurting, and begin trusting, or want to be close. That means this – although believers are obligated to forgive, the addict is not entitled to forgiveness, especially not on their own terms. When they expect a clean slate time and time again, they are treating their victims like robots who are expected to simply respond to each new attempt with as much hope as the first, second, third… and are not permitted to be hurt when the drug is chosen once more.

Addicts are used to setting the terms by which everyone else has to live. That doesn’t change when they give up their drug, it generally intensifies. Addicts, being self-focused and enabled (just try not enabling an addict when you are a child and he or she is your parent!), will leave the drug without really dealing with the self-centered attitude that rooted the addiction in the first place. They did the drug of choice because they wanted comfort, not the comfort of others, and the last thing they want when they give it up is to consider the needs of others over their own immediate desire for gratification.

Here’s the deal with sin – and I am not talking about a perceived slight or an accident, I am talking about genuine transgressions against other people. When we seriously transgress against another person, when we make the choice to do that, we need to go in with the knowledge that they may never forgive us, and that is their choice, a choice we have no control over. We don’t have a right to demand forgiveness, no one is entitled to it. When we damage lives, those lives don’t go back to normal just because we feel badly about it. If I beat you up ten times, and say I am sorry, that expression of remorse is not going to heal you or cause you to trust me, or give you a reason to reconcile whatever relationship we had before the first beating. I made an irrevocable choice, one that has long-lasting consequences, one of which might be that I don’t get you back. Even if you do forgive me, my choice to beat on you has consequences that forgiveness won’t erase. The sin happened, it is a matter of history that is unchangeable. I have no right to expect you to live as though it never happened.

Forgiveness, as I alluded to yesterday, is a refusal to have a two-sided sin war. It is a downpayment on future reconciliation IF certain conditions of righteousness are met. It doesn’t mean that you don’t call the police when I beat you up – I committed a crime and, for the safety of the community, I need consequences. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t defend yourself – but you don’t go any further than is required to do so. Forgiveness should be enacted, if we have been saved by the blood of the Lamb and have been forgiven our sins, because it is our obligation – a recognition of the debt we owe to our King. But forgiveness is not deserved, it is a free gift. It is always a free gift, whether divine or given by ourselves, but restoration and reconciliation must be earned. Forgiveness clears the path for the sinner so that nothing except themselves stand in the way of repentance. Forgiveness means that we refuse to retaliate sinfully in return for their sins. Forgiveness is the gift we give back to God, and we can do it because we know that the resurrection is real, and that justice will be performed, if not in this life, then in the world to come. Without that assurance, who could truly forgive without sinking into silent resentment?

Victims have rights, and yet believing victims also have obligations to be radically forgiving. It’s the high price tag for being conformed to the image of our King, it’s the small yet very costly price we pay to be like Yeshua/Jesus. It would be grossly unfair if it were not for the Resurrection. It would be horrifically unjust if we had not ourselves been forgiven. It is actually one of the reasons people decide to walk away from Christianity altogether. We want that radical forgiveness, but giving it causes us to balk.

The story of the Cross is that sinners get a gift that they don’t deserve. The story of the Cross is that each one of us got a gift that we didn’t deserve, and our part of that story is how we respond to it – no one, except ourselves, can decide how we will respond or will be held responsible for our response. The question is: How badly do we want to be like our Savior? Is it enough to learn how to carry the cross of radical forgiveness? To pick it up every single day and carry it? To learn and relearn to forgive with each new betrayal?

I tell you the truth, it is the only path to true peace with God, and if it were easy then everyone would do it.

December 10

Been thinking the last few nights about Saul, David, and Absalom. Author Gene Edwards wrote about them in a book entitled The Three Kings and I read it about fourteen years ago. It had some really profound truths in it about character that I have found to be quite the revelation in my own life. Saul, David, and Absalom provide us with brilliant Scriptural/historical examples of what happens when cowards, even anointed ones, come to power (they often become bullies), when anointed men, brave ones, are hunted (they will often run away, refuse to engage, and won’t retaliate in kind), when good men, anointed leaders, become intoxicated with power (others are violated), and when non-anointed, charismatic, appealing, self-appointed, angry men try to seize the Kingdom through violence (they become worse villains than the ones they ousted). I have dealt with all of these kinds of people over the last nineteen years, and especially over the past seven.

The internet has made the Sauls and Absaloms far bolder than they ever could be in real life where there are consequences and face to face meetings, and you actually have to live in the community you are impacting with your words and actions. An Absalom, who dazzled others with his beauty, his way with words, and his emotional displays, can gather quite the crowd around himself just by being angry and promising the world; he can quite make one forget that he hasn’t been anointed king! Then there are the Sauls – he seemed humble at first, right? He later became vengeful, paranoid and prone to fits of anger. So blinded by paranoia and anger, he hunted a man who kept avoiding him and who tirelessly worked for the good of the Kingdom that Saul had turned against him. And we can’t forget about David, who started and ended well, but in the middle became a typical ancient Near Eastern king capable of the worst of crimes.

We all want to see ourselves, and our favorite leaders, as David at the beginning. But we need to take a closer look, always. Are we (or our leaders) the hunters or the hunted. Are we prone to fits of anger, lashing out (even in private or behind the scenes), and destroying those we feel intimidated by, or are we the ones quietly working for the Kingdom while hunted, daring not to speak against those who hunt us because we fear and trust God? When we have a measure of authority, do we lord it over others as the Gentiles do – with oppression and vindictiveness? And when we have no authority, but only the feeling that we should have it because we are angry and because we can see what is wrong, do we try to seize the Kingdom by force and become guilty of worse than those whom we supplanted?

No tyrant ever felt as though he/she wasn’t perfectly justified. Therefore, we are just as capable of self-deception. When Saul and David were anointed, they received the Holy Spirit – therefore we can’t presume that we won’t fall to the same temptations when we want to badly enough.

Relational Sanity Pt 6: Remorse, reflection, responsibility and repentance

Often in our lives we are faced with people who are harmful, plowing through the lives of others like freight trains that have jumped the tracks. We can break these individuals down into two groups — the people who feel remorseful when they see the pain they cause and those who don’t. As there is no use whatsoever in talking about the second group (because they don’t care and therefore will not change), I am going to focus on the first – using King Saul as an example.

As we read through the accounts in I Samuel, we see that Saul is a very tormented individual – literally. God sends an evil spirit to vex him and Saul ends up struggling with it for the rest of his life instead of repenting and turning his life around. As we know, this is the point where David enters into the picture, having been brought to the palace in order to play music to soothe Saul by sending the evil spirit away for a time. Unfortunately, jealousy and paranoia get the best of Saul and he returns David’s service with violence. Saul throws spears at David; Saul conspires to have David killed in battle under the pretext of securing a dowry, and he even sends soldiers to his bedroom at night in an attempt to kill him. David escapes and spends years living in the wilderness of Israel, hiding in caves as Saul hunts him.

Twice during this time, David has the opportunity to kill Saul but he instead uses the opportunity to show Saul that he can be trusted. On both these occasions we see that Saul is grieved and filled with remorse when he sees that he has wronged David. But what exactly does remorse amount to?

Saul felt bad, and he briefly remembered David as a son, his loyal servant. He sees that the effects of his pursuit have been harmful, he feels guilty, and he goes home. Remorse is good as it shows the humanity of Saul, his ability to perceive that he has harmed someone else, but Saul never seems to reach the next step. You see, remorse can come from a place of empathy or it can come from a place of self-centeredness. There is a big difference between feeling bad for causing someone else pain, and simply feeling bad because we don’t like that the results of our actions have been negative. I think that Saul fell into the second category.

When we have done harm and feel badly, there are two paths we can take. The first is to reflect upon our actions and question them, and the second is to refuse to question our actions while simply regretting the results. For example, let’s pretend that I always speak my mind and I hurt you. I can either question whether or not I have the right to say whatever pops into my mind, and really analyze whether I am acting in a destructive, harmful and sinful way, or, I can simply regret that you were hurt by what I said and go on as though I haven’t done anything wrong, feeling badly that you feel badly, but under the delusion that I am justified. I submit that this is what Saul did, that he never took any time to reflect on whether or not his actions were evil. He said the right words, and then went home because he felt badly, but as we see he started up the pursuit again as though nothing had ever happened.

But perhaps he did reflect on his actions, which might have been why he went home. It is possible. Upon reflection, one has to make the next choice; do they accept responsibility? Responsibility says, “This poor guy, I have been chasing him for years, that’s on me. I chucked the spear at him, I commanded the soldiers to go kill him in the night, I have led the armies against him. No one else was responsible, it was me and I was wrong.” Now, the fact that he continued chasing David shows that he either didn’t reach this phase, or he decided that he was justified – but taking responsibility is meaningless if we have not rightly judged our actions. It is certainly easy to justify our sins towards others, even when they are innocent of evil against us. The human drive towards self-justification is a powerful one. But someone who truly takes responsibility for their actions in a righteous way will follow it up with repentance.

Saul spoke the words, but he never showed true repentance until the day he died. He continued to chase a man who was not his enemy, trying to kill him, and all because David was honored by the people. It is really too bad, because we see that God changed Saul’s heart when He made him king. That means that Saul had the opportunity to be a David, to found a great dynasty, to destroy the Amalekites and be a righteous man.

Now contrast this with David, who took another man’s wife, got her pregnant, and treacherously had her husband killed. When confronted with very great sins, he showed immediate remorse, he reflected, he accepted responsibility and he repented and never did anything like it again. That’s why David was a man after God’s own heart and Saul was not.

This is a lesson for all of us. Do we plunge ahead assuming that we are right and simply regretting that sometimes our methods injure the innocent, as though they are acceptable losses – or do we pause when we have damaged someone and re-evaluate ourselves? If our remorse does not lead to reflection, responsibility and repentance then we will have squandered our new hearts, and risk becoming illegitimate – regardless of whether we are kings or paupers.

Why did I place this under the “relational sanity” category? Because not only do we have to rightly judge ourselves in this area, but we also have to recognize that words do not always reflect true repentance. Actions over time reveal the fruit, but words are easy. We must forgive, but we do not need to trust someone who has been doing evil. Nowhere is there a biblical mandate to trust anyone, and not trusting Saul saved David’s life on more than one occasion. David looked at the fruit of Saul, his actions, and refused to trust him. David didn’t turn that mistrust into betrayal or take the opportunity to do evil, but he also wasn’t going to throw that mistrust out the window and act like a fool either. We must be gentle as doves, yes, but also wise as serpents.

What David teaches us about how to conduct ourselves when being hunted

First of all, thank you so much. Even though I have been off of facebook (and will remain gone until December 26) and wasn’t able to directly support the process, you got the word out and helped me to give away 555 more copies of my book on Kindle (no, I didn’t make that number up). So far, we have been able to give away 1419 copies, with more to come next year when I renew my kindle contract! I am so grateful for your support and help in all of this, and I pray fervently that this book is helping people understand the character of our great God and King, our Father and Master. It is such a privilege to be able to go before the world and teach about His character from the whole Word. He deserves out praise and He deserves to be known. Everything in our lives, everything we go through is secondary to promoting His glory through our behavior towards Him and each other. Let us never fail to love and guard one another, as he loves and guards us.

As I have been sharing lately, I have been teaching my sons from I Samuel for the past few weeks. And it is no secret that I love the character of David on the run, hiding in caves – an amazing man doing great things under terrible stress. I meditate upon him a lot because I see his character under persecution as what mine should look like but too often doesn’t. It is easy to lash out when wronged, but how did David handle the character assassination, the paranoia of king Saul, the actual attempts on his life, and the fact that people were aiding and abetting Saul’s attempts to hunt David down like a dog, or a flea (in David’s own words).

If anyone knew the literal ups and downs of life, it was David. The young man came in from tending the sheep one day, only to get drenched with oil by the hand of the last of the Judges, the prophet Samuel, and declared king! And instead of putting on airs, he went back to the sheep — not unlike his predecessor Saul, who went back home to his father. David ended up in court not through his own efforts, but because of his musical talents! He ended up fighting Goliath not because he rushed off to war, but because his father sent him to the front with supplies about 40 days later. He ended up a commander of men not because he sought it out, but because the king placed him in command. He ended up married to the king’s daughter because the king wanted David dead and had set a bride price of 100 Philistine foreskins, as David could never afford the bride price of a princess and yet also could not refuse the honor outright. David was honored by God, and being honored by God doesn’t mean that we will always do what is right, but it does mean that when people do wrong to us, it will often backfire in their faces if we do what is right (and sometimes even when we do wrong).

Saul was absolutely God’s anointed; there is no question about that. But being God’s anointed does not mean that one is automatically right, just, or faithful. God’s anointing wasn’t a total character override, giving Saul no choice but to act according to the will of God. The Spirit does not possess the believer, as though it was a demon. The Spirit guides, but we have control over ourselves. Saul had every opportunity to get it right, and he had Samuel there to guide him (how many of us wish we had someone like that to help us out?), but he made evil choices which resulted in him losing the Spirit, taking on a demonic spirit, and succumbing to paranoia and fear. He spent years hunting David down like an animal, without cause, and even though he sometimes came to his senses and realized it, he never allowed his momentary remorse to lead him into true repentance.

So, we have David who was accused without evidence; he was hunted, his allies were murdered, and he was treated with dishonor by the very people whom he was helping. What was David’s response? Was it a coup? Did he try to seize the throne? Goodness knows the kingdom would have been better off without Saul than with him. No, he did not move against Saul. In fact, we never see him working against Saul but only for the good of the kingdom, oftentimes behind the scenes quietly caring for shepherds and killing off the enemies of Israel, even while on the run. Not only was David often not honored by the very people he saved, but he was also forced to run lest they betray him to the king. Did David kill Israelites in revenge for their betrayal? No, he didn’t. David kept on fighting for them. David was not perfect; he had his moments of weakness. He almost killed the household of Nabal (for refusing to honor him), he cut off the hem of Saul’s garment (an act that meant rebellion in the ancient world) – but in each of those cases he was brought to repentance.

Righteous people, those with God’s own heart, have moments of great trial and testing and sometimes they make plans to do evil things and sometimes they even start down the road and sadly sometimes they even carry them out. The real measure of character is whether or not they can turn around once they have started. Regardless of what David did in his life, over and over again, even after doing great evil, he showed that he could turn around. He learned that lesson in the caves. In the caves is where David teaches us to be hunted without cause, and to not respond with evil. We need that lesson because there is nothing more tempting than to return evil for evil, and to even mistake that evil for righteousness. Most people would have said that Saul had an overthrow coming, and in the eyes of the world that might have been true, but God told David that he was the king and so David had to trust God to work out the details.

Did David confront Jonathan about the danger he was in? Yes he did. Did David try to recruit Jonathan to his side? No he didn’t. Did David confront Saul about his accusations? Yes he did, years later after refusing to kill him when he had the opportunity. David never tried to build an empire; David ran from his pursuers and did the work of YHVH and people chose to follow him. Everything David did preserved the lives of God’s people, whereas Saul endangered their lives. David refused to be treacherous (before he was king), whereas Saul lived by treachery, David held his tongue as Saul ranted, David never took the kingship from Saul but Saul took David’s wife and gave her to another. Saul swore oaths to refrain from harming David, only to break them. David swore never to do evil to Saul and kept his oath.

Saul was God’s anointed. The calling of God is without repentance, Saul sat as king until the day he died. People had a choice whether or not they wanted to follow Saul, but they didn’t have a choice as to whether he sat as king or not. That choice had been made by God. David understood that no matter what Saul did to him, that it was for God to remove him from the throne of Israel than to take matters into his own hands. Even though it took many years, God did remove him — but only after He had made David into the kind of man who knew how to respond to threats, disloyalty and slights to his honor without treachery. David had to become the kind of king who understood that the Kingdom is established on justice and righteousness, from the greatest to the least, and that to truly be a great king, one must exhibit the character of God. Saul was sadly never able to grasp that he wasn’t made king in order to be in charge for the sake of being in charge, he was king so that he could represent God and administer righteousness and justice to the people. The great kings that came after David did that, but the evil kings did not.

Being hunted is a dreadful thing, but it is not the most important thing. Being hunted is what is done to us, and we cannot control that. How we respond to being hunted is quite another. Everything done to us can change us for the better or for the worse, only we can decide which outcome will prevail. Perhaps it would be good for us to see ourselves as kings and queens in training, when we are being mercilessly hunted, and in that way it will be easier to redeem these evil times. David had a choice, to continue to be hunted or to end it all by hunting down Saul and in the end he decided that it was better to be the hunted than to be the hunter.

Jonathan and Saul — ignoring evil in the Body of Messiah

So often, when someone comes to me heartbroken about spiritual abuse (abuse carried out by a minister against a parishioner, often in full view of the congregation) they are not nearly as upset about what the minister did as they are about the lack of concern from their brothers and sisters who saw exactly what was going on. Imagine being violated in front of an audience who show no concern nor take any action against your attacker!

This week I am teaching my sons from I Samuel, and today we read chapters 21-23.

Jonathan loved David as himself, they were in Covenant together. Yet David routinely had spears chucked at him by Jonathan’s father King Saul, and even escaped a nighttime attempt on his life which also was ordered by Saul. So we have to wonder what was going on in Jonathan’s mind when David said, “Dude, your dad is like trying to kill me,” and Jonathan replied, “No way!” Seriously?

Um…. where was Jonathan where the spears were being hurled? It was Jonathan’s own sister in bed when the men came in to kill her husband, David. Good grief Jonathan, after the first spear got lodged in the wall the threat should have been rather difficult to ignore.

But I have seen this same thing happen in church. How many times does the pastor have to preach against people from the pulpit (either by name or with just enough details that everyone knows exactly who they mean) before someone starts thinking that “Hey, maybe this guy has a problem.”

Saul threw spears and sent armed soldiers, some pastors throw words and gossip over the phone. And yet the people closest to them turn a blind eye and dismiss the obvious, that the man with the spear, or the words, has become a threat to the Body. And the reason is generally the same. Saul was intimidated by David; he considered a man who loved him like a father to be a threat (even when no one else saw the threat). Oftentimes we see the same thing in church. No one else sees the threat, and so the Pastor has to make sure that everyone sees it. Just like Saul, who loved to tell people how dangerous David was to him, about the unsubstantiated threats to Saul’s life and throne, even though David never once acted against him. And evidently Saul was able to convince some people, because he never lacked for loyal minions willing to go hunt down David, despite their being no evidence of his guilt (apart from Saul’s accusations).

Interestingly enough, Jonathan refused to believe the overwhelming weight of evidence. He ignored the death threats, the actual attempts on David’s life, and the armed execution squad that invaded his own sister’s bedroom. He tried to deny it to David, and even tried to prove David wrong. It was only after three days of trying to prove David wrong that a spear hurled at his own head convinced him.

Isn’t that typical? So often in these situations, the people I talk to themselves turned a blind eye while the pastor abused whatever person was in line before them. It might be about wanting to put our faith in a man, but I know that a lot of it is simply about wanting church to go on as usual. We want the Pastor to look good so we can look good, so we can pretend that we are the right people who are doing the right things. Maybe we even see and we hope someone else will have the courage to speak up so we won’t have to. And so when the accusations come, we don’t question them the way we should; we don’t demand proof and we just continue to allow the anonymous character assassination to go on; we don’t consider how deeply crushing it is to someone to have no way to counter accusations that aren’t even being given out in the open (or even discussed in person), but instead hide behind the cowardice of anonymity. Or maybe we enjoy hearing someone rebuked as long as we don’t have to look them in the eye, as long as we assume they have it coming. But we can’t put our faith in any man to be that honest with no proof. It is an injustice to the accused when we sit through those accusations in silence, and not only that but paying him to to it!

So what convinced Jonathan? Jonathan was convinced when he got treated like David. Selective outrage is when we only respond when we are the offended party. when we or sometimes someone close to us is abused in some way. Until we feel the pain, the pain is deemed irrelevant and that is a terrible cancer within the Body.

Sadly, even after that attack, Jonathan stayed with the illegitimate ruler over the people when he could have given up his comforts to follow David. As a result, he got to watch (figuratively) the destruction of the priests of YHVH, from the city of Nob, as well as their families. He got to stand by as the Gibeonites (under Covenant with Israel) were slaughtered. David loved Jonathan, but I don’t. I have no respect for him; he stood by and allowed too much evil to happen to too many people — and he ended up dying right alongside his father. The consequence for tolerating injustice and oppression, in a Kingdom or in a Church, will be to share in the fallout when God restores righteousness and justice.

Honestly, it would be better to live in a cave with the King than to live in a palace with an oppressor.