Finding Coherence

Who knew one podcast could spawn so many posts.  At about the 27 minute mark, Mike talks about putting down all the books down and just waiting–”being.”

I am embracing this idea more and more.  I originally thought the gateway to relationship with God was more knowledge.  This has been helpful to an extent, but it has its limits.  If knowing God is a relationship, then all the “knowledge” in the world about that relationship without experience will be empty.  I think that is where I find myself today.  This seems like a natural tie-in to Truth and Interpretation.

Another area of my life where I’ve stopped striving so hard and “doing” is finding a church.  In my background regular church attendance was always the paragon of a good Christian and sin if you didn’t.  I don’t buy that any more.

Thinking more about the conversation with Mike Steele I was struck by his comment about being able to feel loved.  I think this can be a real struggle.

It’s easy to assume that anyone can receive love just like the assumption that anyone likes a gift.  I have encountered people that have a hard time receiving gifts and sometimes I do too.  In the same way I think it can be hard to receive love.

An interesting book I read recently was called Receiving Love by Harville Hendrix and Hellen Hunt.  Overall it was very thought provoking if not a little heavy in places.  One of the chief points of the book is that if you don’t love and accept yourself, it’s difficult to receive it from others.  It also suggests that people often blame the other person for not caring about them or loving them when in fact it is their own inability to receive and absorb the love being sent their way that is the real problem.

I’ve always assumed that I couldn’t feel God’s love because he wasn’t there or I just didn’t get it.  I wonder how much of my inability to feel God’s love is the same as in regular relationships where I question if I’m good at that or not.

I wonder how much our own personal make-up and past hurts play into feeling loved by God?  I’ve always thought of God in a special category that can break through all of our barriers.  Maybe just because it involves God doesn’t make it magically different.  Perhaps geting to a better place in human relationships and learning to feel love there will also help me when it comes to God.

We are coming up on two years since we’ve regularly attended church.  Am I a different or worse (back slidden–is that a word?) person because I haven’t gone?  I was raised to believe this is true.  Now I’m not so sure.  In fact as more time goes by the more content I feel about not being at church and seeking God in my own way and in his timing.

The thought of not taking our child to church does nag at me, though my spouse likes to remind me that growing up at church didn’t seem to have helped me a lot.

In that light this podcast on Contentedness at The God Journey added more to those thoughts.  Wayne says (around the 30:30 minute mark),

I hear question asked, “How are my kids ever going to know God without Sunday school?” and my answer usually is, where I am in this journey now, “How are your kids ever going to learn to follow God if they go to a Sunday school and God just becomes an idea and a manager of principles instead of getting to know God as their father?”

Earlier in the conversation Kevin espouses the same view, noting one of their children never grew up in church and how it hasn’t affected her relationship with God.  He also suggests that, “God doesn’t need the structures to enable Children to grow in relationship to him.” (30:08)

I’m still not sure what to think and feel about all this, but I do think they are really onto something with this idea that it is more about being than it is doing (my words).

I love how absolutely raw and honest this conversation with Mike Steele is on The God Journey.  Towards the middle there are some long pauses and emotion where you can sense how deeply Mike is feeling and experiencing these things.

I love how he talks about how he had it all together and then how he didn’t.  I love how he talks about waiting for God and figuring out what God is doing and joining God there.  I love how he completely blows up the notion that it is all about converting souls, “being involved in ministry,” and “doing.”

So much of the Christian sub-culture I grew up in was focused on serving, doing, and converting.  Some leaders liked to get people’s attention by stating that, “the Great Commission was not a suggestion.”  It was a command that must be followed or sin would result.

Certain charismatic leaders like Tony Campolo knew exactly where that could and couldn’t happen.  He made it clear in a talk at my college–working in the inner city with kids without hope? Absolutely.  Somewhere where you might make money or be comfortable?  No way.  In Tony’s words,  ”IBM doesn’t need another Christian businessman.”  Nice to know Tony had it all figured out for everyone.  I wonder if he really believes this or if he was just being dramatic to make a point.

The big takeaway for me from the podcast and thinking about Tony’s statement is that it is nobody else’s business, but yours to figure out what God wants you to do.  The timeline will probably not meet other people’s expectations either.

Many corners of conservative Christianity invest a lot energy in being “right” on their theological views and “right” on the moral issues of the day that threaten to unravel society as we know it.  I love the second paragraph of this quote from Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle (page 72):

Jesus and Petra are on the same page here.  They chose a oneness in kinship and a willingness to live others’ hearts.  Jesus was not a man for others.  He was one with others.  There is a world of difference in that.  Jesus didn’t seek the rights of lepers.  He touched the leper even before he got around to curing him.  He didn’t champion the cause of the outcast.  He was the outcast.  he didn’t fight for improved conditions for the prisoner.  He simply said, “I was in prison.”

The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place–with the outcasts and those relegated to the margins.

I’d add, “it doesn’t matter if others are in the margins or in the swankiest places on earth.”  Just stand (be) with people where ever.  We make a more meaningful impact in each others lives when we stand with them–no matter where they are–instead of judging where they are (evaluating right vs. wrong).

Now, the super hard part is actually doing this instead of just talking about it and reflecting upon what a “nice idea” compassion is in this post.

It occurred to me today that it is really easy to be “against” or look down on other groups that you don’t agree with.  Even as Wayne and Brad critique “religion” and the institutional church they are often careful to note that if what is going on in other places works for the people that are there–more power to them–they want to be careful not to discount God’s reality there.  Wayne and Brad don’t do it perfectly, but I think it is something to strive for.

Along the way I found a genere of blogs that do nothing but poke fun at and report on the worst, most painful aspects of Christian sub-culture they can find.  At first it was funny and somewhat elluminating but after following one blog track the unfolding drama at a popular church I felt worse.

At first the funny church signs and unbelievable youtube videos were funny.  After a while they were depressing–not funny.

I want to be on a quest that makes sense of my world, how I live in it and where God fits into it.  I want to expend my energy and focus on finding ways to make things better and experience life in fuller and more coherent ways.  I don’t need to read and see repeated examples of how broken Christian sub-culture is.  I’ve already experienced it.

In a “law of attraction” type way, it is a better to focus on what I want and am on a quest for and less on all the things I don’t want or don’t like.  In other words, put more energy towards the things I want to move closer to and less energy towards the things I want to leave behind.

I’ll continue to examine what hasn’t worked for  me, the things I question, and the experiences that were detrimental.  Yet I hope that won’t be the overall sum of what I write about.  I anticipate a period of time to detox from my past, however my true hope is to take a more optimistic tone and reach a place of being able to explain how I got on the path making sense of my life and the steps I took to put things together in a way that is coherent and helpful to others.

This ends my 30 day challenge to post something everyday–with 23 minutes to spare.  Going forward I expect to publish at least weekly or until I change my goal.

It’s a day of no progress, or at least no visible progress that I can see.

Questions running through my head:

• What if my boss knew how little I was getting done today?
• Why did I start the day with such a clear picture of what I would accomplish?
• Why is my day over and I’ve failed to execute the “clear picture” I had in my head?
• Why is this so hard?
• What is wrong with me?
• What can’t this be better/different?
• I’m probably the only person this happens to
• Other perceive me as a center of productivity–how I have a managed to fool everyone?
• Will I have to work tonight after dinner?  I don’t want to work tonight after dinner. I was planning to have a hard cut-off before dinner for a better separation between work and home/play
• When will this get better?
• Am I destined to a life of occasionally satisfying work?
• I wonder if really successful bands have days like mine–how could they if they’ve been together for 30 years?
• Do I have 30 years of this ahead of me?
• What could I have done to live today differently that would have had a better outcome?
• What if I’d spent more time cleaning off my desk instead of reading email?
• What if there was less clutter on my desk?
• What if I wrote more when I felt stuck?
• How about more exercise?
• Why can’t I exercise more, “tomorrow” always seems to be foiled by something else.
• Why is everything I touch so difficult?  I want something to work the first time.

Realizations:

• I won’t always feel this way
• This is just a moment
• It’s never too late to turn the current day around
• Write three things down on tomorrow’s “todo” list that I WON’T do that have the potential to make the day better.
• Exercise comes one day at a time and builds to the next.  I did exercise today.  Celebrate the victory of that.
• Will the timer ever ring?

Whew.  This writing sprint is over (10 minutes on the kitchen timer–writing without stopping).  I feel a little better and I see some insights above.  I bet someone could do some interesting analysis on me in terms of the thoughts in my head.

I got the idea of writing sprints from Christian Baldwin’s Lifelines.  They are magical.  And just like that I have a post for today when I had no idea 30 minutes ago what it would be.

Sometimes I think prayer makes God a cosmic vending machine.  It makes me uncomfortable in a way I can’t quite explain.  It seems too simplistic and selfish to just go to God with everything we want or think we need.

Sometimes when I pray I wonder if I should.  Sometimes when I pray I wonder if it matters.  Why do we need to pray if God already knows what we need?  Or why do we pray for someone to be healed of a disease when we know God may or may not intervene and it is beyond our control.

I’ve heard it said in Christian circles when someone is miraculously healed of a disease that it happened because “so many people were praying.”  Does that mean if only one person had prayed God would not have healed them, but because 1,000 did, God was convinced to act or change his mind?

If God is omniscient and omnipotent, how can what he does or does not do depend our “level of effort?” So if I push the button enough times or hard enough (like when you think it will make the elevator come sooner) on the vending machine that is God, he will give me what I ask for?  Something feels off about that too.

Something was said at the church I visited a while back in this regard.  It was about the importance of members going to a special room at the church before the services started to pray for the services so that God would bless the service and minster to the people attending.  The pastor admonished people to come because, “It does matter and it does make a difference.”

This strikes me as an overly simplistic and limiting way of looking at God and prayer.

I hear it as  ”If people pray for the service it turns out good” which implies the converse, “If people don’t pray for the service it doesn’t turn out as well”–In other words, “if you don’t put your money (time and prayers) in the vending machine, God won’t drop out as much good stuff at the bottom of the machine (people blessed in a certain way, get their needs met, etc.).

Disclaimer: This is what strikes me today.  It’s very possible (like a lot of what I write on this site) that I’m missing something or looking at things through the wrong lens.  Other perspectives along with your constructive thoughts and ideas are welcome in the comments.

Another thoughtful podcast by Brad and Wayne on the The God Journey podcast titled Living Truly.  It’s primarily a follow-up to the Spiral of Silence with a great discussion at the end about living in a relationship people instead of trying to change them.  In the last few minutes of conversation they quote a sermon by George MacDonald that really resonated with me (emphasis mine).

My work was not to destroy the false, except as it came in the way of building the true. Therefore I sought to speak but what I believed, saying little concerning what I did not believe; trusting, as now I trust, in the true to cast out the false, and shunning dispute. Neither will I now enter any theological lists to be the champion for or against mere doctrine. I have no desire to change the opinion of man or woman. Let everyone for me hold what he pleases. But I would do my utmost to disable such as think correct opinion essential to salvation from laying any other burden on the shoulders of true men and women than the yoke of their Master; and such burden, if already oppressing any, I would gladly lift. Let the Lord himself teach them, I say. A man who has not the mind of Christ–and no man has the mind of Christ except him who makes it his business to obey him–cannot have correct opinions concerning him; neither, if he could, would they be of any value to him: he would be nothing the better, he would be the worse for having them. Our business is not to think correctly, but to live truly; then first will there be a possibility of our thinking correctly.  One chief cause of the amount of unbelief in the world is, that those who have seen something of the glory of Christ, set themselves to theorize concerning him rather than to obey him. In teaching men, they have not taught them Christ, but taught them about Christ.

The gist of their discussion is the value of letting every person have their own journey and not trying to make sure each person is “doing it the right way.”  If there needs to be a change in someone’s life, let God be responsible for it.  I highly recommend the last ten minutes of the podcast.

If you like to read books on Kindle, Amazon has a number of George MacDonald’s books for free.  Two that shouldn’t be missed are The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie.

Great podcast by the guys at The God Journey called the Spiral of Silence.  The basic gist of the topic they cover is how groups behave differently as a group compared to what individual members of the group believe privately.

I definitely see threads of this phenomenon acting itself out in churches, at work, and in family settings.  I don’t think I can do justice trying to sum the whole podcast up, but here are some quotes and ideas that hit me.

• People fear being rejected by their social circles so they remain silent even if the group or the leader espouses an idea they disagree with or don’t believe.  This happens in families, churches, companies, etc.
• People use conscious or unconscious disapproval to keep other people in line–”If you disagree with me, our relationship is compromised.”
• Creating a place where people can be genuinely themselves is true freedom even if others disagree with them.
• “Can you relate to someone where what you’re gifting relationship with is a sense of security?  Because then you get the gift back of the real them.”
• agreement with the majority is essential for relationship or inclusion
• if you disagree with me, our relationship is compromised
• “placating the social crowd.. I don’t want to do anything negative or that turns the crowd against me and so I complicity go along with things I don’t really go along with.”
• conformity based systems create this “spiral of silence” because I SHOULD
• “asking the wrong question marginalizes you as a rebellious person that cannot go along with what God has revealed to me.”

Part of finding my own voice several years ago was a good block of time I spent at L’Abri.  There for the first time I found an environment where I was accepted for who I was–not what I thought or believed.  It was also a place where conformity to the group was not expected and there was room to wrestle with questions and reject paradigms without being rejected or pitied.

L’Abri was a place where true relationship could happen for me because I didn’t have to maintain any pretenses or remain silent when something didn’t make sense or square with my life experiences.  As much as I long for it, I’ve yet to find this freedom or acceptance in any type of institutional church setting.  There are always seem to be “norms” and “expectations” and what is considered “normal vs. weird.”

Much like they describe in the podcast, in these settings the best and safest option really is to keep your mouth shut and just say everything is okay.  Occasionally I crossed that line, but that usually resulted in some deer in the headlights looks by people who didn’t know how to handle it or know what to say.  That just made it uncomfortable for everyone so I went back to playing it safe.