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Thursday, August 15, 2013
Myles' Garage
It will be fun if I could continue and then add color.
Revolution vs. Restoration (Ordinary Time - Day 73)
2 Samuel 15:1-18
In
today's passage we're given a picture of what it looks like to lead
with the fuel of defiance. Absalom, who was granted access back to
Jerusalem after finding asylum in Geshur, is now trying to sabotage the
role of King David. He's planting himself at the city gate every
morning, waiting for each person with a case to bring before the king.
Absalom tells the people that the king won't hear their cases, and says
that he'd be glad to settle accounts with them fair and square.
Eventually, he steals the hearts of everyone in Israel through his secret conspiracy. He sends messengers all throughout the different tribes with this message: "When you hear the sound of the ram's horn trumpet, shout: Absalom is the judge of Israel!"
Evidently David has a better idea about Absalom's motives than anyone else. He commands his servants to get out of Jerusalem as fast as they can because Absalom's about to bring down the city. David and his family escape on foot, and as they're sneaking out of the city, the same army that once marched with him is marching past him with allegiance to Absalom.
There are two kinds of fuel for leadership. One type of fuel is defiance. This is where a person doesn't like what they see, and they secretly find a way to steal the hearts of the people and revolt against the powers that be.
The other type of fuel is creativity. This is where a person doesn't like what they see, and finds a way to rally the people and create ways to restore.
The first way is about revolt. The second way is about restoration.
When we don't like something we see, it's our responsibility (if we become passionate enough about it) to start creating ways to restore it. If all we do is complain about the way things are being done with the expectation that the same people are going to fix it, then we're not taking responsibility for restoring what is broken. So, assuming that we are taking our first steps in trying to restore something that's broken, we have two options - revolt or create.
If you're someone who is good at rallying people together for a cause, what is fueling it? Revolution or restoration?
I have to say that most of the times I want to see something be restored, I lean more towards stirring people up than bringing people together. However, I've learned that it doesn't work. When the aim of leadership is to destroy what is in place, something has to die in the process. Something has to be replaced. That is revolution. It's toppling something and replacing it with something else.
I believe that when it comes to the Church, the only workable option one has as a leader is to restore. If the agenda is to topple the bureacratic systems that are in place, and replace it with something different, people get hurt. Although I'd love to be able to say that a system is an object, it's not. It involves people and families.
Using the Church as an example, I have complained way more than actually doing the hard work of creating ways to restore what I consider broken. I've sent long ass emails about how people aren't doing it right. I've filled out comment cards, expecting the same thinking that created the problem to fix the problem. Sometimes, I do get the feeling that the Church just needs to start over. It's got to hit a rock bottom and just start over. But, I believe there's something to be said about the history of the Church. It's been around for a hell of a long time, so something has worked. Unlike governments, businesses, and educational systems, there is something that keeps the Church churning.
Don't get me wrong. The Church is definitely a sight for sore eyes. But, it also has a history of finding redemption, and being the light of the world that it was created to be.
So, if there is something in the Church happening that think is wrong or could be better, it's our responsibility to create ways to restore the broken pieces. The elders, pastors, deacons, and popes can't do this. If we don't like how money is spent in the church, we have the opportunity to create ways to use money differently - starting with ourselves. If we don't like what the church's view on homosexuality is, we have the opportunity to create spaces of harmony with the LGBT community.
Our two natural instincts are to fight or flee. I say we have a third instinct, and it's to create. There's something to be said about the otherness that rises up inside us when we feel that something just isn't right. We all have the ability to take what's broken and help restore it. It starts with ourselves, and if we're serious about it, starts rubbing off on other people.
To revolt is to antagonize. To restore is to harmonize. Which one will we choose?
Today's Action: What's one thing in our lives or the world around us that seems broken? Are we creating ways to help restore it? Or we merely complaining about it? Or, are we trying to revolt against it? Put the pen to the paper and see.
Eventually, he steals the hearts of everyone in Israel through his secret conspiracy. He sends messengers all throughout the different tribes with this message: "When you hear the sound of the ram's horn trumpet, shout: Absalom is the judge of Israel!"
Evidently David has a better idea about Absalom's motives than anyone else. He commands his servants to get out of Jerusalem as fast as they can because Absalom's about to bring down the city. David and his family escape on foot, and as they're sneaking out of the city, the same army that once marched with him is marching past him with allegiance to Absalom.
There are two kinds of fuel for leadership. One type of fuel is defiance. This is where a person doesn't like what they see, and they secretly find a way to steal the hearts of the people and revolt against the powers that be.
The other type of fuel is creativity. This is where a person doesn't like what they see, and finds a way to rally the people and create ways to restore.
The first way is about revolt. The second way is about restoration.
When we don't like something we see, it's our responsibility (if we become passionate enough about it) to start creating ways to restore it. If all we do is complain about the way things are being done with the expectation that the same people are going to fix it, then we're not taking responsibility for restoring what is broken. So, assuming that we are taking our first steps in trying to restore something that's broken, we have two options - revolt or create.
If you're someone who is good at rallying people together for a cause, what is fueling it? Revolution or restoration?
I have to say that most of the times I want to see something be restored, I lean more towards stirring people up than bringing people together. However, I've learned that it doesn't work. When the aim of leadership is to destroy what is in place, something has to die in the process. Something has to be replaced. That is revolution. It's toppling something and replacing it with something else.
I believe that when it comes to the Church, the only workable option one has as a leader is to restore. If the agenda is to topple the bureacratic systems that are in place, and replace it with something different, people get hurt. Although I'd love to be able to say that a system is an object, it's not. It involves people and families.
Using the Church as an example, I have complained way more than actually doing the hard work of creating ways to restore what I consider broken. I've sent long ass emails about how people aren't doing it right. I've filled out comment cards, expecting the same thinking that created the problem to fix the problem. Sometimes, I do get the feeling that the Church just needs to start over. It's got to hit a rock bottom and just start over. But, I believe there's something to be said about the history of the Church. It's been around for a hell of a long time, so something has worked. Unlike governments, businesses, and educational systems, there is something that keeps the Church churning.
Don't get me wrong. The Church is definitely a sight for sore eyes. But, it also has a history of finding redemption, and being the light of the world that it was created to be.
So, if there is something in the Church happening that think is wrong or could be better, it's our responsibility to create ways to restore the broken pieces. The elders, pastors, deacons, and popes can't do this. If we don't like how money is spent in the church, we have the opportunity to create ways to use money differently - starting with ourselves. If we don't like what the church's view on homosexuality is, we have the opportunity to create spaces of harmony with the LGBT community.
Our two natural instincts are to fight or flee. I say we have a third instinct, and it's to create. There's something to be said about the otherness that rises up inside us when we feel that something just isn't right. We all have the ability to take what's broken and help restore it. It starts with ourselves, and if we're serious about it, starts rubbing off on other people.
To revolt is to antagonize. To restore is to harmonize. Which one will we choose?
Today's Action: What's one thing in our lives or the world around us that seems broken? Are we creating ways to help restore it? Or we merely complaining about it? Or, are we trying to revolt against it? Put the pen to the paper and see.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Holy Kiss (Ordinary Time - Day 72)
2 Samuel 14:21-33
About
fifteen years ago, I was sitting at friend's house drinking. He had a
sister-in-law who was married with two kids. I thought she was
attractive, and the more I drank the more attractive she became. The
more I drank, the more my moral compass dissolved. By the end of the
night, I was completely infatuated with her. So, I invited her to lay on
the couch with me. "Nobody will know," I told myself.
As we lay there, I started making my moves. All I could think about in the moment was getting what I wanted, not thinking about who could possibly be affected by my actions. I had no sense of morality left in me. I was all in, ready to devastate the whole family.
By the grace of God, she still had some morality left in her. She realized that she was about to make a really stupid mistake, and got up and left. Thank God.
I've never made amends with her or her family for what I did that night, and I don't know if I ever will. I'm not sure if it would cause more harm than good. However, I can tell you that the guilt I experienced the next day was overwhelming. It wasn't new to me though. That was just a small layer of shame added on to a whole construct.
Alcohol was already my master, and I obeyed it completely. The more I followed alcohol, the more demoralized and heartless I became. There was no such thing as discernment or rational thinking. I got to the point where right and wrong started blurring together, and I couldn't tell the difference.
Not only were my relationships with others tortured with shame, but the God I believed in was a product of my shame. Since I put myself through hell, I figured God wasn't any different. The way I viewed myself was projected onto this construct I had of God. I expected God to give me the ultimate death penalty. So, what would I do? I got really good at reading the Bible, memorizing scriptures, praying, and doing good things for people. I had to match my erratic behavior with behavior that would appease the gods. This was the only way I could maintain some semblance of a relationship with a god I feared.
I believed that if I missed a day of reading the Bible or praying, then I would have an extra hard load thrown down from the heavens for that day. If I was in a relationship, it would be ripped apart by the czar of the heavens. If I had a job, my boss in the sky would surely fire me.
This sort of thinking dominated my conception of God all throughout my drinking and for two years into sobriety. Even after I took my last drink, I couldn't shake the shame. I still expected my higher power to punish me for all the chaos I'd created in other peoples' lives. I set the death penalty on myself, and figured God was doing the same.
Thanks to a man at a retreat I went to, I was introduced to a different God than I knew at the time. This God did not hand out death penalties, but grace. I heard other stories so similar to mine that it gave me goosebumps. I got to hear other people talk about how much they feared God, and how screwed up their spiritual lives were because of fear and shame. On the morning of the last day, the man giving the talk gave everyone a chance to "leave their fears in the woods" before we headed home. I finally heard about a different way to live, one that didn't require trying to make constant sacrifices to atone for my misconduct. I finally heard of a shameless way to live out my spirituality.
That morning, I took a walk into the forest and found a place that was isolated. I fell to my knees and cried out to the God I'd never known. I admitted that I couldn't possibly love him and fear him at the same time. I didn't have it in me. I admitted that I'd been waiting on him to judge me and punish me, and that I always attributed the bad things that happened in my life to him. After I finished admitting where I'd been in relation to God, I asked him to remove the fear I had of him. I was done. I was finished trying to appease the gods because it was futile and endless. There was nothing I could do to make the god of shame happy.
Right then and there, my life changed. Something in my heart and head clicked. Instead of receiving the judgment that I was so afraid of receiving, I gained a new insight: grace. Ever since my childhood, I'd heard the word grace thrown around, but it never sunk in. But there in those woods, on my knees, a light turned on in my soul. I was ushered in to a new found dimension of the concept of grace. I realized right there that I didn't have to do anything to earn God's love, and that shame was a construct of my own mind. Shame was not a ploy used by God to get me to change. It was a byproduct of the lifestyle I was living, a symptom of my own lost sense of morality.
Instead of receiving the guilty sentence I had placed over my own head, I was radically ushered into the scandalous, compassionate, and gracious relationship with the God of my understanding. Instead of the death penalty which I thought I deserved, I received a holy kiss. I left that day with a hunger for God that hasn't been satisfied yet, and I hope it never gets satisfied.
Today's Action: Think about any areas in our lives that we are trying to earn God's grace. Usually, it has to do with what some people call "habitual sin." As a result of our own failures to get it right, are we trying to even out the spiritual scales with more good things that will hopefully appease the gods? If we are willing, get on our knees at some point today and admit the ways that out of fear, we've tried to balance the scales with good works. Admit that we've feared God, and expected punishment. Then, tell God that we don't want to fear anymore, that we want it removed.
As we lay there, I started making my moves. All I could think about in the moment was getting what I wanted, not thinking about who could possibly be affected by my actions. I had no sense of morality left in me. I was all in, ready to devastate the whole family.
By the grace of God, she still had some morality left in her. She realized that she was about to make a really stupid mistake, and got up and left. Thank God.
I've never made amends with her or her family for what I did that night, and I don't know if I ever will. I'm not sure if it would cause more harm than good. However, I can tell you that the guilt I experienced the next day was overwhelming. It wasn't new to me though. That was just a small layer of shame added on to a whole construct.
Alcohol was already my master, and I obeyed it completely. The more I followed alcohol, the more demoralized and heartless I became. There was no such thing as discernment or rational thinking. I got to the point where right and wrong started blurring together, and I couldn't tell the difference.
Not only were my relationships with others tortured with shame, but the God I believed in was a product of my shame. Since I put myself through hell, I figured God wasn't any different. The way I viewed myself was projected onto this construct I had of God. I expected God to give me the ultimate death penalty. So, what would I do? I got really good at reading the Bible, memorizing scriptures, praying, and doing good things for people. I had to match my erratic behavior with behavior that would appease the gods. This was the only way I could maintain some semblance of a relationship with a god I feared.
I believed that if I missed a day of reading the Bible or praying, then I would have an extra hard load thrown down from the heavens for that day. If I was in a relationship, it would be ripped apart by the czar of the heavens. If I had a job, my boss in the sky would surely fire me.
This sort of thinking dominated my conception of God all throughout my drinking and for two years into sobriety. Even after I took my last drink, I couldn't shake the shame. I still expected my higher power to punish me for all the chaos I'd created in other peoples' lives. I set the death penalty on myself, and figured God was doing the same.
Thanks to a man at a retreat I went to, I was introduced to a different God than I knew at the time. This God did not hand out death penalties, but grace. I heard other stories so similar to mine that it gave me goosebumps. I got to hear other people talk about how much they feared God, and how screwed up their spiritual lives were because of fear and shame. On the morning of the last day, the man giving the talk gave everyone a chance to "leave their fears in the woods" before we headed home. I finally heard about a different way to live, one that didn't require trying to make constant sacrifices to atone for my misconduct. I finally heard of a shameless way to live out my spirituality.
That morning, I took a walk into the forest and found a place that was isolated. I fell to my knees and cried out to the God I'd never known. I admitted that I couldn't possibly love him and fear him at the same time. I didn't have it in me. I admitted that I'd been waiting on him to judge me and punish me, and that I always attributed the bad things that happened in my life to him. After I finished admitting where I'd been in relation to God, I asked him to remove the fear I had of him. I was done. I was finished trying to appease the gods because it was futile and endless. There was nothing I could do to make the god of shame happy.
Right then and there, my life changed. Something in my heart and head clicked. Instead of receiving the judgment that I was so afraid of receiving, I gained a new insight: grace. Ever since my childhood, I'd heard the word grace thrown around, but it never sunk in. But there in those woods, on my knees, a light turned on in my soul. I was ushered in to a new found dimension of the concept of grace. I realized right there that I didn't have to do anything to earn God's love, and that shame was a construct of my own mind. Shame was not a ploy used by God to get me to change. It was a byproduct of the lifestyle I was living, a symptom of my own lost sense of morality.
Instead of receiving the guilty sentence I had placed over my own head, I was radically ushered into the scandalous, compassionate, and gracious relationship with the God of my understanding. Instead of the death penalty which I thought I deserved, I received a holy kiss. I left that day with a hunger for God that hasn't been satisfied yet, and I hope it never gets satisfied.
Today's Action: Think about any areas in our lives that we are trying to earn God's grace. Usually, it has to do with what some people call "habitual sin." As a result of our own failures to get it right, are we trying to even out the spiritual scales with more good things that will hopefully appease the gods? If we are willing, get on our knees at some point today and admit the ways that out of fear, we've tried to balance the scales with good works. Admit that we've feared God, and expected punishment. Then, tell God that we don't want to fear anymore, that we want it removed.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Here I Go.....
I posted this on my blog this morning.....
Ok so, it's 5:00AM and one of my little ones needed something! Ugh why couldn't it be 1:00AM?! Then I could have gone back to sleep but now I am awake so I guess I will troll onto Facebook and see if any of my exciting friends have been up and about while I slept. I stumbled upon a post that so resonated with me that I not only shared it on my own page but I posted a rant and began to unleash all that I have been feeling lately and quite honestly for years. Typing it all on my little phone made it seem longer than it was but I realized that it was turning in to a blog post. A post of things I need to say and have wanted to say for a while. So start by reading my little post and even the article that riled me up this early Tuesday morning and then meet up with me...
Ok so, it's 5:00AM and one of my little ones needed something! Ugh why couldn't it be 1:00AM?! Then I could have gone back to sleep but now I am awake so I guess I will troll onto Facebook and see if any of my exciting friends have been up and about while I slept. I stumbled upon a post that so resonated with me that I not only shared it on my own page but I posted a rant and began to unleash all that I have been feeling lately and quite honestly for years. Typing it all on my little phone made it seem longer than it was but I realized that it was turning in to a blog post. A post of things I need to say and have wanted to say for a while. So start by reading my little post and even the article that riled me up this early Tuesday morning and then meet up with me...
Amy Franklin shared a link.
7 minutes ago
This is about so much more than youth groups but about the state of the church. Why do we feel the need to make ourselves seem so appealing? Jesus didn't and the early church didn't. Spending time and money on sprucing up a Sunday morning o...r night service is a waste and its selfish! When will we wake up and realize that if we want people to know Jesus and not our empire we need to get out of the building and live on mission! Not serve people but live out our mission of making disciples by loving them in word and deed. The church today is so whack and yet we just keep allowing the elite few to lead us on down a path of comfort and complacency. I reject that and I pray I never stop! I think I'll finish this on my blog....See More
Monday, August 12, 2013
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