Choosing Kindness
It was the first week of my summer vacation after finishing the 3rd grade. There was an unexpected knock on our front door. The teacher who had started the school year and then disappeared in the spring on maternity leave stood there. In her arms was her newborn child that she had brought to show me. As a nine-year-old boy, I had no appreciation for how far she had driven, nor the inconveniences of taking an infant out in public. I also had little interest in looking at a baby. Yet I can still remember her smile as she sat in our living room and invited me to take a closer look at her treasure. I don’t know how many other students she visited, but the feeling of importance I felt was beyond my capacity to express at the time. She honored me that day, and my little-boy’s heart could feel it. This thoughtful and tender act left such a deep impression that it is one of the few things I can now recall from that year of my life. Kindness is powerful.
I’m certain that I have experienced many more acts of kindness than I can remember. And I believe they have all been part of shaping me into who I am. However, I have also heard this tender quality referred to as something much less meaningful and impactful. Some see it as nice but not necessary for a relationship, kind of like garnish on a dinner plate or a cherry on top of ice cream. It makes things a bit more pleasant, but it’s not the main dish. Afterall, it is often the first thing to be discarded when a relationship comes under stress.
For others, to be kind is to show weakness. Therefore, to sit in the relational power seat, kindness is either twisted or disregarded. Many thus view outward expressions of kindness as little more than manipulative tools. They find themselves using “kindness” to get what they need or want. And they perceive questionable motives behind the thoughtful and generous acts of others.
Read MoreChoosing to Be Taught
All through my early years I saw myself as a humble man. The fallacy of that image was exposed the day I was informed that the one-on-one, who I understood would be my “mentor” in the YWAM training program was a single, 19-year-old kid. I was a married, 32-year-old father of three. I could feel the walls going up inside. It was clear to me that there was nothing of value I could possibly gain from this arrangement. God had obviously stepped out of this one. And that was the attitude of my heart for quite awhile after that.
Receiving the Words of Jesus
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples” (John 8:31 NIV). I have always appreciated learning. I study the Bible and have sought to educate myself on all its contexts. The words of Jesus are the foundation of the Christian faith, so of course I want to comply with what He says. This is what it means to be a follower of Christ: agree with the teachings of Jesus. Right?
Jesus’ words above sound great until an uncomfortable reality pushes in. He wants to drill deeper than mere intellectual acceptance. He often seeks to plant His teachings in my heart through instruments and circumstances I don’t like—painful events or people who seem unfit for imparting wisdom. I resist. This forces me to then ask the question, am I truly teachable? Can I absorb God’s truth for my life regardless the vessel through which it is delivered?
To Be a True Learner
For a long time, I understood “learning” to be the accumulation of information. The more facts I could memorize or clever processes I could emulate, then the wiser, more stable and effective I would be in life. But the amassing of data and life experiences alone does not make an effective disciple of Jesus. Holding to His teachings requires a truly humble heart ready to always ask a simple question: “Jesus, what are you wanting to teach me?” Whether I’m in the middle of great pleasure, pain, confusion or despair, the ability to ask this question and wait for and interact with His response is a very powerful indicator of whether or not I am truly a disciple of Jesus.
Thus, a disciple is a learner, and a disciple of Jesus is one who is committed to interact with Him as the number one method of learning. To be a growing disciple I have to recognize His commitment to never let a single circumstance in my life be wasted. He may not cause everything to happen, but in His sovereignty He certainly desires to use everything to teach me His ways. I just choose to receive it and respond in a way that keeps my heart open to Him.
Read MoreChoosing to Suffer Long
I always saw myself as a patient person. That was until my first year of teaching remedial English to 8th graders in a California inner-city school. My carefully composed lesson plans were sabotaged daily by 13 and 14 year olds who derived perverse pleasure from watching my frustration grow. I would come home each afternoon exhausted and dreading the next day. A couple years later, after I had transitioned out of teaching public school and into working with Youth With A Mission, God had to deal with my heart. He revealed to me that I was holding onto hatred for some of those kids. And to be truly free of the torment I still carried, I had to forgive each of them by name and pray blessings on them. It was not a fun process, but it was necessary. And out of it I grew to understand more of how God wants His Holy Spirit to work in my life. I am to take on more of His characteristics.
We are told in Galatians 5:22-23 that there are certain God-given qualities called the Fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. I have talked about love* and Joy** in past posts and will soon post one on peace. But the quality that I have been pondering lately is that of patience. An older name for it is long-suffering, which always sends uncomfortable chills down my spine when I say it. Is it really necessary?
We don’t produce it
The first thing that comes to my mind is that patience is a FRUIT of the Spirit. One of the definitions of fruit is “result” or “effect.” Thus patience, along with the other qualities on the list, is evidence that the Holy Spirit is living and active in me. The other thing that comes to mind is that fruit must be cultivated to grow; it does not suddenly appear fully ripened and ready for harvest without a caretaker making sure the plant or tree is properly nourished and dangerous pests are eradicated. In other words, once the proper seeds have been planted and the environment suitably prepared, the fruit will naturally come . . . eventually.
I often hear people (especially Americans) talk of their need for more patience. Most of us intuitively desire the valuable attributes of being able to wait, endure, and stick with something when results do not appear as quickly as we prefer. However, I have been warned of praying the “dangerous” prayer of, “Lord make me more patient.” Afterall, there’s nothing magical, mysterious, or instantaneous about growing patience. Difficult and delayed circumstances are always necessary for this particular fruit to take shape. And God seems to value this quality to such a degree that He is ready to answer this prayer with plenty of opportunities.
But I don’t want to wait
So, what exactly is this characteristic that the Holy Spirit wants to produce in all of God’s children? I think the term “long-suffering,” as uncomfortable as it sounds, describes it most succinctly. Many of us have developed an aversion to any kind of discomfort or misery to the point that we believe it should never be God’s will for our lives. And waiting for something good to come when all around us pain, sickness, grief, and evil are pressing in can be an agonizing hardship. Yet the Bible communicates quite consistently that waiting on the Lord has powerful benefits.
“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:30-31, ESV).
The word “wait” throughout most of the Bible can also be translated into English as “hope.” The scriptures instruct us that our waiting should always be with the expectancy of good to come. Waiting without hope quickly becomes despair, which makes our spirits sick and can turn deadly. Godly patience is thus an attribute that guides us to put our hope in something not of this world, something that is bigger and outside ourselves—namely, God, His promises for the future, and His unshakable love. It is rooted in the understanding and belief that the way things are right now is not the way they are going to remain. A patient person’s spirit is given the ability by the Holy Spirit to see beyond the immediate agitation or suffering and to choose to dwell in the hope of what cannot yet be seen with the physical eye.
We must cooperate with the Holy Spirit
Such patience is something only the Holy Spirit can produce. But our active cultivation of this fruit is required. First, we have to surrender to the Holy Spirit. If we are constantly resisting what He wants to do in our lives, little will be able to grow in such hard soil. In addition, we must let our sight be turned toward the future and how God has promised to shape it. We naturally want everything fulfilled now. He, however, has bigger things in mind that involve all of eternity. One of our ongoing weaknesses in dealing with people and circumstances is that our thinking is so short-term.
As I look back at my experiences as a first-year teacher, I can now see that my lack of patience with those kids was a spiritual issue. I failed to invite the Holy Spirit in to show me the destiny that their Creator had in mind for each of them. Thus I was incapable of responding according to how God saw them, as those for whom He sent His Son to die. Instead, I saw and heard only what was immediately in front of me and how it negatively affected my personal wellbeing at the moment. I had no interest in suffering long with those students who very likely were suffering through their own issues and circumstances of which I remained mostly clueless. God, of course, knew each one intimately and would have been happy to open my eyes to see if I would have invited Him to do so. Patience might have come a little more naturally then.
It shows who God is
For a follower of Jesus, growing patience is not optional nor a luxury. It’s a vital part of navigating this confusing world and keeping our eyes on what is truly important and lasting. God anticipates its active presence in our lives because it is also necessary for representing Him well. He, afterall, is the most long-suffering being in all the universe, putting up with humans because of His great love and amazing plans He wants us to experience. He’s not expecting us to do it perfectly. But He is waiting for us to let the soil of our hearts to be plowed so the seeds can put down roots. And at the same time, He desires us to invite Him to show us the future that He wants us to put our hope in, for ourselves and for all those around us.
It’s important for Him, and so He waits.
Response:
- How great of a need do I have for more patience?
- How does my view of patience change when I associate it with hope?
- What do I need to do to better cooperate with the Holy Spirit in growing more patience?
- How does what I focus my attention on need to change in order to see the bigger picture of what God is doing?
- Jesus, what do you want to do in me to better see circumstances and the people around me through your eyes?
*Posts on love include: Choosing Love Over Fear; Choosing to Love, John 3:16 Style; Choosing God’s Definition of Love.
Choosing to Humble My Pride
I have worked with some people over the years with serious pride issues. Surely you know the type I’m talking about. They see and hear only what they want and leave room for little to no outside input into their work, their projects, their relationships or their lives. They’re blind to everything outside themselves.
I remember one of my very first jobs working as a government employee. My immediate manager was tasked with training me to take over her job before she retired—that was the position I had applied for and what I was hired to do. The problem was, however, that she personally felt (I found out later) that I was being given this position at too young of an age. Afterall, she had had to work her way up over the years through the ranks having started as a janitor. I was a punk kid fresh out of college. So she stalled. I was given meaningless tasks for months but never trained to do any of her job. Many a night I fumed at home over this woman’s arrogance. She thought her personal assessment of me and the situation trumped what I had been hired to do. She was blind to my needs, my abilities, my ambitions and, not least of all, our supervisor’s instructions. And I was being abused in the process. But of course, she thought she knew better. So I quit.
Ouch!
After recalling this little piece of my history, I’m reminded (uncomfortably so) that people who walk in pride typically are very sensitive to and angered by the pride they see in others. They rarely, however, see it in themselves. That doesn’t reflect well on me.
Pride has traditionally been recognized to sit enthroned at the top of the Seven Deadly Sins.* Just as countless other sins have been understood to flow from the Big Seven (pride, lust, sloth, gluttony, greed, envy and anger), these other six have been recognized to flow from pride. It’s the headwaters, the source. Every sin humans commit is tainted with pride. It’s even been called the “original” sin. But of course, most of us, including myself, don’t see pride as our issue. It’s those other people that need to learn some humility. Right?
Read MoreChoosing Confidence in God’s Goodness
It has become a beloved classic. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, although written by C.S. Lewis as a children’s story, has powerfully communicated the Gospel message to many adults as well. Aslan, a lion and a Christ figure in the story, has a way of getting behind some of our unhelpful stereotypical images of Jesus and God. In one very memorable scene, the four Pevensie children are questioning Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about this lion they have just heard about and are having a difficult time understanding his appeal. “’Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver; ‘don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’”
Lucy’s concern about this powerful being that she and her siblings are just learning about is similar to that of many Jesus followers. Am I safe in God’s hands? Do I dare allow myself to fully trust Him with my entire life? Will I in the end get hurt or regret making myself vulnerable to Him? These are fair and very natural questions. But ultimately, I don’t think they allow us to explore God to the fullest or open the door to know Him in the way He desires to be known.
Expectations and Disappointment
Most people are searching for ways to be in better control of their lives. The pursuit of wealth, knowledge, and power are the classic ways humans have always sought to minimize the pain and unpredictability of living in this broken world. We search for pathways that guarantee safety, provision, health, success, and satisfying relationships. Uncertainty of desired outcomes can be unnerving, stir anxiety, and lead us to do almost anything to maintain a sense of control.
Read MoreChoosing to Love the Light
I remember as a child being afraid of the dark. It was in the blackness of night that the monsters, the “boogey man” and all my unspoken fears, manifested. Unlit buildings paralyzed me with fright. Sleeping with the light on was always a good idea. As a child it was easy to see that bad stuff hides in the shadows, just out of sight.
So, how can the statement in John 3:19 be true? “People loved the darkness more than the light.” What could possibly make darkness so alluring that humans feel affection for it and prefer it?
The Attractive Side of Darkness
As I got older, games in the dark became fun. We played one where an individual, the wolf, would hide in a wooded area at night. A group would search without lights, then run back to base before the wolf could catch them. Shadows were my friends when I was the one hiding. As the wolf, darkness emboldened me. I would terrorize people with sounds and movements that imitated wild animals—or maybe something worse. Often it worked, with the searchers timidly feeling their way through the underbrush, jumping at the slightest rustling of bushes, screaming with fright. The ability to easily hide made me feel powerful, and energized an annoying side of my personality. Perhaps darkness wasn’t always undesirable after all; it felt nice, like a comfortable, protective yet exhilarating blanket.
Read MoreChoosing to Live for a Hopeful Future
Dystopian stories have been all the rage for quite a few years now. The 20th Century produced novels like Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Brave New World by Alex Huxley, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. They each described an imagined future in which powerful forces sought to control not only people’s behavior but also what they thought—a very grim outlook. More recently, The Hunger Games by Susan Collins and Divergent by Veronica Roth are examples of popular stories turned into movies that describe a similar bleak future for humanity in which a controlling elite, through fear and manipulation, hold the populace in bondage. Interestingly, many of the most recent and fashionable dystopian novels have been labeled “Young Adult” fiction. Might this provide a peek into this generation’s expectations for what is to come?
The word dystopian comes from the Greek prefix “dys,” which refers to something bad, harsh, or wrong combined with the Greek word “topos” which means place. The opposite would be utopian, which refers to a community or country where everything is perfect and ideal.
So, why are there no utopian novels being made into movies? It seems that would be much more uplifting. My guess is that no one believes such places are possible, and stories about perfection are typically considered boring anyway. In fact, most of the dystopian novels I am aware of concern societies attempting to make themselves into utopian communities. But of course as is generally true, but not always believed, such human efforts fall short, often miserably. And thus the “best” tales that seem to resonate with the most people are those of the gloomy failures in which humans ineptly seek to make their own paradise.
Has it ever worked?
Speaking of paradise, the Bible has a few things to say on this topic. God appears to be interested in drawing humans into a place of utter joy and contentment where there is no evil. We are told in the first two chapters of Genesis that He in fact created a paradise for the first humans. Not only was this Garden perfect with every human need met, but God Himself walked and interacted with all He created, taking particular delight and interest in humans. The man and woman drew their life from the unmediated Divine Presence as the rest of creation looked to them for proper care and management. And it was this unbroken connection with the Creator that allowed the Garden, administered by the humans, to be a successful utopia. It was the place where heaven and earth met. What more could the man and woman desire?
Read MoreChoosing God’s Definition of Love
I was in Lhasa, Tibet the first time I saw someone physically bow in worship to a statue. The Buddhist temple was filled with smoky incense, and dozens of people prostrated before a grinning image. Sunday-school stories of the ancient Israelites giving offerings to idols bubbled up from my memory. It was difficult to comprehend there were people today still worshiping gods made of wood and metal. The second Commandment came to mind: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Exodus 20:4, ESV).
My next thought: “I’m so glad we don’t carve images and worship them in our Western culture.”
Of course, I’m embarrassed now that I blindly believed the American people were idol-free. As a nation, we’ve made gods out of so many things, it’s mind blowing. Money and comfort are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There are all kinds of things we worshipfully run after to make our lives feel easier and worthwhile. We have relational idols—ideal connections with others that we trust will remove or cover our loneliness and give a greater sense of significance. We have philosophical and political idols—ideas we count on to provide a sense of control, self-determination, and justice. We even have religious idols—reshaped images of God that allow us to better relate to, manage, and fit the divine into our lifestyle.
Yes, we still worshipfully “carve” and fashion things and ideas into shapes we believe will benefit us. And we then bow down in submission, living our lives and treating others according to how these “gods” dictate.
Buddhist temples have nothing on us when it comes to worshiping hand-crafted images.
The Shape of Love?
One such thing I have noticed popping up more and more among Christians is the refashioned image of love. We quickly assume we know what it is: to show love is to affirm the feelings and personal interests of another. Granted, sometimes that is how love is manifested. But as far as a definition goes, it’s not quite what’s presented in the scriptures. Nobody today disagrees that we need more love in our society. However, if you ask someone what the word means, you’re likely to hear something about being nice and letting people alone to do and be whatever they want.
The most succinct definition of love in the Bible is found in 1 John 4:8: “God is love.” It’s important to note that it doesn’t merely say God is loving. In other words, love is the essence of the totality of God’s being. It is not just what He does, it is what He is.
Some are drawn to this definition because it allows us to call out anyone who does something that we consider insensitive or unloving as working against or opposing God. The logic appears to be sound: if God’s essence is love and we claim that His Spirit indwells us, then love is what we should be all about. And someone who isn’t loving is thus “Godless.”
However, if we’re going to take this definition seriously, it seems to me that we first must determine what God is like so we can then know what love is really like. Only then can we conclude whether what we feel love ought to be fits with what has been revealed about who God is. To be faithful to this definition, we must start with God. If we begin instead with what we personally believe love is or should feel like, we end up shaping our image of God, and love, after ourselves. Thus, we would be saying something more like, “My idea of love is God.” We would then be on the pathway of worshiping an image rather than the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth.
This possibility should concern any follower of Jesus.
Read MoreChoosing to Turn from Anger
I almost killed my younger brother when I was 12. He was being mean to our sister, and when I stepped in, he said something—I don’t remember what. But I lost it. I put my hands around his throat and squeezed as hard as I could. The screams of our sister finally cleared the red haze clouding my brain. My brother’s face was a shade of blue. I pulled away, stunned that I could do such a thing. Even though I was young, and I felt my feelings were justified, I couldn’t deny that something dark had churned up to the surface. And It scared me, not to mention my siblings.
What is it?
Anger is an emotion that provides a surge of energy through the body and mind. In addition, it’s a protective armor that covers the vulnerable and weak places where my insecurities dwell within. It makes me feel bigger and more powerful than I actually am. It’s addictive and difficult to put away once it is found to be effective for injecting strength I can’t otherwise access. It makes me feel in control . . . for a moment.
But it’s also destructive and twists my judgment. Yes, the Bible mentions righteous anger, the kind without sin (Ephesians 4:26). But the stuff we mostly deal with falls far from any rightness in its results: holes in walls; broken tennis rackets; refusal to speak to that person; impulsive texts that “speak our minds;” friends and family members who now avoid us; canceling; secret desires to get even and see people hurt, a younger brother with bruises around his neck. And it only gets worse.
For centuries, Jesus followers have classified anger as one of the Seven Deadly Sins.* These sins are the attitudes and behaviors that early Jesus followers recognized as seedbeds for all sorts of evil. Anger is a particularly toxic one since it is so easily justified and quickly grows. While anger can take various forms and even smolder hidden within our hearts, a common way this particular sin manifests is as a drive for revenge, desiring and even meditating on others getting the humiliation or pain we feel they’ve earned.
Wishing on them what they deserve
The Bible declares that vengeance is territory that belongs to God alone (Romans 12:19). But the hunger for it can get so strong. And the taste of it, so sweet (at least that’s what we imagine). We want justice—that is, personal satisfaction—when we’re offended. Finding a way to take it into our own hands, right a wrong, humiliate a bully, hurt a hurter or humble someone acting too arrogant just feels right and even pleasurable. But God seems to be saying that we will rarely, if ever, get it right and the pleasure, if any, will be short-lived. We only mess things up more. We are urged to leave it to Him and then bless our enemies (Luke 6:28). Anger interferes with us dealing with “undeserving” people God’s way. And He has a way, if we’ll only trust Him.
So, why is anger a deadly sin? Because so many dark, ugly, and damaging sins spring out of it. In its essence, it opens the door for us to dehumanize another person or group. Unrestrained anger then paves the way for prejudice, malicious talk, defaming another’s character, gossip, shunning, broken relationships, hatred, violence and homicide—justifying each sin the whole way. We don’t treat people as made in the image of God because in our anger we have judged they don’t deserve that sort of value. Basically, we can’t handle anger without inflicting some kind of damage on others—and ourselves. Uncontrolled anger will destroy us if not confronted. We must call it what it is and choose to turn away from it.
Read MoreChoosing to Read Even the Little Words
Full disclosure: I am a recovering English teacher. It’s been many years since I stood in front of a class of middle-schoolers and attempted to convey the beauty of past participles, gerunds and the joy of diagraming a sentence. The response was almost always less than rewarding. Honestly, I never personally liked anything grammatical. It was just part of the job. And focusing on grammar never seemed to produce more motivated readers anyway. But I do find myself every once in a while, as I read, breaking apart a sentence to see if there might be anything hidden a little deeper in the text. This can be helpful when I attempt to comprehend the pithy thinking of a philosopher or theologian. Typically it sounds boring and labor-intensive, so it doesn’t happen often.
My grammatical antennae recently went up, however, as I was reading the Bible. It’s a book that is not always easy to appreciate, especially if you venture into the non-stories. It easily feels like theological gibberish and takes some work to comprehend what’s being said. But the payoff for making the effort can be enriching for a Jesus follower (and even those who are not yet following Him). Unfortunately, I don’t know the original languages of ancient Hebrew or Greek to help me in the process. But as my eyes passed over the text last week, some insignificant English words caught my attention and got me wondering. Suddenly I was seeing prepositions and actually asking myself what they meant. And that can be a bit unsettling, even for an English teacher.
WARNING: Short grammar lesson ahead!
It’s a category of words that most of us forgot the moment we stepped out of the classroom. Some may not have even gotten that far. Simply put, prepositions are connecting words that show the relationship between two items. They provide information about location, time, position, direction or relation. Commonly used prepositions are – to, at, in, on, before, after, through, of, by, towards, about, inside, over, under, between, within – and the list goes on. Learning to use these words give speakers of other languages fits when studying English (why do we get ON a bus but IN a car?). A simple, but not complete, image for identifying prepositions that I offered my middle schoolers in the past was, think of how an airplane might relate to a cloud. It could fly above, behind, around, below, beneath, beside, and through it – all prepositions. You get the idea.
I realized that when reading the Bible and trying to better understand our relationship to God, prepositions can provide a window to better appreciate what’s being said. Let’s look at the passage Colossians 3:3-7 (ESV) for example and focus on the seemingly insignificant word “IN”:
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Choose This Day 