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.

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!

Disappointment

It’s one thing to be disappointed by life’s events or by other people.

It’s quite another when you yourself are THE disappointment.

That happens often in alcoholic or chaotic families that are full of impossible perfectionism and magical thinking and unrealistic expectations.

It’s why so many of us grew up feeling unable to ever please our parents.

We were always a disappointment to them not matter what we did or chose.

And so we bore their shame and disapproval as well.

Internalized Hard-wiring

This gets internalized and we go about life expecting to disappoint everyone in every endeavor, living out the role of “the disappointer” in the play of life.

It is a self-reinforcing, negative loop where one never wins and where one cannot escape.

So why try?  Why not just go ahead and get it over with and be the disappointment?

This root is a source of much despair and even depression.

Perfectionism, inevitable disappointment, and depression are an unholy trinity so many people carry around with them throughout their lives.

I know because I’ve been one of these poor souls.

Not crassly or openly, but quietly and secretly–living with an undercurrent of buried emotion that says, “You are such a disappointment! (And always will be!)”

This gets projected onto all other people–our spouses and loved ones and authority figures, even God Himself.

It leaves us unable to accept love or see the love that’s there.

Any Hope For The Disappointing?

So how does one emerge from the tyranny of this toxic role?

Is there a way to throw away the script and embrace a new role in a new script?

I’m happy to say there is.

The first step back is coming to terms with the lie of perfectionism.

It’s giving up the dream of self-lifting up our selves to a state of perpetual excellence and magical sufficiency in all areas.

It’s, ironically, embracing the old biblical term for us in all our fallenness, selfishness, and ruinous self-destructiveness–a sinner.

In fact, the more honest we are about our selves, the more we’ll collide with the inner sewer, the vicious monster, within us.

It’s too late for us to be perfect because we are repeat offenders with a million convictions on our records, zillions of infractions against any standard of perfection.

Love for the Disappointing

The second step is where grace kicks in.

We are not only not perfect, we can never be perfect and self-sabotage ourselves all the time.

No amount of punishing the self, pressuring the self, or riding the self will get us the results of perfection we insanely seek.

Weirdly, realizing that nobody else, however polished and self-assured they look on the outside, is that good is good news.

The thing that alcoholic or chaotic families do that is so insidious is they withdraw love in the presence of imperfection, making hiders and liars out of us all.

What if we could admit the obvious and come to Someone who would lavish us with undeserved love when we are outed as sinners and exposed as failures?

What if, instead of being berated, humiliated, or viciously punished for failing, we are held close, celebrated, and championed as beloved child?

What if we no longer were under a false mandate to be perfect or no longer had to dread being condemned for any failure?

What if we could be part of a new, vastly different kind of good family?

For me, the long way back from perfectionism and perpetual disappointment has been a journey ever deeper into God’s grace for sinners.

Adult Faith

Part of spiritual adulthood is realizing our screwed up parents had screwed up parents as well.

We can therefore step outside of their issues and make an adult choice to no longer carry their baggage of shame, disapproval and disappointment.

It’s to let Christ bear our impossible burden of disappointment on the Cross.

It’s to emotionally transfer this unholy role to Him where He became the ultimate Scapegoat and Victim who took our place.

Its to experience an emotional exchange where we take on His deserved status as beloved child, bearer of glory, and clean, bestowed goodness.

It takes great courage to allow ourselves be loved as sinners because we break with that familiar tyrant within us:  our sin monster full of wounded pride.

To entrust ourselves, our failing, ever disappointing and sinful selves, into the care of Another is sheer vulnerability.

But it’s a vulnerability to another, better kind of love than anything we’ve ever known among sinful humans on earth.

A Perpetual Delight

Through the knothole of surrendered control and trading places with Him, we enter a zone where we are perpetually pleasing to God despite our present performance levels.

It’s a status that can survive the worst failures and grossest disappointments.

By grace we are fully approved on an infinite scale, and He is well-pleased and delighted with us forever and ever.

God, the ultimate and good Father we’ve always longed to know, is free to lavish us with redeeming love and kill us with kindness,

The reign of parent-instilled, internalized self-disappointment is over.

There is a solution!

Letting Go of Dominance

American society, even the most religious parts of it, is no longer shaped by Christianity.

The New Gods Nietzsche and Marx

On the right, America now follows the teachings of 19th Century German atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

On the left, America now follows the teachings of 19th Century German atheist philosopher Karl Marx.

God is dead, therefore anything is permissible.

It’s therefore it’s all about “will to power” and achieving dominance over others.

Dreams of Earthly Dominance

When I hear today’s journalists and politicians, when I observe today’s professors and commentators, I hear the competing utopian ideologies of populism or socialism.

Having given up heaven, it’s all about creating a strongly national or a justly progressive paradise on earth.

Having abandoned theology, it’s all about politics and gaining power at any cost.

The individual or the collective is supreme.

The self or the government is on high and at war with the other.

And each of these centers of dominance seeks to dominate their ideological opponents.

No dissent is allowed.

All compromise or pragmatism is seen as treason.

Not merely content to win elections or make a good society, the goal is now a perfect society that expresses the projected wishes of the self upon all others.

Controlling Yet Out of Control

The goal is to control the environment which necessitates the control of all other people.

Yet, despite these wishes, our populace is now more personally miserable.

The harder we seek control and dominance, the more out of control we behave and the more enraged we become at the defiance of others.

Gun control is passed, yet lawlessness, addiction, and crime increase.

Regulations on commerce are eased, then greed and exploitation in businesses are multiplied.

Speech codes are adopted, then racist and offensive speech mushrooms.

Having banished God and ditched the Bible, we find ourselves enslaved to our own independence and addicted to our props that hold us up in a chaotic world.

Religious Atheism

Even among my own group, Evangelicals, the will to power and passion for dominance in reaction to being dominated reigns supreme.

Our tribe, our region, our culture, and our values must be protected at all costs.

Whatever alliances are needed, whatever politicians we need to get into bed with, is done and is justified.

The moral absolutes which once marked us have been traded away for protection from our ideological enemies and victory over the other political tribes at war with us.

It’s dominate or be dominated.

Which is why Donald Trump’s rise isn’t the rise of the religious right, but the triumph of irreligious right-wing philosophy within religious groups.

The Devil’s Offer of Easy Dominance

Yet none of this is new.

Jesus, when He went into the desert to experience temptation by the devil, was offered dominance.

All the kingdoms of the world and dominance over all humanity could be His for the asking.

Just worship the devil once and it was a done deal.

Thankfully, He refused the temptations of cheap, false dominance and chose to go to the Cross instead.

And, in His refusal, is a way out of our mess.

Forsaking Control, Finding Peace

Ironically, it’s in laying down control that we enter into God’s good control.

It’s in becoming absolutely vulnerable to Him that we find freedom and peace.

Weirdly to our minds, leaving the false throne we occupy is when we can become our true selves, our new selves.

The great challenge of our times is to abandon this false hope of dominance.

To give up the fantasy of achieving absolute security or restored greatness or perfect justice or total equality on earth.

To give up the dream of making the people who threaten or hurt us the most bow down to us.

To give up the wish of making them validate us and comply with our plans for the universe.

Living With Tension By Faith

How do I know I’m progressing?

It’s seen most clearly in letting people disagree with me without reactivity.

It’s seen most clearly when I lose elections, when my preferred vision for America is in retreat, when things don’t go my way.

It’s in resisting the temptation to have the last word and to always win–for I no longer need to win earthly battles.

It’s marked by learning to live with unresolved tension, with unsecured threats, with painful realities one cannot change.

For the sake of “a better hope and an abiding one”, as the writer of Hebrews puts it.

Bringing Our Pain to God

Behind our will to dominate others is a deep core of woundedness and soul fright.

We need healing and comforting from our fears by Someone Supreme and in charge of all.

It’s admitting that our atheism has failed and we really do need God to function with any semblance of humanity.

That we have been proud fools and are incompetent as lords of the universe.

That we are out of control and cannot fix ourselves or make the world a safe place for our selves.

It’s letting these false dreams of dominance be shattered, then forsaken.

And coming lowly, coming vulnerable, coming as a sinner, to a God who offers mercy to sinners.

“You’re right, God.  And I’m the one who’s been wrong all along!  Forgive me!” is the idea.

There is a solution!

Peace and Goodwill?!

I was re-reading the angel’s announcement of “peace on earth, good will towards men” recently.

And it struck me.

Are you sure we’re talking about the same planet?

Are we honestly referring to the same human race?

The Same Planet? The Same Race?

The world I know is a tormented, conflicted, miserable place for most of its history and in almost all places for much of the time.

It is chronically filled with selfishness and greed, and awash in war and injustices.

I see little of peace on earth.

And the human race I know and you know is the source of the vast majority of this misery.

How could God ever be pleased with such a selfish, nasty, rebellious, idolatrous, violent, lustful, greedy lot like humanity?

What could possibly make Him favorably disposed towards us even a tiny little bit?

Especially when I look at the guy staring back at me in the mirror.

The Mystery of Christmas

It’s a mystery.

It’s hard to fathom what could be giving Him such good pleasure as He gazes upon the human race.

Is it some kind of joke?

It sure seems that way.

This announcement is made to the dregs of society–shepherds–outside a tiny, nowhere village called Bethlehem.

It is given in the midst of a society where the vast majority lived hand to mouth, grinding away in poverty.

And it is spoken in an era when the Jewish people are under the Roman boot and ruled over by a Roman-installed cruel despot, Herod the Great.

I can see little cause for celebration either in heaven or for the target audience hearing the heavenly messenger.

Bleak times in a bleak place.

Missing the Irony

What I’m trying to say is we modern readers miss the irony.

So we miss the real cause for joy and the real reason God is so terribly pleased despite all the above.

We have domesticated Christmas, and commercialized it to death.

It evokes a yawn instead of a gasp.

Despair instead of hope.

Weariness instead of energizing expectancy.

The truth is the angel’s message is purposefully given to the lowborn, the conquered, and the destitute.

For those with no stake in the present world order, and who can only look to God as those without anywhere else to look.

Somehow Connected to the Child

Whatever this peace on earth is, it is somehow related to the birth of this Child.

Whatever good pleasure and good will God has towards us, it is somehow tied up in whatever this Child was born to do and for whom He was born for.

To those who feel like the economic-political-societal deck is stacked against them.

To those who feel detached and despised by those above them.

To those who will never prosper under this present world order.

Christmas is about the birth of God’s universal King who overthrows the present state of affairs and who ushers in the reign of God.

Christmas is about grace–grace for sinners, help for losers, love for nobodies, raising up to heaven because God’s terms are satisfied by this Child.

The Basis of Peace and Goodwill

Righting every wrong, settling every offense, and removing every sin we’ve ever done, the Child will obtain the terms we need for peace with God on earth to happen.

He will so please His Father and so totally remove what displeases Him that God will view us through the lens of His Son’s all-lovely, all-satisfying life and it will take His breath away.

Because this Child came and died in our place and settled all our debts against God, goodwill now justly reigns.

God couldn’t be more pleased than He now is on the other side of the Cross.

The peace we enjoy with Him cannot be equaled or improved–it is a perfect and eternal peace at the ultimate level.

We who ought to expect nothing but richly-deserved condemnation are brought near, adopted as His own, and made alive with His life.

It’s the very bleakness and ridiculous impossibility of the context of this angelic announcement that makes it so astounding an outcome!

It’s the magnitude of God’s sheer generosity in contrast with the magnitude of our utter unworthiness and ruination that make Christmas, Christmas.

Christmas is for You

Feeling down?  No problem.

Feeling bleak?  You’re a prime candidate.

Feeling unwanted and unworthy?  That’s exactly who He’s looking for.

No other options and nowhere else to go?  You’ve been set-up in an unexpected way.

For you this Child has come.

For you this God who became Man would die on a Cross.

For you He has made peace with God.

For you He has secured the favor of God and, unlikely as it seems, made you the object of His perpetual goodwill.

All you need to do is trust His goodwill and dare to draw near and come to Him with empty, dirty hands.

And let Him love you there as a unlovable person chosen to know the greatest love of all.

That’s what Christmas is all about!

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.