The Game

Most children have played the game of musical chairs.

There’s one less chair than participants, and the child who cannot find a seat when the music stops is out.

Another chair is then removed, the music begins again, and the cycle repeats itself until one child is left as the winner.

The Adult Version

What if there was an adult version of this game?

What if there were only three chairs and that number never changed?

What if none of these three chairs was ever taken away when the music never stopped, trapping the participants in an endless, destructive game?

Let’s call these three chairs:  victim, villain, and hero.

And let’s call it the blame game.

And let’s say the point of the game is to never be left sitting in the villain chair whenever the music stops.

The Victim Chair

In the role of victim, we gain others’ sympathy and support.

We are the sinned against, the unjustly wronged, the one bearing all the pain.

In this chair we highlight our injuries and our injustices, and cry out for a hero to come to our rescue and punish our bad guys for us and right all of our wrongs while we stand safely by.

The problem is we never own up to our own wrongs, wallow in self-pity and irresponsibility, and are trapped in a perpetual, emotional dependency upon our emotionally needy heroes.

This is the classic role an enabled addict is in–their “helpers” are actually helping to destroy them and are manipulated into feeding their addictions.

The Hero Chair

In the role of hero, we gain affirmation and validation from the victims.

In this chair, we take up the causes, hurts, and grievances of victims and go after villains while victims cheer and applaud.

The problem is we are not qualified to be anybody else’s messiah and this role traps us in taking up others’ offenses, from which there is no release.

The victims feel great, but heroes are left burdened and in a state of ignoring their own problems, denying their own villainy, and trapped in their unhealthy need to be needed.

This is the classic role that enablers and co-dependent fixers play in a family–doomed to make it all better when they have no power to make anything better.

The Villain Chair

In the role of villain, we are stigmatized and punished by victims and heroes and play the role of the noble martyr.

Others–the whole family or group or society– place all of their badness on us and we bear not only our punishment, but theirs as well, so they can pretend to be perfect and above it all.

To be scapegoated is to be endlessly punished for things we never did so others can pretend to be perfect.

It’s a kind of death where others are free to abuse and slander us–to be villains with complete impunity and commit grave wrongs against those blamed for their misfortunes.

And even when we are guilty of what they say we did, there is no forgiveness, no release, no way to be reconciled.

For that would leave heroes and victims with needing to confront their own pain, their own guilt, their own choices and consequences, etc.

The Unreality of the Game

Notice that none of these one dimensional roles is based on a complete picture or upon reality.

Notice the game revolves around escaping responsibility and denying painful realities.

Instead, we shift them and concentrate them onto one person or group so the rest of us can evade and avoid our own guilt and unrelieved pain.

Notice that one side’s hero becomes the other side’s villain, as villains are victimized and become the victim, as the oppressed become the oppressors.

Then others rise up to play the hero on their injured party’s behalf and punish the first side’s heroes and victims for their villainy.

But they always take it too far and commit fresh excesses for the sake of their “righteous cause”.

We swap places and a new cycle of victim, hero, and villain begins.

Society and politics works this way.

Many families and social groups work this way.

Human history works this way.

Next time I’ll look at where this game originated and how we can escape it.

There is a solution!

Roots of Contempt

I recently read an intriguing essay by Arthur C. Brooks on a subject I had never given much thought about:   contempt.

You can read about it here.

Motive Attribution Asymmetry

Long story short, Americans are now as divided as Israelis and Palestinians are from each other.

We see our own side as motivated by love and the other side motivated by hate.

Where all the virtue is on my side and all the bad is on the other side.

And, most concerning, Americans are breaking off relationships with family members and friends over political differences at a rate and with an intensity not seen since before the Civil War.

To quote from the article, “Each side thinks it is driven by benevolence, while the other is evil and motivated by hatred — and is therefore an enemy with whom one cannot negotiate or compromise.”

It continues with the chilling conclusion, “Motive attribution asymmetry leads to something far worse: contempt, which is a noxious brew of anger and disgust. And not just contempt for other people’s ideas, but also for other people.”

Moral Inventory Exposure

It would have been easy, after reading the article, to conclude, “It’s all those fanatics on the Left and the Right!”

Which, again, is a way of shielding myself from exposure and deflecting the force of the truth.

Which is, to say, “That can’t possibly be me–it’s only them.”

So I did a fearless moral inventory, a self-examination exercise where I asked the Lord to reveal any areas of contempt lurking in my own heart.

Which began a two week process of exposure of some very soft-spoken, very subtle areas of unspoken contempt in my heart.

Because I know the Bible too well for anything overt, and because I’m cautious about saying things out loud, this wasn’t going to be a matter of looking at where I shot my mouth off in public.

It was going to be a tour through what I felt like saying but didn’t, and of locating the lairs where anger/disgust and its child contempt was born in my heart.

A Full Unsent Mail Box

Not surprisingly, I found two groups of people that I was angry with/disgusted by and thus held secret contempt for.

The first identified group were those who had authority over me in childhood, and how their beliefs failed me and/or directly contributed to some hugely traumatic experiences.

This would be the progressive beliefs of being soft on crime, justifying sexual deviancy, removing my mother from me via work and feminist ideology, etc.

The root was these past wounds, along with the current pain of seeing my oppressors views reemerge and hold a position of dominance again (as in the 60’s/70’s).

It was a hard go but, in the end, God heard me and gave me a miracle of serenity and fresh joy and a deliverance from contempt.

Here We Go Again

Several days ago, it clear I had another group that I had harbored secret contempt against:  intransigent, change-resistant rural people.

I was reading in our local paper how they were enjoying success locally on a broad array of issues and blocking all progress.

Which broke the serenity I was enjoying and evoked that familiar mix of emotions springing from contempt.

The reason why is how this very same demographic tormented our leadership team and scapegoated me without mercy over a period of three years.

Again, I was too well-versed to say what I felt at the time out load and now find myself sublimating this unresolved conflict onto other issues where this same group is at work locally.

So it was another time of confessing contempt this morning, admitting my powerlessness and slavery to contempt, and asking God for an intervention.

And, once again, He mercifully gave it.

The Truth that Sets Free

So I offer myself not as an example of perfection but as a struggler, as a great sinner who needs a great Savior.

I thank the Lord for His gift of healing and freedom, all the while knowing I’ll have a propensity for the sin of contempt that will need watching and many more times of repentance and healing.

Arthur C. Brooks concludes with some helpful words to those who are still tempted to justify holding others in contempt:

“As satisfying as it can feel to hear that your foes are irredeemable, stupid and deviant, remember: When you find yourself hating something, someone is making money or winning elections or getting more famous and powerful. Unless a leader is actually teaching you something you didn’t know or expanding your worldview and moral outlook, you are being used.”

“Contempt makes persuasion impossible — no one has ever been hated into agreement, after all — so its expression is either petty self-indulgence or cheap virtue signaling, neither of which wins converts.”

“You will be treated with contempt very soon. This is a chance to change at least one heart — yours. Respond with warmheartedness and good humor. You are guaranteed to be happier. If that also affects the contemptuous person (or bystanders), it will be to the good.”

Self Absolutism

When I was a younger man, there was still a sense of moral absolutes and right and wrong in American society.

These absolutes were outside the self, were true across all cultures and times, and formed the shared moral consensus for distinguishing right and wrong.

The Earlier Transition to Subjective Relativism

But even in my youth a transition was already happening.

These moral absolutes were being jettisoned for subjective, self-chosen beliefs, “What I say is right…”, “What’s right for me…, “What works for me…”

Situation ethics and moral relativism spread from the universities into society.

Each of us now busily designed a moral world that would best fit us while allowing society to largely operate according to traditional absolutes.

“As long as nobody else gets hurt” and “Live and let live” were its mantras.

The fastest way to settle an argument that was unanswerable, “Well, that may be right for you, but for me….”

The Current Transition to Self-Absolutism

Now there’s been a transition from relativism to a troubling and aggressive kind of self-absolutism.

What’s right for me (or my group) and how I/we see it is how everyone else in society should see it and must see it.

This self-seeing, self-rightness absolute that we hold must first be codified into laws and then all others in society must agree and comply with it.

Out of self-moralizing comes self-supremacy comes self-absolutism.

In self absolutism, I am the standard for all others.

My views are absolute and my will is paramount.

Battles of All Against All

Which sets off a power and dominance battles between all the other “selfs” of society and their self-absolutes.

Which makes it impossible to compromise without violating our very self and its existence and its identity.

We must therefore compulsively make all others agree and comply–it is a mandate because otherwise an absolute isn’t an absolute.

Life and politics and everything has thus become a zero sum game where, if anyone else wins or is allowed space to disagree and not comply, it’s a disastrous loss.

We end up acting and speaking as if our very lives depend upon winning every argument, silencing every other view, prevailing in every election, etc.

It’s what Donald Trump and his bitterest opponents share in common:   a narcissistic, self-absolutism!

It’s the war of all against all, which creates a paradox.

As our politics becomes increasingly authoritarian and increasingly obstructive, a kind of lawlessness and total lack of social connection and cohesion happens.

We ourselves are out of control in our private lives and our secret habits and our raging emotions, while, at the same time, we’re furiously trying to control everyone and everything else.

Sanity vs. Grandiosity

In what the Twelve Steps call, “being restored to sanity”, confused authority is straightened out, unrealistic expectations are let go, and smallness is embraced within a non-posturing, anonymous community.

We give up our grandiosity and our will to domineer others.

In other words, God is allowed to be God, the self takes primary responsibility for itself alone under God, and we devote ourselves to helping others as a helped person instead of trying to control others as a sanctimonious superior.

In shark contrast, in self-absolutism the self pretends to be God, loses control of itself and acts irresponsibly, and trying to domineer and control all others as a toxic busybody who evades and avoids the real issue.

The truth is its delusional to pretend we are God and to try an impose our will on all others–it’s insanity!

The Solution

What we really need most, and where the greatest comfort and relief from stress will come from, is to get off of God’s throne and stay off.

Here we deal with our own crud and take radical responsibility and do a fearless moral inventory.

Here we admit we are out-of-control, enslaved sinners with a fatal condition who have hit bottom and occupy a position of supreme vulnerability and powerlessness.

We therefore need a Messiah to intervene from outside and above us, and in mercy grant us a spiritual awakening and open us up under new management.

My advice to my fellow Christians is to challenge not the beliefs being foisted upon us but the unsustainable, underlying insanity of self-supremacy and self-absolutism.

And to model the beautiful joy and freedom of being under God’s management, being small but loved by Him in a caring community, and being vulnerable but graced and comforted and transformed by God.

Indoctrination

In education, the student is moved from a childish, “believe everything you’re taught”, naivety to an adult, “form your own views and test all truth claims” status of a life-long, discerning self-learner.

True Education

With all genuine education, students grapple with the views presented by their teachers and are given the tools by which they can test their teacher’s views.

They are expected to do original work, interact with first-hand sources, draw conclusions based upon evidence, state their views with originality, and interact with fellow students and teachers along the way.

Dissent and challenge are part and parcel of this kind of adult-forming education, and in producing the kind of citizen a representative democracy needs in order to thrive.

As I told my teens, “In high school, you’re taught to uncritically accept the viewpoints in the textbooks you’re assigned and then regurgitate them on a test.  In college, you meet the authors of these textbooks and quickly realize they are human.”

“You’ll soon see that they’ve been presenting you one view of many within their subject.  That they are fallible and prone to bias and must therefore have their views tested rather than unquestioningly accepted.”

At least, that’s how it used to be.

Indoctrination

Now, it seems that most liberal arts courses require unquestioning acceptance and parroting of the teacher’s ideology in order to receive high grades.

We have moved from education to indoctrination.

Education has been displaced by indoctrinating activism, and the propagation of “critical theory” and progressive and socialist ideology is paramount.

But far worse is the lack of equipping by institutes of higher learning of their students to first learn and then use a set of intellectual tools against the views being taught.

What do I mean by that?

What I mean is there is now no freedom to debate and dissent from the prevailing ideas of our times or that particular classroom.

Where are the robust discussions and rigorous mutual challenging that college used to all be about?

The Tools of Critical Thinking

When I was at UCLA, I learned about debate techniques such as “he who defines the terms wins the debate” and about various logical fallacies like attacking the person instead of their views.

I also learned this gem:  every world-view is founded upon at least one unproven, unprovable assumption.

One must therefore surface these unspoken assumptions and challenge them instead of blindly accepting them.

And if one fails to do so, then this is what will happen:

If you accept the teacher’s or ideology’s assumptions, you will inevitably find yourself accepting its conclusions and not even know why.

You’ll find no space for your former views and not even realize how that outcome happened.

In other words, most professors will tell you on the first day of class what their world-view is and even what assumed views they take as a given.

Taking careful notes, a student can then ask, “But is that assumption even true?  What are the flaws of that assumption? What are the holes in this theory?”

Then, armed with that knowledge, the student can guard him or herself from being indoctrinated, from being blindly carried along into accepting a set of conclusions based upon what can never really be proven.

And, in that way, gain a basis upon which to dissent, to challenge, to wisely interact, and, ultimately, to form one’s own views instead becoming a little parrot of the prof.

Cases in Point

I had two painful conversations the past weekend.

The first was with a father who is watching his high-school daughter accept beliefs and views in contradiction to her own faith, and then watching her move further and further away from it.

She was being indoctrinated into a social justice ideology by her teachers, and given a lens by which to view everything in her life and adapt it to her new ideology.

The second conversation was with a college student who was both young in their Christian faith and, at the same time, being bombarded with views leading him away from orthodoxy into conclusions that contradicted his faith’s core beliefs.

In both cases, the tragedy wasn’t so much that these students’ views were changing.

It’s that they were never given a set of critical, discernment tools by which to avoid being carried along and indoctrinated without their conscious awareness or consent by the ideologies of our age.

They had bought into a truckload of unproven assumptions without realizing it, accepted them wholesale, and were now blindly conforming everything in their life to fit with the conclusions of the prevailing ideology.

Like lambs being led to the slaughter.

Countering Educational Abuse

Indoctrination is a kind of educational abuse that locks one into perpetual childhood.

It is a form of educational malpractice preying upon the ignorant, the intellectually lazy, or, most often, upon folks too afraid to dissent courageously and face social rejection.

And until we Christians move beyond indoctrination ourselves, we will be unarmed and defenseless.

Until we equip our young adults with a set of discernment tools and a familiarity of the techniques of indoctrination, we will see case after case after case of avoidable losses pile up on our watch and see our own lambs led to the slaughter needlessly.

The Cancer of Self-Supremacy

There is a kind of supremacy that’s worse than white supremacy because it is the root of every supremacy on earth.

And because it behind every attempt by any group or human being to exercise dominance over others.

And because it is also behind intractable conflicts, polarization, and partisan spirit and hostility.

The Monster Within Us All

There is a master supremacy that lurks within us all.

It is rooted in a vastly overinflated view of ourselves and our own importance.

It is animated by a determination to control rather than be controlled.

It is governed by a passion to hurt those who have hurt us and put them in their place.

It desires above all else for all other people to bow down and worship us and obey our laws and satisfy our needs and end our pain.

I’m speaking, of course, of self-supremacy.

Hallmarks of Self-Supremacy

In self-supremacy, I will allow no one else to tell me what to say, what to do, what to think, how to feel, or where to go.

In self-supremacy, I require all others to say what I want, do what I want, think my way, feel what I feel, and go where I want them to go.

And in this contradiction we find eternal conflict that no human can solve.

If self-supremacy was a matter of ideology or conscious beliefs alone, it might be solved.

But our problem is our fallen human nature itself, and its underlying passion to “be like a god” and achieve god-like dominance.

Inescapable and Unsolvable

We therefore take this lurking self-supremacy with us wherever we go and cannot escape it.

Changing our environment is not enough.

And we are born with it so changing our genetics will not help.

It corrupts our thinking, our emotions, and our wills, so self-help and willpower cannot overcome it.

It defines our alliances and our enemies, our politics and our battles, so it will defy all governmental or market or systemic solutions.

Economics and political power will not heal it or change it, even if our group gains temporary political power and tries to make our self’s enemies comply with our will.

These others will, of course, resist our will and seek to counter-impose their own, being animated as well by a sense of wounded pride and thwarted self-supremacy.

A Deeper Surgery

Recently, I’ve written less because it’s been a season of soul surgery.

God has been rooting around inside my soul and has been uprooting roots of feeling like being a perpetual disappointment to my non-nurturing, absent parents.

He has been touching again my deepest wound, the molestation trauma and the psychological torture my abuser inflicted.

He has been surfacing bitter root judgments against my dominator and the inner vow to never let anyone dominate and humiliate me like that ever again.

He has been surfacing bitter root judgments against those who failed to protect me and who allowed injustice to go unpunished, and my vow to go after doers of petty injustices and punish them myself.

He has been showing me that a lot of intense feelings I am feeling over politics or certain issues are rooted in these vows to resist domination and fight against unpunished injustice.

He has made me worse temporarily and let these things flare up, so He can free me more deeply and make me permanently better.

Pursuing the Healing

Which means reversing the verdict of my bitter root judgments, forgiving at an even deeper level, and renouncing the vows that fuel self-supremacy.

He has reminded me that He alone is supreme, so there is no room or need for anyone to be that.

He has reminded me that He chose to be victimized, humiliated, and dominated as an offering for my sin, out of love and compassion for my plight.

So when I read about progressive Christians or conservative Christians engaging in dominance politics and marked by mass self-protection and reactivity against those they see as wanting to dominate them, I see myself.

And I want to gently say what God so gently has shown me, that the problem isn’t these others who disagree, it is our own thirst for supremacy disguised as fighting against injustice.

And I want to point them to the One who is reigns supreme and who loves us best, the One who slew our old nature on the Cross and moves us out from under the control of our wounded pride.

Crucifying Our Self-Supremacy

Self-supremacy isn’t a good thing to be gratified; it is a cancer that is killing us all and destroying us, our groups, and our society.

It is driving us mad and turning us all into punishing, sanctimonious monsters–and we don’t even realize it.

Thankfully, by dying to self and relinquishing the throne and handing all control and all of our wounds and our judgments and our vows over to Christ, we can be free from this worst of tyrannies.

There is a solution!

Supremacy and Equality

A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of local government where I noticed a tug of war between leaders voicing two ideologies.

A Case Study of Dueling Equality

On one side, a leader that I count as a friend and fellow believer is defending the tradition of praying before their meeting.

Although I was in sympathy with that tradition, I noticed it made her counterpart bristle.

On the other side, another leader who is new to the governing body was really pushing for a declaration of equality and support of gay rights.

Unsurprisingly, both leaders opposed the goals of the other, and both saw themselves as defending a group they feel is being unfairly attacked by its opponents.

They see themselves as fighting against a wrong and defending a right.

Each of them would say they’re fighting against a kind of supremacy, and each of them would say their side does not wish supremacy but fairness and respect.

Gay or Christian Supremacy?

That meeting really bothered me.

It bothered me so much that I haven’t posted ever since and have pondered these matters instead.

After much thought, I believe one of the reasons for the yawning gap in our society is this lurking undercurrent of supremacy that is poisoning everything.

The one leader who hails from my faith community isn’t seeking Christian supremacy.

I know her.  I know her heart.   That’s not there.

But the progressive leader interprets her defense and advocacy of the tradition of prayer as just that.

The progressive leader would never describe his goal as gay supremacy, but equality and protection.

Yet what he advocates is definitely perceived as an agenda of gay supremacy by the Christian community.

The Passion for Supremacy

In supremacy, the perception is we want to ban the other side or the other side suspects that, if unchecked, we would ban them.

That our true goal is to put them in the closet and criminalize their opposing views.

That what we really want is to stigmatize their beliefs or practices, and go after them and make them see it our way, do it our way, and parrot our viewpoint at all times.

We require dissenters to offer eternal validation and affirmation, and forbid them their right to protest and dissent.

Which requires boatloads of control–social or legal or physical control–over other human beings and even over all of society.

Kinds of Supremacy and Counter-Supremacy

Rural areas see the urban areas as trying to dominate them–destroying their economic way of life and holding them in utter contempt.

And urban areas feel the same way in return about the Trump agenda.

Upper class, liberated women see uneducated, lower class men as enemies of feminism and holding up the equality between the sexes.

Blue collar men, in turn, see upper class women waving signs, “the future is female” and “girls rule” and take these messages with deadly literal intent.

My own people, the conservative Evangelicals, are convinced that LGBT folks are out to get them, would ban their faith if they could, and seeking to impose their immorality on them.

And, of course, the LGBT folks would point to what happened to them under a majority Christian society and say we are the real threat–even in areas we’re a small minority now.

The same is true of the fraught race relations between the poorest whites and blacks, between those who champion the vilified police and those who champion the people of color they shoot far too often, between the indigenous peoples and the descendants of the white pioneers, etc.

Everyone’s a Defender, Everyone’s an Aggressor

My thesis is this:  everyone thinks they are merely raising a shield against their oppressors, but everyone is also predisposed to view their opposition as raising a sword of oppression.

The self perception by the individual or group is they are merely defending themselves (or a group they champion).

Yet these same defensive measures are seen by other individuals or groups as arming themselves and going on the warpath.

So hardening opposition and increasing passions and growing fury begin to color everything

It is as if the only question left is “Who will be supreme?”, “Whose will will prevail against all other wills?”, and most simply, “Who will win?”

Which perpetuates the cycle and makes sure, in the end, we’ll all lose.

I wish our local governing body had the courage to say, “We’re not here to be used to further any ideological agendas that make one side or another feel like the other is gunning for supremacy.”

And I wish I’d had the insight to have seen it and warned all sides to cease and desist and focus on the many issues that sorely need local attention.

Next time, delving deeper into supremacy….

What WON’T We Do?

Of course the government shutdown is going to go on and on!

We live in a time and place where everyone loves to trumpet their morally superior views.

All virtue is held by our side, and all vice is on the other side.

There is an absolute certainty in our own (or our group’s) rightness.

It seems like everyone is both rigidly inflexible and boundary destroying at the very same time.

The True Test

How did we end up like this?  And how might we find our way back to collective sanity?

An older man once told me:  don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.  Instead, watch what people do and the fruit of what the do.

So here’s a self test:

What won’t you say about your enemies–no matter how provoked you might be or satisfying it would be to slander them?

What won’t you do to those you despise–however painful it would be to refrain or pleasureful it would be to harm them?

It’s in that “not for sale” moral center, that place where threats and punishments cannot touch and will not budge us from our integrity, that tell us what we really believe is the most important.

Situation Ethics

What I find the most disturbing is how both parties, and both leadership teams in both parties, are willing to dispense with all precedents and traditions and checks and balances and limits for the sake of prevailing.

The end justifies any and all means to get there.

And if no limit will stop them, no sense of decency, propriety, or morality can check them, what then?

If they give their word only to go back on it as soon as it is advantageous to do so, how can there be any basis for trust between them and anyone else?

If lying is OK so long as it advances the cause, then our given word means nothing at all.

If a deal isn’t really a deal, and any agreement can be broken at will, then why would your opponents bother to forge one with you?

Why compromise and give a little in order to get a little if the other party can never be trusted to give their little or takes it away at the first opportunity?

A World Without Integrity

Welcome to a world without moral integrity.

The sad and ominous cloud hanging over our entire political establishment is this:  ideologies give us unlimited sanction for lying and both the ideologies on the Right and the Left are live by the credo:  “the end justify the means.”

I say this because, based upon the last ten years of public actions in and out of power, both socialistic progressivism and populist conservatism have this in common:  they will stop at nothing to win.

And they want not merely to win and then govern, but to win and then use their power to dominate and crush the other side.

The raw “will to power” is all that’s left of our hollowed out, amoral elites and our aimless, enraged citizenry.

Only the Will to Power

Power for its own sake.

Power as the one moral absolute left and the one command which must be obeyed.

Power to impose one’s views upon all others and to silence all dissent by all means possible.

So, again, what won’t we do?

It’s an exercise worth taking, listing out our core ethics and morals we won’t sell for advantage or ditch when threatened enough.

Keeping in mind that ever-present moral line and not permitting ourselves to ever cross it and always choosing positively to live by it.

The Why Behind the What

But keeping in mind we need a why to live by these compromising absolutes.

For me, I find my core in an Absolute, Perfect, Infinite Person who has spoken a Word to us all.

He sits on the throne and tells me what is right and wrong–personifying it and living it out perfectly in the Person of His Son.

He intervened to dethrone my inner sin-monster and birthed a new person when I surrendered to Him.

His redeeming love, and the gratitude and thirst for intimacy with Him it created, now govern my soul and redeem all my sorrows.

If it drives us insane to seat ourselves on the throne of the universe and fight with millions of other wannabe gods and goddesses, then maybe we were wrong about God after all.

Maybe our collective insanity and moral dead end we find ourselves in–the frenzied partying hiding a profound emptiness–is a sign that we were wrong to jettison God and replace Him with our self.

Both paganism of old and biblical Christianity were in agreement on one thing:  hubris is inevitably followed by nemesis.

Our inconsolable misery and chronic fighting with each other is a sign we are cracking under the pressure of ultimacy, and more of self can never be the solution to the problem of self.

God is the solution!

Christmas and Home

I was listening to the song, “I’ll be home for Christmas”, which, unsurprisingly, got me thinking about the intersection between home and the holiday.

The Harder Tug

As I get older, the tug of home and hearth, of kith and kin, pull harder.

There’s something in us that longs to be rooted, to be deeply connected to one’s soil and people.

Something that longs to be back in the small village of my ancestors and spend my whole life with people I’d know my whole life.

Yet there’s something else at work that condemns us to be a wanderer on the face of the earth, to be ever restless and resistant to being tied down.

We long for adventures.

Yet we long for home base.

Longing More for Home

And this song taps into both needs–I’m not at home, but I will be–even if only in my dreams.

For it presupposes a home that we can return to.

A place where we are from and where we are best known and loved best.

The problem is our own restlessness and the temporariness of life.

Christmas evokes memories of those who are no longer here to join us.

It makes us feel most keenly the separation of miles and geography and weather–especially we Americans who move every 36 months on average.

Moving Ever Further Away

Few indeed are those of us who still live in the place we were born.

Fewer still who still run in the same social circles they did in elementary school.

In Western civilization, we have left the village for the city, and then left the city for the suburbs.

We no longer live near, nor are we surrounded by, our extended families in our hometown.

Instead, if we’re fortunate, they will be occasional visitors in whatever new place we’re living.

Our lives are hyper-anonymous and barricaded in our homes and even within our separate rooms inside our homes.

We go on virtual adventures through our screens and devices.

Still Longing for Home

Yet, across the generations and the many miles, touching deep within the human heart, we still long to return home and get back there once again.

As deaths and departures intrude and as memories fade, it becomes clear we can never really go back.

There’s an ache inside of us that aches more at Christmas.

We begin to suspect at this time of year that we’ll never really find the home we seek on planet Earth.

We feel dissatisfied, uprooted, and belonging nowhere.

We intuitively feel this homelessness is wrong, and intuitively keep looking for a substitute that will fill the void.

Which raises the question:  if not on Earth, is there another, truer, deeper, more permanent home we were designed for?

The Great Move

Interestingly, the Christmas story is about God the Son leaving His Father’s home to make His home with us and inside of us.

While here, Christ spoke of home.

Christ tells His followers, “Abide in Me”.

Make your home inside Me–make me your home base and gratify your need for a permanent, good home in My own Person.

I am your home.

And then He left.

Not forever, but to prepare a new home for us with Himself so we could live with Him there.

Our True Home

The Bible even ends with a permanent dwelling together of redeemed humanity and God Himself in the City of God in a brand new universe.

Our intuition that we were made for a permanent, perfect home is then infinitely gratified forever and ever.

So if your family is disappointing or quarrelsome, if going home is miserable instead of fantastic, do not despair.

Even the best and closest families can’t do the job–for all homes change and every person in every family will one day leave, never to return.

The trick is to take our cue from the One who left home and returns, who makes His dwelling within us and tells us to find our home in Himself.

The Great Day will come when we go and physically live with Him in our permanent and most real home.

Until then, we carry His home in us and our home in Him where ever we go!

Which is why there’s a Christmas in the first place.

Pivoting From Loss to Joy

The holidays can be so full of great memories and happy occasions.

The holidays can also be times where we feel our losses most keenly.

Additions and Losses

For me, I have the joy of having two kids home from college and the pain of it being the first Christmas without my mom.

Happy additions and sad losses at the same time.

And I suspect I’m not alone.

The first temptation is to push losses down and wear an artificial smile.

The second is to wallow in losses and be a bystander to all the joy that could be entered into.

Neither options works well.

Full Loss and Full Joy

A better approach is fullness–fully feel the sorrows at times, then fully enter into the joy at other times.

There will be times when one will most keenly miss absent friends and family, where the loneliness of life in a fallen world confronts us.

What I do is to give myself permission to feel the loss and take my losses to God for comforting.

Then I turn towards thanking God for the time I had with them and rehearsing all their best qualities and best memories with them.

It acknowledges that the heart is both difficult and worthwhile to explore in a fallen world.

Feeling honestly without being swallowed whole by our feelings is the art of it all.

Losses Locate Love

The paradox is this:  we feel most keenly our losses where people are most beloved and where their best qualities are absent.

Take, for example, my maternal grandparents.

My maternal grandfather was largely missing from our lives and, when we did visit him as kids, it wasn’t pleasant at all.

I seldom if ever think about him and his absence created no vacuum.

But the woman he divorced and failed to treat well, my grandma, made a positive mark and then some.

Her prayers were instrumental in bringing me to Christ.

Her pithy, homespun sayings are still ringing in my ears decades later.

Her home-made peanut butter fudge was to die-for.

Her hand-made ornaments are still treasured additions to my family’s Christmas tree.

Months before she died from kidney cancer, she made the coast-to-coast flight to our wedding and graced it as a frail but keen-eyed witness to our vows.

I find myself keenly missing her at Christmas.

Reliving and Celebrating the Best

The same goes for my parents, although in different ways.

My mom’s gourmet cooking and consummate baking skills shone most brightly at Christmas.

And her admonitions to us all to “have another slice” or “there’s lots of cookies–eat up!” were part of what made Christmas, Christmas.

She gave us some quirky decor–reflecting her own upbringing in the Great Depression and desire to live large and go big while the money was there.

Things like the Mickey Mouse electric ringing bell set and the 13 miniature houses and many inherited nutcrackers all remind me of her.

My dad’s niche were Christmas calamities like Christmas trees that fell down and escaping to watch football or golf in the far bedroom.

And, of course, puns and humorous anecdotes around the table were part of what made any holiday complete.

Pivoting from Loss to Joy

Perhaps you like me will keenly feel some losses this year.

Christmas is like an amplifier–especially the first one after a loss.

Four years ago it was my dad.

This year it’s my mom–my first Christmas without her.

I’m expecting some harder moments this year, and am hoping to not be blindsided like I was at Thanksgiving.

Hence, the importance of being open and of allowing myself to feel this loss in appropriate and healthy ways.

I can’t change her departure from this life.

But I can pivot from this often-felt loss into treasuring memories, savoring her best qualities, and appreciating all the ways her life bettered me and blessed me.

And, by pivoting, find my way back to joy again!

How about you?

The Happiness of Smallness

It’s a paradox:  the smaller our ego the greater our gratitude.

And it’s a solution:  collapsing our ego is the key to regaining a grateful heart.

Bloated Expectations of Bloated Egos

A big-shot expects everyone to give way to their way and get their own way.

A big-shot expects only the best at no cost to themselves.

A big-shot demands and feels entitled to everything good.

The big-shot is therefore never satisfied, complaints loudly and always, and sours more with every passing year.

With a tightening but futile hand, their life and joy slip through their fingers like slippery sand.

The core belief that drives big-shots is their own worthiness and importance.

Their self-concept is a concept of deserving it all.

And it’s ridiculous, isn’t it?!

The Joy of the Unworthy

But a person who comes to terms with their utter unworthiness is a person who is primed for gratitude.

This person owns up to their terrible selfishness, rests in their insignificance, and admits their debt pile of wrongs is as high as heaven.

This person knows without a doubt that they deserve no good thing ever.

And in that state of ego collapse and unworthiness, they look around and see so much good being given to them.

The count their blessings and rejoice when anything is right or goes well.

The Feast of the Forgiven

The unworthy person looks up and expects to face merciless judgment from on high but is shocked to be received with redeeming grace.

They find they are lavished with undeserved love to the point of being killed with kindness.

Having sinned greatly, they are forgiven much and now love the One who forgave them so much.

Their hearts are softened, their wills are supple, and a song of thanksgiving fills their voice.

Life has become a continual feast of unexpected, unearned delights.

Their faces mysteriously beam and their smile is inexplicably broad.

The Miserliness of the Big

The egoist, on the other hand, shrivels and shrinks into miserliness and grasping.

Here is Charles Dickens description of Ebenezer Scrooge:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

And, of course, we all know the Grinch had a heart four sizes too small.

The Generosity of the Small

On the other hand, a small, unworthy yet forgiven person is a person with a generous heart.

They lend a hand up to those behind them, wanting others to enjoy what they now have from a super-generous God.

Being blessed does not result in any elevation change–it’s not a sign of being better than someone else but a proof of grace.

They’re in on the secret–generosity is God’s kind of fun and is the ultimate form of recreation.

They smile at others and carry an open face.

Their warmth overflows to cheer others.

Their hand is open and their time is available.

The True Resistance

Today’s headlines are full of nasty attacks by public figures and gotchya new stories full of contempt and malice towards public figures.

I am reminded how we are awash in big egos raging at other big egos for defying them.

It makes me recoil in horror at our descent into collective egomania.

So let’s get small again and give up our inflated, grandiose expectations.

Let’s humble ourselves again and hit our bottom once more.

Let’s embrace our unworthiness as chronic sinners and repent of our pride and ingratitude.

Let’s look out and up and away from ourselves with eyes of gratitude again.

Then let’s share the enormous blessings we’ve so abundantly received and spread some cheer and goodwill.

What if and why not?