My Christmas Confession

“All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means 'God is with us').”  --  Isaiah 7:14 NLT

On this Christmas eve of 2018, I have a confession to make.  

I don’t like the word Immanuel, or Emmanuel, and would much prefer it being cut out of the Bible.    Eliminated from all Christian faith, or at least my own faith.  And I say this not because I lack faith in God.  Rather, I lack faith in myself.

Let me try and explain.

See, the world Emmanuel, which means God with us, suggests in my mind that God is reaching down to take my hand and walk with me when I would much rather He pick me up and carry me.  I’ve stumbled and fallen down on my own and, in my humble opinion, it’s time for God to come and pick me up and just take over control of my life for me.   I want God to be “for” me, not “with” me.

I lack faith in myself to do this “with” business that the word Emmanuel challenges me to expect.  I don’t need God’s hand to walk with me.  I don’t need God’s influence.  I need God’s arms to carry me.  I need God’s control.   

Or, at least that’s what I want.  I think I need it, but I really want it because I lack faith in myself.   

What I want for Christmas is a God who will pick me up and carry me, and who will control this dark world in these troubled times and make it all better and brighter.  A God who will do “for” and not “with” us.   A God who will be "the" light, not tell me to also be the light or let "my" light so shine.  

I confess that where Christmas is concerned, I don’t want a human baby who will come and live with me.   I don’t want the Christ-child of Bethlehem.   I want the Christ-adult of Calvary.   I want a divine Savior who will go straight to the Cross and die for me so I don’t have to die.   I don’t want to have this Christ who lives here to teach and preach and say I should take up my own cross and follow him.  I want a Christ who will do things for me, not say things with me.   

I want a sky-God who will take control, not an earth-God who will give influence.  

I want God to come and condemn this crazy world, not save it.   Or, put another way, I want a God who will save the world “for” me or save me “from” the world.  Not a little baby of Bethlehem who will save the world “with” me letting my own light shine and taking up my own cross.  I want a simple divine Christ who will say “believe me,” not a complicated human Christ who will say “follow me.”   I want a Christmas God who will come down, pick me up, and carry me out of this place of stumbling and fallen humanity.  That’s what I want for Christmas from God.

Instead, the Bible uses the term Emmanuel. 

Perhaps God knows what I want but also cares even more about what I really need this Christmas. I need Emmanuel.  I need to follow the child of Bethlehem.  I need that human hand in mine to walk with.  That human ear and that human voice to pray with.  I need a God I can do things with.   I need a God who empowers me, not overpowers me.   I need a God who influences me, not controls me.   I need a God who enables me to help save the world, not condemn it.   Who helps the world survive, not end.   Who helps transform the world into God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I need a God who dies with me, not for me.   A God who leads me to a cross where, in losing my own life I am saved. 

 

I need Emmanuel.

Yet, I confess that’s not what I’ve asked for.   No.   I’ve been asking for that one set of footprints in the sand where God is carrying me.   Where I don’t have to stand back up and walk “with” God’s human hand in mine, feet alongside mine, and making two sets of footprints after all.

O come, O come Emmanuel.   God, give me all that I need this Christmas, even if it’s not what I’ve always wanted.  Give me back those two sets of footprints after all.                

      

About getting through the getting through

I made a lot of mistakes as a Pastor.

Even prior to my second retirement, while serving as an Associate for Pastoral Care in our local parish, I made one having to do with the annual Longest Night service I was in charge of on the evening of Dec. 21, 2014.  I can still remember it well, but there was as in most mistakes a helpful lesson to be learned through it all.

I had four ladies from our Grief Ministry team all set to read four scripture passages during the service from what we call the Psalms of Lament.   I would then key in a message of how, like the ancient Hebrews, we might celebrate God’s presence even in our darkest of times.  

Fair enough.  

But what was unfair to these ladies is that ahead of their readings came a song I had asked our Men’s Quartet to sing.  It was that old secular classic by Billy Hayes and Jay Johnson titled, “Blue Christmas.”    Yes, that one.   The one Elvis made famous, with lyrics such as:

I'll have a blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue just thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won't be the same dear, if you're not here with me

And when those blue snowflakes start falling
That's when those blue memories start calling
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue blue blue Christmas

By time for them to stand for their readings, all four of our ladies were bawling and sniffling and struggling to stay composed enough to handle their parts in the service.   Their anguished memories of loved ones lost was more than enough to ruin their presentations no matter how many times they had privately rehearsed their respective readings beforehand.

I had messed up by putting that song in just ahead of their parts.   Worse yet, I’d failed to warn them in advance.  Even at the age of 68, I was still making my share of Pastoral errors. 

My message that followed may or may not have redeemed me in some fashion that evening, but I do remember at least trying to make clear this one point:  being blue today does not mean having to stay blue tomorrow.   This, too, can pass.   We really can get through the getting through, at least to some positive extent.  

As Pastors, we even get through our own mistakes and move on.  Still making our share of errors in the field, but at least different ones next time.   And in that respect, we all are or can be like the Hebrew people who in exile could find no way to sing a happy song.   They had every reason to cry out their laments of woe.    Every reason to be blue.   But being blue today doesn’t mean having to stay blue tomorrow.   There is such a reality as a return from exile.   Not to how things had been before but to how they can become again, if that makes any sense.  

And with God’s help, I think it does make sense.

For those of us going through a tough time this month in anticipation of Christmas.   For those finding it hard to sing a happy song in a foreign land, as it were.   For us we may indeed be blue today.   But we don’t have to stay blue tomorrow.  

We can be like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.   That’s right.  The poet.  Who back in the year 1863 found himself on the verge of having a very blue Christmas.   It had been a bad year.  And Henry had every reason in the world to lament.  

Approaching Christmas day and the bittersweet sound of those church bells to come, Henry couldn’t get over thinking about even his first wife, Mary, who had died all the way back in 1835 during her miscarriage.   Then just two years ago he had buried his second wife, this time after a fatal fire.  They had but one child, a son named Charles, who earlier that year had left home against Henry’s wishes and joined the Union Army.   Our nation’s Civil War was raging on, and now word had come that Charles lay wounded in an Army Hospital far from home.  

It would be a blue, blue, blue Christmas. Or so Henry thought as he penned these words of rhyme onto paper one day: 

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,
'For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.'

But here’s what made the difference for Henry.  Here’s what made it possible for him to get through the getting through.   It’s what helped him be blue today but not stay blue tomorrow.  It’s a verse we can all rejoice in reading together even now out loud.   Yep.  I know it’s just a blogpost that you’re reading, but go ahead and let yourself read these words aloud even now.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
'God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.'

Whatever your year has been like.   Whatever mood you are in today.   Whatever mistakes you may have made in the past.   There’s always more to your story.   And it will be about getting through the getting through.    

The United Guests of America

We are most honored to be the Thanksgiving guests of Karl & Linda Mattila today.   Thank God for friends who are inclusive enough to welcome us as family!

This brings to mind, for me at least, the origins of our nation’s thanksgiving mythology.   The one where our so-called American Indian hosts welcomed our European “caravan” as guests. Well, actually that’s the alternative myth.  In our telling, we “white folks” were the hosts and Tisquantum, aka Squanto, was a guest of “our” pilgrims. 

I’m thankful today for our native American forefathers and mothers.  And for our pilgrim guests and their legend of gratitude upon this north American continent.

The rest is history in terms of our pilgrim heritage.  Not long after their dubious entry into that original native American community, these pilgrims developed what we’ve come to call our “ownership society.”   And with ownership, we’ve accumulated slaves and “possessions” that were beyond foreign to our native American forefathers and mothers.    You see, those wise folks such as Tisquantum understood that the earth was God’s to own and ours to borrow.   Planet earth was here to provide its own resources for our use, starting with food, shelter, clothing, and natural energy.  (Think wind and solar.) We were, they rightly believed, all guests of our common God.  And in being “guests” we became most “honored.”  

Guests become united as one, and out of such unity comes honor.  Then gratitude.

That is the lesson I choose this day to draw from our nation’s thanksgiving mythology.  

The idea of owning what God alone owns places us not in atonement or unity with God but, well, it makes sinners out of us.   Sinners in need of salvation.   Salvation to be found as guests in God’s all-inclusive family.  Honored guests.  Thankful guests.

Our choice as a nation today is between claiming as our forefathers and mothers those who owned the land and its bountiful produce, who would love things and then use people, or those true native American forefathers and mothers who assumed the role of guests upon God’s land, living instead as those who loved people and only used things.

Such a choice represents perhaps our greatest of all freedoms today as Americans.   The choice of foreparents between those who lived as “owners” and those who lived as “honored guests.”

So here’s a toast to Tisquantum, aka Squanto, and to his Patuxet people.   We are honored to be their guests today.     And to be the United Guests of America.

Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety is what happens when we place our faith in fear.  Depression is what happens when we place our doubt in love.  And these two walk hand in hand. 

What would cause me to think and say such a thing?

Anxiety and Depression come in all types and sizes.  To suggest any kind of “one size fits all” here is more than a bit disingenuous.  But, I’ll invite you to read on anyhow.

In my new book, “Love’s Resurrection: its power to roll away fear’s heaviest stone,” I assert that there are two primary forces working in conflict within the human mind.  One is fear and the other love.   I also contend that facing future uncertainty is universally met with faith that is based upon past experiences of fear and love.   Everyone who believes there will be a tomorrow lives with faith.   Those deeply frightened by past traumatic stressors find it natural to have faith in fear where tomorrow’s uncertainties are concerned.  Their faith in fear produces some level of anxiety in mind and body.    So I can probably connect the dots between past trauma and future anxiety with at least that much rationale.  

But where does this notion of Depression being our doubt in love come from?   Why would I even think to go there?

Traumatic stress triggers both faith and doubt, I believe.   Only in reverse order to what had been before, which is why it is called trauma.   Whether we experience a life-threatening incident ourselves, or in relation to a loved one, we entertain doubts where faith once proudly stood.  We wonder if love will really last forever.   The biblical promise of I Cor. 13:8 that “love never ends” begins to seem “too good to be true.”    Faith in love’s fairness and future assurance gets lost in the mess of traumatic stress.  Doubt begins to take over and create what I then call a faith vacuum where the future is concerned.   Rather than despairing about our future uncertainties without any faith at all, we defensively develop a faith in fear itself.  This takes over in our minds where doubt in love leaves off.   Out of our Depression comes new Anxiety.

Clinically, when our Depressed mood turns into feelings of profound fear and anxiety, we may use the term Major Depressive Disorder to diagnose what is happening in our minds.    We may notice changes in our minds.   Or, if not, we may experience Major Depression as a bodily change replete with jitters, hyperventilation, or other panicky sensations in our bodies.     Not to mention utter fatigue, or a drained feeling of emptiness in either mind or body.      

Treating such misery as is found in our experiences of Anxiety and Depression is not easy, though it is simple.  Simply producing more doubt in fear and more faith in love accounts for successful outcomes.  But that’s never easy.   Possible, yes.  Easy?   No way.

Many people look for a pill to swallow that might magically cure us.   Not that easy, as a rule.   Rather, what works with or often without any pill is something called “cognitive behavioral” therapy, where we learn to assess our fears in line with the facts.   This helps us challenge our old faith in fear’s story for our future.   We begin to doubt that our past traumatic events had the power to kill love in our lives.   We begin to see that love still remains alive.   And we go on to doubt that fear of tomorrow’s uncertainties will have the power to kill love in the future.   From these doubts in fear’s ability to destroy us past, present, future, we begin to regain our sense of faith in love.  Our future can now be restored or re-storied from one of fear to one of love.  Anxiety and Depression can be most effectively treated and relieved in this way.  

So why am I bringing up this topic now?

Because tomorrow’s US election day is filled with uncertain outcomes, whether in the short or long range future.   And many of our friends and neighbors are anxious.   They fear the worst, especially if they experienced the worst possible outcome in a past election.   In the run-up to tomorrow’s actual count, which could extend into days in some places, there are people on both sides of the partisan divide who are afraid of America’s future.   Their faith is in fear.   And, regardless of the count, some will then find themselves doubting in love’s certainty against a backdrop of our national uncertainties.              

If you are one of the many who are feeling anxious about tomorrow’s election results, here are some questions you might ask yourself yet today or tonight before going to sleep.   If the worst possible results should happen to occur, how will you be personally affected?   Will you be afraid to go on living?   Will fear have the power to stop you from loving or being loved?   Will fear have the power to control your thoughts every day?   Will it have the power to stop you from helping and influencing your close friends or even unknown strangers?   What can love help you do in the future that fear may try stopping you from doing?    When love and fear have their future arguments inside your own mind after this election, which side will you take?   How will that make a difference in your future regardless of this election?  

You see, in a very real sense every day is election day in our world.   Everybody is voting one way or the other inside their own minds.   Some will take sides with fear against love.  They will place their faith in fear, and their doubt in love.   Some will instead vote for love against fear.   But life is one grand election and we get to vote again each new day.   Every day is election day.

Tomorrow’s results are no more certain than the next day’s or the day after that.   Uncertainty demands faith.  And doubt.  Those are givens.   But the best given of all is that we can choose between the truth of certain love and the lie of uncertain fear.   And in that sense, our own preferred side can win every future election.

America’s Wildfire of Fear

Scared people scare people.

This year’s season of Halloween is special, and I say season because it is no longer regarded as the singular night in our American calendar when as a child I would don some homemade outfit such as an old bedsheet (always white in those days) to go in search of the neighbors’ sweetest of treats.  It affords us, children of every age that we truly are, a great learning opportunity.   We are all afraid.   Our nation and our world seem in many ways more out of control than perhaps ever before.     Death is in the news, with last week bearing witness to racially and politically inspired murders and potential murders.

Scary times we live in.  This season of Halloween that won’t end.

Until.

We learn about how fear feeds upon itself, and how we can personally go about starving it instead.   This is a learnable lesson.   Now is a teachable moment.   It’s Halloween.  So let’s take another look at fear in our world, our nation, and ourselves.  

Writing from my own perspective as a geezer who has first studied and then served his time as therapist and even pastor for hundreds of folks over the years, permit me to offer this perspective.   Fear feeds first upon ignorance, or let's at least say misunderstanding.   To begin with, we are often ignorant of fear’s presence, our minds distracted instead by the hatred our fear produces.  It’s as if we are blinded by hate from being able to sometimes even see our own fear.  

I liken fear to fire.   Hatred is the smoke fear produces.  And sometimes all that we see these days in America is that smoke.   And so we go about fighting smoke itself, for that is what blinds us to see the actual fire beneath.  Putting out the smoke is of little use unless we also learn how to fight the underlying fire.   Ours is not a smoke problem.  It is a fire problem.  It is not a hate problem.  It is a fear problem.   And the fear is so large and its smoke of hatred so dark that we had better use this season of Halloween to help get it out.  Pronto.

Yes, we need safe outlets for our hatred.  People are dying from inhaling the smoke of hatred resulting from our fire.    By some lever we must certainly open the hot damper door above our fireplace, to use that analogy.   There has to be a safe outlet for our hatred or it will truly blind us from ever finding the fear itself.  And suffocate us in the process.

Staying with the fire metaphor, fear is like a pilot light in our brain remaining lit at all times.  Fuels from outside our body can then feed that flame, but so can memories from within our brains.   This is where past traumatic stress comes in.   Past hurts.  Tragedies of disappointment, perhaps loss or even grief act as fuel for the fire within.   So just as underneath our angry hatred lies fearful anxiety, so underneath our fears lie all of our unhealed hurts from stressors past.   Yesterday’s traumas fuel today’s anxieties and potentially tomorrow’s explosions.   

Picture, if you will, an out of control wildfire whether in fields of grass or forests of trees.   Each blade of grass or each tree limb becomes a carrier.  Fires are like viral germ epidemics.  Get too close to the next burning object and the fire spreads to the next object, and so on. 

Scared people scare people.  Fear spreads.  Hatred then follows like billows of smoke.  And as we feel increasingly out of control, we resort to calling out to others for help as well we should.    We should indeed, in this season of Halloween, do as Fred Rogers was advised by his saintly mother and look for the helpers.   There will always be helpers.  But there’s even more to be done after looking outward for such help.   We need to then look within to locate our own souls.  There we will find a kind of immediate fire extinguisher we can begin using ourselves.  

Halloween for me as an aging child, who still feels my own fears within being fueled by the world around and my past inner memories of stressful and hurtful incidents, is a time for both looking outward in search of helpers and within my own soul to begin helping myself.   And I find this.

I have a Heavenly Father filled with love for me that is expressed in two ways.   One, this Father sends Jesus to be my outside helper.   For me, looking for the helpers means looking first for Jesus, the King of all helpers.   Secondly, this Father sends the Holy Spirit to be my inside helper within my soul.  My own fire extinguisher to use immediately in helping myself.  

             

The good news is we are all Halloween children of this same Heavenly Father, whether we know or understand it or not.   This same Father or Higher Power or God of our own understanding loves us all.   Sends helpers, like Jesus.  And sends soul mates, like the Holy Spirit within us.   And it is this love that then goes to work putting out the fires of our fears.   Just as November 1^st is what we wake up to after October 31^st comes to an end, and just as our season of Thanksgiving follows our season of Halloween, so does love awaken us to fear’s extinction.   It’s what comes next.   And it happens when the church of Jesus Christ in communion with the Holy Spirit seeks out her own primary mission.   An epidemic of love, spreading its relief throughout our world.

It's altogether possible.

Because loved people love people.   

Deciding to make the switch

It happens every year around this time.

Where we live in Ohio, the month of October predictably brings up a decision my wife and I must make here at home.   When to finally make the switch of our gas furnace thermostat from OFF to ON.  

Thankfully, we both have an internal thermostat within our own bodies that can cue the mind quite well when that time comes.   Yet, our minds are stubborn creatures in and of themselves, often choosing to postpone that switch of our furnace to ON just as long as possible each Fall season.   By habit, we drag out our sweaters from summer storage, pile another blanket on the bed, pull those warm slippers down in place of our summer flip flops, and about anything else we can think of to delay this simple switch of that furnace thermostat from OFF to ON.  But, every year, on some morning before October comes to an end, we agree to give in and make the switch.  

The switch from OFF to ON turns our cold house into a warm home seemingly in minutes, always to compensate for those mornings of cold discomfort we were determined to prolong each and every October.   Yet it also turns our summer memories into a kind of winter dread that is a bit harder to explain.  

In our case, we have the blessed assurance that the little pilot light on our furnace will stay lit and can be entirely forgotten for months on end.  No heat but no cost to amount to anything.  Just a tiny flame awaiting that moment each year when we make that eventual decision.  To make the switch from OFF to ON.  And to then listen for the big flame that bursts up within the furnace for exchange through our fan and filter into every room, every duct, throughout our newly warmed home in preparation for winter.   All this after going many days of resisting that switch and many months of taking that tiny pilot light for granted in the first place.       

Which reminds me of something else in life we might postpone, and also take for granted.

I believe there is a soul within each one of us that acts much like a source of warmth in our lives, and within that soul lies a tiny flame I call God’s Holy Spirit.  It’s our energy supply that, well, goes unnoticed for a period of time.   Why we may choose to prolong that period of time and leave that soul’s own thermostat switched to OFF is a question for the ages.   But, true confession, I’ve also been known to stubbornly refuse making that switch from OFF to ON before in my life.  Maybe I’m not the only one.  Maybe we’re in this one together.

Why is that, do you suppose?

Why is it we not only take for granted that the Holy Spirit’s tiny pilot light within our souls is even there, but why do we also resist that switch from OFF to ON even upon realizing our need for additional comfort in our lives?   Why do we resort to all other manner of comfort from head to toe and back again before realizing this Spiritual energy is clean, renewable, and downright free for the taking?  Here I’m talking about the equivalent of warm slippers, pullover sweaters, and heavy blankets.  Things like alcohol, comfort food, and shopping trips.  Anything we think might comfort us enough to avoid, for awhile longer, having to make the switch within our souls from OFF to ON.   And so we leave the Holy Spirit’s pilot light to just flicker away on its own, hesitating to actually fire it up again.   

Here’s my own thought as to why I, perhaps you as well, might resist.  You see, I prefer the times when the world around me is a warm and friendly place.  I’d like it to stay that way all year around.  And I rather hate the thought that it can turn into a cold and cruel place.  Yet, as the seasons of our calendars change and signal more warmth or more cold ahead, so our environment changes in ways that predict more cold cruelty from life’s storms and other terrors in this world, and, well, I resist that awareness.  I resent that prediction.   I angrily drag my feet at the thought that the warm and friendly world that I have known can seemingly turn on a dime into some place cold and cruel.   Then I reach for all manner of other comforts before considering my own soul’s energy source that lies ready to supply my body with its every need if only……………I will decide to make the switch.  Decide to pray.  Decide to switch God’s clean, renewable, free energy from heaven from OFF to ON.  To fire up within me through that tiny pilot light I call the Holy Spirit.   

And to strangely warm my heart even through the times when this cold, cruel world can no longer be denied or postponed.   

"I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend [comforter]so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!"   --  John 14:16-17 (The Message) 

What possess us to stay here?

I’ve changed my mind about Jesus.

I used to think that the wilderness of temptation for Jesus was essentially limited to 40 days when he was alone in the desert.   After that the devil was said to have left him alone for a while, perhaps a long while.   So I thought all along that the temptations of Jesus Christ were what happened when he was alone, unaccompanied by friends or family or followers.   Perhaps unaccountable to anyone else.

No more.

I now believe Jesus was tempted as well when with other people.  Which was pretty much wherever he went, come to think of it.  Starting with his homies there in Nazareth.  In fact, it was there that the devil tempted him for the 4^th time.

The 4^th temptation of Christ?  Really?

I believe so, and for this reason.   There was something about going home to Nazareth that tempted even Jesus to be conformed to their world.   To be their homeboy.   To be Mary and Joseph’s son.   To stay home and take care of his own people.   To be……and here’s where it gets downright demonic…….possessed by his own past, and by his own hometown.    

If we will notice the places Jesus went, including his hometown, it was not unusual for the people there to want Jesus to stay.  Instead, he always left.  Oh, sometimes they wanted him out of town, but maybe more often they wanted him to stay.  Keep him all to themselves.   They wanted to possess him.   They hoped he would come and stay longer.   But he never did.  Ever.  At least that I can recall.  Always moved on.  No one ever possessed him.  Not even his own disciples, who wanted him to stay in Galilee instead of leaving for his ill-fated Jerusalem.  As in "get thee behind me, Satan."   

I believe Jesus was tempted, though.  Tempted to stay.  To be conformed to “their” world.  To fit in and belong with the people around him.   Call it his 4^th temptation by the devil.       

And I have to wonder about ourselves in our own world today.  Are we only tempted when alone in some isolated wilderness where no one is around to hold us accountable?    Or are we also temped when with other people who want us to be conformed to their world?  To fit in and belong and behave like they do, to stay with them and not leave, and to be possessed?

People can be very possessive of us.   Where the temptation to conform is concerned, people can be downright demanding of us.   Stay the same as we were.   Stay where we already are.   Don’t leave.   Don’t grow.  Don’t change.  

Tempting?

Perhaps there is a Nazareth in everyone’s life.   Some place we go where we find ourselves tempted to just stay.   Conform.  Serve their needs.  Ignore that urge to move on, or that call in our lives to go out into all the world and serve the needs of others.   Perhaps we are more possessed to stay here than we ever are to go there.   Perhaps the most possessive people in our lives are those where we were or still are.   Perhaps this is our own 4^th temptation to contend with.

Jesus resisted that 4th temptation in his own life, starting in his hometown of Nazareth.  So I believe we as followers of Jesus can face, and also resist, that same temptation.   Say no to conformity with the world of our own Nazareth, wherever that may be.   Refuse to be possessed by anyone, even our own friends, family, or followers.   Like Jesus, I believe we can say no to those who would hold us back in order to say yes to the God who calls us forward.  

Yes, when we face temptations in the lonely places of this world, we will most likely return to the familiar places of people where we can again be welcomed home.   That was true of Jesus as well.   But when we are then tempted to just stay home and not risk those further wilderness temptations ever again, let’s all try and remember Jesus.  Remember his refusal to stay in Nazareth.   Remember what he said about going out into all the world, to make new friends through baptism, to serve their needs, and to take along one constant companion wherever then and there happens to be.   Himself.

“Therefore go and make disciples in all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and then teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you; and be sure of this—that I am with you always, even to the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19-20 TLB).      

Pit Bulls and Presidents

I’m a dog lover.  But.

I’m the kind of dog lover who takes his Dachshund to the dog park and, upon seeing a Pit Bull running loose off leash, turns around and leaves.  Too risky, in my judgment.

Truth be told, I know there are some Pit Bulls that are perfectly safe to be around.   I’ve never owned or wanted to own a Pit but I have nothing against the breed itself.  I just don’t trust the people who do want to own a Pit Bull.   Call it my prejudice, or whatever.  Just saying.  I’m more leery of that breed of owner than I am that breed of dog. 

On a few happy occasions, I have met Pit Bull owners who were very loving and highly responsible.  They rescued or adopted a Pit and have one of the most loving and loyal dogs I’ve ever seen.     

But then on several more occasions, I have met Pit owners who had very different motives in mind.   They were afraid.  They wanted a dog who would fight for and protect them.  Love was not their aim; rather, it was self-protection. Their choice of breed was all about fear, not love.  And, hence, their dog was far more scary than loving.

Which reminds me of Donald Trump and the people who chose to vote for him as their President.     

No doubt some people chose Trump for the same reason they might rescue a Pit Bull.   They believed he could be reformed and could make a good pet.   Would be trainable.  Was smart.  Would learn on the job.   Would make a good president.

But then here comes my prejudice.  

Based on my experience, on far more occasions I have found Trump owners to have very different motives in mind.  They were afraid.  They wanted a president who would fight for and protect them.  Love was not their aim; rather, self-protection.   Their choice of president was all about fear, not love.  And, hence, their president is far more scary than loving.  

You see, in my humble opinion, governments are like public dog parks.   Leaders are like alpha dogs.   My dog and I have as much right as anyone to be in this public place.   My tax dollars help pay for this park.   But there are times when our own government is one where I’d prefer to just take my dog, turn around, and leave.   Alpha dogs that are unleashed are like unaccountable politicians.   Pit Bulls are like Presidents.   And I want to leave not because of the other dogs so much as the other owners.   They are the ones I have the hardest time trusting.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Getting unstuck?

Have you ever felt stuck in a situation you felt helpless to get out of?   Maybe a bad job?  A bad marriage or other close relationship?  A house or apartment, or a neighborhood?  A town or city?  A financial debt?   A chronic illness?    Or anything else from which you wanted to “just get away” but…………you couldn’t?  You were stuck.  

If so, welcome to the human race.   We’ve all been there.  Stuck.   Somewhere.  Wanting to get away, but maybe no place to go or any way to get there.   No way out.  Feeling helpless.  

There’s a Greek word in the Gospels of the biblical New Testament, apollumi, that is used to quote Jesus in at least two different places, John 3:16 and Luke 15:24.   In John, that word is translated as “perish” and in Luke, it is translated as “lost,” for it refers to the prodigal son in that famous parable Jesus told.   In the most general of terms, apollumi means loss of all hope.   In my world as a clinician, think “depressed.”  Loss of hope.  Helpless.  Stuck. 

Which is why I happen to believe God so loved the world of “stuck humanity” that he sent Jesus to be our difference-maker.  For the purpose of our getting unstuck.   And solving our universal problem of apollumi.     

  

Try reading the Gospel red letters sometime and notice the people Jesus came to and those who came to him.   They were people in the throes of apollumi.   They were stuck.  Dead end diseases without treatment or cure.  Blindness, leprosy, psychosis, paralysis, etc.  Dead end jobs working their Dad’s fishing boat.   Or collecting taxes and having to stay with it despite the abuse, because no other job would pay that well. People who were too short or too greedy.  Too female or too menstrual.  Too mulatto or too Samaritan.  Too Gentile or too Roman.  Too stuck or too helpless.  Apollumi.   That’s who Jesus came to.   That’s who came to Jesus.  For help to get away from their stuck places.  

So can Jesus help us get unstuck today?   And can we still come to him even today?

I believe he can.  And I believe we can.  

If.

You see, the question is if we are willing to convert from our present lifestyle of helplessness to a new lifestyle of helpfulness.  Are we?

If we are willing to convert from stuck to unstuck, from helpless to helpful, then we are ready to follow Jesus.   Those are the people Jesus called then.  And, I believe, still calls today.   

To be a Jesus follower means nothing more than to give up on being helpless, to take up our mat and walk, to just go and help somebody.  Anybody.   I love the analogy in Mark 2 of the paralytic’s mat.   To me, anytime we are stuck in a lifestyle of helplessness, can't stay sober, can’t get a job, can’t this, can’t that, we are paralyzed on one of life’s mats.   And Jesus calls us to take up our mat and walk.   Go help somebody.   Take up a new lifestyle.   That, to me, is the crux of the Gospel and the core of Christianity.  

I doubt that Jesus was sent to the world God so loves so we could argue doctrine, proof-text our apologetics, or get out of hell free on the day we die.   If anything, that’s the mat of paralysis Christianity itself needs to get unstuck from.   The real message of Jesus for the world both then and now is get up and walk.   Convert.   Throw out the old wineskins of helplessness and hopelessness.   Take up a new lifestyle of helpfulness.  

If we follow Jesus into this new lifestyle, more than we can ever imagine we will be helping other people, apollumi people, in also getting unstuck.            

  

To Help or To Rescue?

When faced with hard times in life, would you prefer someone coming along to help you get back up and on your own two feet or someone coming to take over and rescue you?  Letting you sit this one out.

Some of us have consciously considered this.  Others have more likely kept this question and its answer at an unconscious level.  But, either way, I wonder if it isn’t what partly if not mostly informs our ideas about God, about people in authority or leadership in our lives, and about ourselves in relation to others under our own leadership.   Not only are we either supporters or rescuers in our own right, but we seek out either supporters or rescuers for ourselves.

Or here’s another one.

Do you think love involves helping people out, ourselves included, or rather rescuing them?  Rescuing as in taking over for people who are overwhelmed by circumstances of any sort.   And now to get really personal here: do you feel more loved when someone enters your life to take over, or someone enters to encourage you to take over yourself?   And to support you in doing so?

The God of my own faith is a God whose love always helps but never rescues.  

You may believe in this same God.  Or not.

If you believe in a different God, whose love is controlling and does things “His” way or else just forget it, then you and I will arrive at very different answers and conclusions about how to solve a great variety of human problems.   We will espouse different ideas when it comes to marriage, parenting, politics, economics, of course religion, and just community life in general. 

And for us to resolve our differences, we will probably have to back up to square one and open up to each other about our answer to that original question:  would I prefer being supported or rescued when faced with hard times in life?  Notice I say when faced, not if faced.   You see, life is hard and there are two different ways to go in life: we can either make it harder still, or we can make it easier.    To me, being rescued makes it easier in the short run but harder in the long run.  Being helped?  The opposite.   Easier in the long run.   

The God of my faith, and of the Bible I read, is the God of the long run.   The God whose love is always aimed at making life easier in the long run.

Not the short run.   That may involve “like” but it doesn’t involve “love.” 

At least not in my book.

I believe God supports but doesn't rescue us even when this means our life is harder in the short run, because such support, indeed such love, is precisely what will make life easier in the long run.  

I believe God loves the world so much that God refuses to take control for us.  Over us.  Or to rescue us from our own hard times.   Rather, God loves us enough to help us help ourselves and take control of ourselves and get back up on our own two feet and, well, to then support instead of taking over for others.  That is, to love one another as God has loved us.  

So what do you believe?  Supporter? Rescuer?   Which is God?  And which are you?