In Philippians chapter three, Paul’s listing his credentials from “circumcised the eighth day” to his meticulous adherence to Jewish Law. He then says: the things that “were gain to me, I now consider loss for Christ… I consider them garbage…” Paul illustrates the meaning we make up.
Just like ours, Paul’s culture attached meaning to his accomplishments. Yet, transformed by his encounter with Christ, his fellowship with the saints, and the Spirit’s work on his heart, Paul gave it a counter-cultural meaning.
“Garbage.”
When Jesus Christ takes over a life, he often wrecks it.
He works to wreck our petty fetishes which Hebrews 12:1 calls “sins that so easily beset”.
Jesus works to wreck our insolent immaturity.
The veneers we’ve labored to erect.
Our commitments to self-sufficiency.
Self-centeredness.
And selfishness.
So, if you’re life’s being thrashed from sources unknown, look to see if it is the Lord’s loving work: working to undo your independence from him… independence God knows will destroy you in the end.
In the spiritual mushiness of today’s Christian culture, such opposition is held to suggest that God has failed you. Just the opposite is true.
God chastens those he loves. [Heb 12:6] Political correctness would have us view such texts with derision. As archaic. Practically prehistoric. Anchored in a middle-eastern culture too far from the sophisticated sensibilities of our day.
There is a place to assign meaning to life experiences, when, like Paul, we anchor that meaning in scripture, fully informed by Jesus’ life and teaching. As you and I grow in Christ-likeness, we’ll interpret more and more of life the way he did. Counter-culturally.
That’s how Paul was able to reinterpret his history. Paul was God’s provision for a deeply religious culture that was so proud of itself. His life, up to Damascus Road [Acts 9] was everything they admired. And, Paul’s life thereafter was just what they’d need to counter the meanings of their cultural predilections.
Consider the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a litany of counter-cultural meanings that Jesus assigns, beginning with poverty of spirit [Mt 5:3] and ending with what an authentic disciple is. [Mt 7:23]
Take a month and only read the red type in your Bible. Let Jesus’ own words soak into you. Allow them to challenge the meanings you’ve been assigning all over your life.
Would you?
Coaching Distinctions #27
This series of blogs about the meaning we make up about things has been really powerful. Last night, I listened to a talk by the Dali Lama as he explained the main tenents of Buddhism- the Four Noble Truths. As Christians, there’s something we can learn from this. The heart of the four noble truths is that suffering (also defined as stress, anxiety or striving) has its root in desire (our hopes, dreams, vision for our lives)- what WE want out of life or make up life to be about. Disappointment comes from life not showing up the way we’ve scripted it to. Their solution is to recieve life as it comes, not as we’d like it to, and then self-regulate through the 8-fold path (right thinking, right speach, right action, etc). As a Christian, I wonder how different my life would be if I truly rooted myself in the Romans 8:28 sovereignty of God- trusting that God has some design and purpose in ALL things. When I don’t know what He’s up to, I can trust He is working on my heart and my character, rather than creating some meaning like ‘This challenge is happening becuase I’m a failure, or I’ve done something wrong.’
What if most of our stress was actually a response to us trying to shove life into a box that it wasn’t meant to fit in? What if most of our anxiety comes from our own expectations of the way we want life to turn out (In my case, as a pastor, that would equal more people and a bigger budget)? What if the Matthew 11:28-30 rest Jesus talked about was ultimatley about experiencing Him each day and allowing Him to assign the meaning through Scripture and His voice of affirmation, rather than our own feeble attempts to control our experiences through labeling them?
Thanks for the helpful paradigm shift regarding the meaning we offer things- it’s sinking in more and more…
Darren, thanks for the vulnerability and your excellent observations. Your comments have sparked three thoughts for me:
1. Consider the word “disappointment”. I’ve not studied its etymology, yet, imbedded in it, I think, is a clue.
Dis-appointment.
What if disappointment arises when an “appointment” we’ve made with a future expectation isn’t fulfilled? How often do I make “appointments” that involve other people without checking to see if they’re even willing (let alone able) to meet what my expectation requires of them? As a Christian I can readily do this with God. Before checking to see if God has any interest in what I think I want, I “schedule an appointment” with something God’s supposed to do for me. And, when God doesn’t “keep my appointment”, I blame God. How dumb is that?
2.I know very little about Buddhism, but I do know something about desire. I believe desire is central to all growth and progress, even toward our maturing in Christ. It is true that desire and suffering are inextricably linked. The disconnect I have with the Buddhist notion of a desire-free life is that it is intended to free the Buddhist from the possibility of suffering.
Yet, suffering is common to life.
Love a spouse, a child and that love will cause you to suffer. Simply choosing to love another assures that we will suffer. If she hurts, I hurt. When my insensitivity results in her harm, I hurt doubly. That’s exactly what’s supposed to occur. In loving, we open ourselves to suffering– willingly.
Why did Jesus weep over Jerusalem? I’m certain it wasn’t because they’d rejected him (which they had). It wasn’t because he considered himself a failure in turning them to himself. Jesus wept for them because of his love. His desire (love) for them caused him to long for their well-being. And that longing was thwarted by their own choices; by their hardness of heart. Yet, his desires for them remained. And because it did, he suffered.
I believe it was Jesus’ commitment to the Father’s will [Jn 4:34] that carried him thru Gethsemane and to the cross. “for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame…” Jesus’ longings called him to endure the “opposition from sinners” [Heb 12:2,3]
The challenge, I think is to stay in life with my heart (desire) fully engaged, even knowing that suffering will follow, for the fulfillment of that which is so much greater than my petty comfort: the advance of the Kingdom of God among those I get to influence. Yet, to do this in a way that respects the sovereignty of every human being to make all their own choices, all the time. So, I make my “appointments”, and I keep them, whether the other person chooses to “show up” or not. The freedom we give people to be autonomous, without fear of reprisal from us, I think, invites them to live more nobly, At least, I hope so. 🙂
3.When you write, so capably, that stress comes as we labor to jamb life into our box, you reminded me about the universality of resistance. That human beings are “Resistance Machines”, as John Hanley said in a seminar once. When life fails to look the way I prefer [“my box”], I begin resisting it. How do I “resist”? By withholding my participation from it. In both sentences the “it” is MY OWN LIFE!
To believe that Rom 8:28 and Eph 2:10 are true, is to acknowledge that in those moments I am holding myself back from the life God gave me to live! As God’s “poema”, each of us gets to be God’s redemptive agent in our sphere. If I take myself out (because of discouragement, failure, disappointment, self-incrimination, or judgments) those around me miss out on the redemptive grace I was there to bestow.
Someone said to me once: Kirk, do you think God in Heaven is wringing his hands over you, saying ‘Oh no! I didn’t see this coming!! How am I ever going to fix THIS?’ The statement is preposterous, yet, many times, I’ve behaved as if it’s true. The God who promised to “work all things together for good” is fully capable of doing just that. I’m getting better at resting in God’s ability and willingness to be at work in my life in that way.
Kirk, thanks for the rich reply. I especially appreciated your emphasis on the fact that suffering is intrinsically linked to love in the Christian worldview (unlike Buddhism where the goal is to escape suffeirng). What a powerful example in Christ who didn’t come to show us out of suffeirng (like Buddah), but rather how to embrace suffering fully. Jesus’ death on the cross while still forgiving his tormentors is the most astounding snapshot of love, suffering and forgiveness all mixed together. Armed with that kind of love, we can walk freely into any situation knowing that the goal is not to esacpe conflict, but to love more deeply in the midst of it. I’m walking through one such situation right now, and this conversation has given me greater courage to do just that.
Thanks,
D
Darren, this might be the single best articulation I’ve ever heard about how Jesus lived and what He desires for each of us: “Armed with that kind of love, we can walk freely into any situation knowing that the goal is not to esacpe conflict, but to love more deeply in the midst of it.”- D. Adwalpalker
These excellent comments were offered by Ken Fish, of Kingdom Fire Ministries. He elaborates on several points in the latest blog post.I hope you’re blessed by them, as I’ve been:
He works to wreck our petty fetishes which Romans 12:1 calls “sins that so easily beset”.
He works to wreck those things in our lives which Romans 12:1 calls “sins that so easily beset.” What are these? They are the things that become obsessions in our lives without any real meaning. They can even be things that we do which are wrong according to scripture, but they don’t need to fall to that low of a level. Sin is anything that cools our affection for God, that causes us to become somehow worldly, and to miss the mark. Call them, if you will, “petty fetishes.”
Jesus works to wreck our insolent immaturity.
Jesus works to remove anything that stands in the way of our effectiveness in his work. One of these can be spiritual immaturity, even among those of us who think we are already spiritually mature. What does spiritual immaturity look like? It can be seen in those who make decisions for pleasure over hewing the line on the teachings of Scripture. It can be seen when we trifle with the momentary pleasures of conscious sin instead of seeing the “beauty of holiness” which is nothing less than seeing the wholesomeness that overtakes our lives when we make choices to do what the Lord wants of us all the time. Spiritual immaturity then, is the repeated pattern of making choices that fly in the face of God’s instructions. Not to put too fine a point on it by using hard words, but this behavior is insolent: rude and disrepectful toward the Lord.
The veneers we’ve labored to erect.
Veneers are fancy coverings that hide a lower quality base material. They make something appear better than it is. We all want to look our best, but at what price? What kind of veneers to we erect around ourselves?
Our commitments to self-sufficiency.
Self-sufficiency is another target for Jesus’ wrecking ball. Self sufficiency happens when we build a lifestyle wherein we are insulated from needing to rely upon the hand of God. We establish the order of events so we can control the outcomes. No divine intervention needed here, no sir. “Thanks Lord for that great education, this marvelous church, my impressive job, my comfortable life in XYZ community. Now that you’ve blessed me with all of this, I’ll take it from here. I don’t want to bother you.” How noble this all sounds, yet how laced with the inevitable loss of dependence upon the active grace of God.
Self-centeredness.
Then, Jesus decides to turn the wrecking ball to our self-centeredness. Now, this is a word that we do not use much today, except perhaps when we are disciplining our (young) children. Think of it: When was the last time you heard an adult tell another adult that they are (or were) self-centered? This term is potentially one of the most provocative and combative in our language. Yet, when we live self-centered lives, our lives truly are “all about me.” One dictionary defines the term this way, “concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others,” and of course “others” includes Him. Learning to live so our focus is on the Lord and other people feels unnatural. Yet, this is the essence of what was once called “dying to self” and it is the very thing we need most, if we are to grow up into Christian maturity. When we lose our self-centeredness, our selfish behaviors go out the door. Did someone just hear the sound of a wrecking ball knocking down another wall of the “me” building?