Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Are people making the same relational error with Obama that they made with Jesus?
It seems many detractors of Obama have been quite disturbed by the level of adoration that Obama is receiving these days. Supporters of Obama need to take a look at this as well, especially Christian ones. They should know better because of the example that Jesus gives them. Remember what happened when Jesus went into Jerusalem? It was a massive celebration, but soon thereafter, he was crucified with the same group turning against him. Why? People want their savior to be who they want them to be, not who they really are. You see this in marriage relationships, we turn on our spouces when they fail to reach our expectations. Obama can not possibly meet the expectations that people have of him, anymore than Jesus could. This does not speak poorly of Obama or Jesus, but rather how people want to have a savior in their own image of what a savior should look like. Obama can survive this to the degree that he is able to inspire others to do the work along with him, but in the end he may still be "crucified". This does not mean that people should not follow someone else, we need good leaders, and good followers to accomplish anything in this life. The pivitol question is how healthy are we in relating to our leaders, and how healthy is our leader in leading us?
Love leads to Truth
Many times, when I mention the importance of the church showing grace towards each other, and towards those outside the church, I encounter a response similar to this, "Yes, grace is important, but we also must tell them the truth." For some in the church, loving someone means you accept all their behaviors and never confront any of their sins. I believe that, rather than there being two separate concepts, that true grace includes the truth, and that Truth needs to contain grace, rather than being a seperate concept.
I know as a psychotherapist and husband, that there needs to be a particular way of confronting in order to be most effective. For instance, the context in which I point out problems that I'm having with my wife is paramount to my effectiveness. If I attack her beliefs or her as a person, shaming her and rejecting her, I'm probably not going to be all that effective or worse can cause permanent damage to the relationship. However, if my wife is feeling that I'm loving and caring, and I'm not going to reject her, she is more open to hearing my complaint. If she really feels the love that I have for her and we are close, it often pains her that I am being hurt by something she has done or not done. When I encounter God's love, I want to repent. I know longer desire the sin, I'm broken, not where I feel lousey, but like I can't wait to get out of my smelly workout clothes after 30 minutes on the stairmaster, so that I can jump into a shower of God's love.
In therapy sessions, I'm continually confronting clients with their unhealthy and sinful behaviors, but the number one thing I look for before I do this is whether or not they feel cared for enough by me to be able to handle what I have to say to them. For some people, it takes longer than others to achieve this kind of trust. Nonetheless, it is my responsibility to have the right attitude, if I'm going to be recieved.
By the way, I really can't think of too many times in the last 16 years of doing therapy, where the person has been emotionally hurt by my correction because I did the work to prepare them for it. I liken it to a trained surgeon doing heart surgery: You first do no harm, you care for them, you prepare them, you are careful with the incision, you use your training, you close them back up, and you help them recover. Too many times in the church we have people just hacking away at each other in their correcting, leaving the person bleeding to an eventual spiritual death. We need to care for one another, and espescially those outside the church, because they need to see that Christians can be different from the world that corrects through shame, punishment, retaliation, and rejection. We need to be a light that shines and communicates that we care, and from that we want them to experience the Truth of God's love, and that in order to have this we need to change our ways. Isn't this how Jesus related to the world when he said that he did not come to judge the world, but to be a salve to the hurting world, and to give them a way out of thier self-destructive sinful lives?
I know as a psychotherapist and husband, that there needs to be a particular way of confronting in order to be most effective. For instance, the context in which I point out problems that I'm having with my wife is paramount to my effectiveness. If I attack her beliefs or her as a person, shaming her and rejecting her, I'm probably not going to be all that effective or worse can cause permanent damage to the relationship. However, if my wife is feeling that I'm loving and caring, and I'm not going to reject her, she is more open to hearing my complaint. If she really feels the love that I have for her and we are close, it often pains her that I am being hurt by something she has done or not done. When I encounter God's love, I want to repent. I know longer desire the sin, I'm broken, not where I feel lousey, but like I can't wait to get out of my smelly workout clothes after 30 minutes on the stairmaster, so that I can jump into a shower of God's love.
In therapy sessions, I'm continually confronting clients with their unhealthy and sinful behaviors, but the number one thing I look for before I do this is whether or not they feel cared for enough by me to be able to handle what I have to say to them. For some people, it takes longer than others to achieve this kind of trust. Nonetheless, it is my responsibility to have the right attitude, if I'm going to be recieved.
By the way, I really can't think of too many times in the last 16 years of doing therapy, where the person has been emotionally hurt by my correction because I did the work to prepare them for it. I liken it to a trained surgeon doing heart surgery: You first do no harm, you care for them, you prepare them, you are careful with the incision, you use your training, you close them back up, and you help them recover. Too many times in the church we have people just hacking away at each other in their correcting, leaving the person bleeding to an eventual spiritual death. We need to care for one another, and espescially those outside the church, because they need to see that Christians can be different from the world that corrects through shame, punishment, retaliation, and rejection. We need to be a light that shines and communicates that we care, and from that we want them to experience the Truth of God's love, and that in order to have this we need to change our ways. Isn't this how Jesus related to the world when he said that he did not come to judge the world, but to be a salve to the hurting world, and to give them a way out of thier self-destructive sinful lives?
Monday, January 5, 2009
They will know we are Christians by our love
One of my most profound contacts with Jesus, in terms of his impact on my life, was when I was 7 and visiting my dad's Jesus People community. I remember them singing praise songs all the time: on the bus as we were traveling, at every meal, at thier coffee house, and I just remember feeling so much love, like I'd never felt before. Consequently, I wanted to be like them and craved to know Jesus the way they did, and ended up having a born again experience at a Billy Graham crusade where we were passing out Jesus People newspapers we had printed. Now, I had gone to church before all of this, and went after, but I was never impacted by anything that I was taught from the pulpit the way I was by the love from this community and the way it impacted my relationship with Jesus.
Unfortunately, the Church's reputation in the world is not one of being filled with exceptionally loving people, but one of exceptionally judgemental people. This is not to say that there aren't loving people in the church. Most churches I have attended are more loving than any other kind of institution, but too often the only things that we communicate to the unchurched is that they are behaving badly. We make stances on gay rights, abortion, women's rights, the right to bear arms, stem cell research. The wedge issues as they are called. However, we do so at a cost, and that cost is the reputation of being stronger in love than we are in the law. This last election showed this quite markedly. In thier desire to legislate morality, the evangelical right rallied behind a lady who they gleefully described as the "Baraccuda". She didn't have the reputation of being a woman of exceptional love, care, peace, joy, but rather one that could attack and destroy her opponent.
It seems that Christians have lost faith in the power of God's love. This Sunday at church, I had a wonderful time experiencing God's love through songs, prayer, praise, and connecting with others, and from that I released a number of sinful behaviors to God. When I do connect with God, I don't want to sin. Now that doesn't mean I don't still struggle, but for an hour at least, I got some movement in the right direction. In human relations, we have to offer an alternative, if we hope to erradicate another less healthy behavior. God's love is an alternative to all sin. If we want to change the world, it comes from loving it, not criticizing it. If people know that I care about them more than I care about correcting them, then they will listen, otherwise I am just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal to them. With my wife, she doesn't want me to make her perfect or without sin, she wants me to love her, and when she knows that, she is more likely to change in ways that are pleasing to me. In relationships, we need 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative. If we, as Christians, want to truely impact others, we must love them at least 5 times as much as we judge them.
What would be our impact on our world if we erred on the side of love, rather than erring on the side of truth?
Unfortunately, the Church's reputation in the world is not one of being filled with exceptionally loving people, but one of exceptionally judgemental people. This is not to say that there aren't loving people in the church. Most churches I have attended are more loving than any other kind of institution, but too often the only things that we communicate to the unchurched is that they are behaving badly. We make stances on gay rights, abortion, women's rights, the right to bear arms, stem cell research. The wedge issues as they are called. However, we do so at a cost, and that cost is the reputation of being stronger in love than we are in the law. This last election showed this quite markedly. In thier desire to legislate morality, the evangelical right rallied behind a lady who they gleefully described as the "Baraccuda". She didn't have the reputation of being a woman of exceptional love, care, peace, joy, but rather one that could attack and destroy her opponent.
It seems that Christians have lost faith in the power of God's love. This Sunday at church, I had a wonderful time experiencing God's love through songs, prayer, praise, and connecting with others, and from that I released a number of sinful behaviors to God. When I do connect with God, I don't want to sin. Now that doesn't mean I don't still struggle, but for an hour at least, I got some movement in the right direction. In human relations, we have to offer an alternative, if we hope to erradicate another less healthy behavior. God's love is an alternative to all sin. If we want to change the world, it comes from loving it, not criticizing it. If people know that I care about them more than I care about correcting them, then they will listen, otherwise I am just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal to them. With my wife, she doesn't want me to make her perfect or without sin, she wants me to love her, and when she knows that, she is more likely to change in ways that are pleasing to me. In relationships, we need 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative. If we, as Christians, want to truely impact others, we must love them at least 5 times as much as we judge them.
What would be our impact on our world if we erred on the side of love, rather than erring on the side of truth?
Sunday, January 4, 2009
What is Relationalism as a Christian approach?
How do we define what it means to be Christian? This is certainly a loaded question that too often becomes heated around questions of beliefs and doctrinal wars. For me, I don't care so much about denominational or doctrinal beliefs, but rather what is your relationship with God and Christ like? This is somewhat contingent upon your beliefs about God, but ultimately your relationship is what it is. If we were to parallel this with your relationship with your spouse or significant other, no one cares whether you believe that you should kiss her in the morning before you leave, or only when you are about to go to bed, or whether or not you should kiss her at all. Rituals in marriage or beliefs about how things are done in marriage are not what keeps them strong, rather the quality of your relationship is what is important. This is also what is most important with God as well. Keeping this relationship strong and intimate sorts out everything else. I once had a Christian friend who would greet me with,"How are you and Jesus doing?" in much the same way someone might ask me, "How's the marriage with the wife?" What would happen if we view life and our walk with God on a personal and relational level, rather than a doctrinal and political level? In subsequent days, I will be posting from a relational approach of examining what it is to be Christian.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)