“AM I BEING FAIR TO MYSELF?”
“The LORD demands accurate scales and balances; he sets the standards for fairness.” (Proverbs 16:11, New Living Translation)
“Not fair!!” (My youngest daughter whenever her older sister and brother beat her in a footrace)
I was thinking about fairness this morning, and it suddenly occurred to me that fairness is very important, but very rare.
The words for “fair” in the Bible are often translated with words like “just, justice,” and “judgment.” However, justice seems to me to be a word that is too narrow to really convey what the Hebrew and Greek words mean. “Fair” and “fairness” seem to be a fairer translation.
Throughout the Old and New Testaments, we are told that God is fair. It may not seem so to us. In fact, to tell the truth, God very often appears to be anything but fair. However, I need to distinguish between who God is and who God may appear to be to me.
Furthermore, both the Old and New Testaments tell me that I also need to be fair. Now, the Scriptures are getting plumb meddlesome!
Being fair to others is very hard work. If I let a person into my lane on the highway, I may be trying to be fair. But what about the people behind me? Am I being fair to them?
It occurred to me this morning that there is one person that I am particularly unfair to: myself. I frequently talk badly about myself. I am demanding. I want to be the perfect everything. I try to hold myself to a higher standard than I would anyone else—including God. Seriously! I would more readily allow for some sort of weakness in God than in myself.
Not FAIR!
But how can I truly believe in the fairness of God, unless I am at least trying to be fair to myself? If I don’t practice fairness, I tend to make God over into my own image. That is called idolatry. It is also called stupidity.
And if I am not fair to myself, how can I be fair to others? I can only act, based on who I am. If I am not practicing the fine art of fairness toward myself, how can I make a serious attempt at being fair to others.
So, today I am going to be fair to myself. To practice and to make progress in the spiritual realm, I need to practice all the virtues—fairness included—toward myself, as well as toward everyone else.
“SELF-COMPASSION, OR SELF-PITY?”
A dear friend and I were talking about the need to be kind, even (especially?) to ourselves. However, we decided—or, perhaps, he decided and I agreed—that it was crucial to distinguish between self-pity and self-compassion.
Self-pity is ugly and unhealthy. Self-compassion is lovely and legitimate. In a sense, self-pity is counterfeit compassion.
But how do you tell the difference? Counterfeits are not easily identified. They are not designed to be. I’ve noticed that it is much easier to catch counterfeit “self-compassion” when someone else is trying to pass a bogus bill. Not so easy when I’m doing it.
However, . . .
However, I think I can propose some helpful ways of distinguishing these two look-alikes. At least, these are helpful when I actually practice them.
One way of distinguishing between self-compassion and self-pity is that self-compassion helps me to be more compassionate toward others. Self-pity means that I am collapsing on myself.
Another way of telling the difference is that self-compassion is usually accomplished in a moment, whereas self-pity tends to settle in for a longer stay. If I try to hang on to a hurt, it is a sure sign of self-pity.
Finally, self-compassion tends to energize me, while self-pity saps my strength and will. A question that I always need to ask myself is this: Is this feeling feeding my energy for accomplishing good things? If not, I need to give it the old heave-ho!
What do you think, dear readers? Are there other ways that you have discovered to distinguish these two? They may look alike, but their DNA is not the same. Neither are their effects the same.
“SHOW ME A REAL CHRISTIAN—AND HELP ME TO BE ONE”
(Epictetus, Encheiridion, Book 2, chapter 1, §4, my paraphrase).
“Show my a real Stoic if you can—not those who merely repeat Stoic phrases.”
Epictetus (A.D. ca. 55-135) was a Stoic philospher. He knew some good teachings, and he gave us some good teachings. However, he was not impressed at all with good teachings. He wanted to live as a Stoic.
No matter how much they might have disagreed on many things, the New Testament author James would have agreed with Epictetus on the need for action, rather than mere teachings.
“21 So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.
22 But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.
23 For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror.
24 You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.
25 But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.
26 If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless.
27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” (James 1:22-27)
Now, don’t get me wrong: What Christians (or anyone else) believe does matter. Bad beliefs can, and often do, lead to bad behavior. Sincerity of belief doesn’t cut it, if the belief itself is mistaken.
Years ago, I heard an interesting illustration, which I pass along for your consideration. Whether or not it happened exactly like this does not matter; it is certainly realistic.
An on-call doctor is awakened at 3:00 a.m. by a call from a nurse at a nursing home. He hasn’t been able to rest well for days. The nurse who has called him tells him that one of their residents is unable to sleep, and is striking out at everyone around her. The doctor listens, considers, and orders one 50 mg. dose of a strong sedative. The nurse notices how sleepy the doctor sounds. She doesn’t think that the dosage sounds right. She goes to her Physician Desk Reference, and discovers that a strong dosage of this drug in .05 mgs.
She calls the doctor back to double check the dosage. The doctor is now fully awake. “Oh my God!” he exclaims. “Thank you! 50 mgs. would have killed the patient!”
Sometimes, sincerity is not enough.
However, knowing the truth and believing the truth is not enough either. The question that we Christians need to ask is not “Are they Christians (whoever “they” are)?” Rather, the question we all need to ask is, “Am I living as a Christian right now?”
Unfleshed truth is falsehood.
Now, none of us gets this right all the time. Still, that is our goal—or, at least, it ought to be. To live out the Christian faith day by day and moment by moment is what we are called to do. To be forgiven is a wonderful thing, but the question that cuts like a knife is this: Am I living as a forgiven person?
Lest you (and I) despair, however, it needs to be recognized that there is only One person who has ever fully, consistently lived out the Christian life. That person was Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, he called people to follow Him. I believe that He still does.
Years ago, there was a skit that asked a simple question. If you were accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?
Perhaps the question is whether there would even be enough evidence to indict us.
God, please show me a real Christian when I look in the mirror!
“LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS, ORDER FROM CHAOS: DO IT AGAIN, LORD!”
“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1–2, The New American Bible)
“For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6, New Living Translation)
In my 3-minute retreat today, I read the following:
“Each of us knows the chaos of searching, wondering, and waiting for direction. In the Genesis story it is the Word of God that brings order, balance, and beauty to creation. We experience God’s presence in the created world. When we consider the beauty of the world and understand that “God saw how good it was” after each act of creation, we become increasingly aware that our special place in creation gives us unique dignity and value. In turn, we have both a responsibility to care for creation and give God praise and thanks.”
I immediately thought of that verse in 2 Corinthians that plays off of this same idea—at least the part about light. Paul takes these wonderful statements from Genesis—statements that relate to God’s creation of the universe—and compresses them into the human heart.
The human heart is, I believe, a very dark and chaotic place. At least, my own heart is. You also likely know the dark places in your own heart, the places that are too scary even for you to look into.
However, according to Paul, this is precisely the dark place that the light of Christ wants to shine. And, of course, it is in the darkness that light is needed. It is in the chaos that order is needed.
“SAVED OFF OF A KILL TRUCK”
I sometimes listen to “Fresh Air” on National Public Radio. Recently (on my birthday, April 10), Fresh Air had an interview with Brady Jandreau, a severely injured bronco rider and wild horse trainer, featured in the movie “The Rider.” The director of the film, Chole Zhao, was also interviewed.
Terry Gross, the host of “Fresh Air,” gently compels me to be interested in things and people I’m not interested in. She has wonderful, interesting guests who are made even more interesting by means of Terry’s good questions, and her even better silences.
For example, when Terry asked her horse trainer the following question, I was moved to wonder and to tears. “I see what humans get from a relationship with the horse, but what does the horse get?” Terry asked.
Brady responded, “Many horses we save off of kill trucks. There’s no legal slaughter of horses in the United States now, but there’s still legal slaughter of horses in Canada. So if there’s a horse that’s never been trained and he’s much too wild or much too old for your average trainer to have a go at him, they’ll typically sell him and nobody can ride the horse so he typically becomes glue or dog food or whatever, sent to France. And the horse Apollo in the movie is actually one of the horses I saved off of a kill truck.”
I feel as if I myself have saved off the kill truck. I was too old and too wild to tame. It wasn’t just that I was going to hell someday. No. I was already there.
Addictions make you do destructive things to others, especially to those you love. Addictions make you do destructive things to yourself. You may choose your way into an addiction, but you can’t choose your way out. I know. I tried for decades.
So, I had pretty much given up. I was loaded on the kill truck, along with many others. And then, Someone opened the gate and let me out. I tried to stomp Him, kick Him, bite Him, escape Him, but He kept trying to get close to me. Eventually, I gave Him a little sniff. What harm in that, I said to myself. Well, He didn’t smell particularly threatening. And eventually, I let Him touch me . . . just a little. Well, that didn’t hurt so much!
Little by little, I let Him work his way back along my body. The shoulders! That’s far enough! He walked back to my muzzle, and gently stroked it. “Let’s start over again,” He said softly.
This time, He got to my flanks before I shied away. Back to the muzzle. “Let’s start over again,” He laughed gently.
And finally, little by little, He tamed me. I was not simply freed from the kill truck. I was free!
Or, at the very least, my Trainer and I are working on freedom.
“OF ROYALTY AND BAD BEHAVIOR: THE LAW OF BLUE TASSELS”
37 Then the LORD said to Moses,
38 “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: Throughout the generations to come you must make tassels for the hems of your clothing and attach them with a blue cord.
39 When you see the tassels, you will remember and obey all the commands of the LORD instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, as you are prone to do.
40 The tassels will help you remember that you must obey all my commands and be holy to your God.
41 I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt that I might be your God. I am the LORD your God!”” (Numbers 15: 37-41, New Living Translation)
This is one of those boring passages in the Old Testament that is tempting to skip. I decided that I would dig a bit deeper. I’m glad that I didn’t skip, but dug deeper. The brief dig was more than worth it. Two sentences from an Old Testament scholar shed a great deal of light on this. Pekka Pitkänen writes,
“As Milgrom suggests, the purple colour in the tassels is likely to tie in with the Israelites being a kingdom of priests (Milgrom 1990: 414; Ex 19:6). This said, the law at the same time ties in with the fact that human nature can be susceptible to bad behaviour (v. 39).”[1]
So, the tassels remind Israelites (and us) of two things: We are royalty, and we are, at times, behaving royally badly. Those are two things that we all need to remember.
Twelve-steppers confess two things at meetings: We are recovering and we are addicts (or, as one of my friends likes to say, “We have an addiction”).
Being recovering addicts makes us royalty. But we are still “susceptible to bad behaviour.” Indeed, as an addict, I am prone to very bad behavior!
I believe that these are two very important things for all humans to remember. If we don’t affirm our royalty, we are ignoring our own worth. If we only affirm our royalty, we ignore our innate tendency to do the wrong, destructive thing to ourselves and others—our tendency to screw up royally.
But what do we do to remind ourselves of these two seemingly contradictory facts? What are our blue tassels?
I can’t speak for you, but my 12-step meetings, readings, and phone calls are my blue tassels. The program and my friends in it remind me of what a good person I am, how blessed I am, how I reflect the glory of God in some dim but important ways.
But they also know all my stuff. They have heard my unvarnished, unedited, x-rated story. They know only too well that I am “still susceptible to bad behaviour.”
I would encourage everyone to find and wear some blue tassels. Put them on every day. Look at them often.
[1] Pekka Pitkänen, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual and Colonialism, Routledge Studies in the Biblical World (London: Routledge, 2018), 125.
“LIVING WITH THE PREPOSITIONS IN THE RIGHT ORDER”
“Today, LORD, I want to live in and through and for you. Help me to live with the prepositions in the right order.”
I tend to think (and even feel) grammatically. That doesn’t mean that my grammar is always good or appropriate.
Take prepositions, for example.
Prepositions are the workhorses of every language I know anything about. Along with conjunctions, they connect and divide. They prioritize. They are, I would argue, the most important parts of speech and thinking—more important than nouns, or even verbs. Prepositions are the unsung heroes of language.
“She gave her love to me,” versus “She took her love from me”—that sort of thing. “I ran toward the dog,” is a very different statement from “I ran from the dog.”
So, this morning, I wrote in my journal the words that begin this post: “Today, LORD, I want to live in and through and for you. Help me to live with the prepositions in the right order.”
The prepositions are crucial in this desperately longing short prayer.
First, I need to live in God. Indeed, I believe that there is nowhere else to live.
The Apostle Paul, speaking to some of the intellectuals of first-century Athens, said, “For in him (that is, God) we live and move have our being” (Acts 17:28).
We live in God! Does that seem a bit “new-age-ish” to you? Well, it’s in the Bible!
Of course, if we live in God, that means it is going to be terrible difficult to recognize God’s presence, or even God’s existence. If God is the medium in which we live, we will probably take God for granted. Expecting us to be aware of God would be like expecting a fish to be aware of water. Water is all that the fish knows. Therefore, awareness of water is, I suspect, not easy for fish.
And yet, though living in God makes it very challenging even to be aware of God, it is a wonderful prepositional truth. (No, I did not mean “propositional truth.” I meant “prepositional truth!”) There is a sense in which I need to “seek” God. There is another sense in which I simply need to pay attention. God is, in fact, all around me, inescapably present. This non-negotiable presence of God might invite me not to take myself quite so seriously. It might help me to relax.
But even when something or Someone is inescapably present, I do need to pay attention to that fact. Unfortunately, paying attention is not one of my strong suits.
Then, there is the preposition “through.” “Through” means that I don’t try to do life apart from God. Living through God means that I recognize my intense need for God’s help in order to live well. Otherwise, I will mess things up. A friend of mine said years ago, “The Christian life is hard to live without God.” In his usual ironic way, Marlon nailed it. What he was really saying was that it is impossible to live the Christian life apart from God.
And then, there is the preposition “for.” To live for God means that I seek to trust and obey, to glorify God, to make God look even a fraction of how good God really is. To live for God requires my very best intentions, will, plans and actions.
So prepositions matter, in my opinion. The order matters as well. If I start with living for or through God, I’ve already messed up. I need start with the in—God’s everywhere presence. Then, I need to continue with through—God’s every-when empowerment. Finally, I need to live for God—recognizing that I am not the center of my universe; God is. It is in, through and for God that I need to live! Only in that order does my life find its proper order.
IMPORTANT UPDATE!
I just got an e mail from a friend who had read today’s blog. He had some excellent suggestions for making it even better.
“. . . [Y]ou forgot WITH, which is my favorite preposition. God uses WITH more than any other preposition when describing himself and us, n’est ce pas? On another note, I think of prepositions as VERBS. Gives them more CLOUT, if you will.”
Both points are well taken, and will be the subject of future blogs, I hope!
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