Stop Pretending

Greetings All,

 

    This week's 'thought' comes to you from Mike Yaconelli's book, "Messy Spirituality."  The book claims to be, "a stong antidote for the spiritual perfectionism in us all..." giving us, "truths that can cut us loose from the tyranny of the ought-to's and open our eyes to the deep spirituality of being loved by the God who meets us and transforms us in the midst of a messy and unpredictable life."  It's a book that does live up to its claim.  

     As I have told others, I love the way he writes and the true stories he tells.  There is an honest, humble and gracious undercurrent that runs throughout the book, as well as a repeated emphasis on the need to be liberated from the pressure to "pretend" in our spiritual lives.  

    The following thought, in fact, comes from the section entitled,  "Unpretending."   And since I know that churches in particular can often be guilty of pressuring people to "pretend" -- and have even driven people from the church for being too honest -- I pray his words might heal and minister grace to you if that has been your personal experience. You may even want to pick up a copy of the book for yourself and then pass it on to others.  His perspective really is refreshing. Enjoy. 

"They were good in the worst sense of the word."

Mark Twain

       "There is no room for pretending in the spiritual life.  Unfortunately, in many religious circles, there exists an unwritten rule. Pretend. Act like God is in control when you don't really believe he is.  Give the impression everything is okay in your life when it's not.  Pretend you believe when you doubt; hide your imperfections; maintain the image of a perfect marriage with healthy and well-adjusted children when your family is like any other normal dysfunctional family.  And whatever you do, don't admit that you sin. 

        Practically, pretending is efficient, uncomplicated, and quick.  Answering 'Fine' to the question 'How are you doing?' is much easier and quicker than saying, 'Not very well, thank you; my back is bothering me, my teenage children are disappointing me, I'm unhappy with my body, my husband never speaks to me, and I'm wondering if Christianity is true.'   Honesty requires a huge investment of time and energy from the person asking the question (who would then wish they'd never asked). 

        Pretending is the grease of modern nonrelationships. Pretending perpetuates the illusion of relationships by connecting us on the basis of who we aren't.  People who pretend have pretend relationships.  But being real is a synonym for messy spirituality, because when we are real, our messiness is there for everyone to see. 

        Some people consider the use of words like messy spirituality rude and audacious.  "How dare you suggest that people are messy? What are you proposing?  Are you suggesting that sin is okay, that we should condone less than a 100 percent effort to serve God?  You are too negative.  It's not helpful to emphasize our flaws." But the truth is we are a mess.  None of us is who we appear to be.  We all have secrets.  We all have issues.  We all struggle from time to time.  No one is perfect.  Not one.  (I have just paraphrased Romans 3:10).   

        The essence of messy spirituality is the refusal to pretend, to lie, or to allow others to believe we are something we are not.  Unfortunately, people can handle the most difficult issues more easily than they can handle the lack of pretending. When you and I stop pretending, we expose the pretending of everyone else.  The bubble of the perfect Christian life is burst, and we all must face the reality of our brokenness.... 

        For a period of time, we were lucky enough to have a housekeeper.  She would come in once a week to dust, vacuum, and clean every little out-of-the-way corner of our house. I dreaded the day she came, because my wife and I would spend all morning cleaning the house for the housekeeper!  We didn't want the house to be dirty, or what would the housekeeper think?! 

        We act the same way with God.  We talk our way out of the spiritual life by refusing to come to God as we are.  Instead, we decide to wait until we are ready to come as we aren't.  We decide that the way we lived yesterday, last week, or last year makes us 'damaged goods' and that until we start living 'right,' we're not 'God material.'  Some of us actually believe that until we clean up the mess, Jesus won't have anything to do with us.  The opposite is true.  Until we admit we are a mess Jesus won't have anything to do with us. Once we admit how unlovely we are, how lost we are, Jesus shows up unexpectedly.  

         According to the New Testament, Jesus is attracted to the unattractive.  He prefers the lost ones over the found ones, the losers over the winners, the broken instead of the whole, the messy instead of the unmessy, the crippled instead of the non-crippled.... I want my crippled soul to escape the cold and sterile spirituality of a religion where only the perfect nondisabled get in.  I want to lurch forward to Jesus, where the unwelcome receive a welcome and the unqualified get qualified.  I want to hear Jesus tell me I can dance when everyone else says I can't.  I want to hear Jesus walk over and whisper to this handicapped, messy Christian, "Do you want to dance?""

   

        Being open, transparent, and honest (that is, refusing to pretend) is frightening.  And the reason it's so frigthening is because we are always unsure of how people will react when are (even close friends).  It's scary to expose your soul in a place where others will not.  Yaconelli is right, the person who "stops pretending exposes the pretending of others," and that can make those "others" every uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable to the point where they avoid that person who is not willing to pretend.  

      That's my subtle way of saying we need to stop pretending, but we also need to choose wisely whom we bear our souls to, since not everyone in any given church can handle it or respond to it with grace. 

        Sinners (even of the more "notorious" brand) felt comfortable and safe bearing their soul around Jesus (John 4). Yet, as far as we can see, being able to do so actually led to their conversion.   

  
      May we who are His followers -- called to imitate Him and His ways -- also make others feel the same around us.

         

        To the greater praise of His grace,  Pastor Jeff

Called

Greetings All,

 

      This week's 'thought' comes to you from "The Call -- Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life," by Os Guiness.  It's a book that is profoundly insightful, intellectually and spiritually stimulating, and personally encouraging, while also being challenging. If you want to understand postmodern culture -- and especially want to help your older children or other young people find direction and a way through the maddening maze of contemporary life-alternatives -- this book is extremely helpful.  Guiness has an uncanny grasp of human need, sees the big picture, and relates it to the smaller details of modern life very well. 

      I know this quote is long, but ask you not to ignore it for that reason!  It was difficult to condense into a short selection, since the whole chapter is so good.  It comes from the chapter entitled: "A Focused Life."   If you are one who often feels like life is confusing, superficial, too fast-paced and overloaded with too many alternatives, options and choices, you may gain helpful insight and guidance for your dilemma from his words -- words you can share with others.  Enjoy.  

    "Pluralization is the process by which the proliferation of choice and change rapidly multiplies the number of options. This affects modern society at all levels, from consumer goods to relationships to worldviews and faiths... The modern world offers an endless range of choice and change, overwhelming traditional simplicities and cohesion.... Life has become a smorgasbord with an endless array of dishes.  And more important still, choice is no longer just a state of mind. Choice has become a value, a priority, a right.  To be modern is to be addicted to choice and change.  These are the unquestioned essence of modern life.  

    Some of the effects of pluralization are desvastating... For example, the increase in choice and change leads to decrease in commitment and continuity -- to everyone and everything. Thus, obligation melts into option and choice.  Other effects are also terribly obvious -- above all the way in which choice and change lead quickly to a sense of fragmentation, saturation, and overload.  In the modern world there are simply too many choices, too many people to relate to, too much to do, too much to see, too much to read, too much to catch up with and follow, too much to buy.  

     Each choice sprouts with its own questions.  Might we? Could we? Should we? Will we? Won't we? What if we had? What if we hadn't? The forest of questions leads deeper and deeper into the dark freedom, then to the ever darker anxiety of seemingly infinite possibility. At some point different to us all, a cut-off switch kicks in.  We are overloaded, saturated. There is too much to do and too little time to do it.  But life goes on.  Neither planning nor juggling can span the gap.  But life goes on.  At the level of our relationships alone, their sheer number, variety, and intensity become impossible. But life goes on. One minute we feel the vertigo of unlimited possibility and the next the frustration of superficiality. But life goes on. 

     The result is not only overload but also a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life. Experience comes to us shredded into fragments and episodes.  Each moment stands on its own, with neither roots in any yesterday, not consequences for any tomorrow.  Like a sound-bite or a headline, each experience bursts into our attention and quickly fades from our memory. So today's rage is ridiculous tomorrow; today's celebrity is tomorrows bore.  Not surprisingly, attention-deficit is a contemporary disorder and genuine tradition is a scarce commodity. 

      Stone, it is said, was the medium for the ancients and steel for the early moderns; ours is plastic and the name of the game is recycling.  'One-and-only' and 'forever' are obsolete, and 'needing more space' is our most readily given excuse.  In our fragmented lives the one thing necessary is to "keep our options open." The art of "identity building" is more a matter of fluidity than fixture.  And since the rules of the game change as fast as the games themselves, we are taught to avoid above all else, being 'stuck' with commitments that might 'mortgage' the freedom of tomorrow...

   Yet the very character of [our God-given] calling counters the fragmentation and overload at key points and opens up the secret of a focused life in a saturated world: First, calling subverts the deadly modern idolatry of choice... Choice for modern people is a right that overwhelms both responsibility and rationality... But, ultimately, only one thing can conquer choice -- being chosen.  

    Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental poison of choice in modern life. 'I have chosen you,' Jesus said, 'you have not chosen me.' (John 15:16) 'We are not our own, we were bought with a price.' (I Cor. 6:19-20)  We have no rights, only responsibilities.  Following Christ is not our initiative, it is merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling.  Once we have been called, we literally 'have no choice.'

    Second, calling provides the story line for our lives and thus a sense of continuity and coherence in the midst of a fragmented and confusing world.  The saturation and overload produced by pluralization, and reinforced by mobility, are a leading cause of modern alienation.  If we have lived too many places, had too many jobs, known too many people, and watched too much TV, how do we make sense of it all?  Is there a story line to our lives or are they just a jumble of experiences that are, 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'?... 

     Whenever we feel this dilemma, calling reminds us that there were nomads before modern mobility -- and calling gave them meaning.  Thus Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees and followed the call of God without knowing where he was going. The people of Israel crossed a trackless desert following a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  In both cases their sense of direction and meaning came soley from God's call, not from their foresight, their wisdom, or their ability to read their circumstances. They were on their way to a land of promise.  They did not always know the way God was leading them, but they always knew why they trusted God: His word was the promise and his call was the way...  Follow the call of Christ despite the uncertainty and chaos of modern circumstances, and you have the story line of your life.

    Third, calling helps us to be single-minded without being fanatics. Modern choice and change, reinforced by the pace and pressure of modern life, constantly threaten to diffuse our concentration and dissipate our energy... The dangerous notion that 'the need is the call,' is a sure recipe for overload and confusion... The remedy, needless to say, lies in setting wise goals and setting aside everything else.  But how? Long ago the writer of Proverbs observed, 'Folly may amuse the empty-headed, but a man of understanding makes straight for his goal.'  More recently, Harvard philosopher George Santayana wrote, "in accomplishing anything definite a man renounces everything else' ....

     A sense of calling helps because it provides the bull's-eye at the center of the widening concentric circles that are life's possibilities.  Modern life assaults us with an infinite range of things we could do, we would love to do, or some people tell us we should do.  But we are not God and we are neither infinite nor eternal.  We are quite simply finite. We have only so many years, so much energy, and so many bank notes in our wallets... Let God's calling be the ultimate compass in your life... [For] calling is a 'yes' to God that carries with it a 'no' to the chaos of modern demands, and helps us trace and unriddle the meaning of our lives in a chaotic world."    

       We live in a challenging era, where living out our faith in Christ is difficult (maybe more difficult than ever before), and thus empathy and compassion for struggling and lost souls, and not anger, or an escapist desire for a "return to simpler days," needs to drive us to offer advice such as which Mr. Guiness gives. Advice which is intelligent, coherent, wise, and finds its source in the high calling of God, and not your typical superficial remedies.

                             That we may all reorient ourselves to the compass point of His call, 

Pastor Jeff

Read

Greetings All,

 

     Today's 'thought' comes to you from William Booth (1829–1912).  He was a British Methodist preacher who founded "The Salvation Army" and became its first General (1878–1912). With much embarrassment I must confess that even into my late teen years I thought, "The Salvation Army" was given that name because it saved clothes to give to poor people.  All I knew of this group was that they had big red drop-off bins in grocery store parking lots where people could place used items they no longer wanted.  It wasn't until I studied church history that I discovered its Christian roots, and its evangelistic purposes, and specifically the fascinating life and vision of William Booth -- a man who was intent on living a well-rounded Christian life -- one that sought total consecration to the Lord, preached the Gospel, sought personal godliness or holiness, and sacrificed to help meet the needs of the less fortunate.  Booth even started farms in the countryside of England where the homeless and unemployed of London were housed in "barracks," taught a trade, instructed in the Scriptures, and given food and work.  But I will leave it to you to research his many accomplishments. Their ongoing charitable work speaks for itself.

 

     This thought is a personal admonition (by way of a letter) to those who had joined "the Army."  To follow it completely you need to know the denomination is set up in a somewhat military-like organizational structure (even to this day).  Booth was the "General," and pastors were "officers," and others in the "Corps" were soldiers. He spoke to them all as his "comrades" in the work of the Gospel (thus the greeting of the letter and parts of its content). 

 

     The letter tells them how they as Salvationists should view the Bible, though we would all do well to heed his words -- especially those of us who have, like them, come to experience the salvation of which it speaks.  Enjoy.

 

   "My Dear Comrades,

        I desire to offer you some counsel about the Bible.  You all know that the Bible is a very important Book, and I have no doubt you set great weight in it.  Indeed, I am pleased to learn that, of late, more thought is being given to its pages than ever throughout the Salvation Army.  But still, I am afraid that the precious Book does not receive the attention that it demands.

 

        Let me try to say a word or two that will be likely to better impress upon you its great value.  The Bible is a very wonderful book.  It's very name signifies this, for the word 'Bible' simply means 'the book,' so that when we say the Bible, we mean that it is The Book; the book which, above every other, a man should know, treasure, and obey.  If a wise man were offered the Bible on the one hand, or all the books in the world on the other, he would choose the Bible... Oh precious Book!  What a priceless blessing it has been to The Salvation Army. 

 

       Now, my comrades, I want to ask this question: What ought you to do with the Bible?  Ought you to neglect it -- pass over it for the newspaper, the story book, or other rubbish?  By no means. That is how the godless world around you deals with the precious treasure. 

 

      What, then, ought you to do?  I will tell you.  The very least that you can do with the Bible is read it.  If I, as your General, sent you a letter, you could not do less than read it over, try to understand it, and strive to do what I requested in it.  The Bible is a letter from your Heavenly Father; you cannot do less with His letter than you would do with one from your general.

 

      Next, read it alone. Read a few verses at a time. Read them on your knees. Read them as you walk the streets, while you take your midday meal, when you rise in the morning, when you retire at night, and read the blessed book in your spare moments.  Read it in your families.  Impress its precious truths on your children (if you are parents). Explain them to the ignorant -- make them understand.

 

       See to it that you experience in your own hearts the blessings the Bible offers you.  Remember, it will be little better than a curse to you if you only know the Word, and do not possess and live in the spirit of it.  If you only 'believe' it with your head and do not enjoy the things that it describes and accept the mercy, wash in the fountain, receive the Holy Ghost, and live and die in the light and joy of its good tidings, then it will only add to your condemnation and guilt. 

 

       In the same way, fulfill the duties it commands.  It is the doers of the Word who are blessed.  Make it the guide of your life -- at home, abroad, in your Corps, in sickness and health, in joy and sorrow, everywhere you go -- in the streets, in the barracks, in your home, and at your work; everywhere, tell the glad tidings.

 

       Oh, my Comrades, do not let the Bible rise up in judgment against you, as it surely will if you either neglect it, or if in reading and knowing about the salvation and victory of which it tells, you do not enjoy that salvation and experience that victory."

 

 

        His words are nothing but wise, godly, common sense advice from a Christian leader to his followers. 

We would do well to take his words to heart -- for the sake of a greater consecration to Christ, 

 

 Pastor Jeff