I used to watch a sitcom called "My Name is Earl". The show centered around "Earl", a former lowlife who turned his life around because of karma. In the opening episode, Earl wins the lottery, but is hit by a car as he celebrates. He wakes in his hospital room to see Carson Daly talking about karma on his late night show. He believes he has found the reason why bad things keep happening to him...Karma. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you, but if you do good then good will come back to you. Each episode of the series chronicles Earl's attempts to cross all the bad things off his list in order to have a better life using the lottery money. This usually involved tracking down the person he wronged and making it right so he could cross them off his list. It seems like a good premise and good philosophy to guide your life, but it lacks something....
If most of us were honest with ourselves, we would admit that we can all have this philosophy. We set up conditions for ourselves and others to live by. If I'm good, good is returned to me. If I do bad, then bad will be returned. If you're nice to me, then I'm nice you. If you hurt me, then I hurt you. What goes around, comes around. I remember being about six years old and forgetting to take my vitamins and when I got to school, I had a really bad day. I got a bad grade on a test and my friends weren't playing with me at recess. The next day, I remembered my vitamins, and I had a great day. I continued to remember to take my vitamins, and I had better days, so I began to equate the two. I believed that if I forgot to take my vitamins, or washed my face before I shampooed my hair, or started applying my makeup on my left side of my face instead of my right that it would be a bad day. I believed that I had control over my own life.
Unfortunately, I put these same conditions on other people, but I judge them more harshly because I feel like I am have more willpower or more motivation or more drive to be good.If they made a mistake or hurt me, too bad. Karma gives me an excuse for treating them badly. I forget that I'm just as human and fallible as the next person, so I forget to extend the grace that has been extended to me.
You see, that's what is missing from this whole karma thing. Karma doesn't allow you to make mistakes or bad choices because you'll always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's meant to help you make better choices and to do good things and be nice to everybody else, but eventually the merry-go-round makes you sick. You give up; you're motivation is gone because you can't be good enough. Only God's grace, secured for you through Christ's death on the cross can change your heart. Pastor Tullian Tchividjian says, "Only undeserved grace can truly melt and transform the heart." Only then will we get rid of our own conditions and be obedient to God because we love Him and want to obey Him. And even if we fail, His grace is there to pick us up, dust us off and help us get back on the ride.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Seriously, a peacemaking team?!
Last week at the daycare, my boss was having a problem with her computer. She had lost the schedule she makes every week; it was just gone. She had called in our tech guy to look at, but he wasn't able to figure it out because he wasn't familiar with the program she had been using. When I got there, the tech guy had just left, and she was frustrated. She had restarted her computer and managed to get some of the old information, but not the design. I don't know anything about the program she was using or about "Apple" computers, but I do have some experience with losing documents and computers, so I suggested that she try cutting and pasting what she did have into a new document or a new program. She was able to recreate the table and then cut and paste each person's information into the corresponding cells, but she wasn't able to find one of the worker's names. As I sat down to talk it through with her, she thought of something she hadn't tried. All she needed was someone to talk to, someone to help her think through what she needed to do.
The same is true about peacemaking...sometimes we just need someone to talk to, someone to help us see what we need to do, someone who has learned from their own mistakes. That's what the team is here to do, sit down and talk it through. It can be as simple as chatting over a cup of coffee.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The pit of despair
My life changed with two words, "statutory rape".It was like, what I would imagine, being hit by a semi. I felt so many emotions when I heard them...shock,shame, anger, confusion, guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, rage, hatred. They became my pit of despair. These are emotions I would continue to feel for the next 10 years and affect every relationship. Let me back up and give you some context.
It was my senior year of college and I was getting ready to go to orientation for student teaching. I had just moved back into my house off campus after the Christmas break. Since the beginning of the school year, I had been teaching the youth group at dad's church in Pendleton, IN and I also started dating one of the regular church goers. He was 20 and the son of one of our more prominent couples. He lived at home with his parents and a member of my youth group who was a distant relative. He had a reputation for being irresponsible even dishonest, but I didn't care. You see, I was the last single one in my family. My sister had just gotten married that July and my brother had been married for six years and had two children. I just wanted a mate, someone to go to dinner or a movie with, to not have to be single for the holidays again.
Our relationship started out rocky to say the least. He stood me up on our first date. I remember being angry as I was driving back to school and spilling my guts to one of my roommates. She was sympathetic, but believed that I was being too hard on him, that my expectations were a tad high. "Give him a second chance." she said. For anyone who knows me, that's not my modus operandi. I cut people off after the first disappointment, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." was my motto, but after a couple of pleading phone calls from him, I relented.
Things went pretty well from there. We talked on the phone about every night(he always called me), and saw each other every weekend. He helped with the remodeling of the youth room and came to church every Sunday. My mother and my sister-in-law were pretty vocal about their feelings toward him (neither knew about the first date fiasco) and so I hid my relationship with him. The first my mother heard about it was the night of the Christmas party for the company where he worked. He was late picking me up from my parent's house (another of my pet peeves), and mom got home to ask questions. She was annoyed, but ultimately supportive (that took a little wind out of my sails). It was a great night, he opened doors for me, told me how wonderful I was, bought me ice cream. I don't remember why we weren't talking Christmas Eve, but he sent me flowers after my uncle died Christmas day, so things were back to good New Year's Eve. I had come home to host a sleep over with the girls at the church and he came to drop off his relative. For months to come, I would relive that night, looking for a sign of the turmoil that was to come.
The night before I heard those life-changing words, my dad called. I was in the kitchen with one of my roommates and was expecting a phone call from him, but got my dad instead. He informed me that my guy had been arrested. That was shocking enough and when I asked why, he told me it was because he was AWOL. I was upset, but it was endurable. The next day, my mother called and asked me what I was thinking about in regards to him and I told her I was done, no more. It's then she told me that she had asked dad to lie to me, that he was in fact in jail for statutory rape(that relative in my youth group) and that the girl was pregnant.
The rest of that day was a complete blur. I went to class, but heard nothing. My mind just kept reliving that moment and those two words, "statutory rape". I was like a cow chewing his cud.
The weeks to come were rough, and I became an angry person. I kept people at arm's length and pretended that I was fine. To make things worse, dad agreed to counsel the guy even after I begged him not to claiming it was "God's will". What had once been a close relationship became estranged, and I withdrew, from life, from him, from God.
It took almost 10 years, countless crying sessions, a move to North Carolina and three years of talk therapy and medication before I was ready to embrace my pit as Joseph did in Genesis. As Tara Barthel said in her general session at the Peacemaker Conference, I was forgetting three things my duty, depravity and destiny. I had forgotten God and believed He had abandoned me. I felt lost and alone because I forgot my duty to serve God, my own sinful nature and the destiny God had for me.
Joseph remembered and embraced all of those things. He had had dreams about his destiny and he held onto those and his relationship with God through his journey from the pit to Egypt. Never once did Joseph give up on the destiny God had for him, and when he was faced with the decision to help his brothers or let them suffer as he did, he remembered his duty telling his brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."(Gen. 50:20).
After I moved out here the guy committed suicide. I felt mixed emotions...relief, guilt, frustration. You see, I had never had an opportunity to confront him, to tell him how he hurt me, to understand why he did what he did. I felt like I would never have closure or find reconciliation. I would never have the chance to tell him how much I hated him, and I would never be able to hear him apologize and grant forgiveness. What I never realized is I don't need that, I need to remember my duty, my own depravity and the destiny God has for me. I need to remember that God is always with me no matter where my pit is or how big it is, and He will always use the bad for something good even if it's not in my time or my way. I pray it's not just me....
It was my senior year of college and I was getting ready to go to orientation for student teaching. I had just moved back into my house off campus after the Christmas break. Since the beginning of the school year, I had been teaching the youth group at dad's church in Pendleton, IN and I also started dating one of the regular church goers. He was 20 and the son of one of our more prominent couples. He lived at home with his parents and a member of my youth group who was a distant relative. He had a reputation for being irresponsible even dishonest, but I didn't care. You see, I was the last single one in my family. My sister had just gotten married that July and my brother had been married for six years and had two children. I just wanted a mate, someone to go to dinner or a movie with, to not have to be single for the holidays again.
Our relationship started out rocky to say the least. He stood me up on our first date. I remember being angry as I was driving back to school and spilling my guts to one of my roommates. She was sympathetic, but believed that I was being too hard on him, that my expectations were a tad high. "Give him a second chance." she said. For anyone who knows me, that's not my modus operandi. I cut people off after the first disappointment, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." was my motto, but after a couple of pleading phone calls from him, I relented.
Things went pretty well from there. We talked on the phone about every night(he always called me), and saw each other every weekend. He helped with the remodeling of the youth room and came to church every Sunday. My mother and my sister-in-law were pretty vocal about their feelings toward him (neither knew about the first date fiasco) and so I hid my relationship with him. The first my mother heard about it was the night of the Christmas party for the company where he worked. He was late picking me up from my parent's house (another of my pet peeves), and mom got home to ask questions. She was annoyed, but ultimately supportive (that took a little wind out of my sails). It was a great night, he opened doors for me, told me how wonderful I was, bought me ice cream. I don't remember why we weren't talking Christmas Eve, but he sent me flowers after my uncle died Christmas day, so things were back to good New Year's Eve. I had come home to host a sleep over with the girls at the church and he came to drop off his relative. For months to come, I would relive that night, looking for a sign of the turmoil that was to come.
The night before I heard those life-changing words, my dad called. I was in the kitchen with one of my roommates and was expecting a phone call from him, but got my dad instead. He informed me that my guy had been arrested. That was shocking enough and when I asked why, he told me it was because he was AWOL. I was upset, but it was endurable. The next day, my mother called and asked me what I was thinking about in regards to him and I told her I was done, no more. It's then she told me that she had asked dad to lie to me, that he was in fact in jail for statutory rape(that relative in my youth group) and that the girl was pregnant.
The rest of that day was a complete blur. I went to class, but heard nothing. My mind just kept reliving that moment and those two words, "statutory rape". I was like a cow chewing his cud.
The weeks to come were rough, and I became an angry person. I kept people at arm's length and pretended that I was fine. To make things worse, dad agreed to counsel the guy even after I begged him not to claiming it was "God's will". What had once been a close relationship became estranged, and I withdrew, from life, from him, from God.
It took almost 10 years, countless crying sessions, a move to North Carolina and three years of talk therapy and medication before I was ready to embrace my pit as Joseph did in Genesis. As Tara Barthel said in her general session at the Peacemaker Conference, I was forgetting three things my duty, depravity and destiny. I had forgotten God and believed He had abandoned me. I felt lost and alone because I forgot my duty to serve God, my own sinful nature and the destiny God had for me.
Joseph remembered and embraced all of those things. He had had dreams about his destiny and he held onto those and his relationship with God through his journey from the pit to Egypt. Never once did Joseph give up on the destiny God had for him, and when he was faced with the decision to help his brothers or let them suffer as he did, he remembered his duty telling his brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."(Gen. 50:20).
After I moved out here the guy committed suicide. I felt mixed emotions...relief, guilt, frustration. You see, I had never had an opportunity to confront him, to tell him how he hurt me, to understand why he did what he did. I felt like I would never have closure or find reconciliation. I would never have the chance to tell him how much I hated him, and I would never be able to hear him apologize and grant forgiveness. What I never realized is I don't need that, I need to remember my duty, my own depravity and the destiny God has for me. I need to remember that God is always with me no matter where my pit is or how big it is, and He will always use the bad for something good even if it's not in my time or my way. I pray it's not just me....
Saturday, October 5, 2013
The Shutdown
Let me preface this post by saying that I am NOT a theologian, politician, psychologist, lawyer, social worker, doctor, news analyst, pundit or economist. For the record, I identify myself as democrat, but I am first and foremost a sinning Christian, saved by grace. This is simply my opinion based on my own experience as a sinner who is terrible with relationships. That being said...
"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others."
Phil 2:3-4
I don't watch the news. I find it, well, depressing. As a kid, I used to love to watch the CBS morning show with Harry Smith and Paula Zahn. They were humorous, and they seemed to care about the stories that they were reporting. I never felt uneasy watching because they were professional. They asked important questions, but they never seemed to back people into a corner or try to get someone to say something that could be used as a soundbite by a different network or political party. I'm not sure when all that changed, but somewhere along the way, the news became about opinion, pundits, blame, name calling and a constant battle for bragging rights. Cable news stations like Fox News and MSNBC trade barbs between anchors using terms like "lame-stream media" and "Christian Right". Every reporter has a story to tell, and they are ready to make a judgment call based on that opinion (and sometimes the opinions of others).
It's very easy to judge someone, I do it everyday, but I rarely do it charitably. I assume the worst about other people's actions based on motives I think up in my head. I assume my mom doesn't care about me because she's not home from work on time and hasn't called. I get angry with her because I assume something about her motivation, I refuse to think charitably about her, I don't give her the benefit of the doubt. I look to my own interests alone, out of selfishness and "vain conceit". I do not humble myself and value her (or anyone else) above myself and think about their interests. It could very well be that she simply forgot, after all I forget things all the time. Maybe she just lost track of time. There are a million possible reasons for her behavior, but my mind focuses on the bad. The media outlets and politicians do the same thing.
Please understand I am not calling the media selfish or saying that either political party is acting out of vain conceit. I don't know that. For all I know, they could be fighting for someone who is struggling financially or is hurting in ways I can't begin to understand. I am saying that both sides seem to be concerned only with their own interests. They are like two people just staring each other down, waiting for the other to blink. They refuse to attempt a compromise because it seems like weakness or treason. They both assume the other is trying to somehow destroy the country all because they have a differing opinion on policies. They see things as black and white, as either-or, all or nothing. All the while missing the shades of gray that could have prevented a shut down. And people eat it up; we thrive on the drama. We stand strong with our party, refusing to budge because we just know that the other side is wrong. People post pictures and sayings on social media calling for salary decreases for Congress, a new president (like that would help), the repeal of the Affordable Care Act; they call our president names and look for the "Christian" solution for wanting him out of office. They are making a judgment based on the friends they have, the cable news shows they watch and their own interests.
Instead, what we need to do is what Paul tells the Philippians in Phil. 2:4, " Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others." We need to stop making selfish judgment calls based on our own opinions of others' actions and start making charitable judgments based on God's value of them as His children and His call for us as Christians, to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven"(Matt. 5:44). Could it be or is it just me?
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