Recovering from Spoiledness

Peggy Noonan, in the previous entry, asserted that America is governed by “calloused children” who don’t realize that we have limits as individuals and as a nation.

These kind of leaders gain and hold power to achieve their ideological dreams, to feel like they have “done something”, to make citizens cooperate with their grand vision–whether or not they really want to or need to.

And then they shame or belittle or explain away those who either disagree or oppose this coercive vision.   Then they wonder why they are resented and can’t fathom how the people being imposed upon are so angry and would dare to vote against them.    They are offended that their motives are called into question and their goals are seen as anything but good.

Which brings up the issue of maturity vs. immaturity.

We all are prone to fits of immaturity.  I know I am.   We are all born with a propensity to folly.   I know I was.   We all have this “king me” inside of us, a tyrant called “his majesty, the baby” which can still throw temper tantrums or pout with the best of them.    I know I do.

They’re is something within us that doesn’t want to live within limits, that wants what it wants and wants it now.   And if it didn’t cause such tragedy, it would be comical that we could be so egotistical to the point of silliness.    But it does cause tragedy.   Others get deeply hurt by our self-absorbed, self-consumed, self-promoting agendas.   That’s what I’ve seen in my life.

America is thus a culture full of immaturity and immature people, whatever their birth age.    Thankfully, we can each do something about it.

Maturity begins with taking responsibility for my own immaturity, with refusing to excuse or justify my resentments and outbursts by pointing the finger at others.    Wisdom, in other words, begins when we admit we have been chronic fools and desperately need to acquire wisdom if we’re going to make it in life.  ”The beginning of wisdom is:  acquire wisdom.”

Maturity continues by acknowledging that I am not God, never have been God, and never will be God.   God is God, and “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

This fact is why all effective Twelve-Step programs begin with admitting that our lives are unmanageable, that we are enslaved to our idols, and that only God can restore us to sanity and save our lives.    We face our ego down, call its bluff when it says “I can handle this!”, and surrender control by turning our lives and our wills to the Lord.

And when God is invited to assume the throne of our souls, and pushes aside our inner tyrant, and we rest in His good control, then His control controls the habits and vices and self-destructive impulses we cannot.    This is why impulse control is another hallmark of maturity.    ”The fool’s frustration is known at once” and “he who rules his spirit is better than he who captures a city” are Proverbs which capture this idea.  All this happens under God.

We delay gratification, and labor long in the same noble direction even when the instant returns are meager and the difficulties to surmount are high.   We say “no!” to selfish impulses in order to channel our energies into the best and highest things.

Suffering, in other words, teaches us patience and perseverance and resilient hope.    Maturity is expensive.  Fools chase after instant relief from suffering at all costs, wise people leverage suffering to their lifelong and everlasting advantage by letting it form godly character within them.

Interestingly, the great British sociologist Unwin, who studied cultures all over the world throughout history, found that cultures that limited sex to marriage and delayed sexual gratification had the greatest creative outpourings and advanced the furthest.    Those cultures that allowed sexual libertarianism to run amok experienced decay, decline, and death in their creativity.     Water carves a canyon faster in limited channels than on broad plains where it dissipates its force in every direction.  So do sex and creativity and people.

Another hallmark of maturity is empathy, the ability to place ourselves in another’s shoes and see life from their perspective, and treat them with regard, compassion, and kindness.     I have been re-reading “Team of Rivals”, a biography about Abraham Lincoln, and this was this very quality that set him apart from the other politicians of his day.   The sadness that marked him was produced by all he grief and suffering of the Civil War, which he took into himself.

In other words, Lincoln through suffering learned to empathize with those who suffered–even with his defeated confederate enemies.  His ability to be magnanimous in victory touched the hearts of those around him.   Maturity is thus “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Those who lack this quality do the most damage to other people–often unthinkingly.   They are insensitive and insensible, thinking that everyone must see it their way and do it their way, or they’ll judge them to be bad and justify trampling over them.   If there is one great mistake that our present administration and congress have made, this is it!

Instead of trying to impose our ego-will upon others who are resisting us, we see life through their eyes, understand how our actions would make them feel, and then choose to be better to them than they deserve and address their fears and hurts and sorrows.

If there is one quality the Lord continuously works on me to have, it is this kind of empathy and compassion.   It is probably the most important quality to have in leadership, and the aspect of maturity hardest to gain and easiest to lose.

How are you doing on the maturity scale?   How is your recovery from “the spoiled children syndrome” going?

Spoiled Children Syndrome?

I read this morning an op-ed column by Peggy Noonan that arrested my attention.   She claims that we are being governed by leaders who are calloused children and here is what she says:

The biggest threat to America right now is not government spending, huge deficits, foreign ownership of our debt, world terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term threat is that people are becoming and have become disheartened, that this condition is reaching critical mass, and that it afflicts most broadly and deeply those members of the American leadership class who are not in Washington, most especially those in business.

It is a story in two parts. The first: “They do not think they can make it better.”

I talked this week with a guy from Big Pharma, which we used to call “the drug companies” until we decided that didn’t sound menacing enough. He is middle-aged, works in a significant position, and our conversation turned to the last great recession, in the late mid- to late 1970s and early ’80s. We talked about how, in terms of numbers, that recession was in some ways worse than the one we’re experiencing now. Interest rates were over 20%, and inflation and unemployment hit double digits. America was in what might be called a functional depression, yet there was still a prevalent feeling of hope.

Here’s why. Everyone thought they could figure a way through. We knew we could find a path through the mess. In 1982 there were people saying, “If only we get rid of this guy Reagan, we can make it better!” Others said, “If we follow Reagan, he’ll squeeze out inflation and lower taxes and we’ll be America again, we’ll be acting like Americans again.” Everyone had a path through.

Now they don’t. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out. Have you heard, “If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better”? Or, “If only we follow the Republicans, they’ll make it all work again”? I bet you haven’t, or not much.

This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.

Part of the reason is that the problems—debt, spending, war—seem too big. But a larger part is that our government, from the White House through Congress and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long-term everyone—well, not those in government, but most everyone else—seems to know that won’t work. It’s not a way out. It’s not a path through.

And so the disheartenedness of the leadership class, of those in business, of those who have something. This week the New York Post carried a report that 1.5 million people had left high-tax New York state between 2000 and 2008, more than a million of them from even higher-tax New York City. They took their tax dollars with them—in 2006 alone more than $4 billion.

You know what New York, both state and city, will do to make up for the lost money. They’ll raise taxes.

I talked with an executive this week with what we still call “the insurance companies” and will no doubt soon be calling Big Insura. (Take it away, Democratic National Committee.) He was thoughtful, reflective about the big picture. He talked about all the new proposed regulations on the industry. Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.”

The executive said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.”

He felt government doesn’t understand that business in America is run by people, by human beings. Mr. Frank must believe America is populated by high-achieving robots who will obey whatever command he and his friends issue. But of course they’re human, and they can become disheartened. They can pack it in, go elsewhere, quit what used to be called the rat race and might as well be called that again since the government seems to think they’re all rats. (That would be you, Chamber of Commerce.)

***

And here is the second part of the story. While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that.

It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. They don’t see it as all-powerful, impregnable, unharmable. The loving have a sense of its limits.

When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap-and-trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don’t have the habit of worry. They talk about their “concerns”—they’re big on that word. But they’re not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa’s lap.

They don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—”strongest nation in the world,” “indispensable nation,” “unipolar power,” “highest standard of living”—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.

 

I spoke, on the aftermath of our last election, about the toppling of idols on the Right and how we could expect the same thing to happen on the Left.  And when all the political idols of human government and power lie powerless on the ground, where will we turn?  To whom will we look for salvation?

This coming week I will look at the “spoiled children” syndrome at work in our souls and how we can examine our lives to if we are part of this problem.   I hope we will see if the markers of personal maturity are there…or absent.

Vicarious Pseudo-Lives

It’s Halloween season and the merchants of entertainment have served up their usual mix of slasher flicks to celebrate the season.  But I think something deeper is at work than tasteless, pandering mediocrity.

In my last entry, I explained a process whereby a fearful person, under God’s care, can be de-feared and freed to enjoy more and more of life without fear.    Since giving over control to God rubs many people the wrong way, a cheaper alternative is available.    Instead of facing and resolving our own fears, we watch horror movies.

Every piece of literature–both visual and literary–works by getting people to identify with a protagonist (the main character).   Through this fictional person, we do things we would never normally do.   This kind of life, one that’s lived through another, is called vicarious living.

In other words, regular people can, through this persona, have sex with beautiful partners or commit acts of heroic violence against villains or face horror and death and live to tell about it.     They wouldn’t dare do these things themselves, but they can anonymously and safely do it through the character they watch or read about.

We see this vicarious pseudo-living at work in soap operas, action shows, social networks, computer avatars, video games and all manner of television shows and movies and books.

But in reality, those who do this actually do nothing but sit and stare for hours and hours.   Their marriages are no better.   Their relationships with their children are unchanged.   Their jobs are just as boring.   Their fears are still unresolved.  The realities of their lives haven’t changed, but they have the illusion of having done something actual.

The problem with vicarious pseudo-living is twofold:

First, it degrades us as we, through the character, participate and mentally do the immoral, grotesque, or violent actions.   We become more numb, desensitized, and coarsened as people.   We lose our power to be shocked, and to blush, at things that really should shock and embarrass us.    We become insensible, and insensitive.

Second, we get used to doing these actions vicariously and are therefore far more likely to do them in real life.   Interestingly, studies have found that teen girls who watch a lot of TV shows with normative casual sex going on are far more likely to be sexually active themselves at a far younger age.  Young men who play a lot of highly violent video games as teens are trained just as effectively as real soldiers to shoot with deadly accuracy real guns.

And this vicarious process of desensitization, boredom, and hunger for newer, more exotic thrills is going on all around us.    Real, normal life just isn’t enough.   And, worse, our energy to make something of ourselves and the fire that burns within is doused.    We stop having real life adventures and noble pursuits are pushed aside by ignoble fluff.

A spirit of slumber and sleep is upon our land.   We are being tranquilized and anesthetized slowly, slowly, slowly to death.    More and more of us are living vicarious pseudo-lives instead of putting all of our heart, soul, mind and strength into actually living our own.

Where will it end?

The Process of Being De-feared

How does one who is afraid grow less and less afraid?

I thought about this question because fear is the natural human state, and those who are gripped by anxiety need our compassion rather than our scorn.   Few people desire to be afraid, and many are gripped by strong fear reactions they cannot stop once these reactions are triggered.

My own life story is one marked by great fear.   I didn’t enjoy much emotional security growing up.   I struggled with elevators, with floating on water, and with new situations.    And, if you have read this blog, you’re aware that I was kidnapped and molested at age twelve.   My fear level reached such heights that I stayed indoors for many months afterwards, and engaged in rituals whenever I heard a car coming down the street.

The process of being de-feared didn’t happen all at once.    A big step happened when I entrusted myself into the care of Another and accepted the redeeming love of Christ.   I freely chose to lose control and accept the offered mercy.  Instead of being my own father, my own lord, my own boss, and having the impossible task of running the universe and creating a safe bubble for myself, I could rest in His care.   He was on the throne, and I gladly resigned from the pressure and the dread of trying to do His job for Him.

Under His good care, I noticed a pattern.  Instead of helping me avoid the situations and people I was most afraid of, He took me right into them.   His plan was to tack my sailboat into the storm instead of letting the storm winds of fear drive me wherever they wanted to.     And when I didn’t perish, but emerged on the other side of the storm not only intact, but stronger and wiser, a little fear fell away from me.

What I saw was I had unconsciously erected a life built on “never going there again” and “never feeling that way again”.    Self-protection was my unspoken motto, and self-protection was really a mask for unresolved fears.

Every time I felt like my body was out of control, and/or an abusive person had control and was threatening me, and/or I was confined and couldn’t escape the situation, and when I followed as He led me to keep on trusting and keep on going and not take up control and not run away, my reactions lost their power.

The result:  It took more to make me afraid, and my fear reaction was slowed down.   The dots were being connected between current fearful situations and parallels to past horrible events–and I could see it and choose to not go there emotionally.   Fear became more of a choice, less of a knee-jerk reaction.

Bravery is not the absence of fear, it’s acknowledging the fear and doing the hard, right, and courageous thing anyway.    And on the other side of that dreaded event, I find myself still alive and usually unscathed.    And that’s when the fears begin to lose their power.  And when people who specialize in making others afraid lose their power over me as well.

Many of us want the feelings of fear to go away before we take that God-directed next step of faith.   But I have found the fear only goes away afterwards, not before.     And when I experience this process fifty times, there’s a lot less fear.  And when I experience it five-hundred times, there’s usually no fear left and I don’t struggle anymore with that situation.

So if you are a worrier and full of anxiety, don’t despair.  If God can help one as bad off as me, He can surely help you!    The key is giving up the illusion of control, and allowing One infinitely wiser and higher and greater to love you and guide you and care for you.

It’s allowing Him to use current events to take you back to those “much afraid” places in your soul, and, with His arms around you, learning that He has gone to all the trouble of arranging this re-enactment so He love you exactly where you need it the most.

The Peril of Losing Our Heads

I sometimes get the impression that far too many of us allow the media do our thinking and our feeling for us.   Take the swine flu, for instance.

Between 300 and 400 people have died of the swine flu in the United States so far.    And between 20, 000 and 40,000 people die of the ordinary flu EVERY YEAR in the United States.   But, somehow, the first is a crisis and the second is just a part of life.   The first causes panic and the second never gets a headline.

And here’s another one:   EACH YEAR, drunk drivers kill about the same number of people as soldiers who died in the whole Vietnam War.    And in all the years of fighting in Afghanistan, we’ve lost 800 people.   Which gets the most headlines?   Which condition bothers people more?

We’ll close schools and cancel events for the swine flu.   But not for the regular flu.   We’ll have debates in Congress about the Afghan War, but there’s no debates about drunk drivers.    I hate to say it, but we Americans are being led around by the nose by voices that awaken fear and use fear to advance their agendas.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s the folly of fear.   Reliable studies have proven over and over that 95% of what people worry about will NEVER happen!    It’s a time-waster and a joy-killer, and it clutters the mind and crowds the soul.

Note this:  whoever can make you afraid controls you.   Whoever causes you to panic and stampede with the crowd is the puppeteer, and you become their marionette when you let them.   But the person who refuses to quake and who remains calm and who simply cannot be threatened into cooperation–that person and only that person is truly free!

Now I’m going to say something to my Christian readers:

We have every reason to be the least afraid people on earth.

First of all, the worst that can happen in this life, dying, immediately places us in heaven.  ”For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”.  (Phil. 1:21)   We are therefore invincible.

Second of all, the second worst thing that can happen, persecution and suffering, only makes us stronger and rewards our cause more.   “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond comparison.” (2 Cor. 4:17)   “And even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.  And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled.” (1 Peter 3:14)

Consider these assertions, “God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” (2 Tim. 1:7).   “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fear is not perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18).   “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

What if, instead of worrying about whether this thing or that thing is going to happen to us, instead of being consumed with self-protection and obsessed with self-preservation, we focused on being as dangerous as we possibly can be to the kingdom of darkness.   What if we turned off our televisions and shut our newspapers and did some real good for real people for the cause of Christ.

In times of panic, the cool heads and people who stay focused on actively doing the good that everyone else is too afraid to do will gain something:  credibility.    As Martin Luther’s hymn reminds us:

Let goods and kindred go,  this mortal life also.

The body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still

His kingdom is forever.

The Peril of Ranting and Raging

I’m deeply troubled by all the unbridled rage being expressed in the political/moral debates going on right now.     Whether it was the Cindy Sheehan crowd hectoring and haranguing our previous president, or the Glen Beck crowd doing the same to our current president, I am disgusted and put off by it.  No, it’s more than that.

I know history all too well to deny where this escalating cycle of mutual vilification and hatred is leading us.   I predict, if this cycle is not arrested and reversed, we will have a civil war within a generation here in the USA.

My wife enjoys talk radio and we were listening to a conservative talk show on the way to the airport.  The host pontificated his view, and then berated callers for daring to disagree with him.  His speech was amazingly abusive. He implied that he alone could solve our political problems.   I turned to my kids and said, “This spirit is not the spirit of Jesus Christ”.  Then I turned off the radio.

What concerns me most is this:   people, even good Christian people, seem to be mindlessly accepting un-Christlike attitudes, words, and agendas of persuasive and domineering media personalities.  Why?  Because these personalities agree with them on the issues and claim to lead their causes.    The faults and follies of the “other side” are mocked, rejoiced in, and used to every advantage.  But our own excesses and abuses get a free pass.

If agreement is all we want, if winning is everything, if ending the threat that the “other side” represents is all there is left, there’s not much left.     No matter how right we think we might be, losing ourselves in anger and rage is never justified and is profoundly anti-Christian.   Doesn’t Jesus Christ deserve far better than this, my fellow Christian conservatives?

Here’s how it works:    A person begins as a fellow human being.  Then they hurt or threaten me.   So I downgrade them to “that person” and begin to depersonalize them.    If they continue to threaten or hurt, they become “the enemy” and I begin to give myself permission to fight them and hurt them back.   I simply must get power or get back lost power.   Power becomes an obsession.

Eventually, they become “a monster” and I am permitted to use monstrous words and means to destroy them at all costs.    But what have I become in the process?   I have become a monster myself.   And I raise up a host of monsterized people on the other side of the issue.

This is the way it looks to me:  in our anger at being in the political wilderness and out of power, we’ve given way to anger and are following voices of raw hostility animated by an unclean spirit of unbridled rage.

So I repeat these words of warning to us from the New Testament:

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse…never pay back evil for evil to anyone.  Respect what is right in the sight of all men.” (Rom. 12:14, 17)

“But you also, put them all aside:  anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.” (Col. 3:8)

“You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.” (Acts 23:5)

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt. 5:44)

“The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity…and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell…No one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.  With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing.   My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.” (James 3:6-12)

Anyone who thinks the Bible isn’t relevant to our lives or our ongoing problems or our ongoing political debates, either didn’t read or has forgotten the verses they just read.

Magnificent Desolation

There’s an IMAX movie at our local Air & Space Museum titled, “Magnificent Desolation”.  It’s about the Apollo missions to the moon.  Strangely, he moon is barren and desolate, and the moon is beautiful and amazing–both at the same time.

This paradox is true of inner space, too.   A person can experience intense aridity and desolation of spirit, and yet have a rich life with God–both at the same time.    That’s what I’ve been experiencing lately.

Much of my ministry involves delving into the problems of people’s souls and the problems of a church seeking renewal after a period of stagnancy and decline.  Plus my family experiences all the normal stresses and strains of any family, plus a few challenges that are quite daunting.   I am immersed in problems, and, if I’m not careful or attentive, these problems can gather like lint in my soul and send me into a season of desolation.

One the one hand, I have felt stressed out and dry within my soul.   Jesus at times seems so far away and I feel like I have little energy to pursue intimacy with Him.   I feel like a dead weight in His arms, like a nearly drowned man being carried to shore.   My state of inner poverty crowds my thoughts.    It is a lonely place.  It is an unattractive place.   It is a sad place to be.    I feel so useless and powerless to be of help to anyone else.

Many of God’s greatest servants have felt desolation, barrenness, and poverty of Spirit.   David cried out to God “in a dry and weary land” (Ps. 63:2).  Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”   John of the Cross spoke of the “dark night of the soul”.   Larry Crabb speaks of “a season of particular vulnerability before God.  If he does nothing, there will be no Resurrection, only ongoing death, which no one can endure.”

Therefore no panic is necessary.   I am not the only one who goes through these times.   I am still in the palm of His hands.  I am still His beloved, even if I feel temporarily god-forsaken.   And here is the magnificent part of desolation.

Desolation strips me of me-ism and dethrones the great I.   Desolation strips me of non-essentials and punctures ego-fantasies and time wasters and gets me down to bedrock.   Desolation helps me re-enact my salvation by taking me through shatteredness, powerlessness, desperation, and crying out and finding God’s grace all over again.

Desolation gets me jumping up and down until I feel the solid ground of God’s love under my feet.   Therefore desolation reveals, if I keep clinging and keep on crying out and keep at wrestling, the magnificence of God Himself.

All of His subterranean work deep within my soul–normally hidden–is suddenly brought to light and brought to my attention.    Another layer of the onion is worked through, another phase of growth is completed, the next phrase of life in God is prepared.   So desolation is God’s finest tool to excavate and heal my soul.

The keys are faith, surrender, submission, and persevering with God when all the lights go out in my lower room and I am left withered and dry.   The habits that help are surrendering anxieties daily instead of letting them build up, laying problems before Him instead of managing them myself, and carving a sacred time and place and space from the busyness of one’s life.

If you are desolate right now, take courage.   It will not be forever.   It is not permanent.   It is probably not your fault.   It is certainly being put to good use.   It contains the seeds of the next uplands of greater intimacy with Christ. It is necessary.

It is therefore unavoidable.   It is not God toying with you cruelly or abandoning you in fickleness when you need Him the most.   It is the death that precedes new life.   It is proof of God’s refusal to let you stagnate under the thumb of your inner tyrant, lord self.

Creating Community

This entry is for a targeted audience:   people who are desperate to see spiritual renewal in the evangelical churches of the United States of America.    If that’s not you, bear with me.

I want to have an “in-house”, heart-to-heart chat here about what can be done by each of us personally to evoke an upwelling of dynamic community within our ranks.    I want to draw upon what I have learned and have seen and have myself experienced.  And I say this as someone who has participated, facilitated, and encouraged corporate prayer and dynamic brotherhood across denominational lines for 20 years.

The first fact I have seen is Christian community rises or falls on our personal and group communion with Christ Himself.    We truly have a living Person in common, and His heart and mind and will are, by the Holy Spirit, alive and at work within us.   He is always and ever leading us into greater intimacy with Himself, and, by extension, with all others who are on intimate terms with Him.  He is the object and source of our community.

I have seen it best in times of lengthy, unhurried, unscripted times of worship, praise, silence, confession, singing, and praying for one another as if our lives depended on it.  Then we pray for the world and contend unitedly against the powers of darkness and beg God for a heaven-sent, sustained work of revival.    And I am never so close to my brothers as in those times.

So the cultivation of a close, warm, personal connection with Him each and every moment of every day is the paramount goal.   Out of this abiding, out of this warm beating together of our shared hearts, comes a fellowship so sweet and a fullness and sense of fulfillment so large it dwarfs the universe.   It is both a gift from Christ, and the great goal of all our relating to Christ.

First, let’s consider the positive side of these interactions.

There is indeed something mystical that can happen during face-to-face encounters with my fellow Christians where something good in me brings out something new and holy in them.   And where something good in them brings out something new and holy in me.  And we both leave the encounter more full and alive in Him than when we entered it.

It’s why I’m so fanatical about church and so doggedly steadfast in my refusal to give up on it.

It’s when two or more believers come together to stir each other up, to encourage each other, to see Christ in each other and point out that He is there and He is working.  It’s where we  see what our brother could be if the Spirit had His way in his or her life, and relate to him as if that was already true.  Then life happens.   Community happens.   We are each stirred and stimulated through holy conversations and prayers and acts of goodness.   We are ready to storm the gates of Hell and knock on Heaven’s door.

Many good words and acts are born in this zone of spoken, enacted love.   It’s where we celebrate each other, enjoy each other in Christ, delight in each other, and bless each other.    It’s where we bring out the best in each other, and therefore serve each other fervently from the heart.

It’s where we see the Jesus potential underneath the scars and flaws and faults and yuck, and call it out in the open for everyone else to see.   It’s like nothing else on earth.   And it makes Satan extremely nervous and very angry.

There is also a negative, recovering side of these interactions:

When I am on empty, when my soul is foul, when I am distant, when I am far from God and lacking in energy to return, I need community at that time as well.

Personal confession sets the stage, not for advice-giving and pressure and finger-waging and shaming, but for words of grace from others that change my life.  They champion my cause, taking my side against my own sin. They help me let go of the anvil and come back up to the surface for air.

Those who speak grace-giving words of love to me at my worst wake up the suppressed Jesus life deep within me.   It is the power of redemptive, self-sacrificing love spoken and incarnated by a fellow believer that I need most in such an hour.     It is what Larry Crabb calls, “dying in the presence of another” so they might speak “words of life” to us.

When I confess my sinfulness and poverty and powerlessness and wretchedness to a group of soul friends, and am lavished with undeserved love, something bad is weakened and something good within me is released. And they, too, find themselves refreshed and more alive as they re-enact in a brother’s life their own redemption by grace.

Our poverty of community will never change until we begin to confess our sins one to another and die in each other’s presence, and are loved and treasured instead of cast off and judged.    Instead of reinforcing sin, this interaction breaks its back because “God’s kindness leads us to repentance”.

And it will never change until we spend face-to-face time with each other as groups of dedicated celebrators and encouragers who call each other out from mediocrity to feats of glory and greatness.    It takes time, lots of time.

Who knows where the next outbreak of out-poured community will take place?   And who knows with whom God will begin it?    Let it be us.  Let it be here.  Let it be now.

The Crisis of Community

Both the American culture and the Evangelical church in general are dying for lack of community.

God has built into the human psyche the absolute need for others, and both marriage and friendship and knowing one’s neighbors and meeting face-to-face with real, live human beings on an everyday basis is good for our health, good for our mood, and good for our society.

A lively social community reduces the crime rate and provides a safety net for neighborhood children.   When people fix broken windows and paint over graffiti and pick up trash on their streets and sweep their sidewalks, an unspoken signal is given to strangers that “The people who live here care and will notice what you do.”   James Q. Wilson called this the “broken window effect.”

And where at least one nosy neighbor lady tells your parents what you’ve been up to, kids are less likely to get into trouble.   Funny how much stupid stuff doesn’t happen when you know someone’s watching and will tell mom and dad if you do it.   Relationships,  in other words, retard social evils.   We are more likely to mistreat a stranger’s property than a friend’s.

And, as Joseph Putnam documents in his book, “Bowling Alone”, we have become a society of disconnected, isolated individualists who form temporary alliances but no real friendships with others.    Instead of forming married families, many urban young adults form tribes of loosely affiliated, same-aged people who room together and go out partying together and mate together.

We are not joining groups like bowling leagues or churches, we are playing Wii bowling at home and listening to sermons on the television.    We are lonelier, more depressed, less happy, far more addicted, and psychologically sicker than our great grand-parents, despite making 4 times as much yearly income on average.   Affluenza and techno-barbarism are killing us surely and slowly.

And the church is not exempt.  The lack of deep relationships with God and others in our congregations causes the body of Christ to dissolve into special interest groups of competing, fickle consumers who attend “to get their needs met” but who aren’t likely to sacrifice much to help others, let alone build Christ’s kingdom.

Even when we do bother to attend classes and groups, we are not animated and full of Christ towards one another.   Bible information is dispensed, prayer requests are dutifully collected and prayed by rote, and we leave disconnected and unchanged.      This is all the more tragic because there is no place on earth where the potential for God-enlivened, live-changing community is greater!

Thankfully, I have tasted such things and have been learning, as a very damaged human being, how to experience and enjoy such community.  I read Dr. Larry Crabb’s book Connecting 14 years ago on this very subject.  It changed my life because it pointed out to me the latent power of Christian community and, more importantly, how to release this power into my relationships.

The point is there is hope!   There is something inside of every single genuine Christian that can literally transform our souls, our relationships, and our churches.    I will devote the next entry to spelling out what it is and how it works.   Stay tuned….

More About Hope

There is a strong link between a despairing life and an isolated life.

The unholy trinity of “me, myself, and I” pours forth a steady stream of negativity, complaining, and self-condemnation.   And I read a quote some time back where boredom was defined as “the self stuffed with the self”.

There is this lie abroad in the world that we are sufficient for ourselves, need nobody else, and are our own best companion.   The truth is we’re horribly insufficient, need God and others to be complete, and are lousy companions for ourselves.  And we know it!

And there is a world of technology created in the last few decades that enable a person to have no face-to-face contact with real people, to live in an isolated world of dancing images on computer screens and ear phones and media devices.  How sad! And what a waste!

The only antidote to all the above is when another human being infiltrates our i-bubble and interrupts the stream of inner yuck chatter.

They can interrupt it with grace–they tell us there’s more to us than the inner yuck that is so real to us right now.   They see Christ living in us–that we bring good out of others and have done much good for others.   We belong, and we are belonged.   We love, and we are beloved.   Haven’t you wondered why every single recovery program on the planet requires addicted souls to be and stay in a group?   This is why.

Or people can interrupt it with great need–please have compassion on me. Please step out of your world and give up what you want to give me what I cannot do without.

My family volunteers in the local soup kitchen once a month and I get to operate the dish sanitizer back in the kitchen.   I go from being “Senior Pastor” to lowly dishwasher, and have a blast helping others out of the limelight.    I walk away hopeful and more free.

It’s in stepping outside of ourselves that we experience hope and lively interest instead of despair and boredom.   It’s like there’s this hair and soap clog in our souls, and giving ourselves away freely to others is like Draino.  The self stops being so stuffed with the self.   We stop feeling so sorry for ourselves and discover that we were born for more than this silly self stuff.

When I, lowly sinner and miserable weakling, am used to bring good into another person’s life, I discover my destiny as a Christ-filled, Christ-empowered, Christ-displaying servant.  It’s fun!  I laugh a lot more, too–especially at myself.    I begin to whistle, hum, and sing praise to God from a place deep within.

In fact, were it possible–the most exhilarating life of all is a self-forgetful one. It’s where we are so into God and others that we forget about ourselves and get lost in all the glorious good going on.    That’s why the phrase, “beside ourselves with joy” makes so much sense.

Are you ready to emerge from you techno-cocoon?   Ready to re-enter the human family again?    Ready to give up on yourself and give away yourself instead?