Archive for ideals
May 25, 2008 at 6:41 pm · Filed under Jesus, bible, faith, freedom, growing in God, ideals, paradigms, spirit, struggling with sin
Jesus tells us over and over not to be afraid.
Fear of the unknown can drive us to do many things to feel safe, not the least of which is to surround ourselves with unnecessary structure and rules and people to tell us the right things to do so that we never need make a mistake. Or if we do err, it is someone else’s fault because we have transferred personal responsibility. And once we have surrounded ourselves with this high towering structure that we can see and touch, we no longer need have faith. Because, as scripture tells us, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of which is not seen. We have an example of what can happen when we desire a king that we can touch - this is what happened to Israel. God wanted to be their king but the people wanted a king like all the other nations. Someone to go to battle for them. Someone to protect them. This grieved God’s heart. But he gave it to them. He didn’t come up with the idea, but he went along with it. That’s not the ideal.
Inserting ourselves into structures led by kings that we have asked for, which God has given us, is not his ideal for us. But this is what we choose because we are afraid of being unsafe. We choose the good instead of the best, in the name of safety, when all along we have been safe because we are in the hand of God. We choose to put mediators and messengers and vessels between us and God. We choose Moses instead of Jesus. We choose the law instead of the Law Fulfiller. We choose a veil, a curtain, to shield us from God’s glory, when God himself has torn that curtain so we might go directly by way of Jesus to him.
We expect God to be safe, when in fact he is not safe at all. God is good, but he is not safe. If he were safe, we would not need faith. Yet our spirits are safe in his presence, because of Jesus. Not because of a man or a church. But because of our faith in Jesus.
Worshiping God is not a matter of going to a certain place or doing a certain thing. That is how God operated before Jesus was sent. Jesus fulfilled all of the going and doing. It is left to us to believe and follow and worship in spirit. It is not our job to follow rules, but to follow Jesus.
Exodus 20:
18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Jeremiah 31:
31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to [d] them, [e] ”
declares the LORD.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
35 This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:
John 4
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
John 6
63The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit[e] and they are life. 64Yet there are some of you who do not believe.”
May 24, 2008 at 1:16 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, family, fellowship, growing in God, ideals, struggling with sin
Many of us are victims of hurt from other women. Most of the time it comes from a childhood hurt. For me, it was rejection. Cold, unfeeling rejection from two girls that I thought were my best friends. Many years later, I realize it is possible that neither of them meant to hurt me. But their actions left a lasting wound that perhaps only now is healing.
Women are often suspicious of each other. I have found that whenever I talk about my former “issues” with women, it strikes a chord with other women, who tell me that they have given up and just decided to hang out with men.
The root of this is the kind of childhood hurts like I experienced, coupled with the messages society delivers about what makes women valuable. These messages literally pit us one against another in an endless competition to be the most beautiful, the sexiest, the youngest looking, the best dressed, the most well off, and to get the man. Even if he is someone else’s man. Even if he is yours.
So after we experience the sting of childhood rejection, then they pile on with the news that we have to watch out or some nasty but beautiful vixen is going to snatch our husband or boyfriend out from under our nose, especially if we are not thin, smooth-skinned, and large-breasted enough to continuously captivate our mate and any other man in our presence.
This is not a good environment for friend-making. We don’t trust each other. We’re insecure, and we think everyone else is making us look bad. Just drive to work and you’ll receive hundreds of messages designed to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy something.
I am convinced that because we women are constantly receiving the message “not good enough,” we see other women not as friends, but as dangerous rivals. We put up our defenses, just waiting for the first slight. If someone else is having a bad day and snaps at us or ignores us or says something insensitive, we take it as a personal rejection. Many times we snap back, or take our hurt and go hurt someone else with it.
My prayer today for all my sisters is that we would recognize our need for healing in our relationships with each other, and our need to overcome the deadly message of Madison Avenue. I know you all think I am “smoking something” with my posts on stepping out of the matrix and not following the systems of this world, but let me tell you that you are better off without these things. Living the message of Madison Avenue brings death to the things that are really important - the things that, when we get to the end of our life, we realize are the things that matter.
I got to be 40 and realized I had this hole in my heart that was missing friendships with women. Since I have begun to heal from my past hurts, I have discovered the nourishing quality of relationship with the fairer sex. With my female friends, I can be mothered. I can also mother and mentor. With my girlfriends, I can be a child. I can be myself in a safe environment where I know they love me. I can grow. Oh yes, we step on each others’ toes sometimes and it hurts. But “wounds from a friend can be trusted,” goes the Proverb. When it comes to friendships with women, “Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” In other words, we will get angry with each other, but anger is born of true relationship. When we are envious of others’ status, that destroys relationship. Anger can make our relationships stronger, as long as we work through the anger and keep on trusting each other.
If you are one of those women who just don’t “do women,” I get you. I used to be you and I know that it feels safer to just avoid the issue of female relationships. I also know that there is an ache in your heart to experience the God-given blessing of healthy relationships with women. I am praying for you, my sister, to overcome your woundedness and reach out to that motherly woman who needs a daughter like you. Or to pick up the phone and call that mother who needs a sister, or that young girl who needs a mother. Don’t reach the end of your life and realize that in protecting yourself, you have missed what is really important in this life. In giving of yourself you will receive so much more. It really is worth the risk.
May 21, 2008 at 1:39 pm · Filed under freedom, ideals, paradigms
From Sterling Hayden, a passage that has given me pause this morning:
To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… cruising, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?
May 8, 2008 at 4:00 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, ideals, struggling with sin
I think that just the act of trying to live by my ideals makes me more vulnerable to hurt from others. Have you ever asked for forgiveness from someone, in a heartfelt and repentant way, only to have them act (in a really snotty way, I might add) like they don’t know what you’re talking about? It definitely hurts to get smacked by your own sincerity. Oh well! It’s not about me and my feelings.
May 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm · Filed under faith, freedom, growing in God, ideals, spirit
I have been ignoring this blog because I have allowed things to motivate me and lead me that shouldn’t be motivating me and leading me. Consequently, I haven’t been following my passion, which is to write about my spiritual journey and the things that I believe Dad is showing me.
The most recent distraction has been money. I have been all about finding a way to make more money using my God-given writing gift. This, even though I have clearly heard Spirit-voice telling me it is time to stop using my gift for what I can get out of it and start allowing myself to simply be a conduit. How could I possibly make money writing about my passion? So I have been focusing on other things, like a Web site about telecommuting that could draw lots of visitors and therefore ad dollars. Something that is completely without passion for me.
Another thing that has distracted me is the fact that people from time to time have such a strong reaction to the things I write. So I have blocked myself from expressing what I hear Spirit-voice saying to me because I have been worried about what people would think or if they would be offended. I tried to explain it to myself in pious terms. You shouldn’t be causing others to stumble, I told myself. You shouldn’t make it sound like you are pointing fingers, I said. Don’t express the things in your heart because you might hurt others. But these were really just excuses to play the martyr. My refusal to write the things God has put on my heart is a selfish act of the will designed to mitigate personal risk. If I don’t share my heart, then people cannot disagree with me or get angry with me. If I don’t share my innermost thoughts, then the resulting silence is the result of my own choice, not someone else’s choice to say nothing about the thing I have risked myself to express.
Of course, all of this is wrong thinking. I realized that this morning as I was journaling, a discipline I am working on separately from blogging. Neither money nor risk mitigation are valid reasons to abandon my God-given passion. So to hell with money, and if you are offended by what I write please do not make the choice to visit and read. I will not be co-dependent with the world.
April 3, 2008 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Church, Jesus, bible, dying to self, faith, family, freedom, ideals, little "c" church, paradigms, struggling with sin, systems
My good friend submitted a comment on my post entitled “God.” I thought he raised some good questions, so I decided to make my reply a post where everyone could see it — perhaps there are others with similar thoughts and questions about my post and my intentions.
Tina, are you trying to engage conversation or controversy?
I see your over all concept idea of idolatry, but prejuduces, woundings, and crusades can be idols as well.
If the Bible is not divine or our final athority (or God-breathed) do we go to YOU for your emotional empressions of what God is saying at the moment. Or are we left with the maddness of the people in the time of the Book of Judges where people did “that which was right in their own eyes?”
How do we even understand what a relationship with Jesus is like if you have denied me the divinity and authority of the Bible? That is the only source I have which tells me what he was like and what he said. “If you want to know what my father is like, look at me.”
True….we do not worship translations…but His Word is truth and is a light unto my path and living water to my soul.
True….communinion is not divine…but is a wonderful gift of grace, a remainder how much he loves me, that he was willing to accept my rebellion, pride, hurts, fear, and pride to save the person I would become.
True….the church is not final authority…but hidden within the organization it has become is the Bride of Christ he is purifying and preparing to present to his Father. I REFUSE to forsake even ONE member of her just because she seems surrounded by inempt and frustrating rules and regulations. If she needs encouragement, that is why Christ has not taken me home; not to rail but to restore.
As a member of the clergy, if my fellow ministers have wounded you or you family, I want to to be the one to assume the responsiblity of asking your forgiveness. Too long we have wounded with our demandes and regations.
Hey Dave,
First of all, I love you a lot, bro.
I see I have struck a somewhat dissonant note here for you. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to explain, clarify, etc.
I guess I tend to engender controversy. It’s not intentional. But it does happen. I don’t shy away from it most of the time, but neither do I intentionally court it because honestly, my life would be a LOT easier if this controversy didn’t happen.
You seem to be saying (and correct me if I am wrong) that I have prejudices, woundings, and at least one crusade, and my interpretation of your statement is that these are the motivation for the things I have written in this post. Am I correct? For the purposes of this reply I will assume for now that I am correct.
So, if I am honest, yes, I do have prejudices - I think we all do. Prejudices are kind of nebulous usually and hard to nail down so I’m really not sure what prejudices I may be motivated by on a daily basis. I think prejudices are based in fear of the unknown, though, and don’t think I have many unknowns when it comes to the institution.
I have been wounded by many many things in my life, not the least of which is the institution. I think it is fair enough to say that all of us either have been or will be. But this was long ago in my past - probably about 10 years ago now, and while I was very, very angry at the time and allowed my anger and bitterness to put a wedge between me and Papa, this is no longer the case. I made my peace with the institution and even embraced it, for years. Some of my best friends are clergy. I am not angry or wounded any longer by anything the institution does - if I am angry it is only for the big picture injustice of the entire system and how it feeds on people, including clergy, to sustain itself.
Dave, I guess I’d take your comments about the Bible and turn them around: How in God’s name can we say that the Bible is the final authority and not Jesus himself? We have replaced Jesus with the Bible. Is Scripture inspired? Of course it is! Is it the most inspired piece of Christian literature that exists? I would probably have to say yes to that! Is it the fourth person of the Godhead? NO! Is it even the Word that is mentioned in Scripture? No, I don’t believe so! I believe that Jesus is the Word of God. If we believe that the Word of God is actually Scripture, then when John wrote that the Word was God … well nevermind because I think we have actually adopted that belief and mindset in evangelical circles that the Bible is God. That’s a problem if you ask me. But don’t ask me, ask Jesus! I’m definitely not the person where the buck stops. Don’t look at me, look at Jesus.
And yes, His Word is truth and a light unto my path: his Word is JESUS, not a book. Even the book points us to Jesus and not to itself. But we only go to the book and then stop there, thinking that’s enough and it’s not.
Communion is a great reminder of God’s grace, I don’t think we disagree there. My beef is more with the Catholic idea that communion is the actual body and blood of Jesus, which renders it God.
In protestant churches, the Word of God must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy, just as in the Catholic church, the Eucharist must be cloistered and guarded by professional clergy, because we have given these inanimate objects a divinity that they should not have.
And regarding the Church, which is the actual bride, she is not hidden inside the institution, David, but throughout the entire world. The institution does not envelop the bride because she must and shall go free. Are there some members of the bride who move inside those institutions? Yes. Does walking free of the institution mean one is forsaking anyone? No, it does not. If I am a part of the true Body, I cannot forsake it because I AM a member of it. If you, as a member of the Body, choose to move within the system but remain separate from it because that is what Papa has told you to do, then do it with all your might. If I, as a member of the Body, choose to go out to the wilderness with Jesus on my arm because I heard him calling me out to it, then I will do it and proclaim it with all my might.
I think there are good-hearted people who believe, mistakenly, that being “of” the system is the best way to follow God. Do I condemn those people? Of course not! The couple who runs the last institutional church we were a part of are still our friends, we just saw them the other day and had a blast hanging out. The wife is asking us to come back to the small group we were part of where we had such great friendships and dug into Truth. We kind of chuckled because if we went back to that group that met in a friend’s home, there’s no way we could keep quiet about our views on the institution. Butwe are all on a journey and none of us has the ultimate and final solution except to the extent that we have Jesus. Isn’t it interesting that when we boil away everything that truly isn’t necessary, we are left with Jesus. That’s all I was saying in the post. That was my heart that I was sharing. Thanks for giving me the opportunity once again to share it more fully.
With much sisterly affection,
Tina
March 4, 2008 at 4:16 pm · Filed under ideals, leadership, little "c" church, paradigms, struggling with sin
Leadership is a hot topic in American Christendom and in the American political system right now. As it happens, I am leading about 100 people for a few months, as we prepare to facilitate an intense three-day spiritual encounter with Jesus for about 36 women. So I’ve been thinking about the dynamics of leadership and struggling with our paradigms versus what the kingdom of God really is. What I see in this experience, is that people are clamoring for leadership. This is true across the board, in all walks of life and in all different faiths and traditions. Everywhere around the world, people look for a leader and when they find one, they follow. And this is a good thing, because we are all built to follow Jesus.
The bad thing is that there are so many leaders in this world who do not lead in a godly way. True godly leadership involves no agenda for personal gain. None. True godly leadership, whether in corporate America or in religious circles, is bent only on seeing other people built up, encouraged, strengthened, and equipped, by our service. True godly leadership doesn’t take on the mantle of “servant leadership” as a means in order to increase profits, numbers, obedience, or productivity. And because it is such a virtuous aspiration, true godly leadership is impossible unless the leader is submitted to Jesus on a moment by moment basis.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about leadership in Christendom or in corporate America. The principles of godly leadership don’t change, because spirituality is not compartmental (at least it is not supposed to be). No matter what the arena, according to God, leadership is only supposed to be for the benefit of those being led. I realize this notion is completely at odds with the corporation (and remember that your local little “c” church is a corporation).
and that’s a “whole other” blog post: even though I believe in capitalism, I think corporations are evil, and I’d be happy to tell you why.
Unfortunately, because of human nature, given enough time, human leadership always ends up satisfying some kind of need on the part of the leader (if it didn’t start that way, that is, and much of it unfortunately starts with the leader’s agenda in mind).
Followers usually idolize their leaders, whether they’re spiritual leaders or business leaders. They reverence them. They honor them. They clamor after them, just to be in their presence. They stand in line after hearing them speak, to ask questions or just to say thank you. They pay them. Sometimes they pay them a lot of money. They give leaders power, over them, and over other things in their stead. And perhaps most dangerously, they cede their personal responsibility to leaders and ask these leaders to “take care” of them. Once again, this is true in religion and in politics. The nanny state is alive and well in both realms, I’m afraid, and this is because we have created the systems, both religious and political, that support this kind of thinking.
Selah.
Because we, the followers, want our leaders to take care of us and make our decisions for us, and protect us from ourselves, we, the leaders, take that power and money and admiration and lose our focus, and instead of empowering and strengthening our followers, we fall into a horrible conflict of interest in which our best interests are served by fostering dependency. And the more we foster this dependency, mitigating personal responsibility, the more whinging, clingy, selfish, and immature our followers become and the more parasitical.
This is what we have created in our political system, and this is also what we have created in our religious system.
Leaders in both systems take our money and make the decisions for us about who will benefit from that money, redistributing it as they see fit. They take our personal responsibility away and protect us from ourselves, telling us that they know better how to raise our children than we do, telling us that they know better than we do what we need to know, that they know better how to keep us “safe” in this big dangerous world. And sadly, they take our misplaced adulation and swell their own breasts and build themselves up, instead of refusing to receive it and determining to live a life of obscurity, so that those who have entrusted their lives to them are enriched with the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Slow down and really think about it.
February 24, 2008 at 8:35 pm · Filed under faith, family, ideals, paradigms
I wrote about kids the other day, and how they have to find and follow their own ideals. It just doesn’t work to traipse into the big wide world wearing your parents’ convictions. I said that it is important to find those before you head out. And I insinuated that as parents we need to help our kids make that switch.I was wrong.
Well, I was wrong on one thing. (That doesn’t sound too prideful, does it?) And when I found out that I was wrong, I felt my paradigm move, click, and lock into a new position.
It happened this past weekend. Darin and I stopped by to see some friends. We needed them; we needed to hear what they had to say and we needed to share some “body life” time with them. These two friends are truly elders - you know the kind - they would not want to be appointed to such an office, but they just “are” elders, regardless of whether a church CEO has decided they are or not. Besides that, we just like them and we like how the Spirit is expressed through them.
I know that my friend doesn’t read my blog, so when she basically started reiterating the contents of my post on ideals to me, it really got my attention, and Darin’s. It was as if she’d co-written the post with me. Kids need to find their own cornerstone. They need to figure out who they really are and what Jesus means to them, and they need to identify and take ownership of their convictions. There are no “grandchildren” in the faith. But when she got to the part about how this process happens, that’s when God really dropped a bombshell on me. You see, she said that they have to experience a crisis of faith in order to develop their own identity as a believer.
That’s where our paradigms parted ways. She’s already been through faith crises with several of her children. And unbeknownst to her, she made me see that we can’t gently shepherd our kids through their dark night of the soul. Every one of them has their own journey to take and make. Sometimes that journey is fairly mild and painless. They “get it” pretty quickly. Other times, with other people, it takes a big stumble or a huge veering off course before things get righted. It might happen while they’re still living at home, or it might happen when they move out. The thing is, God knows what it is going to take for each person to figure out that they’re a prodigal son or daughter.
And he’s willing to let it happen.
And it’s not my fault.
If my child veers way off course in his journey to his ideals, it is not my fault.
Paradigm shift.
Because there’s no way for someone to be dropped off right in front of their convictions, so that all they have to do is step over some magical spiritual threshold and there they are. No pain, no gain. Something like making the kid earn their own money for the Ford Mustang so they’ll appreciate it… If daddy buys it for them, they’ll just take it out and crash it.
It’s not up to us parents to take responsibility for our kids’ faith crises, or to try to steer them through it, whenever it happens (we’re not in control of when it happens, either, by the way.) It’s up to us to simply love our kids on their journey and trust God to get them through it.
February 24, 2008 at 8:34 pm · Filed under faith, family, ideals
To my children:
One of the things you’ll need to learn before you fly away from the nest is how to internalize your ideals. From the time you were little, your parents have been hard at work transferring their ideals to you, hoping that you would see and understand that making Jesus your center is the only way to have the abundant life that he wants you to have. When you are living at home and Mom and Dad are in charge of the details of your life, it is fairly easy to live the ideal of Christ. You may even think that Christ really is your ideal. 
What happens though, is that as your parents’ child, you may simply be wearing your parents’ ideals, like a comfy sweater or a fuzzy blanket. Sweaters and blankets make you feel secure and warm when your environment is not as welcoming as it should be. Your favorite blanky can mean the difference between a sleepless night or sweet dreams. Even so, instead of just wearing your parents’ ideals, you will have to begin making your own ideals that become part of who you are, instead of something that you put on and take off.
A true ideal is like a guiding star in the night sky. When the three wise men were looking for Jesus, they found him by following the light of the star. Just like them, you are under no illusions that you will ever making a landing on this faraway star - no, it is too distant to reach in a mere mortal’s lifetime. Instead, you will use it to determine the course of your life as you judge every choice by the light of this perfect ideal. Every step moves you closer to the star and closer to becoming the person you want to be.
The problem with the fuzzy sweater approach to ideals is that when you grow up and start directing your own life, when you officially become an adult, you will find that those dark, starless nights don’t scare you so much any more. In fact, you find them rather intriguing. Rather beguiling. Worth a look around. So you cast off the restrictions of the blanky and go exploring. The sweater feels a little tight so you fold it up and lay it on the shelf. It will be here when I come back for it, you tell yourself as you walk away into the night.
You enjoy the cool of the darkness; you find excitement and adventure on every turn. You travel farther and farther away from the shelf. Things are going well. What was I thinking, hiding under that blanket for so long? This is where life really happens. But then something changes. You realize that out here, in the cold and the dark, you’re alone. You begin to feel the palpable darkness and you long for a light. Back at home you were content with the blankie, but out here, you really, really need a light. And there is none to be found, not one star can you see, not one guiding beam to keep you from stepping off the edge of the cliff or falling into the raging whitewater and being dashed on the rocks.
You didn’t find your star before you headed out into the unknown. So you grope around in the darkness, looking for something to keep you warm. Anything. Anything at all will do. But the sweater and the blanket you once found so secure and comforting and then so restrictive, while they’re still there on the shelf of your beliefs, are different now… no, actually it’s you that has changed. You thought you could come back and get them when and if you needed to, but those ideals you clung to so fervently as a child just do not fit anymore. And you don’t have your own guiding star to lead you. So you turn back to the dark and find someone else’s sweater to put on, to take off, and you wander.
Dear children, let’s make a point of helping you find your star, your “guiding light,” your God-beam, before you launch out into the unknown. Let’s be aware that the fuzzy sweater is not adequate out there. Only the fire light of your own ideal will be sufficient to keep you in this life. Let’s find it before you go.
